H:LotS characters belong to Baltimore Pictures & NBC. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback.
The Final Judgement
Cinnamon
"Fellas!" Pembleton eased the Cavalier to the curb, rolled down his window, and hollered to Meldrick Lewis and John Munch.
"Frankie! Hey, hey, hey!" Lewis was holding Robbie Dwayne Henderson in front of him -- Meldrick's left hand held the nape of RD's neck, while the right clasped RD's cuffed hands behind his back. "Fancy meetin' you here."
"Who's this?" Tim leaned across Frank's lap and stuck his head out the window.
"Baltimore's man of the year," Munch answered dryly. "What are you guys looking for?"
"Shooter named Scooter," Frank flashed the picture of Scooter Dupri at his fellow detectives. "You guys didn't happen to see him, did you? It isn't my lucky day...is it?"
"'Fraid not, Frankie. But there's a whole mess o' brothers two corners that-a-way," Lewis removed his hand from Henderson's neck and pointed south. "One of 'em could be your boy."
"Thanks, buddy," Tim waved at Lewis and Munch. "See you later."
***
"Sit down," Lewis pulled a chair out for Henderson, roughly pushed the man down, and handcuffed him to the table.
"You've seen a lot of these kind of rooms, haven't you?" Munch walked over and sat on the other table in the room.
"'Cept they were always up in Sex Crimes, weren't they, Robbie Dwayne?" Meldrick said the man's name like Pembleton might have, drawing it out, making it impossibly long.
"So?" Henderson didn't seem to care that he was sitting in the interrogation room of the Homicide Department, and he really didn't seem to care that he was in deep shit.
"No reason, my man," Lewis walked in big circles around the table. "What happened to your hand?"
Henderson's left hand had four deep scratches on the top of it that went from the wrist to the knuckle.
"Got scratched," Henderson took the hand not cuffed to the table and ran it through his greasy black hair.
"By what?" Munch asked.
"By my bird."
"Your bird?" Lewis snorted.
"My bird."
"So if we went to your house and took a look around, we'd find said bird?" Munch queried. "Because I really like birds. What kind is it?"
"One of them outside birds." Henderson put his scratched hand under the table.
"Like an oriole?"
"Or something. I was filling my bird-feeder thing, and this crazy-ass bird just came out of nowhere and attacked me."
Meldrick sat down in the chair across from RD. "Is that the case?"
"What did I say?" Henderson scoffed. "Here's the proof, buddy." He waved his scratched hand at Meldrick, then at John.
"Because wouldn't a bird," Lewis leaned on his elbows, "wouldn't a bird peck at you? Peck at your head, your face? Peck at your eyes?"
"Hey, Meldrick, did you ever see 'The Birds'?" Munch called from the shadows.
"Oh, yeah! That was a great movie, Munch!"
"I agree. But I don't recall anyone in that Hitchcock classic simply getting their hand scratched by the birds. Did you see that movie, Robbie Dwayne?" Munch's voice grew shrill.
"Maybe," Henderson muttered.
"Did you see anyone simply get their hand clawed by a bird?"
"No."
"And you didn't get your hand clawed by a bird either, did you?" Lewis stood from the table and took a spot standing in the corner.
"Well, if you guys are so smart," Henderson brushed his hair from his face again. "You tell me how I got scratched."
"If I were a bettin' man, I'd say you got your sorry self all scratched up when you raped that pretty lady this morning." Meldrick crossed his arms in front of him.
"What the hell you talkin' about, man? I didn't rape no woman this morning."
"You didn't?" Meldrick asked Henderson.
"Hell, no."
"He didn't," Lewis directed his words at Munch this time.
"I heard that."
"Makes me wonder, though," Meldrick circled the table again, hand to his face. "How your prints and a condom full of your semen ended up all over that pretty lady's apartment."
"So what if we had sex?" RD again made his same nervous gesture of messing with his hair. "That don't mean it was rape or nothin'."
"Do you usually kill the women you have consensual sex with?" Munch spoke up. "Just curious. Because I try not to make a habit of it."
Henderson seemed to mull over his options in his head. "I didn't kill her."
"But you raped her, didn't you?"
"Wait, Meldrick, why are you asking him?" Munch remained seated, but looked over the tops of his glasses at Henderson and Lewis. "We already know he did it."
"Thank you, Munch," Meldrick turned to Henderson again. "Like the man said, we know you did it, bunk. So spit it out."
"All right, I raped her."
"Did you beat her?"
Henderson was quiet.
"Did... you... beat... her?" Meldrick repeated.
"Yeah."
"Did you kill her?"
Henderson turned to Munch, who he seemed to fancy over Meldrick. "Am I in deep shit?"
"Very, very deep shit, my friend."
"So you wanna answer my question?" Meldrick spoke up. "Did you kill her?"
"Is she dead?" Henderson seemed legitimately curious.
"If she wasn't, I wouldn't be asking."
"Then I guess I did."
"Tell it from the beginning. Did she struggle?" Lewis asked.
RD nodded. "At first. I tried to grab her from behind, but she just fought and fought." He paused and looked around the room. "Can I get a cigarette?"
"No," came a unison reply from Meldrick and Munch.
"I think one of you should get me a cigarette."
"Fuck what you think," Lewis' expression was stony. "Talk."
"So I come up behind her after she got inside her house or whatever. See, her arms were full of groceries, so I figured she couldn't fight or nothing. But she starts elbowing me and shit. The bitch is still holding her grocery bags, and she's trying to hit me!" Again, Henderson paused. "If you won't give me a smoke, at least get me a soda or something."
