Soul Murder. Daniel Blake

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СКАЧАТЬ usually a time in a homicide interrogation when the suspect cracks, the floodgates open, and they tell the police anything and everything. That time may come several hours into questioning, sometimes even days; rarely does it come right at the start.

      But Shaniqua could hardly wait.

      ‘J’Juan dealt horse, that ain’t no secret,’ she said. ‘And sometimes he’d bring his, er, his clients’ – she arched her eyebrows – ‘back to our house, when they were too wasted to get the fuck back to their own homes.’

      ‘You were happy with this?’

      ‘You lemme tell you what happened, we’ll get done here a whole lot quicker.’

      Beradino was far too much of a pro to take offense. He smiled and gestured with his head: Go on.

      ‘No, I weren’t happy. I done seen too much of what drugs do, and I don’t want no part of it. Not in my house. Every time he brings someone back – black, white, boy, girl, it don’t matter – I hit the roof. Every time, he swears it’s the last time.

      ‘And every time, like a fool, I believe him.

      ‘But today, when it happens, I’ve just had enough, I dunno why. We in the bedroom, Trent and I, sittin’ on the bed, chattin’ ’bout tings: school, grandma – those kinda tings. We talk a lot, my boy and me; we’re tight. He tells me tings, I tells him tings. Only man in my life I can trust. Anyhow, J’Juan comes in, says he off out now, and I says, “You take that skanky-ass bitch with you, like five minutes ago, or I’m callin’ the police.”

      ‘He looks surprised, then he narrows his eyes. Man can look mean as a snake when he wants to, you know?

      ‘“You do that and I’ll kill you, bitch,” he says.

      ‘Trent says to him, “Don’t you talk to my mama like that.”

      ‘J’Juan tells Trent to butt the fuck out, it ain’t nothin’ to do with him.

      ‘“Come on, Trent,” I say, gettin’ up from off the bed, “let’s go.”

      ‘“Go where?” says J’Juan. “Go the fuck where? You leavin’ me, bitch?”

      ‘“No,” I says, “we just goin’ for a walk while you cool the fuck off.”

      ‘“You leavin’ me?” he keeps sayin’. “You goin’ to the cops?”

      ‘“You keep on like this,” I says, “then, yeah, we’re leavin’ you. Gonna go live with my auntie in Des Moines. Gotta be better than bein’ stuck here.”

      ‘I’m nearest the door, J’Juan’s standin’ by the end of the bed. He’s between me and Trent, between Trent and the door.

      ‘He grabs Trent, and says we ain’t goin’ nowhere.

      ‘And right then, I see he’s left his gun on the sill.

      ‘So I pick up the gun, and I level it at him.

      ‘He’s got his back to me, so he don’t see straight away; but Trent sees, and his eyes go like this wide’ – she pulled her own eyes open as wide as they’ll go – ‘and I say to J’Juan, “You leave that boy the fuck alone.”

      ‘And he turns to me all slow like, and he says “Put that fuckin’ ting down. You don’t know what you’re doin’.”

      ‘And I say, “Trent, come on.”

      ‘And J’Juan looks at me, and then at Trent, and then at me again, and he says – I’ll never forget this – he says: “You walk out that door, I’ll kill this little motherfucker with my bare hands.”

      ‘And Trent tries to break free, and J’Juan dives for Trent, and I just shoot him. I said I would, and I did, ’cos he was gonna hurt my boy, right before my eyes, and he does that over my dead body.

      ‘Not my boy. Take me, but not my boy.

      ‘Trent’s real daddy’s about as useless a piece-a-shit as God ever gave breath to, so no one loves that boy like me. That’s why I tell him I love him for both, you know; I love him as his mama and his pops too. Boy needs a daddy, know what I’m sayin’? Boy needs a father like he needs our Father in heaven. But Trent ain’t got one. So J’Juan can kiss my ass.

      ‘I shot him, and I ain’t ashamed of it.

      ‘Shit, if he walked through that door right now, I’d shoot the motherfucker again.’

      

      Patrese was silent for a moment, and then he laughed; he couldn’t help it.

      ‘Now that’s what I call a confession,’ he said.

      Shaniqua looked at him for a moment, and then she laughed too.

      ‘I guess it is. That’s the way it happened. But it ain’t murder, right? It was self-defense. He was goin’ to kill me and my boy.’

      ‘How did you feel when you realized you’d killed him?’ Beradino said.

      ‘Feel? Ain’t nothing to feel. It was him or me. And if it hadn’t been me shot him, it’d have been someone else. He weren’t the kinda guy who’d have lived to take out his pension and dandle grandkids on his knee.’

      Many people freaked at the sight of a dead body, certainly the first time they saw one. Patrese guessed Shaniqua had seen more than her fair share.

      Patrese had charged dozens of suspects over the years, and he’d never apologized to a single one of them. But he wanted very badly to say sorry to Shaniqua; not just for what the law obliged him to do, but also for every shitty thing in her life which had brought her to this place.

      Oh, Shaniqua, he thought. What if you’d been born somewhere else, to another family – to any family worth the name, in fact? If you’d never set foot in Homewood? Never opened yourself up to men whose idea of fatherhood started and stopped at conception? Never had your soul leached from you atom by atom?

      ‘It ain’t murder, right?’ she repeated.

      He was about to tell her things weren’t that simple when Beradino’s cellphone rang. He took it from his pocket and answered.

      ‘Beradino.’

      ‘Mark? Freddie Hellmore here.’

      Freddie Hellmore was one of the best-known criminal defense lawyers, perhaps the best-known, in the United States. A Homewood boy born and bred, he split his cases between the nobodies – usually poor, black nobodies on murder charges – and the rich and famous. He was half Don King, half Clarence Darrow.

      Love him or hate him – and most people did both, sometimes at the same time – it was hard not to admire him. His acquittal rate was excellent, and he was a damn good lawyer; not the kind of man you wanted across the table on a homicide case.

      ‘I hear you’ve got a client of mine in custody,’ he said.

      ‘I’ve СКАЧАТЬ