Seeing Red - Chapter 21: Chapter 21

"There had better be a great freaking reason for getting us to come here this late at night," Nikko bit, hands across his broad chest as he leaned against one of the desks in the main journalists hall of Urban Life & Times.
Lola, who was chewing gum and on her phone, hadn't even looked up. I had to text her half a dozen times before she even responded to the texts to get here as fast as possible.
But Pete. Pete knew something was off when I walked in ahead of Erika, who snailed her way behind me, never coming up to stand on my right side as she usually did. Proud and Strong. She said not a single word, uttered no phrases, her heels did all the talking that was necessary. Hitting the ground with small clacks, not even enough to cause earthquakes for the insects on the ground.
"What's wrong?" Pete asked. His voice snaked around my leg, slithered up my back and wrapped itself around my throat. How could I start? Where do I start?
Stepping a bit closer, out of the darkness of the office and into the white light that streamed in through an open window. His hair was still deshelled from sleep, but his eyes were alive and awake, his skin holding as bright a color as I could make out. His footsteps got Lola to look up at me and Nikko – still shrouded in the dark – to kick himself from the desk. "What happened?"
"Can we talk in Erika's office?" I asked, as soft as a whisper, but it might have as well had been as loud as a jet soaring overhead. "We have a problem."
I looked back at Erika, bathed in the darkness, only her silhouette pointing to any life hidden in the black of the room.
Lola's phone had slipped from her hands and onto my old desk. She blinked from me to Erika, back again before they decided firmly to settle on her sister. "What is this about?" she asked, stepping up next to Pete into the white of the light, but only half-so. Her body was cut right down the middle, half lit by the moon, and the white light that came with it, and half out of view with the darkness and the black of the office. "What happened with Anna Elise?"
I did not turn around to see what Erika's face was doing this time. If she was smiling? Was she silently crying? Was there remorse? Was any of this even at all? An elaborate joke?
"Can someone start speaking?" Nikko grumbled, staying firmly in the darkness. "What's going on?"
I said nothing more. I had swallowed needles. I cleared my throat of them, and walked passed the three, making a straight line for Erika's office, the door cracked open, the lights also off.
I didn't turn them on, but whoever came in after me did and all of us were lit ablaze in the whiteness.
"Why do I get the feeling that we're all going to prison?" Pete asked. His skin was shock white, and I wasn't sure if it was my disease making him so, or if his skin was actually paling.
I leaned against Erika's desk, my coffee from earlier still sat there as Nikko closed the door behind him.
Lola snapped at him. "Erika isn't here yet."
"She isn't coming," I finally spoke. "I asked her to wait out in the front before we came inside while the four of us has a chance to talk."
"Talk about what?" Lola asked, hands on her hips. "Look, if this is about that Anna bitch, whatever Erika did is fine by me."
"She killed her."
Lola's hands slipped from her waist as if they were holding weights. Her left eye twitched. "I'm sorry?"
"Yeah," Nikko said, snorting out a laugh, "I could have sworn it sounded like you said Erika killed Anna."
My jaw clenched, and my eyes slipped to the cold coffee before returning them to my friends, my colleagues, these strangers.
Pete ran his hands through his hair, Lola's eyes were wide and she barely looked like she was breathing. Niko. Well, Nikolas laughed.
He sat down in one of the chairs by the door. "Look, if this is some birthday prank-"
"- I watched as Erika pushed Anna from the platform of the train station onto the tracks and she was hit by a train," I said, almost not believing the words that escaped my mouth. But believed them I must. It was color I had a problem with, not vision. And the eyes never lie. "Erika killed a woman in cold blood after she let Erika know that she was aware that she had killed people before."
"What?" Pete spat. His head snapped over to Lola. "Erika is a murderer?"
"That's not possible," Lola responded, but nothing in her voice – the weariness, the softness – rang as true. Not to my ears. Not to Pete's, who had begun pacing. "Erika is not a killer."
"I watched her," I replied, softly, calmly. No other possible emotion had registered. Nothing else was coming. Shock, yes, but no rage, no fear. Nothing as yet. I felt something bubbling under the surface – like a hot spring – , but I hadn't made what that was just yet.
