Authors: Keisha Orphey
“Think you can make it? Go ‘head. If you can make it, you’re free to go,” he stood there with his arms crossed daring her to challenge him.
She knew this man. Knew this man well. She also knew he was full of shit and he would kill her no matter what she did. And just a flinch of a muscle would send him sprawling on top of her like a wolf. “I had no choice! You gotta believe me!” she pleaded through tears.
He reached down and grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head around, then crouched down, meeting her fearful gaze. “I believe you, but we all have choices, Lizzie. Some good. Some bad. And the choice
you
made is where your fate lies.”
She knew she had to act fast. Her heart beat like a drum. The bedroom door was only a few feet away. She had to get away from him and fast, but his hands were wrapped so tight around her hair. One quick snap and he could easily break her neck. He was going to kill her anyway. Better take a fighting chance. She balled her fists beneath her naked chest and swung her body over. The sudden movement caused him to topple over onto his back. She sprinted from the room like a jack rabbit only to stumble, but regained her footing and scampered into the living room, but just as quick, he was at her heel.
She didn’t stand a chance against the fury that awaited her. As she reached the edge of the living room, just a foot from the door, he grabbed ahold of her long flowing hair, yanking her backward like a puppet on a string, and flipped her onto her stomach again, then straddled her back like a cowboy on a bull. He grumbled in her ear: “I could fuck you right here! Right now! And I
bet
you’d like it. Wouldn’t you?”
No one will hear my cries tonight. The weather outside is getting worst and everyone is sheltered inside or away from home. She wished now that she’d fled to safer ground. Instead, she chose to stay behind and attend a hurricane party. Another bad decision. I’ve gotta fight, she repeated in her mind. She struggled to breathe under his weight. “I’ll do anything you want. Please … just please don’t hurt me.”
Where is my gun?
She struggled to remember where she’d hid it. Too much heroin in one night. She didn’t even remember how she made it home.
“Really. I love when you beg.” He rose to his feet and lifted her off of the floor by the hair kicking and screaming, then dragged her toward the sofa like a disobedient dog on a leash and bent her over the back edge, with a steady grip. He wrapped his body around hers, leaning over her with all his weight, pressing her tightly against the sofa, as if using his own body as a cage, then removed his gloves and laid them on the head rest. He yearned to have her this one last time. For old time’s sake. For closure. For redemption. He wanted to feel the sting in his palm as he spanked her. Punished her. Make the last time, the best time. Enjoy her more than he ever had before. He stripped off his shirt and allowed his trousers to fall to the floor at his feet, standing naked behind her. He groped her backside with his warm erect penis and ushered his way between her thighs. “Tell me you want this dick, Lizzie—“ he whispered in a low growl.
Suddenly, she remembered stuffing the pistol snug between the sofa when company arrived earlier that evening. She’d been advised to keep the protection near at all times. Even frequented the local firing range.
Always be prepared. Never let your guard down
. But tonight, she’d been careless. And now, unarmed and hunted. Left it behind when she darted out the door behind the rowdy bunch. Her eyes focused in the darkness, searching desperately. It was close. So close. Then, a metallic edge glistened in her eye. But just as she slid her hand onto the surface of the cushion to retrieve it, he’d wrenched both hands in his grasp and buried himself deep inside her.
She shrieked, terrified. But in her own twisted sense of pleasure, she found herself enjoying him. Missing him. Regretting the growing feud between them. And with every forceful thrust, she hoped he’d forget how she’d betrayed him. Weaved him into a trap with authorities to save herself. Within minutes, their bodies were gleaming wet. Intertwined in love-making. She moaned with ecstasy as his hips moved faster, as he dug deeper inside her. His hands moved up and down her back, massaging her skin almost lovingly. He’d missed her. She was sure of it. She could feel it in his touch. But just when she thought the war between them was over and she’d been forgiven, the real battle began.
He yanked her head back, exposing her neck, then reached behind his back with a free hand and removed the dagger from the sheath strapped around his waist, burying the blade in her neck. Blood gurgled in her throat as life drained from her. Her legs made a final attempt as if to flee, then her body fell limp and crumpled ben
eath him like a bag of bones.
