“Mike Simmons is awake. He’s still pretty out of it. He just had a pretty large blood transfusion, but he asked to speak to you.”
The detectives all turned to look at one another, stunned.
“He asked to speak to the police?” Lennon asked.
“He insisted, actually. Adelle Smith is awake as well.”
“Can she talk?”
“Her speech is still impaired from the stroke. She speaks really slowly and her words are a little slurred…but yeah, she can talk.”
Detective Hendrix turned to the other two detectives.
“You two take Simmons. I want to hear what Mrs. Smith has to say before I join you. We might just get out of this okay after all.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Adelle shook her head in exasperation. She was once again in a hospital. Yet, despite her ordeal, she felt better this time than she had the last time she’d been here after suffering that stroke. At least now she could talk again.
“What’s your name young man?”
Her voice was weak. Her speech sluggish. The detective had to lean in close to hear her.
“Detective Hendrix, Carl Hendrix.”
“Are you Black?”
“My mother was Italian, but yes, I’m Black.”
“That’s good to hear. I was afraid you were going to say no.”
Adelle looked away from the detective and out the window at the sun dappling through the sheer curtains.
“I didn’t think I was going to see the sun too many more times.”
Adelle turned back to the detective.
“Did I get her?”
“What?”
“Is Tonya okay? Did I shoot the right one?”
“You mean you were trying to shoot your nurse?”
“Who the hell else do you think I was aiming at? Did I get her?”
Detective Hendrix’s eyebrows raised. He pulled out his notepad and pen and leaned forward.
“I think maybe you should tell me exactly what happened in that apartment.”
“You’re saying it was the nurse who did all this? That pretty skinny little thing in there that you tried to strangle to death?”
Detectives Swinson and Lennon looked at each other and almost laughed, shaking their heads as if sharing a private joke.
“She stabbed me twice. She killed that other nurse and chopped her up. She admitted it to me when I was trying to get Mrs. Smith out of the house. She’d been abusing Mrs. Smith too. Is she alright? Did I save her?”
Lennon replied. “Who? Mrs. Smith? She’s fine. One of the other detectives is in her room with her right now. She’s telling him all about how it was you who killed that nurse. It was you who tortured her for weeks and it was you who beat and then stabbed her daughter!”
“Tonya got stabbed? Is she okay?”
Mike tried to sit up in bed, but he was still too weak. He winced as pain lanced through his abdomen then collapsed back onto the bed. The two detectives looked at each other. His reactions were all wrong. He wasn’t acting at all like a guilty man.
“Relax before you bust your stitches,” Detective Swinson said. “Tonya Brown is in surgery right now, but the doctors think she’s going to be okay. The knife punctured a lung but it missed her heart.”
“Good. That’s good. I don’t know what I’d do if she didn’t make it.”
Detective Swinson rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Do you really think we’re buying this act of yours? This bullshit about that nurse being some kind of psycho when we both know what you are, a criminal, a drug pusher and a murderer? Just because you ain’t never been convicted for it doesn’t mean we don’t know all about the people you’ve killed. You’ve got one of the worst reputations on the street.”
“You know what I think?” Detective Lennon spoke up as he sat down on the bed next to Mike Simmons. “I think maybe you were trying to sneak Mrs. Smith out of the house and Ms Zenawi stabbed you to try to protect her employer.”
“Or did it go down differently?” Swinson said. “Were you and Ms. Zenawi hooked up? You two have some kind of thing going on? Maybe you were torturing Mrs. Smith together to add a little spice to your sex life? Is that how you get it up? By taking a cattleprod to a sixty-seven year old woman? I think you both murdered Rachael Williams and then you attacked Tonya when she got suspicious. The only thing I can’t understand is why Natsinet would stab you.”
“You guys are a bunch of idiots. What the hell you been smokin’? That nurse did this shit all by herself. I’d never do anything to hurt Mrs. Smith. The only reason I was even up in there was because I thought something about that half-White African bitch wasn’t right. Bitch acted creepy as hell from the first time I met her. Tonya asked me to check on her moms and when I went up in there the bitch stabbed me.”
Detective Swinson smiled wide. He’d been trying to find a murder he could pin on the big ex-con for half a decade. Now, he was pretty sure he had him.
“You go ahead and tell that story to a jury. With your record, they’ll have you on death row before you finish your last sentence.”
“Man, fuck you! I don’t give a damn what you think. Just ask Mrs. Smith. I ain’t have shit to do with this. I tried to save her from that crazy bitch! Mrs. Smith is one of the only people in that neighborhood that gives a damn about me.”
“We’re listening.”
“True shit, man. When I was a kid she came over to my house once, when she heard that my Pops had beaten the hell out of my mom. See, he used to get real mean when he drank. He’d hit me and my moms with just about anything he could get his hands on. He’d put my mom in the hospital with a broken rib earlier that week and word had gotten back to Mrs. Smith about it. She walked right into my house and sat down at my kitchen table. She was pissed off. You could see it in her face. She pointed at my Dad and told him that it was his responsibility to raise me into a man, the kind of man that would help elevate our race, that would help eradicate the negative stereotypes the world has of Black men, that would ensure that our people continued to prosper and succeed. Then she asked him if he thought that his drinking, and runnin’ the streets with all kinds of different women, and beating up on his wife was going to set the kind of example I needed to become that type of man. My Pops looked like he was at school being chastised by the teacher. He broke down in tears and started apologizing and shit. He hugged me and my moms and told us both that he loved us. He never hit either one of us again. That’s the kind of woman Mrs. Smith is. Ain’t no way I would have hurt her. I’d give my life for that old woman.” He ran a hand over his bandaged stomach. “Shit, I damn near did.”
“He’s right.”
Detectives Swinson and Lennon turned as Carl Hendrix walked into the room.
“I just got finished talking to Mrs. Smith. He tried to save her. It was the nurse. She’d been torturing Mrs. Smith since the day she took the job. She used cattleprods and lighters and stunguns on her. Some real sick shit. And I think she may have done some worse stuff to her that she won’t talk about. I didn’t press her for details.”
“Awww shit. She did all that shit to Mrs. Smith?” Mike said, his face displaying every bit of his revulsion. “Now, I really wish I had capped that crazy bitch!”
“Damn. So he’s innocent?” Detective Lennon asked, that confident self-satisfied smirk slipping from his face, shoulders sagging, clearly disappointed not to be the one to put Big Mike Simmons on death row.
“Hell, he’s a hero and so is she. She shot the right woman apparently. Saved all of their lives.”
“What made her do it? What, is she just crazy or somethin’?”
“Let’s go ask her. See if we can get a confession.”