Detective Mick Johnson scratched at the skin on his forearm till it was red and raw. The itching had started as soon as he got out of the car on Denker Avenue, outside Treyvon Raymond’s family home. It was as if he had hives. As if he were violently allergic to this shitty neighborhood. Westmont. The name sounded so innocuous, even gentrified. In fact, the streets where Trey Raymond had lived his short, brutal life were a human cesspit of violence, drugs, corruption and filth.
A lot of people considered Mick Johnson to be a racist. He used to defend himself against the accusation, but at this point he figured it might be true. And he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Two of Mick’s closest friends, including his last partner, Dave Malone, had been killed on these very streets, both shot to death by young black dealers. The murders had happened in broad daylight, and yet, surprise surprise, not a single witness had come forward to identify the shooters. If it hadn’t been for Dave’s own hated dash-cam, his killers would never have been caught. As it was they were both now on San Quentin’s death row, where they belonged.
It was tough to stay neutral about a community that killed your friends and lied about it. What happened on the streets of South Central LA every day was a war – a war, pure and simple – and black junkies like Treyvon Raymond and his buddies were the enemy. Bleeding-heart liberals like Doug and Nikki Roberts could bleat on all they wanted about reform and rehabilitation and the effects of poverty and gang culture and how ‘the system’ was failing young African American males. But they weren’t in the trenches like the LAPD. It wasn’t ‘the system’ that had executed Dave Malone and stood there laughing about it while he bled to death on the sidewalk.
Johnson hammered on the door of the Raymond house as if it were a raid.
‘Open up!’ he yelled, his corpulent form bristling with hostility. ‘Open the damn door! Police!’
A t
hin, frail woman’s voice answered. ‘I’m comin’, I’m comin’!’
‘Come faster!’ Johnson commanded.
Parked across the street about a hundred yards away, sprawled out in the driver’s seat of his battered Nissan Altima, Derek Williams watched Detective Johnson at work, a deep feeling of loathing lodged in his chest. The utterly unprovoked aggression in Johnson’s body language and manner as a diminutive, elderly black woman – presumably Treyvon’s grandmother – opened the door, made Williams’ stomach turn. Here was a grieving family, victims of crime, guilty of precisely nothing, being treated like criminals in their own home. Williams could only presume because of the color of their skin, and Detective Johnson’s racism. This was what the LAPD called ‘community policing’. It was why people hated them.
Derek Williams hated them too, although not for the same reasons. Derek had applied himself to join the police force, three times in total. But each time he’d been rejected, deemed ‘not worthy’ by the faceless powers-that-be that decided these things. He’d passed the physical. He’d passed all the written exams. And yet three times the letter had arrived: ‘Dear Mr Williams, We regret to inform you … ’
That was twenty years ago now, but it still stung. Especially when ignorant, prejudiced fools like Mick Johnson, or vain pricks like his partner, Goodman, evidently made the grade.
Johnson spent forty minutes in the Raymond household, eventually emerging red-faced and apparently even angrier than when he went in. Williams waited until the detective had driven off before heaving himself out of his car and approaching the house and knocking respectfully on the door.
‘What now?’ the voice of a middle-aged woman, weary and resentful, came towards him. ‘We already told you all we know. Why don’t y’all leave us al— oh!’
A small, attractive black woman in her mid-forties opened the door and did a double take at Williams. Clearly, she’d assumed it was Detective Johnson coming back for more. But her surprise soon gave way to hostility. With narrowed eyes, she asked Williams, ‘You another one? You know your friend just left here. Y’all should be out there catching my son’s killer instead of wasting yo’ morning harassing two innocent women.’
‘I’m not a cop,’ Williams assured her, extracting a slightly grubby business card from his pocket and handing it over. ‘I’m a private investigator. And I am trying to catch Trey’s killer, Mrs Raymond. That’s exactly what I’ve been hired to do. May I come in?’
Ten minutes later, Williams was sitting on the couch in an immaculately clean living room, sipping coffee from a rose-patterned china cup. Opposite him, in matching armchairs, were Treyvon Raymond’s mother and grandmother, both as polite and welcoming as could be.
‘So you’re working for Dr Roberts?’ Trey’s mother asked. ‘I think she’s a good woman. She ain’t as warm or easy to talk to as her husband was. The other Dr Roberts. I mean, that man was a saint on earth.’
‘A saint,’ the older woman echoed, nodding.
‘But, you know, she gave our Trey a job, and she was real kind to him, even after Dr Douglas passed away. So we’ll always be grateful to her. And she hired you?’
Williams nodded. ‘She felt the police weren’t doing enough to catch Trey’s killer. And she herself has been threatened.’
The two women looked at one another, concerned. ‘I did not know that,’ Trey’s mother said. ‘That’s too bad.’
‘And then there was the other young woman who was killed, Lisa Flannagan …’
Trey’s mother pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. ‘Trey was very fond of her, I think. She was one of Doc Roberts’ patients, wasn’t she? Poor girl. The trash they’ve been writing about her in the papers, about her boyfriend and all that. I mean, the poor girl lost her life! It’s not right.’
‘No, ma’am, it’s not,’ Williams agreed. ‘I wonder, would you mind telling me what Detective Johnson was asking you about before? I’m curious as to what lines of inquiry they’re pursuing.’
Trey’s grandmother rolled her eyes. ‘“Lines of inquiry?” He wasn’t inquiring ’bout nothin’. He jus’ came in here to accuse Trey of dealin’ drugs.’
‘Which is a flat-out lie,’ Trey’s mother added, indignation blazing in her eyes. ‘My son had been clean nearly two years when he died. Thanks to Doc Roberts.’
‘I know that, ma’am,’ Williams said reassuringly. ‘So Johnson was asking about drugs?’
She nodded. ‘Who Trey’s dealers were, who his friends were, what “gang connections” did he have. I mean, my God! My son was a good boy, Mr Williams. So we told the detective that, and he got madder and madder, and then he started asking about Dr Roberts, and what exactly Trey’s job was with her.’
‘He felt Trey’s job might be important to the case?’
‘I don’t know what he felt. I think mostly he wanted to yell and cuss. He said some terrible things about Dr Roberts and poor Dr Douglas. Said it was the likes of them that kept this neighborhood full of drugs and crime, that made it impossible for the police to help us. Like they want to help us! He basically implied that Dr Roberts never really cared about Trey, that she might even have had something to do with the people who took him …’ She welled up with tears again, too choked with emotion to go on.