Chapter One
1995
“I like that one.”
Dawn pointed at one of very few beepers in the glass case. It was decorated with a green leaf on the front. The others were transparent and brightly colored. The mechanics and the single battery visibly seen. The pagers were positioned close together in the case. The only counter with merchandise, she observed. The unit positioned right next to this case was littered with dust bunnies and that’s it. There was another cabinet expanding the entire wall on the other side of the room, but it was completely empty as well. And random posters were hung indiscriminately on the walls. One poster read:
CRACK IS WHACK
! A second pictured Bob Marley smoking a joint. The image of his face was pictured beside a large marijuana leaf and the name
BOB MARLEY
was tri-colored red, yellow and green. Something just didn’t feel right. Dawn focused her attention back on the man standing behind the glass encasement.
He chuckled quietly. Almost timidly. There was something strange about that laugh. As if it’d been forced. He stood six feet four with long dreads gathered in a ponytail at the crown of his head, yet the sides of his head – all around his head – were closely shaved. His hairstyle reminded Dawn of a rotting pineapple. He wore a faded red and black paisley button down shirt with dark-colored shorts. Said his name was Kendrick. Didn’t look much like a Kendrick to her. With that long oval face, he looked more like his name should’ve been Felix or better yet, Quincy. Dawn didn’t see the shoes he wore. She wondered now if they’d matched his ridiculous ensemble. He probably wore long black socks and slides. She felt inclined to peer over the counter, but as nervous as he was, he’d probably turn and run past the curtain hanging behind him.
Into that room she couldn’t see. Around the pot-bellied man standing beside him. The fidgety one. The man Kendrick addressed as Big John.
“
What
? I think it’s nice. Just because there’s a marijuana leaf on the front doesn’t mean I can’t like it. I want it.” She gave Big John one last look. Saw him eyeing her. But she was used to the attention. Thought nothing of his furtive glances. Then she looked at Amos and exited making her way back outside. Almost as if the air itself ushered her out of the building. What am I doing here, she thought catching a glimpse of Amos exiting behind her and snacking on a fried chicken leg. His words were stern: Stay here and don’t even think of leaving without me. Why? What is he afraid of?
Dawn obeyed. She had no choice otherwise. He hadn’t even given her any gas money or the five hundred he owed her yet. She was penniless, which is why she’d agreed to bring Amos here in the first place. An easy five hundred dollars to pay a late car note and a day off work seemed pretty appealing at the time. But the longer she sat in the parking lot, the more irritable and concerned she became. She sat alone in her fire red 1995 Mitsubishi 3000GT listening to Tupac’s
So Many Tears
and waited for Amos to do whatever it was he was doing in that beeper shop with Big John, the pot-bellied pig, and Kendrick, the rotten pineapple head.
Suddenly, a disembodied voice whispered: “Leave.” A voice soft as cotton. Gentle as a feather. A voice of serenity. The voice was so close; Dawn could feel it’s cool breath brush across the tiny hairs on the side of her face as if upon delivery of its message it’d been whisked away heeding its own advice. Fleeing from danger.
Running from what was coming.
Dawn could feel it. Sense it all around her like a living, breathing thing. An evil force eager to devour what little spirit she had left. At twenty-years old, she hadn’t achieved much in life. Attended the local university in various majors from nursing to engineering. Racked up tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Money she’d never planned repaying. Worked at a franchise copy shop and with her mother’s help, purchased her first car, which she traded on the gas guzzling car she sat in now. A car she couldn’t afford. A car her mother would soon cringe at the sight of. Dawn hadn’t listened to much advice since high school, including her father’s. Especially her father’s. And now, from someone … something she couldn’t even see.
And still, she did nothing.
