When Sarah
Anderson returned home from police headquarters, she closed her front door and leaned back against it.
Her head was still reeling from the things they'd told her about her daughter's involvement with Jamal. And while she refused to believe most of it, she knew that there was only one way to see if any of it was true.
Slowly, she walked to the steps, climbed them to the second floor, and stood outside her daughter's closed bedroom door. It felt strange standing there, knowing that Keisha was gone. But Sarah had to know if Aunt Margaret was right about Keisha and Jamal, so she twisted the doorknob and walked in.
Looking around the room, she saw that Keisha's things were still in place, just as they had always been. Her Bible was on her nightstand, next to her bed. Her magazinesâeverything from
Essence
to
Vogueâ
were on the opposite side.
Sarah walked over to the bed, turned on one of Keisha's bedside lamps, and looked down at her Bible. It was opened to the fifth chapter of Ephesians. Sarah's face creased in a wry smile. She wondered if Keisha had learned more about family through Paul's ancient letter to the church at Ephesus than she had from watching her parents.
Did she know that husbands were to love their wives, that wives were to respect their husbands, and that children were to honor their parents, as the Bible commanded? Or did she believe what she sawâthat husbands were to honor themselves, and wives were to despise their husbands for doing so? Was what she saw in her home the reason she'd chosen the opposite of everything she'd been taught?
Sitting down on Keisha's bed, Sarah picked up the
Essence
magazine. It was a bible of a different sortâthe tome that black women used to measure the pulse of their own unique culture.
Sarah could see that Keisha had gone through its pages with a fine-tooth comb, circling the images that depicted the style and grace of black women. They were images that reflected Keisha's own aspirations and potentialâimages of the woman that she wanted to be.
Sarah went through every drawer in Keisha's nightstand, desperately searching for a clue that would give her some indication of Keisha's state of mind. She found receipts from clothing Keisha had purchased, and notes she'd written to herself about everything from scripture lessons to homework assignments.
She found a few fashion sketches her daughter had drawn, using herself as a model. The drawings were impressive, Sarah thought as she looked through them. She'd never seen them before. But then, there were many things she'd never seen about Keisha.
Sarah went to her daughter's closet and began rifling through
her things. She checked inside pockets and shoes, in pocketbooks and book bags. She went through her makeup and toiletries, sniffing and prodding and poking and searching for something that would tell her what she needed to know.
And after she'd ransacked Keisha's room, searching every inch of every one of Keisha's possessions, she found everything her daughter should have had, and nothing that she shouldn't. There were no indications anywhere that Keisha had ever wanted a boyfriend, let alone had one. There were no phone numbers, no names, no love notes, no diaries. There was nothing.
Sarah lay back on Keisha's bed, allowed her head to sink down into the pillow, and inhaled the fruity scent of the body spray her daughter loved to wear. She thought that by lying there, she would somehow be closer to Keisha. She thought that she could put herself inside her daughter's head.
But Sarah was too tired to think. She'd spent too much time thinking over the past day and a half and was utterly exhausted, both mentally and emotionally. Now she just wanted to rest. And as she drifted off to sleep, the voice in the back of her mind grew louder with each passing second.
Sarah felt her eyelids flutter as the voice continued to call out to her. And then, out of the clouds of her subconscious, she saw the voice take shape. It took on flesh and bone, and a face that was all too familiar.
Keisha was on the other side of the room, standing in the mirror in an evening dress, putting the final touches on her makeup. She didn't look like the girl Sarah had seen the night before. Now she looked like a woman.
“Keisha, there's something I need to know,” Sarah began, trying to find the best way to pose the question.
“You want to know why I'm with Jamal?” Keisha asked, saving her the trouble. “I'm with him because he noticed me.”
“Lots of people notice you, baby.”
“You don't,” Keisha snapped, staring daggers into her mother's eyes. “You never have. You're too busy feeling sorry for yourself to notice anybody.”
Sarah was almost too stunned to respond. “That's not true, Keisha.”
“If you noticed me, you would've seen something different about me the day I met Jamal when I was little,” she said with a mocking laugh. “You would have seen how much I'd changed in the weeks since I've been seeing him again. But you didn't. You couldn't.”
“Keisha, I was just under a lot of strain, honey. Your fatherâ”
“Don't blame my father,” Keisha said. “At least I knew he cared about me.”
“But he never cared about me!” Sarah shouted. “You think you know something about being a woman? Well, you don't. You don't know what it's like when the man you love stops looking at you the way he used to. You don't know what it's like to have him treat you like an employee instead of his woman. You don't know what it's like to beg for his attention, just to watch him give it to everybody else.”
“Oh, but I do know what it feels like to be a woman,” Keisha said with a Cheshire cat grin. “Jamal showed me exactly what it feels like.”
She got up and sashayed across the room with her hand on her hip.
“It feels good,” she said, looking in the mirror and checking her hair.
“Real
good.”
Sarah was dismayed as she looked at her daughter and saw herself. She knew the kind of girl she'd been at Keisha's age, and so she accused her of doing what she would have done.
“You've been sleeping with him all along, haven't you?” Sarah asked rhetorically. “You probably were with him last night when you made up that story about being raped.”
Keisha wheeled around to face her mother.
