Up to No Good (37 page)

Oh dear God, what the fuck did I just do?

“Uuuh.” Omar gasped when I pulled out the knife. Confusion and panic gripped me. It was as if Omar was no longer real, no longer human. I was unable to form a thought; all I wanted to do was take back what had
just happened. But somehow, when Omar moved, I knew that I had to finish what I had started. Letting him live would mean the end of my life as I knew it. My father was sick, and there was no one else to take care of him; I couldn’t risk Omar telling the police that I ’d stabbed him. It would mean certain jail time.

Closing my eyes, I plunged the knife in once more. This time, he stopped moving.

I opened my eyes and saw Keisha next to him, awake, her face covered in blood spatter and her eyes wide with fear. “Oh my God, you killed him,” she said in a horrified whisper. “You killed him.”

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident,” I tried to explain, but from the look on her face and the way she was shaking her head and mumbling to herself, I knew she didn’t believe me.

Stabbing Keisha was harder than stabbing Omar, but I knew I had to do it before she could scream. Besides, she’d never keep her mouth shut. When I pulled the weapon from her body, there was no need to stab her a second time. She was gone.

I fell back onto the floor, dropping the knife by my side. The entire room was spinning, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I struggled to comprehend what had just happened, because it didn’t seem real. It was as if the pieces of myself that had splintered were just coming back together. Maybe I was just waking up from a bad dream. I looked around the room and saw that the walls Keisha and I had painted a beautiful sea green were now speckled with deep red. Everywhere I looked, I saw the same red. And now, finally, I was calm. I just wanted to close my eyes and rest.

“Oh my God!” The neurons in my brain started firing again, and I realized that my clothes were painted red with the blood of two people I had once loved
dearly. I looked at the two lifeless bodies on the bed, then down at the knife lying beside me.

“What have I done?”

A river of tears flowed from my eyes. I loved this woman. And even though he’d betrayed me, I still loved Omar. They’d hurt me deeply, but I had never really closed off that part of my heart that still loved them. And now they were dead by my hands. I wanted to die, too, to have this be over. I was so tired of hurting, of gnawing myself raw with thoughts of their betrayal.

I raised the knife high in the air but then dropped it from my trembling hands. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.

I had to call someone. I found my phone buried in my pocket, and I dialed the one person I needed.

“Dad …”

My cell phone was ringing, and by the time I crossed the living room to pick it up off the coffee table, my chest was heaving. I picked up the phone and checked the caller ID while I caught my breath.

I was happy to see Darnel’s number displayed on the screen. He’d been working his butt off over at the office lately, and I had been wanting to talk to him so I could tell him how proud I was. Plus, my health was declining steadily now, and it was time I finally told him about the doctor’s prognosis.

“Hey, son,” I answered.

“Dad … I need you to come over here.” His voice was thick with panic, sounding almost like it had when he was a child and he would call me to come save him from one of Crystal’s spankings.

“What, son? What is it? Are you all right?”

“Yes … no, I’m not really sure. I just need you to come here. Right now.”

I was wrong. His voice sounded worse, much more scared than he’d ever sounded as a child. Hearing him so distraught set off some sort of primitive instinct inside of me. Suddenly, my adrenaline was rushing, and I
was ready to take on whatever was necessary to protect my son.

“Where are you, son?”

“I’m over at Keisha’s.”

“What?” I caught myself and tried to speak in an even tone. I didn’t mean to raise my voice, but there was no logical reason for him to be at her house. “What are you doing there?”

“I just need you to come over here right away.”

I decided to stop questioning. My son needed me, and that was all that mattered. “I’ll be right over.”

The moment I hung up, a wave of dread came over me. My mind sifted through the possibilities:
Maybe he went over there and tore the place up. What if she came home and now the cops were there? Or what if he set fire to the place?
Any one of those scenarios meant plenty of trouble for Darnel. I tried to take my thoughts in another direction.
Maybe they ran off and eloped and now he’s having second thoughts.
That could be more easily solved, I decided. But deep in my heart, I knew that none of those explanations could account for the chilling tone in Darnel’s voice. No, something worse had happened.

