bottom-feedersârarely stay at the same address for six months, much less six years. So I didnât expect to find him here. Amazingly, when I knocked on the door of the squalid little house in southeast Atlanta, the man who answered looked just like the man in the mug shot. He was tall, thin, black as creosote, shirtless, and barefoot. A scar ran across his throat, almost from ear to ear.
âVernell,â I said, showing him my badge, âcome with me.â
âWhuh?â he said.
âNow.â
âIâma get my shoes,â he said. He closed the door, locked it.
I strolled around the back of the house, stood behind a scraggly bush with my gun drawn, and waited. About thirty seconds later he climbed out the back window, a pair of Air Jordans hanging by the laces from his teeth.
âMan!â he said, when I stepped out from behind the bush, pointed the gun at his sternum. âI ainât did nothinâ!â
Â
Â
Strangely, Vernell Moncrief agreed to giving me a DNA sample without complaint. While we were standing around in the hallway of City Hall East waiting for a crime-scene tech to take a mouth swab, I decided to pump Vernell for information. Not a formal interrogation, just a friendly chat.
âSo how come you ran, Vernell?â I said.
âI ainât realize this about Marquavious. I thought yâall was, like, Narcotics or something. Them narcs all the time be hassling me.â He gave me a real serious face that was hard to give much credit to. âYes, maâam. Anything I can do to help. âCause every time I think about that poor boy, Marquavious, it hurt me right here, you know what Iâm saying.â He whacked himself in the middle of his chest with a loosely balled fist.
âI do know what youâre saying.â Since the mouth swab procedure would only take about five seconds, I had told the crime-scene tech to take her time getting to us. That way Iâd have time to talk to Vernell. âSo tell me about your relationship to Marquavious,â I said.
âI ainât had no relationship! No maâam! I ainât like that.â
I smiled as sincerely as I could. âNah, nah, I donât mean that way. I mean like your family situation, that type of relationship.â
âOh, yes, maâam. Yes, maâam. See, what it was, me and Marquaviousâs mama was like married.â
âChurch married?â
âWell, you know. Common-law type of thing. We was fin to get married, but then Marquavious . . .â He shrugged sadly. âWell, you know. One thing and another. Me and Marquaviousâs mama, Loeesha, we had to go our separate ways. It was all this tension and everything, due to Marquavious dying, it done broke us up.â
âPlus your going to jail for that thing over in Decatur.â
âPlus that. But I was just in jail , Miz Deakes. Not the penitentiary or nothing.â
âRight. It was mistaken identity or something probably, right, because you never got convicted.â
âThatâs what Iâm saying. Them charges was dropped.â
âSo look, we get this test back, everything works out, you get eliminated as a suspect, this whole dark cloud thatâs been hanging over youâit all goes away.â
Vernell nodded earnestly.
âYou didnât do it, right?â
âNo, maâam!â
âSo who you think it was? Had to be somebody, right?â
Vernell blinked.
âYou understand, Vernell? Most crimes like this, theyâre committed by somebody close to the victim. Was there an uncle, a cousin, a minister . . . anybody that was around this boy that didnât seem right to you?â
Vernellâs eyes widened, playing it to the hilt, Mr. Innocent, trying to help out. âMm. Yes, maâam. Come to think on it a little, you might just be right.â
The hallway was silent for a moment. The crime-scene tech poked her head around
Jane Hunt
Jonathan Maberry
K. Sterling
Tara Fox Hall
James Kakalios
Jacquie Rogers
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley
Elizabeth Moynihan
Shiloh Walker
Mary Balogh