Chapter Four
Sam hadn’t expected her to say that, so it took her brain a second to catch up. “You know who killed King?”
“I do. I… I witnessed it.”
“And you’re prepared to make a statement about what you saw?”
Amara nodded as tears continued to flow. “I’ve waited years to make that statement.”
“Why did you wait six years?”
“Because I was eleven when it happened, afraid no one would believe me, and I didn’t want to end up in the foster system, separated from my friends.”
Interesting, Sam thought, that she didn’t mention her parents.
“Okay, in that case, here’s what happens next.
I’ll make a call to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
They oversee prosecutions for the District of Columbia.
An Assistant U.S. Attorney will come here to witness your statement, which will be recorded and witnessed by me and another member of my team. Is that okay with you?”
Amara’s hands trembled harder as she nodded. “I’m really scared.”
“I understand, but I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“Thank you. That helps. I knew you were the right person to come to.”
“I appreciate the trust you’ve placed in me. Let me go set things up, and I’ll come back for you shortly. Can I get you anything in the meantime?”
She shook her head. “I’m okay. Thanks.”
“I’ll be right back.” Sam went out to the pit and gestured for Freddie to follow her into the conference room. “Close the door.”
“What’s up?”
She filled him in on what Amara had told her.
“Holy crap. Why is she reporting this only now?”
“She waited until her eighteenth birthday, so she’d be an adult. She said she didn’t think anyone would believe an almost-twelve-year-old and didn’t want to end up in the system, away from her friends.”
“I’m trying to wrap my head around the implications of her living with this for six years when she was just a kid,” Freddie said.
“I know. The fact that she was concerned about landing in the system means her parents were probably involved, which makes it even more wild that she lived with them for six years after this incident.”
“It’s heavy stuff for sure,” Freddie said. “Should we bring Dr. Trulo in for this?”
“Yes, definitely. Track him down while I call for an AUSA. I want you in there to witness her statement.”
“Got it.”
While he went to find Trulo, she called Hope Miller, one of the triplet sisters who served as the department’s prosecutors.
“Hey, Sam, how’s it going?”
“I’ve got an eighteen-year-old woman who wants to report a six-year-old murder.”
“Who’s the victim?”
“Her brother, King Robinson, who was thirteen at the time.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell, but I’ll look up the case.”
“How soon can you get here? She’s… fragile and eager to get this done.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Thanks, Hope.”
Sam slapped her phone closed and went to Malone’s office to update him on the information Amara had shared. “Do you remember the case?”
“I don’t,” he said, “but let me do a search.”
Sam stood over his shoulder as he searched their database, looking for a report on King Robinson. “There.” She pointed to his screen.
Malone clicked on a report filed by Detectives Dugal and Moran.
“What’s their deal?”
“Decent detectives. Both retired now.”
“Will you send a copy of the report to me and Hope?”
“Yep. Did you hear that Catherine McDermott got confirmed as the new USA?”
“Already? I thought we had a few more weeks.”
“I guess they moved it up since there was no dissent.”
“Great.” Sam had heard the new U.S. Attorney that Nick had nominated to replace the late Tom Forrester was a by-the-book stickler and was worried about what it would be like to work with her.
However, she’d resisted the temptation to ask her husband to reconsider his choice, as there were a few lines she wouldn’t cross.
She hoped she didn’t live to regret her ethical stance.
Sam scanned the write-up in which the detectives reported being called by Patrol to The Yards, a park in the city’s southeastern quadrant, after they received a report of a body near the waterfall.
The autopsy showed that King had been beaten and manually strangled.
Fingerprints taken from the body were run through all available databases with no hits on anyone already in the system.
“I’m going to have those prints rerun.” Sam texted Lindsey to request the retest. “It’s been six years. We might get a hit.”
Freddie appeared at the door to the captain’s office. “Hope is here.”
“All right. Let’s see what Amara has to say. Can you put her in interview one, please, Freddie?”
“Yep.”
Malone followed Sam to the hallway outside the room, where Hope waited for them.
Freddie arrived with Amara, and Sam introduced her to Hope and Captain Malone.