“That's how I know you don't know me,” she said angrily. “Because if you did, you wouldn't say anything like that.”
Sarah regretted making the accusation. But she was about to regret it even more.
“I'm not the way you were when you were my age,” Keisha said, walking to the bed and standing over her. “I don't lie and sneak and plot and connive the way you did.”
Sarah wanted to move, and struggled to run away from the truths she knew were coming. But her body wouldn't budge from that spot, no matter how hard she tried.
“You thought you were too pretty and too smart to waste away in church,” Keisha said mockingly. “And you thought you were too mature for boys your own age.”
Keisha bent down until her face was only inches from Sarah's.
“You wanted men,” Keisha spat. “But you see what men did for you, don't you?”
Sarah wanted to scream, to lash out, to do anything but listen to her daughter speak such things.
“I'm with Jamal because I love him,” Keisha said, standing up and walking toward the door. “Not because of what he can do for me, or what he can give to me.”
She looked down at her mother as if she were trash.
“That's a lot more than I can say for you.”
Keisha opened the door, and a ringing sound filtered in from the hallway. Sarah watched her daughter as the ringing grew louder.
She wanted to ask her to come back. She wanted to ask her for another chance. But somehow, Sarah knew that it was too late for that. And as the sound of the ringing grew louder, Keisha walked through the door and closed it, forever shutting herself off from her mother.
The ringing became unbearable. Sarah couldn't listen to it any longer. And when her eyes snapped open and she awakened from her dream, she realized that the ringing was coming from the phone.
Sarah ran out into the hallway and picked it up.
“Hello?” she said tensely.
“Mrs. Anderson, we're sending a car to pick you up,” a detective said over the phone.
Sarah waited with baited breath for the other half of the message.
“It's about your daughter.”
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Kevin Lynch was walking down the hall with the assistant DA. The two were on their way back to the interrogation room for another round of questions with Nola Langston when one of Lynch's detectives stopped them.
“Lieutenant Lynch,” said the curly-haired Detective Hubert. “There's something I think you ought to see.”
Lynch knew that the detective who'd captured Frank and Nola wouldn't have stopped him for anything frivolous. That's why Lynch was nervous about talking to him.
“Can it wait?” Lynch said. “I'm about to interview Nola Langston again. We really need to hear what she's got to say.”
Hubert looked from the prosecutor to Lynch with a look of grave concern.
“When you see this,” the detective said, “what Ms. Langston says might not matter a whole lot anymore.”
Assistant DA Robert Harris was accustomed to being interrupted by now.
“Go ahead and take a look,” Harris said. “I can wait out here if you want.”
“No,” Hubert said. “You probably need to see this, too.”
“It'll be quick, right?” Lynch said as the two men followed the detective to one of the offices at the far end of the hall.
“That depends on what you mean by quick,” Hubert said.
The three of them walked into the darkened room, and Hubert walked over to a laptop hooked up to a monitor on the table.
“Have a seat, gentlemen,” Hubert said.
Lynch and Harris sat down in folding chairs as Hubert reached for the mouse and clicked it so that the film could begin.
“We got a tape in about an hour ago from one of the news stations and downloaded it into the computer,” Hubert said. “The footage is from their chopper. We were able to enhance it a little bit, but not much.”
Hubert paused the film and directed the mouse across the screen until it was poised over the man on the rooftop.
“This is the shooter right here,” he said, moving the prompter to another part of the screen. “Over here is the commissioner, working his way through the crowd to get to Anderson. Right in front of Anderson is his daughter, Keisha.”
Hubert clicked the mouse, allowing the film to play in slow motion.
“You'll see the commissioner grab Anderson from the vehicle and start pulling him through the crowd,” Hubert said, moving the prompter until it was next to Lynch's image.
“You're here, Lieutenant,” he said, narrating the action.
“Right about here, you run into the alley, and a minute later, we see you running toward the shooter on the roof. There are gunshots, the commissioner is hit, and he falls.”
Hubert clicked the mouse again, causing the film to play frame by frame.
“Keisha Anderson has fallen down at this point,” he said, moving the prompter to the middle of the screen. “Here she is, right here.
“Now, you'll see Jamal Nichols running into the picture, picking her up and carrying her through the crowd.”
Hubert stopped the film and walked up to the television screen, pointing his finger at the focal point of the picture.
“But if you look on the roof, here,” the detective said, “the shooter is still up there, struggling with you, Lieutenant, right as Jamal Nichols takes Keisha Anderson out of the picture.”
Lynch got up to take a closer look at the screen. It was hard to make out the men's faces because the film was shot from overhead. But there was no doubt that they shared similar features, hair, and body types.
“Run it again,” Lynch said quietly.
Hubert went back to the laptop and ran the film again, this time without interruption. The result was the same. Clearly, the man on the roof and the man who'd taken Keisha Anderson were two different people. That could only mean one thing.
“Looks like Jamal Nichols didn't shoot the commissioner,” Lynch said, almost to himself.
“But we've still got every cop in the city thinking he did,” Hubert said. “The question is, do we do anything differently, or do we just focus on catching him, and sort it all out later?”
For the first time in the investigation, Lynch wasn't sure what to do. Jamal Nichols could have been involved, even if someone else did the shooting. But if he wasn't involved and he was cornered
by police who believed that he was, the results could be deadly.