Sugar & Spice (6 page)

“Look, help yourself out. We know you were the one supplying the warden with drugs. What happened between you? Was he stealing from you? How was his wife involved?”

Blake looked at the two-way mirror.

“You're looking at a double murder; special circumstances. You and your crew raped and murdered the warden's wife. The DA's office's hands are tied. You're gonna fry for this, son. They'll say your business with him had nothing to do with his wife. They'll put her picture up so the jury can see what she looked like before you cut her up with that bullwhip. Then the DA will tell the jury about her being a Big Sister volunteer, and being a Red Cross volunteer, and how everyone loved her.

“Then, you know what the DA will do, don't you? Yeah, you know. They'll put up the autopsy photos. They're going to show her back all cut up, her black and blue wrists from being tied so tightly that her circulation was cut off. Then come the photographs of her vagina that had been ripped up from repeated rape. They couldn't get O.J. But they'll get a drug-dealing nigga like you. They'll come back with a conviction in ten minutes. Don't throw your life away, son. Confess and make it easy on yourself.”

Blake looked at his diamond-studded Rolex like he had all the time in the world and said, “I want an attorney. Can I make my phone call now?”

Detective McDonald was about to say something more when Blake put up his hand and said, “Unt-uh, detective. The second I ask for a lawyer, all questioning stops. And by the way, the District of Columbia doesn't have the death penalty. I'm surprised a seasoned veteran like you would try some shit like that. Now, be a good little boy and get me a phone.”

McDonald mumbled something before leaving the room. Blake looked at the two-way mirror and winked. Kelly and I stared at him. He knew
what I knew. The police didn't have anything on him. No drug dealer would leave the money and the drugs. McDonald was convinced that Blake knew something, and had gambled that he could get Blake to give up information to save his own skin. It didn't work. Back to square one. If Blake didn't do it, who did? And if money wasn't a motive, what was? I wondered.

Detective McDonald came back into the interview room with a phone. He plugged it in. Blake picked up the receiver and hit the buttons on the phone quickly, as if he'd made the call every day of his life.

“Yeah, Jimmy,” Blake said, still looking at the two-way mirror. “Nelson Blake here. Is the boss in?” A few seconds later, Nelson was speaking again. “Yeah, man, this is Blake. I'm in a jam. Can you talk to your brother for me, man? Easiest money he'll ever make.” He looked at Detective McDonald. “The nation's capital is full of stupid cops. They think a lowlife like me would kill a prison warden, rape his white wife, and leave the goddamn money and drugs.”

Blake laughed loudly. I could only assume that whomever he was talking to was laughing as well.

“Yeah, man,” Blake continued. “I guess these muthafuckas gotta justify their salaries somehow.” He laughed again. “So, brotha, you think you can get him to take my case, or what? So, he's already in D.C.? Call his cell, man. I wanna be outta this muthafucka by six.” He looked at his Rolex. “It's one-thirty now.” Blake was quiet again. “Uh-huh, yeah man. It's bullshit. They don't know who did it, so these dumb bastards come after my ass.”

A few seconds later, Blake hung up the phone and smiled at Detective McDonald who was seething.

“Don't even think about it, man,” Blake said in a cool street tone. “If you touch me, here's what's going to happen. First, I'ma end up kickin' yo' ass, then I'll sue you for that cheap-ass house you live in.”

McDonald flung the table out of the way and had Blake, who was laughing hysterically, up against the wall. Kelly and I raced into the room.

“Somebody better talk to this man.” Blake laughed. “He ‘bout tuh fuck around and lose his pension.”

Sterling Wise was already in the D.C. area, attempting to work out football contracts for a couple of players for the Redskins. Kelly and I were surprised to see him. When I asked him how he knew the defendant, he told me that his older brother, Jericho, had called him from the Caymans and asked him to defend Nelson Blake.

Kelly and I were sitting in the last row of the courtroom on redcushioned seats, watching Sterling argue for the release of Nelson Blake before Judge Bauer. Sterling was tall, dark, in the black sense of the word, and handsome. He wore an expensive, light-colored suit with a paisley tie.

