Chapter 6
One
Jamal Davis spent his Sunday evening alone at the downtown condo he purchased three months earlier. He knew Willard was going to die for over a year, and his time at the estate would come to a necessary end. He would keep his offices there for now, but he had already set up his own work area at his new residence. He sat at the panoramic windows high above the Manhattan streets and read the file Mindy had left behind for the third or fourth time. He also thought about Jacob. Jacob was spending his night in a jail cell in Brooklyn. That thought made him smile as he imagined the spoiled child rotting alone with the dregs of society.
Mindy was also no longer an issue. He had successfully cauterized that threat. He had gotten an update from a cop he kept in touch with. The police were buying the story that she was an innocent by stander shot in the cross fire between two rival gangs.
There were four bound files on the glass coffee table and he picked up the one that had the initial police report in it. His cop had gotten him a copy of the file for a nominal fee of two hundred dollars. Jamal had a few cops on they payroll, carefully recruiting them. He told all of them that they were not committing crimes by sharing information that would be available to the defense during discovery. They merely were accelerating the process and should be rewarded for injecting some efficiency in the bureaucracy. This was a lie, and even the cops on his payroll knew it. But most people needed a rationale rooted in logic to justify betraying their duty. Under paid, under appreciated, and low morale of fighting a losing war on drugs created a fertile ground to cultivate those that would bend the rules to Jamal's will.
The file he obtained painted the picture of Mindy's last moments alive. He smiled thinking about seeing her alive one moment, and then a bloody sack of meat on the ground in the next. His only regret was that he couldn't have been there to see it.
Mindy had been walking from a small corner grocery store and on the way back to her apartment. She apparently had gone to get wine. According to the police report she had been caught between two black males who were shooting at each other. It was assumed to be gang related. There were shell casings from two different caliber handguns on opposite sides of the street. It appeared that Mindy had been unlucky enough to have been at the wrong place and the wrong time. Two stray nine millimeter bullets struck her. One went through her left eye and exited above her right ear, taking a significant portion of her brain with it. The other went into her chest, turning her heart to pulp.
That was according to the police report. But Jamal knew that was bullshit. Her real killer was not a gang banger or even a man. Her real killer was a woman named Carol Murphy. Carol was a psychopath in the clinical sense of the word. Jamal had helped the woman a few times over the years and he liked her. He feared her too, but if Jamal had to name his closest friend that wasn't a billionaire he would have said it was her.
He had met Carol the first time when she was fifteen years old and he was not yet thirty and working as an associate at a law firm and was assigned Willard Mitchell's account. Willard had not yet made his billions but was on his way. Jamal would stay close to the man but needed the security of a job. He had student loans and needed money. Jamal had grown up poor, but his parents were rich compared to the life of poverty Carol had escaped.
He remembered how he met her.
Two
Carol grew up outside the five boroughs in a trailer park with her mother, Megan Murphy, who was 19 at the time of Carol's birth. Her mother worked as a cashier at the local convenient store for minimum wage and was barely scraping by with some government assistance. Unfortunately for Carol, her mother, discovered cocaine and vodka. Carol never knew who her father was, other than his first name was Dale. Her mother only referred to him as 'the piece of shit'. Everything was 'the piece of shits' fault growing up. When they ran out of milk because the money ran out before the end of the month, her mother would say, "You can thank the piece of shit if you're hungry". She wasn't exactly hungry alot but neither was she well fed.
Things went from bad to worse for Carol six months after Megan Murphy discovered crack cocaine and graduated from snorting to smoking. In those months Carol was more and more scared when she would come home from school, afraid she would find her mother dead or so high she would be paranoid or psychotic. Other times Carol would see the withdrawal when the elder Murphy could not afford the small baggies of crystal misery. The withdrawals were the worst and once Carol came home to find most of her clothes missing. Megan had sold them for a few dollars to feed the monkey she was carrying on her back. Carol had to wear the same pair of jeans to school for two weeks until she was able to buy another pair at the local GoodWill.
She might have lived through that nightmare of a childhood, but Megan met a man named Devon Truly. Devon was another lost soul in the ocean of drugs that were flooding the eastern seaboard during the war on drugs between 1980 and the new millennium.
Carol came home one afternoon to find her mother and Devon high on crack, sitting on the couch. They told her they had good news. Devon would be moving in with them. Carol was not sure this was good news. Devon scared her and she didn't like the way he looked at her. Megan either didn't notice or didn't care. She told Carol that Devon would make it easier for them because they could split rent and he would pay half the expenses. It would be like she was making twice as much money.
Unfortunately that windfall turned into more drugs and more binges.
Devon raped her the first time, two weeks after he moved in. At the time she was fourteen years old, a freshman in high school, and was in her room reading a history book. There was a quiz the next morning and she wanted to do well. Devon was smoking crack in the living room of the trailer, blowing the smoke out an open window. He came into her room without knocking. She was on her twin mattress on the floor, in her gym shorts and a tee shirt, laying on her stomach, a book open on her frameless bed.
He said, "Your mom lost her job yesterday." Carol knew this, but she wasn't sure what Devon expected her to do about it. He said, "I can't pay for this place all by myself so you are going to have to help out. You got any money?" Carol did not have any money and if she did, her mother, no doubt would have snorted or smoked it.
She said, "No. I don't have any money." This seemed to make Devon angry.
He screamed, "Just like your fucking mother. You god damn bitches are all the same. You suck us in with your pussy and tits and expect us to pay for your worthless asses."
Carol sat up and scooted up the mattress away from him, holding her book across her chest defensively. Devon looked angry and hungry. It scared her. She said, "Devon get out of my room". Sometimes a direct command would get through the haze of cocaine and he might follow the instructions. Other times it enraged him. This was one of the times it enraged him.
He said, "You don't have a room you fucking leech. I pay for this place and you are just an ungrateful little cunt. Everything in here is mine, including your worthless ass until you turn 18 and I kick you out." He pushed into her room and closed the door. He turned to her and said, "The only thing you have worth anything is that pussy of yours. You know how to use it yet?"