Dawn was parked at a store front beeper shop, X-Communications, located on the Southside of Houston, Texas at 4PM. Nearly 300 miles away from the home she shared with her parents and brother. No one knew her whereabouts except for Amos, Kendrick and Big John. Amos had the reputation of a drug dealer and Dawn knew that. But it didn’t stop her from lying to her employer and calling out sick from work. She’d been promised five hundred dollars to drive to a city just twenty miles west of Beaumont, Texas in search of a disabled vehicle. Not Houston, but Winnie, Texas. What could possibly be the harm in that? Three hours there and three hours back. She’d be home before nine, at least, with five hundred dollars in her pocket. Making minimum wage as a hotel reservationist just wasn’t paying her car note. At six dollars and fifty cents an hour, she made fifty dollars a day. In her naïve mind, five hundred dollars in six hours would give her the boost she needed. But why so much for such a simple task? A ride Amos could’ve easily gotten free from someone else.
Dawn hadn’t questioned that either.
With each page that came across Amos’ beeper luring him across state lines from Louisiana to Texas, Dawn just knew they were closer to finding the car (or truck) they’d set out to find. She didn’t know if it was a private passenger vehicle or an eighteen wheeler. And Amos didn’t care to elaborate. Nor had he offered. The only truck she’d seen stranded on the side of the highway was an old Ford pickup truck that appeared to have crashed in the trees alongside the highway. And by the looks of it, the vacant truck had been there a while. At least a week or longer.
Of course, that wasn’t the truck they were looking for.
She continued to drive.
Amos sat quietly beside her checking his pager a dozen times. He mumbled into the handheld car phone inaudibly. In code. He’d complimented Dawn’s hair, her face, and her body. Questioned why she’d never given him a chance. He could be the man she needed in her life. The answer to her prayers. But she wasn’t interested in him that way. Business was business. Period. And five hundred dollars was five hundred dollars. Who cared where it came from. Dawn had a big car note and her father surely wasn’t going to pay it. Days earlier, he’d simply alerted her to a flat tire an hour before she was scheduled to attend class at the local university. He didn’t offer to fix it nor had he advised where she could get it fixed. He’d simply climbed into his own car, leaving her to fend for herself.
The trip to Houston had been uneventful, even as Dawn floored the accelerator climbing to speeds of 110 miles per hour at least four times. She’d passed several state troopers, both in Louisiana and Texas, but not once did any of those patrolmen brake in an effort to pursue the red sports car blazing down interstate 10. The cruisers remained parked in the ridden parts of the medians, as if to clear her path.
Ever since she purchased her first car in 1993, Dawn learned that highway patrol cars often parked just past the clearing of a hill on the highway. It was a speed trap. She’d learned the fact well that same year returning home from New Orleans past curfew (even though she was eighteen, but living under her parents’ roof). Luckily, her passenger was a close friend in the military. When the second police officer stopped her speeding at 140 miles per hour, her friend explained to the ex-marine cop they were headed to the hospital in Baton Rouge. Several correctly answered questions later, the trooper released the speeding duo but followed up with a phone call to Dawn’s cousin, who at the time was Lafayette’s district attorney and her father’s nephew.
Dawn vowed she’d learned a lesson that night and realized she was being watched.
It had been at least five minutes since Dawn heard the voice when the Hispanic male appeared in the rear view. Black and bushy, shoulder length hair bounced carelessly disguising his face as he walked nonchalantly passed Dawn’s car carrying a backpack into the beeper shop. He walked quickly like he was late for something rather important.
As though something had forced her hands there, Dawn turned the ignition, but before she could shift to reverse, an unmarked car screeched to a halt behind her. “Oh, my God,” she uttered, glaring in horror at a swarm of men dressed in all-black charged the front door of the beeper shop carrying guns. Big guns. The letters D-E-A stamped in large, yellow block letters on the back of their bullet proof vests.
The scene played out before Dawn’s eyes like a Michael Mann movie. This couldn’t possibly be happening. Who had she become? She’d be labeled a drug dealer’s bitch by the time the news broke, even though nothing had ever happened between herself and Amos. It would ultimately be her word against theirs. And the prosecution would surely use it to build a case against her; to weave her into it entirely. The meeting had simply been a means to an end; in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now she’d pay the price with her life. Surely, she was headed to prison where she’d spend the rest of life pleading her case.
Dawn’s car door opened from the outside.
“What’s going on?” she asked the detective gesturing her out of the vehicle.