“Your Honor,” Sterling was saying. “These charges are ludicrous. The DA doesn't have any evidence whatsoever. No fingerprints, no traces of DNA, no threats, nothing. All they have is the word of a guard who was involved with the trafficking himself. But more importantly, Your Honor, the DA claims that my client is a notorious drug dealer. Yet, this same so-called drug dealer left several kilos of cocaine, and over forty thousand dollars in plain sight. Furthermore, the victims were beaten with a bullwhip and dismembered with a chain saw. The police searched my client's home and car and found nothing. No whip, no chain saw, not even carpet fibers from the victims' home. Finally, Your Honor, when my client learned that he was wanted for questioning, he came to the police; they didn't have to hunt him down. All of this is consistent with an innocent man. These charges should be dropped and Nelson Blake should be released immediately.”

“Mr. Vanzant?” Judge Bauer said to the District Attorney.

“Your Honor, Mr. Blake has been identified as the man who supplied the prison with the drugs. We believe he knows who committed the crime and should be held in custody for further questioning.”

“Hearsay, Your Honor,” Sterling interjected. “The prison guard has never even seen the defendant. He's going by what he heard, not what he knows.”

“Mr. Vanzant, if that's all you have…” Judge Bauer said.

“Your Honor, I respectfully request that you allow us to hold him for further questioning,” Vanzant said. “We believe we can get corroboration from the other guards, but as of now, no one is talking.”

“Then my hands are tied, counsel,” Judge Bauer said and slammed the mallet on the gavel. “You're free to go, Mr. Blake.”

I had told Sterling that I thought the charges were a sham and that they shouldn't have even arrested his client. I also reminded him that I had saved his life a month or so ago in Denver. He promised to speak to Blake on my behalf but stopped short of promising an interview, which is exactly what I wanted. Nelson Blake was a notorious drug dealer and probably a murderer, too, but he didn't have anything to do with the Perkins' murders. However, that didn't mean he didn't know who had committed the murders.

Jerry and Terry followed Sarah Lawford to her home at 1619 East Continental Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia. The two-story colonial was well-kept and neat, with assorted plants on either side of the stairs that led to the porch. The house was powder blue and white with old-fashioned wood shutters. The place looked as if it had been built specifically for a perfect little family with a perfect little wife and hubby team and perfect little crumbsnatchers. But Sarah Lawford wasn't married and she didn't have any children. She lived alone.

Sarah Lawford parked her black Volkswagen Jetta in front of the white picket fence that enclosed her home and popped the trunk. She got out and walked to the rear of the car. Sarah was just barely five feet tall with heels on, but she was well put together and prettier than ninety percent of the actresses in Hollywood. She was so good-looking that most men didn't bother asking her out, believing that such a gorgeous woman already had to have a man eating out her hands. But nothing was further from the truth. She had spent many lonely nights in the house on Continental Boulevard.

Part of the reason she was alone on most nights was because she was a schoolteacher at Matthew Henson Academy. With the exception of two weeks for Christmas vacation, two weeks for spring break, two weeks before the start of the summer session, and another two weeks before the start of the fall session, Henson students went to school six days a week forty-four weeks a year. With a demanding schedule like that, Sarah
barely had time for herself, let alone a significant other. However, when Bernard Rodgers, who taught trigonometry, joined the faculty during the spring session, Sarah Lawford made sure he knew she was down-to-earth and available. A whirlwind romance developed and they were going to marry and honeymoon before the start of the fall session in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

Sarah grabbed two bags of groceries and started walking toward the white picket fence. She saw one of her students, a bright-eyed boy named Luther Pleasant, who happened to be rollerblading in her direction.

Luther was black, just eight years old and a mathematical wizard with a schoolboy crush on Miss Lawford. He skated around Sarah in a circle with ease, smiling as he showed off his incredible balance.

“Hi, Mr. Pleasant,” Sarah said. Calling students by their surname was a part of the school's charter. When Anthony George, the presiding principal, founded the school ten years earlier, he believed that children needed to be taught to respect themselves as well as others. One way to do that, he believed, was by having the teachers call the boys Mister and the girls Miss along with their surnames. The children were not allowed to use first names either.