Gripped with fear, I climbed into my car and took the longest drive of my life. When I finally pulled up in front of Keisha’s apartment, I heaved a deep sigh and walked on trembling legs to the front door. Each step I took up to her second-floor apartment was accompanied by a burning pain in my chest. I ignored it as best I could, focusing only on Darnel’s panicked plea, which still echoed in my head:
I just need you to come here.

I rang the doorbell. Slowly, the door creaked open, and there stood Darnel, looking like he was in some sort of trance. I stepped inside the dimly lit living
room, and my nose was assaulted by a strange metallic smell. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that Darnel’s shirt and pants were covered in blood.

“Oh my God! Son, what’s wrong with you? What happened to you? Who did this to you?” As I spoke, I was examining him, looking for the source of the bleeding. I struggled to comprehend what could have happened. Could Keisha have done this? Or maybe she had a new man who had come by and caught Darnel here.

Darnel still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t spoken.

“You okay?” I was about to pull out my cell phone and call the police, but he reached out a hand to stop me.

“Dad, I’m all right.” His voice sounded surprisingly measured, calm.

“What the hell happened? What’s all this blood on your clothes?”

Tears began to flow down his expressionless face. “I just snapped,” he told me in a hoarse whisper. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t mean to do it, Dad. I swear. I love them both so much.”

“Who are you talking about? What did you do?” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. I was so afraid, and all I wanted was for my son to come out of this trance and tell me everything was fine.

“Omar and Keisha.”

“What happened to them?”

“I killed them.”

He said the words that I had been afraid of hearing. From the sound of his voice on the phone to the sight of his bloody clothing, my subconscious mind had already pieced together the truth. But only now as he spoke it out loud did I feel my whole world come crashing down around me.

“They’re dead, Dad. I don’t know what came over me. I lost it.”

I watched as Darnel, my son who had grown into such a fine young man, fell apart and cried like a baby. “Daddy, please help me.”

I wanted to pull him into my arms and cry right along with him, but he needed my strength right now more than ever.

“Where are they?” I asked.

Darnel turned around and pointed to the back of the apartment. “In there.”

I walked to the bedroom, still praying that this was some horrible nightmare or practical joke. But the grisly scene that greeted me when I looked into the bedroom shattered any last hope of that. I had to hold my mouth to stop from regurgitating at the sight of Keisha and Omar, lying naked in a congealed river of their own blood. It was splattered all over the flowered sheets, the carpet, and the wall. A huge butcher knife, still wet, glistened on the floor next to the bed. Now I could identify the putrid stench I ’d noticed when I first entered the apartment. It was the smell of fresh blood and death.

I turned back toward the living room where Darnel stood motionless.

“What the …? Who …? Darnel, how did this happen?” My boy couldn’t have done this. He didn’t have the heart. “Who did this?” I demanded, my mind screaming for him to tell me it was someone other than him.

“I did,” Darnel said simply. He looked down at his bloody hands, shaking his head as though he, too, couldn’t believe what he’d done. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Okay, we need to call a lawyer.” I fought to stay rational against the panic rising inside me. “This was an
accident, right? You didn’t mean to kill those people.” I couldn’t even say their names. Omar and Keisha had been coming to my house for as long as I could remember. Those corpses on the bed bore no resemblance to the lively, happy young people I had once known, before the wedding was canceled and Darnel’s life came apart at the seams.

“This was an accident, right, Darnel?”

“Yes. I didn’t mean to do it. But they’re never going to believe it, Daddy.”

The image of Darnel actually wielding the knife and committing this brutal act nearly brought me to my knees. I reached out and grabbed the couch before I fell. It was becoming more difficult to get a deep breath, but I forced myself not to give in to the wave of blackness threatening to overtake me. I concentrated on my breathing until I got it under control enough to speak.

