The Bridge (26 page)

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Authors: Solomon Jones

BOOK: The Bridge
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“Lily ain't got nothin' to do with this,” Darnell said.
“No, she got everything to do with it. I think that's why you treat me the way you do—'cause I ain't her. That's why one minute you sayin' you sorry and the next minute you tryin' to take it out on me again. Maybe I should just take my little shit someplace else and smoke it. Maybe then you'll be happy.”
She fell silent and waited for a slap, or one of the other abuses she'd come to expect from him.
Darnell just stared at her. He wasn't used to her standing up for herself, and he didn't know quite how to respond.
When finally he spoke to her, it was with a vulnerability she didn't know he possessed.
“It ain't you,” he said. “It ain't Lily, either. It's Kenya. I guess I ain't know I cared about her that much, 'til it hit me a little while ago. I was smokin' a blunt with Monk, and he started talkin' about how Kenya look like a pretty little woman. I'm listenin' to him, and I'm thinkin' this the man that did somethin' to my niece.
“I started to kick his ass right then. But somethin' told me not to. I guess it was a good thing, 'cause a few minutes after that, he said he saw Kenya on the elevator with this dude Friday night. I made him take me out to try to find him. We walked around the block a few times, even looked around the buildin', but we ain't see nobody.”
“Who was the guy Monk seen her with?” Renee asked.
“He said he ain't know who it was. But I think Monk just old. He probably thought he seen Kenya and ain't seen nothin'.”
“So where Monk at now?” Renee said.
“I guess he went back upstairs to his apartment. I don't know. All I know is I can't look no more. Seem like that's all I been doin' these past couple days is lookin'.”
Renee looked at him with something approaching sympathy. Then she reached up and rested her pale hand against his dark brown skin. “Let's get outta here for a minute. It's a house down Poplar Street we can go to. You ain't gotta think about Kenya for a little while.”
Darnell stared down at Renee, almost gratefully. But when she took his hand and led him out the back entrance of the building, Darnell knew, for the first time in years, that crack wasn't going to solve anything.
Lynch got off the elevator and walked down the deserted hallway to 6D—the apartment number the guard had written down for him. When he knocked, the unlocked door creaked open.
A cold puff of air whisked out of the apartment and clung to him as the pungent scent of smoke filled his nostrils.
He walked in coughing, noting that the plastic floor tiles were burned black. Some of the walls were charred, revealing gray cinder blocks behind the damaged Sheetrock. Water damage had left plaster and paint peeling from the others.
Lynch was so caught up in the sight of it all that the slamming sound startled him.
Reaching for the gun that he kept under his jacket, Lynch wheeled on the man who'd shut the door.
Bayot didn't move. He simply stood against the wall, staring at Lynch with more curiosity than fear.
“Who are you?” Lynch said.
A wide smile creased Bayot's face.
“Had a fire in here a while back,” he said, ignoring Lynch's question. “Floor a little burnt up.”
Lynch chambered a round in the gun. The sound of the metallic click filled the space between them.
“I said, who are you?” Lynch repeated forcefully.
Bayot's smile disappeared quickly and he stared down at the floor.
“Who are you, who are you?” he chanted, as his face transformed into that of an angry little boy.
Lynch started to respond. But then the man looked up, and Lynch caught a glimpse of his eyes.
The person trapped behind them was not the burly, forty-year-old man whose gray-flecked, unkempt beard grew out from leathery, almond-colored skin. The person behind those eyes was a child.
“Bayot,” Lynch said, easing the gun back into its holster as he spoke in soothing tones. “That is your name, isn't it—Bayot?”
His eyes grew wide and his head moved in circles as he tried to form a word.
“My name is Bay-ard Jack-son,” he said with much effort. “They call me Bayot.”
“Okay, Mr. Jackson—”
“Bayot.”
“Okay, Bayot. I'm sorry I had to come in without your permission. But I needed to ask you about something. Is that okay?”
The soft words seemed to relax Bayot.
Lynch reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the picture of Kenya. “Do you know her?”
Bayot looked timid, almost afraid.
“It's okay,” Lynch said. “You can tell me. I'm looking for her, and I thought you might have seen her, that's all.”
Bayot stuck a finger in his mouth and smiled. “That's Kenya,” he said.
“That's right,” Lynch said. “Kenya Brown. Can you help me find her?”
Bayot covered his face with both hands and smiled mischievously. “She pretty,” he said, giggling. “Pretty little girl.”
Lynch felt a knot forming in his gut.
“Are you friends with her?” he asked cautiously.
Bayot's smile faded as sadness turned down the corners of his mouth.
“She don't wanna be my friend,” he said. “She scared o' me.”
The sadness turned to dejection.
“She too little to play with me anyway. Plus Mommy said don't play with little girls, so I don't.”
“Who's your mommy?” Lynch asked.
“Mommy don't live here no more,” he said matter-of-factly. “She died.”
“So you've been living here by yourself since then?”
