Oh, Shaniqua, he thought. What if you’d been born somewhere else, to another family – to any family worth the name, in fact? If you’d never set foot in Homewood? Never opened yourself up to men whose idea of fatherhood started and stopped at conception? Never had your soul leached from you atom by atom?
‘It ain’t murder, right?’ she repeated.
He was about to tell her things weren’t that simple when Beradino’s cellphone rang. He took it from his pocket and answered.
‘Beradino.’
‘Mark? Freddie Hellmore here.’
Freddie Hellmore was one of the best-known criminal defense lawyers, perhaps the best-known, in the United States. A Homewood boy born and bred, he split his cases between the nobodies – usually poor, black nobodies on murder charges – and the rich and famous. He was half Don King, half Clarence Darrow.
Love him or hate him – and most people did both, sometimes at the same time – it was hard not to admire him. His acquittal rate was excellent, and he was a damn good lawyer; not the kind of man you wanted across the table on a homicide case.
‘I hear you’ve got a client of mine in custody,’ he said.
‘I’ve probably got several clients of yours in custody.’
‘Funny. Let me clarify. Mizz Davenport?’
Beradino wasn’t surprised. Someone in Homewood must have called him.
‘Has she appointed you?’
‘Has she appointed anyone else?’ When Beradino didn’t answer, he continued. ‘I’ll take that as a no. Put her on.’
‘I have to tell you; she’s already confessed.’
That piece of news rattled Hellmore, no doubt, but he recovered fast. He was a pro, after all.
‘I’m going to have you seven ways to Sunday on improper conduct.’
‘We did it by the book, every second of the way. It’s all on tape.’
‘Put her on, Detective. Now.’
Beradino passed Shaniqua the phone. The conversation was brief and one-sided, and even from six feet away it wasn’t hard to get the gist; sit tight, shut up, and wait for me to get there.
‘He wants to speak to you again,’ Shaniqua said, handing the phone back.
Indeed he did; Beradino could hear him even before he put the phone back to his ear.
‘You don’t ask her another damn thing till I get there, you hear?’ Hellmore said. ‘Not even if she wants milk in her tea or what her favorite color is. Clear?’
‘Crystal.’
Thursday, October 7th. 10:57 p.m.
She’d been in the hospital almost three days now, in the chair beside her sister’s bed.
She left only to eat, attend calls of nature, and when the medical staff asked her for ten minutes while they changed the sheets or performed tests. Those occasions apart, she was a constant presence at Samantha’s bedside.
Sometimes she talked softly of happy memories from their childhood, conjuring up apple-pie images of lazy summer evenings by mosquito-buzzed lakes and licking cake mix from the inside of the bowl.
Sometimes she fell silent and simply held Samantha’s hand, as if the tendrils of tubes and lines snaking to and from Samantha’s emaciated body weren’t enough to anchor her in this world. And in the small hours, she rested her head against the wall and allowed herself an hour or two hovering above the surface of sleep.
People recognized her, of course, though few seemed sure how they should react when they did, especially in a hospital – this hospital – after everything that had happened here. For every person who smiled uncertainly at her, there was another who glared and muttered something about how she should be ashamed of herself.
She acted as though she didn’t care either way. She was one hell of an actor.
And now, late in the evening, one of the doctors asked if he could have a word.
‘Of course,’ she said.
He cleared his throat. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just be straight with you. Your sister is brain dead. Life support is all that’s keeping her going.’
‘I know.’
‘To be honest, with the injuries she received, it’s a miracle she’s got this far. Multiple gunshot wounds to the head…’ He tailed off, spreading his hands.
‘So what are you asking me?’ she said, even though she knew exactly what was being asked of her.
He swallowed. It was never easy, no matter how often you did it.
‘You’re next of kin. I need your permission to turn Samantha’s life support off.’
It was still a shock to hear it stated so baldly, she thought.
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then we get a court order.’
She thought for a moment.
‘I understand a certain amount of medical jargon,’ she said. The doctor nodded, knowing – as did everybody – what she’d been through in the past. ‘Tell me.’
‘There’s total necrosis of the cerebral neurons,’ he replied. ‘All Samantha’s brain activity – including the involuntary activity necessary to sustain life – has come to an end. We’ve conducted all the usual physical examinations to find clinical evidence of brain function. The responses have been uniformly negative. No response to pain, no pupillary response, no oculo-cephalic reflex, no corneal reflex, no caloric reflex.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Sorry. Eye tests; reaction to light, movement, contact and water being poured in the ears. As I said, all negative. And her EEGs have been isoelectric – sorry, flatline – since she was admitted.’
‘And you don’t want to waste your time keeping her alive.’
‘It’s not a question of wanting.’
‘It is.’
‘It’s a question of prioritizing. The damage is irreversible. She’s not going to get better. She’s not going to improve even an iota from what she is now. The only way, medically, we could justify maintaining life support would be to remove her organs for transplant donation, but…’ He spread his hands again.
‘But she was a junkie, and no one in their right mind would touch her organs with a ten-foot pole. I get it, Doctor. You don’t have to soft-soap me.’
‘Thank you. Please understand; we don’t have the capacity or resources to keep her here indefinitely. Even if we did, she has no reason, no consciousness. She’s not living. She’s existing.’
She tipped her head slightly and examined him.
‘You really believe that?’
‘It’s fact. It’s a medical fact. Medicine’s what I believe in.’
When she sighed, it sounded to her like condemnation.
‘You square it with your conscience,’ she said.