“Hi, Miss Lawford!” Luther beamed.

“Will you help me take my groceries into the house?” Sarah asked the youngster.

“Sure, Miss Lawford.” Luther smiled.

“Just grab one bag at a time, okay?” Sarah said, sensing that the boy would try to impress her and drop everything all over the ground. “And make sure you take off your rollerblades before you come into the house.”

“Okay, Miss Lawford,” Luther said.

After they finished taking in the bags, Sarah offered Luther five dollars for services rendered, but he refused. Sarah then promised to let him help her make some peanut butter cookies for the class later that week and he agreed. After Luther left, Sarah turned on her stereo system and hit a couple of buttons on the CD player. A few seconds later “Brothers Hang On,” a tune on MC Hammer's “Too Legit To Quit” CD began. Sarah sang along.

“
My mind is poisoned from the picture that I see…The hookers or the killers always seem to look at me…BLACK”

Ding-dong! The doorbell chimed over the music. Sarah went to the door and looked through the peephole. There were two men standing on her porch wearing Capitol City Cable overalls. The Arlington area was scheduled to receive the new digital cable so she opened the door. The men were twins with short crewcut hairstyles. Zap! Terry touched her with a stun baton.

The last thing Sarah Lawford remembered was opening her front door and being zapped by a black baton. She opened her eyes and realized that she was nude, gagged, and tied to her own bed with her legs spread eagle. Disoriented, she began to panic. To her knowledge, she hadn't done anything wrong.

Sarah had taught at Matthew Henson School for seven years. She got along famously with the other members of the faculty and all of her students liked her. She had the unique ability to make all her students feel as if they were her favorite pupils.

As Sarah struggled fruitlessly to free herself, she could hear someone moving around; someone was still in her room. She recognized the two men from Capitol City Cable. They were saying something to each other, but she couldn't understand what they were saying. One of them looked back at her and smiled. He picked up something off the floor and was walking over to the bed. As he got closer, Sarah could tell that the man had a leather whip in his hand.

He sat down on the bed and looked down into Sarah's brown eyes. The terror he saw in them excited him. The man rubbed the whip all over her body, and in small circles around her stiff nipples. The other man was busy putting something together. Suddenly, the man with the whip started to disrobe. That's when Sarah's eyes began to bulge out of her head. She knew that the two men intended to rape her. She struggled to
free herself, but it was no use. Sarah Lawford was going to be a statistic.

Before she knew it, the man who had had the whip was pushing himself inside her. Sarah whimpered like a wounded animal as the intruder brutalized her for what seemed like an eternity. Unrelenting tears fell from the corners of her eyes, but the intruder was merciless. After thirty minutes of ruthless savagery, the man got off her and the other man got on top of her and continued where his twin left off.

When they finished ravaging her, they strapped her into the portable gravity boots upside down. With whips in hand, the beating began. The whip crackled loudly and Sarah's delicate body convulsed. Her muffled cries and groans were so terrible that only the Marquis de Sade could have listened to the flogging without covering his ears. One stinging blow after another, almost in synchronized rhythm, ripped away flesh all the way down to the bone. The lashing continued until unconsciousness ripped Sarah Lawford away from the brutality that seemed to go on forever. Then they dismembered her.

Nelson Blake decided to get out of town while the getting was good, he told Sterling. He had decided to take a vacation in the Caymans where Jericho Wise owned the Renegade Hotel and Casino. He feared the police might get creative and plant some evidence so that they could arrest him again. I knew if I was going to find out anything about what really happened to the warden and his wife, I would have to get it from him before he left the country. There was an eight-thirty flight leaving Dulles for the Caymans and Nelson Blake said he would definitely be on it.

We all rode in Sterling's limousine to the airport. But I wanted to speak to Blake alone. I thought that was the best way to get some vital information out of him. Blake and I sat at a table at T.G.I. Friday's not far from gate D19. Sterling and Kelly sat a few tables from us.