“Jesus Christ, what would make you come over here?”

“They sent me a wedding invitation…. They were getting married the same day me and Keisha were supposed to. They just pushed me too far.” He sat down on the sofa and buried his face in his bloody hands.

I sat next to my son, no longer able to hold back my tears. I cried right along with him. It was a long while before he spoke again, and when he did, his voice sounded stronger, like he’d somehow come to terms with what he’d done.

“Dad, we need to call the police.”

I looked at him, not willing to agree to what he was saying. “No.”

“We just have to face facts. My life is over. I’m going to jail, Dad.”

It was an image familiar to too many black families:
another young black man, sitting in prison for the rest of his life. Except this wasn’t just some statistic; this was my son. I couldn’t bring myself to accept that as a possibility.

The first thought I had was to send him away to Europe. Then I would have one child hiding in witness protection and another on the run for the rest of his life. Not an ideal situation, but better than the alternative. But then I remembered the biggest difference between Jamie and Darnel: Darnel had a mother who would want to know where he was. There was no way he could disappear without having to tell Crystal why he was going. Even worse than the thought of Darnel going to jail was the thought of him having to tell his mother he’d murdered two people. I would never let that happen.

I thought about Crystal, who had sacrificed so much over the years. I had never given her the true commitment she longed for, and it had cost her heart dearly. Yet she had never kept my son from me. She had raised him to be a good, honest young man who had made me so proud over the years. I had to believe that these murders were not his true nature. This was a crime of passion, not one that he would repeat if given the chance to remain free. And that’s when I knew what I had to do. I owed it to Crystal to do right by our son.

“Dad, we’ve got to call the police. It’s over.” Darnel went to pick up the phone.

“Put the phone down, son,” I ordered, feeling that my decision was right.

He turned to me for an explanation. “Go wash your hands in the sink and don’t touch anything but the soap.” He did as he was told, and when he returned, I said, “Take off your shirt.”

He just stared at me.

“Goddammit, take off your shirt, now!” I felt my strength returning tenfold. There was no turning back now.

Darnel looked baffled, but as I stepped toward him, he unbuttoned the bloody shirt.

“Give it to me.”

He did as he was told. I took off my own clean shirt and handed it to him.

“Put this on.”

“Dad, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to save your life. Now, put it on.”

With my clean shirt on, he no longer looked like the zombie who’d opened the door for me. Save for a few blood spatters that needed to be wiped off his face, he almost looked like the successful young son who’d been running my business the past few months. That alone was enough for me to trust that I was doing the right thing. I was making it possible for him to put this all behind him.

“Now give me your pants.”

“Dad …”

“Look, boy. Just do what I tell you. Take off your pants.”

An expression came over Darnel’s face as he realized what I was planning. “Dad, no! I can’t let you do this!”

“Look, Darnel, you’re my son and I love you. I know I didn’t always live up to my responsibilities as a father, but—”

“No, Dad, you’re wrong. You were always there for me whenever I needed you. Mom and I never went hungry. I did this, not you.”

“Your mother and you deserved much better, son. True, I supported you financially, but I failed as a father
when it came to what really matters. I spent so much time up to no good, chasing physical thrills and running away from the love that your mother offered. I showed you the worst example of how to deal with love, and now I take the blame for what that did to you. Maybe if I had opened my heart and married your mother years ago, we’d all be in a different place right now.”

A single tear rolled down to Darnel’s chin. “You can’t do this, Dad.”

“I have to do this, Darnel. I owe it to you and your mother.”

He shook his head.

I pleaded with him to understand. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Mine’s almost over anyway. My cancer’s spreading. The doctors have already given me a death sentence. I’ll be gone in a year. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see Jamie again either. I have nothing left to lose, but you have
everything
to lose if you stay here. Now, please, take off the pants and give them to me.”

Looking defeated and helpless, Darnel finished undressing and handed me his things.