“I don't live here. I live in a group home on Eighth Street. They keep takin' my SSI check, talkin' 'bout it's for my rent and for my food. So I be leavin' sometime, and when I do, I get my check and I go upstairs with Judy and them, or I come down here so nobody won't bother me.”
“Were you there on Friday? At Judy's, I mean.”
Guilt swept over Bayot's face, and he was silent.
“What's wrong?” Lynch asked.
“You gon' tell on me.”
Lynch watched him for a moment, trying to figure out what he meant. He decided to gamble.
“I already know you smoke the crack Judy sells,” Lynch said. “You know you could get locked up for that, right?”
Bayot averted his eyes and nodded slowly.
“I don't want to see that happen,” Lynch said. “And if you help me find Kenya, it won't. But if you don't help me, I'm going to have to tell. And then they're going to put you in jail for smoking crack. You don't want that, do you?”
Bayot's eyes filled with tears as he shook his head vigorously from side to side.
“Good. Now I'm going to ask you again. Did you see Kenya on Friday?”
Bayot shrank back against the wall and began to cry. Then he sat down on the smoke-damaged tiles, trembling.
“Did you see her on the staircase?” Lynch prodded. “Somebody told me that you like to play on the staircase.”
“You gon' tell,” Bayot said, rocking back and forth with his arms around his knees.
Lynch hesitated, then came over and sat down next to him. “I promise I won't tell,” he said, looking the man in the eye.
Bayot studied Lynch's face. Then he let out a long sigh and stared straight ahead as the memories poured out.
“I just wanted her to play with me,” he said nervously. “I ain't want to do nothin' to her. I just wanted somebody to play with. But Mommy said I'm too old to play with little girls. So I just followed her.”
Bayot looked down at the floor, then over at Lynch, who sat silently waiting for the rest.
“I ain't want her to be scared o' me,” Bayot said. “I ain't want her to think I was crazy, neither. 'Cause I ain't crazy. I just don't learn like other people do. Sometime it take me a while to figure stuff out, know what I mean?”
Lynch nodded.
“I figured Kenya out a long time ago, though. I knew she was nice, 'cause everybody wanted to be her friend. I guess that's why I wanted to be her friend, too. That's why, when I seen her comin' out Lily place the first time on Friday, I was gon' ask her to play with me.”
“Do you remember what time it was when you saw her?” Lynch asked.
“It was nine o'clock, 'cause when I seen her, somebody had a radio playin' real loud, and they had said the time on the radio.”
Bayot stopped and looked at Lynch for approval. He nodded. That pleased Bayot, so he continued.
“When I saw Kenya come out and start walkin' upstairs, I started
comin' up the steps behind her. She looked back and I ducked down, 'cause I thought she wanted to play hide-and-go-seek. But then she started walkin' up the steps again. So I followed her again. She stopped and looked back like she was tryin' to find me. When she ain't see me, she started lookin' kinda scared, and she ran up to Judy apartment and went in.”
“When I asked you if you were in Judy's apartment, you said I was going to tell. Did that mean you were in there?”
Bayot nodded bashfully.
“So if you were in there, how could you have been outside the apartment, watching Kenya go in?”
“I was in there early. But then I had spent all my money, and Judy told me I had to go.”
He furrowed his brow and stuck out his bottom lip. “She always tell me I gotta go when I ain't got no more money.”
“So why were you on the steps?” Lynch asked.
“I told you, that's where I be at,” Bayot said. “Don't nobody mess with me there. They don't be callin' me crazy and stupid and all that other stuff.”
Lynch felt sorry for him. But he didn't have time for compassion, so he pressed on.
“You said you saw her the first time around nine o'clock,” he said. “So I guess that means you saw her again after that.”
“Yeah, she came back out after while. I seen her comin' down the steps, and I thought if I let her see me, she might want to play. So I waited 'til she got down to, like, the third floor, and then I stood in front of her.”
“Did she say or do anything at that point?”
“She told me to move. First I thought she was playin'. But then she pushed me and ran outside.”
“Was that the last time you saw her that night?”
“I thought I saw her one more time. But I ain't sure, 'cause she was in the elevator.”
“What did you think you saw?”
Bayot's eyes darted about like he was unsure of what to say.
“What is it, Bayot? What did you see?”
“I don't want to get nobody in trouble,” he said.
“Just tell me what you saw.”
“You gon' tell him I told,” Bayot said, as more tears formed in his eyes.
“Tell me!” Lynch shouted.
Bayot jumped, covered his ears and began to babble. “I came up the steps, and I was just gon' go to sleep in here, but it was a lotta noise 'cause they was havin' a party, and I stopped on the steps and looked. Then I seen the elevator doors open and then Kenya was on there, and I ain't want her to see me 'cause I knew she was mad at me, so I backed up and peeped around the doorway. This man got on the elevator with her and it looked like she hugged him. And he hugged her back. And then the doors closed, and then I ain't see her no more after that.”
He sat breathing heavily when he was finished. Lynch watched him, waiting for more. When nothing more came, he asked another question.
“Do you know who the man was who got on the elevator with her?”
Bayot nodded quickly.
“Who was it?”
“I don't know his name,” he said. “He be up in Judy apartment, though. He be up in Judy apartment all the time.”
 
