Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Forty-Six

It was only after Prudence described the girl that I got it.

Our witness, the girl who'd allegedly seen the triple shooting, the girl who hung out with the victims, the girl Freeman and I spotted during our undercover stakeout with Sgt. Backstrom? She wasn't Aretha Carr, best friend to Tasha, Bessie Stone's granddaughter. She was Tasha. I'd never asked Bessie which girl in the photo on the mantle was her granddaughter. I'd made a rookie's mistake. I had assumed it was the girl to her right, the girl, who in my mind, sort of looked like her. But Prudence's description reminded me of a photo in Willis's office.

He had been sleeping with Tasha for nine months, since shortly before her fifteenth birthday.

As is the case so often with predators, he had groomed her with flattery and gifts. Worse, he had played on her emotions by reminding her that given how well he knew her mother, it only made sense that he and this little girl have a "special bond."

Prudence, the den mother of the seven hundred block of South Thirty-Ninth Street, did what everyone's grandma does as I sat and listened. She rambled.

I learned very early in my journalism career that if you want people to open up, nine times out of ten all you have to do is let them talk and interrupt them rarely. Most don't need to be coaxed.

As she described the scene that unfolded the day that Jefferson's lookout was kidnapped, Prudence began to muse aloud to no one in particular that she felt like she had seen the driver of the getaway car before. That led her to reminisce that she believed she had seen two young men in a standoff outside a nearby corner store that appeared to be headed toward a violent conclusion. One of those young men was the kidnap victim, she swore.

"But then the reverend stepped up and did his thing," Prudence said. "Damned if he didn't step between them two boys and tell them to think about their mothers and how it would break their hearts to see one or both of their sons dead or behind bars."

Prudence described the scene as though she were describing an Old Testament prophet performing some kind of miracle.

"That there's a good man, son! And then it was over just like that. He and his daughter walked out and got into that fine car of his and left."

She never resumed speculation about Rev. Willis's possible connection to the getaway driver. Instead, she moved on to speculating whether his Cadillac Escalade was brand new or pre-owned, before changing direction again to how cars were sturdier when she was a girl.

Eventually, we meandered back to Agamemnon Jefferson and his missing alleged employee. But by then, I was already thanking Prudence and heading back to my truck, dialing Bessie Stone as I jogged to ask about the other girl in the photo, the actual Aretha Carr, and to ask her what investigators had said about Carr's knowledge of the crimes.

I didn't have the heart to tell Bessie immediately I no longer needed to find Carr in direct relation to the murders. Her granddaughter would do.

Tasha may not have a best friend in the traditional sense. Maybe she did. In any case, every high school kid confides in at least one peer.

It hadn't initially troubled me that police were frustrated with a teenage girl they assumed was hiding and protecting a friend. Of course, she's going to be reluctant to share her bestie's deepest secrets. But what if those secrets were more than mere breaking curfew or sneaking the occasional drink or joint?

In fact, I had assumed it must've been worse with Tasha from the moment Freeman, Backstrom and I saw her stalk into the Satin Room in her play-grownup clothes, when we thought she was Carr. Maybe she was in hiding. But maybe it was about fear of her sexual predator, not fear of an unknown killer.

###

Under different circumstances, I would have swelled with pride and maybe even shouted over my deductive skills, what with figuring out the real identity of my murder witness, my key to saving the city.

But I wasn't in a celebratory mood, having spent the prior two hours sobering up on very, very bad coffee, after drinking myself into a near stupor while explaining to Freeman how I'd learned that Rev. Willis had been raping a teenage girl for nearly a year.

That's right, rape. They weren't "sleeping together" or "having sex." She wasn't old enough to consent.

"How in the hell are you not in jail," Freeman had asked, incredulously, after slipping me a tube of medicated salve and a roll of adhesive bandage for my knuckles.

"That's easy," I replied. "I told him that Tasha's best friend had given me a written statement and signed it in front of a clueless notary and that if he called the police on me, I would take that statement to the FBI, which might be interested in the so-called youth leadership camp he'd driven Tasha to across state lines."

"So, you're not going to turn him in?"

"Oh, he's a gift that's not done giving yet. And I need him to give me something that'll help find Tasha."

By the time I was finally able to drive, I wanted to drive to Bessie's. But what I would have said? "Sorry I didn't believe your concerns about your granddaughter's safety?" "Let me tell you what I learned about your granddaughter - that she, not her friend, witnessed three boys gunned down?" "That she's a long-term sexual assault victim of the man you've trusted most since your husband and daughter died?" She needed to know, but she needed to be told by a proper counselor who could guide Bessie in helping Tasha to heal...after we found the girl.

What actually re-energized me was realizing after just two minutes that I was being followed...again.

But I couldn't even celebrate that bit of deduction, because I didn't know why I was being followed or by whom. And if you've ever been stalked, not knowing the "why" is what makes it creepiest.

###

Three years ago, while authoring a weekly lifestyle column in addition to my regular reporting, I wrote a profile of a woman – Karina Woodley, a single mom who had overcome long odds to earn her Ph.D. in psychology, open a private practice, and make her way into our city's upper echelon. The piece fueled calls that she run for office.

It's not uncommon for the subjects of positive opinion pieces to express gratitude.

Most pleased subjects send boxes of candy or donuts. A few send flowers or restaurant gift cards. Legitimate newsrooms don't allow journalists to accept most gifts with monetary value of more than a few dollars, though.

So other than the food, which usually gets devoured in minutes, gifts typically go into a box and are locked in a storage room. Once or twice a year they're brought out and raffled off to staff or the public, with the proceeds going to charity.

I wish Dr. Woodley had sent me candy. Instead, I received was a handwritten letter on perfumed stationery, inviting me to dinner. The envelope also contained a snapshot of Woodley. Weird, yes. But she wasn't the first subject to send me a photo of herself. After profiling murdered parents, I've had grandparents send me photos of them posing smilingly with their grandchild, of whom they now had custody.

I'd be a liar if I didn't acknowledge that Dr. Woodley was stunning – athletic but curvy, with piercing green eyes and jet-black hair cut and styled into the kind of bob-hairdo that actress Halle Berry had made popular in the nineteen nineties. And her smile. My lord, Woodley's smile could melt ice.

I phoned her and declined the dinner invitation. Too intimate. I might have accepted a drink.

In any case, Woodley accepted my alternate invitation for coffee...during daytime hours...in a well-lit public place. But she let me know when she arrived at the café that she was displeased with my dinner rejection. How? Oh, she only tossed a fresh, steaming latte in my face.

Twenty-seven scented letters later, encased a few times in envelopes dusted with unknown white powder, dead bugs, lacy undergarments, and one time something I think was blood, Dr. Woodley was taken into custody and compelled by Temporary Restraining Order to leave me alone and to stop contacting my co-workers and neighbors. A judge also ordered her to stay at least one thousand feet away from me at all times.

Woodley was on my mind, as I glanced in my rearview mirror to keep an eye on my tail.