Nikko, however, had no problem expressing his utter contempt. "So," he laughed, "Erika is a killer. And we work for that killer. Fucking fantastic. Superb. Wonderfully deliiightful."
"None of this makes sense," Lola quickly added. "If Anna knew that Erika was a killer, why on earth would she meet with her?" she asked, trying to make sense of what seemed like foolishness. "She may have been a lot of things, but she was never stupid."
"Victim blaming is never the answer," Pete said. And from his voice, I could tell he had already accepted the fact that Erika was a murderer.
"Maybe Anna was too arrogant," Nikko said. He crossed his legs. "White people don't understand the concept of life and death. That's why they be jumping out of planes for fun and splitting up during horror movies."
"Or..." Pete whispered, and we all eyed him. He had moved to the window and was staring out. "Anna knew Erika would bring Ashley." He stopped for a moment to clean a speck of something off the glass, but ended up smudging the window in the process. "She thought that if Ash was there, Erika wouldn't dare kill her." I looked down at the gray of Erika's carpet and sighed. "Anna assumes...or well, assumed...that Erika wouldn't expose herself for what she is to the person who has almost unshakable faith in her." Pete turned around and faced me. "After all, who is Palpatine without Vader?"
"So you're the Morty to Erika's Rick," Nikko snorted. "Harriet Tubman this bitch is not."
"This isn't the time for jokes," Lola hissed at them both. She took out her phone. "I'm checking for updates on the news to see if anyone was hit by a train."
"Do you need anything?" Pete asked, creeping over and resting a hand on my shoulder. Like Erika usually did. I shrugged it off.
"What I need is for the past few years of my life to start to make sense," I answered. "We have all been sitting at these desks, working for her. What lies have we been spouting? What was actual activism and what was cover-up?"
"One bad apple won't spoil the bunch if it's taken out early," Pete said. "That's what my mom always said."
"Your Mom is displaying the earliest signs of dementia, Pete," Nikko retorted. "So maybe don't take what she says seriously."
"Because mental illness is always funny," Pete bit back, but stayed his eyes on me. "If we report Erika we can end this, and make all the good we did count."
"Yeah we can," Nikko returned, walking over, leaving Lola the only one at the back. "But is Ashley ready to break the most sacred of the black laws?"
Pete furrowed his brows. "Sacred law? What is being black a cult?" His grey eyes flashed between us. "What law?"
Nikko was right. Was I really ready to do this? There was no going back. We'd be pariahs in our own community. All because we broke the most scared, unspoken rule of being black "Don't snitch."
Pete sputtered. "She killed someone!"
"It doesn't matter," Lola answered, placing her phone in a chair. "Besides, we have bigger moral problems."
"What bigger moral problems could there possibly be for not reporting a serial killer?" Nikko asked.
"Ashley was there," she said. "She blooded him. He's an accessory to murder. WE turn Erika over, Ashley goes down with her."
"He's the redbone golden chain to go with Erika's tight bejeweled dress of crazy – shit," Nikko tugged on his braids. "Damn Ash, Erika handed you a cup that you thought was gin and juice, but all this time you were sipping on some koolaid."
"Not if he reports it," Pete offered, throwing Nikko a hard gaze. "If he was an unwitting participant, or a viewer, he can report it."
Then it hit me. And it hit me hard. "No." They all went silent. "I won't be spared."
"Why not?" Pete asked.
"None of us will," I added. "Erika came to my house the night she killed Jasmine. She implicated Kenzie and I for harboring a criminal that night. She got Lola to get her out –implicating her, and she told us in the strictest confidence that she didn't mean to kill her. But we all sat on that murder and let it be ruled a suicide. If this ends up in a court and Erika, without reason to lie, tells the truth, we're all going to prison."
Pete's face went from a soft gray, to a white again. His eyes trembled like there was an earthquake happening in them. "I turned down a full-ride to Berkley for this?"
"Bet you regret getting mixed up with black folk now, don't you Pete?" Nikko chided. "So, obviously we can't report Erika."
"Why not?" I asked. They all went silent again.
"Because none of us want to go to prison, Ashley," Lola answered. She picked her phone back and started scrolling. "Some news stations have it," Lola said. "But the major ones haven't as yet." Her eyes settled on something for a moment. "A cop shot a black kid."