Balding with black pepper hair, the detective asked firmly: “What are you doing here?”
Another man approached. He stood in plain clothes and shorter than the balding detective. His tone was blunt and authoritative. “Arrest her. She’ll only fuck with us. Let’s wrap this up.”
After this, nothing would be the same, Dawn thought as the detective secured handcuffs around her wrists and shoved her into the backseat of a cruiser.
Minutes later, Amos was led out of the beeper shop in handcuffs along with the Hispanic male, Kendrick and Big John. But Big John wasn’t in cuffs. He’d been led in a different direction.
Big John walked away a free man.
Amos was shoved into the backseat beside Dawn. She couldn’t speak, even though her mind was flooded with questions. She gazed at the floor and spotted a twenty-dollar bill stuck between the floor board and the car mat.
“Don’t you say a fucking word to those pigs. I’ll get us out of this. As soon as we get to the jail, I’ll call my lawyer. We will be out by morning.”
“My parents are going to kill me,” she mumbled.
“Your parents will never know.”
“How will we get back to Louisiana? They’ll tow my car –“
“Shut the fuck up!” the police officer yelled. “Talk again and see if I don’t stuff your black asses in the trunk!” he slammed the door, closing them inside the hot car.
Amos gave a huff.
Dawn started to cry.
¤ ¤ ¤
Misery loves company.
And another person’s misery spreads like wildfire.
By the time Dawn slipped into Harris County Jail issued attire, the news of her arrest was already gracing the front page of The Daily Advertiser.
Louisiana’s biggest drug dealers finally caught in Houston, Texas. Four kilos of cocaine with a street value of $320,000. One hundred thousand dollars in cash was also seized. Amos Jones of Carencro, Louisiana. Dawn Miles of Lafayette, Louisiana.
This can’t possibly be happening to me, Dawn thought sitting on the metal stool in the small conference room of the Harris County Jail. It was nothing short of a nightmare. Her worst dream magnified by a million. Beaming fluorescent lights shone down on her, illuminating her uncombed hair and tear-stained eyes. She’d cried all night and most of the day wondering when she would go home, if ever. The stench of rusted metal filled the drafty room and she felt stripped of her pride and dignity, dressed in that faded orange state-issued jump suit.
“You’re looking at ninety-nine years,” Lydia Hall explained nonchalantly sitting across from Dawn in the small room. Lydia had a husky voice for a woman barely five feet, two inches tall. The heavy bags under her eyes tattooed late nights studying in law school. But those clothes, Dawn thought. That suit’s gotta be a hand-me-down. Some old relic from a favorite aunt who’d pitied her favorite niece. And those shoes garnered no explanation aside from the fact they screamed comfort.
Ninety-nine years. Here I come.
“Your father has hired me to defend you. I finished law school with your cousin, but I’ve been practicing here in Houston for the last 10 years.” Her words seemed to ramble on inaudibly like the teacher in Charlie Brown no one ever saw. Dawn couldn’t comprehend a word; still in shock about all that had transpired. She’d had been in jail four days before the homely-dressed attorney had made her acquaintance.
And for the last four days, all she could think about was the day she’d have to face her parents. Her mother had returned all of her work uniforms, Lydia had explained briefly. How embarrassed her mother must have been to meet Dawn’s manager for the first time
: I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances, but I’m here to return Dawn’s uniforms. My daughter’s incarcerated and we’re not sure if she’s ever coming back home.
“We need to prepare for your arraignment,” Lydia advised, opening a black rolling case and removing a separate zippered attaché. “You’ve gotta tell me everything. I am your voice before the judge.”
The judge.
There was surely going to be a jury. Twelve people residing in Texas would decide Dawn’s fate. A girl not one of those twelve people knew existed, until now. What chance did she have of convincing twelve strangers she had nothing to do with what went on in that beeper shop? The Texas jury would form an opinion based on the evidence. But what evidence did they have? Couldn’t be enough, if anything, to tie Dawn directly to the crime. She was sure of it. She’d walked in and had a conversation with a man she didn’t know and ten minutes later, she walked out and waited for Amos Jones in her car. Ten minutes changed her life as she once knew it.