Let It Burn (10 page)

In the end, I chose none of the above. I checked out of the motel, threw my bag in the truck, and started driving around the city again. I was seeing it in the morning hours now, when every able-bodied person past school age should be at work. But I knew the unemployment rate for black males was hovering around fifty percent here. A staggering number of men without jobs. A good position in an auto plant was just a dim memory, and even a job sweeping a floor for minimum wage was all but impossible to find.

There were young men hanging out on the streets, some of them eyeing me like it was a personal affront for me to be there. I stared back at them, an old cop habit that I’d never get over, and I kept driving around. I was still on the west side of Detroit. I was staying on the secondary streets, avoiding the highways. You get on I-94 and you just zip right through everything, from one end of Detroit to the other, without really seeing any of the city itself.

Eventually, I found myself going down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. This had been such an important street for us, back in that month when we were searching for our suspect. On paper, this had seemed like the northern limit to how far a young man would reasonably run that night. It was dense on either side of the street with apartment buildings. How many man-hours we had spent, knocking on every single door.

I turned south on Wabash, not really thinking about where I was going, just circling through this part of town like a goldfish in a bowl. To the east, the Motor City Casino towered over everything else in this part of town. A strange sight I’d never get used to. I turned my attention back to the road ahead.

Then I saw Ash Street. I stopped dead at the intersection.

Ash Street. I’d been driving around for an hour, not even thinking consciously about where I’d end up. But here I was.

I made the turn. There had been a grocery store on the corner of Fourteenth Street. The building was boarded up, the brick walls tagged with graffiti. A sign in front announced that the building was
FOR RENT.
As if anyone would see any reason to open a business here now, even if the rent was a dollar a month.

The next block was empty. Not a single building. I thought back and remembered that a few houses had been here once. Now it was just weeds and sumac. Even the sidewalk was almost completely hidden.

There’d been a fire here, on this block. That was a sure bet. A fire right here on Ash Street. It was supposedly just another tree-named street, like Elm and Spruce and Butternut, but no, Ash Street in this particular city meant something else entirely.

I drove one more block, to where an elementary school had been. The playground was still there, and so was the building itself, but the windows were all boarded over. The side of the building was tagged with graffiti, as huge and as elaborate as any I’d seen all morning. An elementary school, the heart of a neighborhood, come to this.

One more block, more vacant lots, an old boat somehow left there on the corner and filled with tires. A neighborhood watch sign, like a cruel joke.

Then finally, the block just past Seventeenth Street. There was one house on the north side of the street now. One single house. Two stories, once white, now a shade of light gray. Some of the siding was falling out of line, and the front porch was visibly sagging away from the house.

It was a small porch, just like I remembered it. Just big enough for one chair. A woman sat in the chair, looking serenely out at the street. A large black woman in a sundress, maybe midsixties, her hair the same color as the siding on the house. I slowed down in front of the house. I had to. If she hadn’t been there, I would have kept driving. It would have been a curious little side trip, something I’d shake my head at all the way home. But the woman was sitting right there on the porch, watching me. The same woman I had met all those years ago, on another warm day not unlike this one, on this very same porch.

It was her. No doubt about it. It was Mrs. Jamilah King. Darryl King’s mother.

I parked the truck on the empty street. I got out and approached her. If having a strange white man paying her a visit made her uneasy, she didn’t show it.

“Can I help you?” she asked me. “Are you lost?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I was just driving around and I saw you sitting here. I hope you don’t mind me stopping.”

“If you’re trying to sell me some of that frozen food, I’m going to have to say no, thank you.”

“I’m not selling anything, ma’am. I promise.”

“Then I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine what would bring you to this end of the street. Ain’t nothing here to see.”

“Well, it has changed,” I said, taking a quick look around. There was an empty shell of an old house down the street, on the other side. The sumac was so tall and so close, you couldn’t even see half of it.

“There used to be houses all up and down this street,” she said. “Kids all went to that elementary school on the next block.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I remember.”

“You were around here then?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, I should introduce myself. My name is Alex McKnight. I was a police officer back in the day. The last time I was here at your house, I was, um … involved in the arrest of your son.”

She processed that for a few moments, looking at me again like she was seeing me for the first time.

“I think I might remember you,” she finally said.

“I definitely remember you. I know it had to be a hard day for you.”

She nodded and looked down at her hands. “My son will be coming home soon. It’s been a long time.”

“I know, ma’am.”

“Mind you, it’s not like I’ve been sitting here on this porch ever since he went away. I actually went to live with my sister for a while. But I kept the house. Now I’m back. Because Darryl’s coming home.”

“I understand.”

“They’ve been sending people around to get me to abandon this place,” she said. “So they can knock it down. With everybody leaving, the mayor says we need to ‘right-size’ the city, whatever that means. I guess just move everybody to one side so they can shut down the rest, huh? I understand the part about saving money. I really do. But this is my home, you understand? This is Darryl’s home. The only home he’s ever had.”

“Yes,” I said, looking up at the upstairs windows. There was no doubt a bed up there, waiting for its old owner after all these years.

“So you say you’re not a cop anymore.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why are you here?”

She put up her hand before I could answer.

“Never mind,” she said. “I know why you’re here.”

That stopped me dead. Because honestly, I wasn’t sure I knew myself.

“I think you should come inside for a bit,” she said. “Get out of this heat. Do you like chocolate cake?”

I was feeling more lost by the second, but there was only one answer.

“Yes,” I said. “That would be nice.”

She pushed herself up from her chair and held the door open for me. I followed her inside. There was a small front room with a fan set in the side window, moving the air around. The floor was once a beautiful hardwood. Now half of the slats looked damaged by water.