“We’re going to one of our interview rooms, where we can record your statement,” Sam said to Amara. “Captain Malone and Hope will be in the observation room, which is through that door. Do you have any questions?”
“Not right now.”
Freddie handed Amara a bottle of water.
Dr. Trulo came down the hallway. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Amara, this is Dr. Anthony Trulo, our department psychiatrist. I’ve asked him to witness your statement so he can offer whatever support you may need afterward. Is that all right with you?”
She nodded. “Thank you all for being so kind and helpful.”
“We’ll be right here with you through the whole thing,” Sam said.
Freddie opened the door to the interrogation room and held a chair for Amara that faced the observation room. They sat across from her.
He engaged the recording device on the table and recited the date, time and participants. He also noted the interview was being observed by AUSA Hope Miller, Captain Jake Malone and Dr. Anthony Trulo.
“Amara, you came to the MPD headquarters this morning, on your eighteenth birthday, to report a crime,” Sam said. “Is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please tell us, in your own words, what happened.”
“I’ve thought about this day for so long,” she said softly, “planning what I would say and how I would describe what happened that day.”
“What was the date of the crime?”
“It was six years ago this past February tenth.”
Sam made a note of the date and waited for Amara to continue.
“I have to back up a few years to tell you how we came to be in the situation we were in that day. Our father died of cancer when I was three and King was four. My mother was a single mom for more than five years before she married a white man named Louis Bingham.”
“What’s your mother’s name?” Sam asked.
“Thelma Robinson-Bingham.”
“How did you and King feel about her remarrying?”
“On the one hand, we were relieved because she’d been working three jobs to make ends meet.
Louis wanted her to have more time with us, or so he said, so she quit two of the jobs after they were married, and for a while, it was…
It was nice to have her around more. The downside was that he was around, too.
He changed a lot after they were married.
Suddenly, everything we did annoyed him.
Our music was too loud, we talked too much, we ate too much, we laughed too much, we didn’t do as well in school as his kids did.
They were in college when they got married, so we didn’t see much of them. ”
She took a sip from the water bottle. “After a while, King and I started to avoid him. If he was home, we stayed in our rooms and kept to ourselves. That’s when we became ‘ungrateful brats.’ We couldn’t win with him no matter what we did, and every time my mom told him to leave us alone, he got pissed at her and told her to shut up and let him run his household the way he saw fit.
He said she should be grateful for him and how he saved us and saved her from being just another welfare family.
That really hurt her feelings because she never applied for aid, even when we really needed it after my dad died. ”
Amara took another sip of the water and seemed to be collecting her thoughts.
“As we got older, King began to talk back to him, to call him out on his shit. They fought a lot.”
“Did it ever get physical?” Sam asked.
“No, but I worried that it would eventually. When King wasn’t around, Louis would tell my mother, ‘That boy had better watch himself,’ or he’d get what was coming to him.
She’d tell him to stop with that talk. King was a normal teenage boy, a good student and all the things she hoped he’d be.
She asked Louis to leave him alone. That was around the time that Louis insisted we start calling him Daddy.
We didn’t want to do that because we remembered our own daddy.
We still missed him and grieved for the loss.
It felt unnatural for us to call him that.
My mom asked us to go along with it to keep the peace, which was the first time King said to me that if it came down to us or Louis, she might pick him.
I didn’t think that was true, but as time went on, she became more about keeping the peace than about doing what was right.
“In many ways, King and I felt like prisoners in that home, even though he never hit us or anything. We knew kids who had it a lot worse than we did, so we pressed on, dreaming about the day we could leave it all behind and go live our own lives. We used to talk about getting an apartment together the day I turned eighteen.” Her eyes filled as she looked down. “That would’ve been today.”
Sam had been deeply moved by her composure. “Do you need to take a break?”
Amara shook her head. “I want to get it over with.” After a pause, she continued.
“Things kept getting worse at home. King was in open rebellion, even though my mom and I pleaded with him to keep the peace until we could figure out a plan. King said there was no plan. We needed Louis to keep a roof over our heads. Mom didn’t want to go back to working three jobs, which would mean leaving us alone with him at night.
We asked her who she’d pick, us or him, but she snapped at us not to put her in that position.