"What am I, your errand boy?" Munch crossed his arms.
"Whatever." RD rubbed the scratches on his hand. "So the bitch finally drops the bags, and she's kicking -- knocking shit over, breaking shit. So I grab some fucking candlestick, huge heavy fucking thing, and I knock her with it 'til she sorta goes limp and hits the ground. Must have been like ten times or something."
"Thirteen," Lewis said quietly.
"Thirteen? Huh. Anyways, she's finally out, so I do what I came to do. Whenever she was kicking, she busts this lamp, so I took the cord and tied her neck up with it. Then I fucked her."
"She was dead when you raped her?" Lewis glared at Robbie Dwayne.
Robbie Dwayne nodded. "I guess," he said, like it was commonplace.
"She was dead when you raped her," Lewis said again.
"Yeah, man, what did I say?" Henderson chuckled and looked at Munch with a "Do you believe this guy?" face. Munch just stared at him.
"You followed this woman home, forced your sorry self into her apartment, scared her, beat her, killed her, and then you raped her." Lewis was still in the corner, arms across his chest.
"Well, you know, I would have done it sooner and all that, but she wouldn't stop moving around and shit. I's afraid she was gonna hurt me or some shit." Robbie Dwayne shook his head. "Bitch put up a good fight, that's for sure."
"What about the condom?" Munch asked.
"What about it?"
"Why did you use one, you ignorant bastard?" Lewis glared at Robbie Dwayne.
"Well, who knows what kind of diseases or whatever she had?" RD sat his chair on its back two legs, but he couldn't recline too far, as he was still handcuffed to the table. "I didn't want to catch nothing from the bitch."
"Jesus Christ," Meldrick muttered, then took paper and a pen from his coat pocket and threw it down on the table. "Write it down."
Munch held the Box door open for Lewis, and RD called after them, "Can somebody get me a smoke now?"
"Fuck you," Lewis said, and shut the door.
***
"Any luck finding your shooter?" Kay Howard materialized out of nowhere to question Frank and Tim the moment they reentered the squad room.
Frank shook his head. "Nope. Found some of his comrades, though." He looked around expectantly. "Where's Merlin?"
Howard sipped her herbal tea and leaned close to Pembleton. "You're never gonna believe this one. C'mon." Kay took Frank's arm and led him to Gee's office door. "Look." Peeking through the crack the door was opened to, Frank and Tim saw Merlin Dupri sitting across the desk from their lieutenant; they were playing Hearts.
"Gee took him to dinner at Jimmy's, too."
"You shirked your baby-sitting duties, Sarge?" Bayliss walked towards the coffee room.
"Does that mean I won't get paid?" Kay followed Tim, as did Frank. Sitting down at the table, she asked, "What are you gonna do with the kid now, hmm?"
Bayliss constructed a makeshift ice pack for his back and gingerly took a seat next to Kay. "Yeah, Frank, what are we gonna do with the kid now?"
Pembleton bit into a red apple and shot an annoyed look at Bayliss. "We're going to take him home...did the Mom give a call?"
Howard simply shook her head.
"Damn," Frank said softly.
"Did you really expect her to, Frank?" Tim awkwardly stood from the chair and scanned the room. "Did I leave that magazine in the car?"
"No, Tim, I didn't expect her to. But how can she not care that her 10-year-old son isn't at home at--" Pembleton checked his watch. "At 11:30 on a Saturday night?"
Bayliss returned from around the corner, GQ in hand. "Kellerman had it. Lots of people don't care about their kids, Frank. Don't wonder and don't care until Junior ends up dead. Then they can't understand how it could possibly have happened to their good boy."
Softly, Howard chuckled.
"What?" Tim demanded.
"I've heard you two go around and around with this in the past, but you were always the ones asking the questions, Bayliss."
"Maybe that's because the kid in question is alive." Bayliss adjusted his ice pack and sat down again.
"What the hell are you talking about, Bayliss?"
"What I mean, Frank, is that you look at this boy now differently than you would if we had found him lying in that parking lot this morning. It's a lot easier for you to shrug 'Oh, well' at a dead child, Frank, and get all philosophical than it is for you to look at Merlin and understand his life."
"I'm bowing out of this one, hmm?" Howard stood and maneuvered around Tim's chair at the same time as Frank bellowed back at Tim.
"And you understand his life, Bayliss? You understand the life of a little black boy living in a piece of shit rowhouse?"
"Why do you act as if he's the only kid you've ever seen who didn't have it easy, Frank?" Tim was yelling, too. "We've seen a million little ones out there living it hard."
"This boy is different, Tim! This boy we can help!"
Bayliss stood again. "How many times have you told me that we change lives every day? That we speak for the dead?"
"You can't turn a dead man's life around, Tim."
"And you think you can turn his life around?" Tim walked up to Frank and stood very close to his partner. "It's not your place to get involved in this kid's life, Frank. You always say I get too emotionally involved in cases, but you know what I think? I think," Tim took his right index finger and poked it in Frank's chest. "You are too involved in this one."
The partners stayed like that for a moment, and then Frank smacked Tim's hand away.
"I'm taking him home," Frank called over his shoulder as he walked towards Gee's office. "You coming?"
"Yeah, Frank," Tim sighed. "I'm coming."
Continue
Back to stories
Feedback