“You sit right there,” she said, indicating one of the two chairs facing the television set. It was one of those old tube-style console monsters that must have weighed half a ton. The sunlight came through the front window, filtered through the white lace curtains. I sat there in my chair, looking around the place, still feeling like I was in a waking dream.

A minute or two later, she came back with a slice of chocolate cake and a glass of milk.

“Gotta have milk with cake,” she said. “I’m sure you’d agree.”

I nodded and smiled. I wasn’t about to argue with her.

She went back into the kitchen and brought back her own slice and her own glass of cold milk. It was now officially the most unlikely thing that had ever happened in my life. Me sitting down with the mother of a murderer, a murderer I’d helped put away myself, and eating a slice of her chocolate cake.

I took a bite. It was pretty damned good. I hadn’t had any breakfast, so I had no trouble finishing it.

“That was excellent,” I told her. “I really do appreciate it.”

“I made this cake as soon as I found out Darryl would be coming home. Right after I moved back into this house. But it was kinda silly of me, because he’s not really coming home until the end of the week. So I’ll have to make another cake then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So you’re doing me a favor,” she said. “Seeing as how I have to get rid of this one. Believe me, I’d have no trouble eating it all myself.”

I looked over at her. She was taking her last bite of cake, and clearly enjoying it.

“I know it’s going to be a hard adjustment for him,” she said, putting her plate down. “A man with a record, that’s one big strike against you, no matter what the circumstances might be.”

She was right, of course. It was already nearly impossible for a black man to find a job in this city. Add a felony conviction and your chances get much worse.

“There’s a man in my church who says he’ll give Darryl a chance,” she said. “That’s a real blessing.”

“That is. I hope it works out for him.”

She studied me for a moment.

“What was your name again?”

“Alex. Alex McKnight.”

“The years have been kind to you. You don’t look much older at all.”

If only you knew, I thought. It sure as hell doesn’t feel that way.

“But like I said, Alex … I know why you came here.”

“Actually,” I said, not sure where to go with this, “I came down here to catch up on things, see a couple of people. I ended up just driving around today…”

“To an empty block with one house left standing,” she said. “On the way to nowhere. You expect me to believe it was just an accident you ended up sitting here in my living room?”

“I admit,” I said. “When I saw this street … I mean, it all kinda came back to me. After all that hard work, we were just about ready to give up. But then…”

“But then you found my son.”

Yes, I thought. We found your son, after finally catching a break, one of the most unlikely breaks ever, a break that led us right to your front door. Then you lied to us about him being here. A forgivable lie, but a lie just the same. Then the way you wailed as we put your son in handcuffs and dragged him away.

I wasn’t about to say any of that, of course.

“Now you’ve come back,” she said. “Just like I knew you would. Someday. It must have been hearing the news about Darryl getting out that made you finally come here. Am I right?”

I just looked at her.

“You didn’t have to wait so long. You could have come years ago. You might have even helped get him out, you know.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. You’ve totally lost me.”

“You came here to apologize,” she said, her voice fortified with resolve now. “And it’s about damned time. Pardon my French.”

“Ma’am, apologize?”

“For taking my son away. Even though you
know
he didn’t kill that woman.”

I looked at her for a while, then down at the plate I was still holding in my lap.

“I’m so sorry,” I finally said. “I’ve accepted your hospitality, but I don’t think I’ve come bearing the message you wanted to hear.”

“Listen to me,” she said, moving forward to the edge of her chair. “Look me in the eyes and listen to me.”

I leaned forward in my own chair. I looked her in the eyes.

“My son did not kill that woman. As sure as there’s a God in heaven. As sure as the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning.”

“Mrs. King…”

“There’s a lot of things my son was capable of doing back then. But killing somebody was not one of those things. Dragging some woman into a train station and cutting her up with a knife was
not one of those things.
Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

“I hear what you’re saying.”

“Do you believe me?”

I hesitated. “I believe that you believe that. It’s only natural that you’d—”

“Oh, stop it,” she said. “Just stop that right now. I don’t need you to pat me on the head and tell me I’m just blinded by motherly love. I don’t need that one little bit.”

“Mrs. King, where is your son serving his sentence?”

“He was in Jackson for a while. Then when that got closed down, he ended up in Harrison.”

“You went down there to visit him.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know about Harrison,” I said, “but I’ve been in Jackson. There’s a big waiting room there, right? Lots of people waiting to see their loved ones?”

“Yes, with all the guards’ shooting trophies on display,” she said. “I guess that’s in case you’re getting any ideas about helping somebody escape.”

“I do remember that. But let me just ask you this. I don’t mean to be rude, and you can ask me to leave your house right now, but when you were sitting there with all those other family members, how many of them do you think believed their sons or fathers or husbands were guilty of the crimes they were convicted of?”

She thought about it for a second. “Not more than a few, I would think. I’m sure even if they knew their man was involved with something, it was probably all a big misunderstanding. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time or whatnot.”

“Exactly. And even those prisoners who were in the visiting room when you finally got in there to see Darryl … If you’d asked them, how many do you think would have told you they were innocent?”

“I know what you’re getting at, Alex. But to tell you the truth, Darryl never said anything one way or another about it. Not to me, anyway.”

“He never said he was innocent?”

“No,” she said. “Never once.”

“And he did confess to the crime. You realize that.”

She shook her head.

“Mrs. King,” I said, “I wasn’t there to see the confession, but I know for a fact that you were. You
had
to be, because he was a minor. Am I right?”

“I was there, yes.”

“So you heard him say that—”

“I don’t care what some detective made him say.”

I let out a long breath. I knew we could keep taking laps on this same track all afternoon, and we’d still get nowhere.