 
 
Wilson and Daneen rushed into the building and up to Judy's, rightly assuming that they would find Lynch there.
When they walked inside and found Bayot standing next to him, Daneen was confused.
“What you doin' with him?” she asked, her eyes shifting from one to the other.
“The same thing I've been doing since Friday,” Lynch said, avoiding her eyes for fear of rekindling their last conversation. “I'm trying to find Kenya.”
“With him?” Daneen asked incredulously.
“He says he saw Kenya on the elevator on Friday night,” Lynch said. “A man who hangs around Judy's got on with her when it stopped on the sixth floor. Kenya apparently knew the man pretty well, because she hugged him right before the doors closed.”
Wilson glanced at Bayot. “Do you know who the man was?”
He looked down at the floor and shook his head no.
“Did you see what he was wearing?” Wilson asked.
Bayot looked away, afraid to speak to her.
“It's okay,” Lynch said patiently. “She's a friend of mine. Her name is Roxanne. You can trust her just like you trusted me.”
“Why are you talking to him like that?” Wilson said. “Is something wrong with him?”
“Bayot slow,” Daneen said with a hint of annoyance. “People usually don't pay him no mind.”
Wilson looked at Lynch. “Don't you think you're reaching here, Kevin?”
“I've talked to everybody else, and I've pieced together everything Kenya did on Friday, except what happened when she left Tyreeka. Bayot's the only one who saw her after that. Are you saying I should ignore that just because he's slow?”
“No, Kevin. I'm just saying he might not be all that reliable as a witness.”
“Well, I don't care what you think,” he said sharply.
Wilson took a step back, stretched her eyes wide, and met his attitude with one of her own.
“Look, Kevin. I know things have been a little rough for you with the suspension, and your wife getting sick, and whatever this thing is between you and Daneen. But don't try to take it out on me. In case you forgot, we're both on the same side, here. So you'd
better start caring what I think, because when it all comes down to it, I'm your only link to the department—the same department that turned its back on you as soon as it needed a fall guy.”
“That doesn't give you the right to question my judgment.”
“If I question what you're doing, it's only because I'm trying to help you,” Wilson said. “That is what you asked me to do when you called me in on this, isn't it? Or did you forget that, too?”

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