Least Wanted (Sam McRae Mystery 2)

Little D checked the compact’s ignition. “Ah-ight. Keys still here.” He got in and started it, pulling it forward a few feet to allow me to leave. He switched off the motor and got out.

“You gots to go now,” he said.

“Thanks for coming, D,” I said. I looked at Diesel, who lay twitching and prone on the pavement, his breathing labored. “What . . . .?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

Tina was still crying softly, clinging to me like a life raft. I disengaged myself from her grasp, while keeping an arm around her shoulder, and led her to my car. We got in and drove away, without looking back.

* * * * *

Thirty minutes hadn’t given me much time to prepare, but it was just enough to make some calls and run to the office for the file. I’d tried calling CID and couldn’t reach a detective. Rather than waste precious time on police bureaucracy, I’d hung up and called Little D.

He said he would park far from the meeting place and approach the lot from the woods. He assured me he could make it. I didn’t know he had until I heard the shots.

We hadn’t discussed what would happen. And I hadn’t given it much thought. As I drove off with Tina beside me, I was struck by my lack of concern that Diesel was a dead man. Seemed like I should feel guilty, but I felt only relief, sweet relief.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I took Tina to CID, where Powell was being interrogated. Turning my evidence over to Detective Harris, I waited with Tina while arrangements were made to put her in emergency shelter care.

Harris told me the police asked Mrs. Mallory, Shanae’s next-door neighbor, to come in. Maybe she could identify Powell as the person she saw leaving the house the night Shanae was killed. Powell was slight and light-skinned. In the right clothes, he could have passed for a gawky teenager. They would check the phone records, to see if he had placed a call to Shanae’s house or vice versa.

When they told Tina about her uncle and her father, she showed little emotion. I had expected more tears or rage, but I think the child had shut down. She was past the point of feeling further pain. She stared, in an almost catatonic state, as we waited. When an officer came for her, I asked for five minutes. I crouched beside Tina.

“Tina,” I said, handing her my card again. “You know you can call me, any time, if you ever want to talk.”

“Why he do it?” she asked. “Why Mr. Powell kill my moms?”

“He was involved in something that would have gotten him in big trouble. He would have lost his job, gone to prison. When your mom found out about Greg, it was only a matter of time before Mr. Powell would have been found out.”

“But why he set me up? What I do to him?”

I paused. “I don’t know. I guess he knew you and your mom didn’t get along. He knew you were associated with a gang. And he knew how girl gangs operate. I don’t think he was trying to pin it on you. Any girl in the gang would do.” I wasn’t sure I believed it. Or that Tina believed it either.

She backhanded the tears off her cheeks. I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose. “What’s going to happen?”

“They’ll find you a place to live. A group home, probably.”

“A foster home.”

“Yes.”

“So now I ain’t got nobody. Not even my pops or my uncle.”

“You have me.”

She gave me a funny look.

“I lost my parents when I was nine,” I said. “I had a cousin who took me in, but I learned to rely on myself a lot. I learned to trust my instincts. And I learned how to take care of myself. You can learn too. If you ever have a problem you feel you can’t handle alone, you can call me and talk about it.”

“You saved my life,” she said. “But you ain’t my kin.”

“No, but neither are these gangbangers you’ve been running with. And they’re not going to lead you anywhere good.”

I could have said that her mother had been kin, for all the good she’d done Tina. I didn’t. Some things are best left unsaid.

I told her that, no matter where she went, she was never alone as long as she had good friends to turn to. I told her to respect herself and make the kind of friends who respected themselves and her. There was more I wanted to say, but it didn’t seem like the right time. And I couldn’t be sure Tina understood all of it. When the officer came to take her, I felt a sense of loss over this girl I’d barely begun to know. I knew she faced an uncertain future. There were probably no big family dinners and white picket fences where she was going. She held her own fate in her hands. Or did she? I’ve often wondered what causes one person to succeed and another to fail. How much is in our own hands? Are some of us born with two strikes against us from the very beginning?