"We have bigger things right now Lola," Nikko grumbled. "Let some other urban news site handled that, preferably one not run by a crazed murderer."
"We all do deserve to go to prison," I said. "We all looked the other way when she murdered Jasmine. We can't look the other way now that she has killed Anna. We've spent years fighting police shootings while they tried to sweep it under the rug. We have asked for transparency, and for the justice system to be just that – just. We cannot have our cake and eat it too."
"Are you actually suggesting going to jail, Ash?" Pete asked.
"I'm suggesting we do not be watered down versions of Erika," I said. "I'm fighting the thoughts in my head because I don't know which have been planted there by her and which are my own moral compass fighting to the surface." I shook my head. "I don't know what is right and what is wrong anymore."
"I'm not going to prison," Lola snorted. "Not for anybody."
"Then maybe we should stop acting as if we're holier than thou," I muttered. "Stop acting as if we're so much more morally uncorrupted than the white people that hate us so much –if they even do."
Nikko scratched his beard. "So what? Now we're them – doing the killing. And they are us? Getting killed by us."
"How do we know if Anna was bluffing and Erika just defended herself?" Lola asked. "Anna could be lying. She could have been bluffing."
Niko snorted. "So, we have to decide if the white woman that was killed by the black woman deserved it or not? Like a police shooting a black kid? We're white people now, aren't we?"
"The irony isn't lost on me, Nikolas," I sighed. "We need to decide what we're doing."
Pete ran his hands through his hair again and again, and again and again. "Well, jail can't be that bad."
Reece
You've reached Ashley King – that guy with the tall curly hair? That plays basketball about as good as a fish plays golf? Yeah, that one. Leave a message.
"Damn it, Ashley," I mumbled, sighing and huffing and trying to remember to breathe.
I stuck my head to the sky, letting the phone slip back into my pocket. Red and blue flashed above, setting it on fire, before, for just a brief half second, they allowed it to sink back into the black it was.
Dennis was dead.
He had been lying here on this cold, hard floor, his mouth half open, his eyes fluttered to a close. His skin had paled. It was as if the yellow in his skin streamed out of the bullet hole, along with pools of blood and left only a colorless man lifeless on the ground.
Kenzie was hovering over him for what felt like an eternity. In actuality, it had been about an hour.
The silence of waiting for the other police to come had disrupted the quietness that blanketed us after we realized he was gone, gone. Now, there were police sirens, there were news crews; yellow tape had been spun around the area and the chanting –the had engulfed the area. The quietness had dissolved and soon, the storm was going to settle here.
The African-American community swarmed, almost as quickly as the police and the medical staff did and started their chanting, as if they had been alerted telepathically that one of theirs was gone. Fire ants out to sting those that dared disrupt the nest.
Kenzie – God, Kenzie – was sitting next to Dennis's white body with his head aimed at the sky and the gun from inside his car seated next to him on the ground.
The cops had tried to make him move, to get the gun, but Kenzie threatened them that if they came closer, he'd start a riot. He sure had the strength of the numbers to do so.
They allowed him to sit there as they got my statement of events and the cop's statement of events.
I couldn't help but feel for the cop. I mean, he was just trying to do his job, wasn't he? If Kenzie hadn't antagonized him in the first place, none of this would have happened. Dennis would be alive, we'd just gotten a ticket that I could have easily paid for. And we could have been on our way.
I wasn't trying to take away from the unjust killings of some black men and women by cops, but this situation was avoidable. The cop pulled the trigger, but Kenzie might have done it himself.
The protestors didn't know that though. So, they raged on, with their picket signs and their well-in tune and in synch chanting.
'black lives matter!'
'hands up, don't shoot!'
'no justice!'
But they didn't know the full story, and I don't think that mattered to them. All they knew was that another white cop killed another black man, and that was enough for them to demand his head. But what was the right thing to do?
"Mr. Red!"
My head snapped left. It was one of my journalists from RED with a news crew beyond the yellow tape where the other news crews had set up shop. I paced over, hands in my pockets.
I leaned in so I had even the chance to hear what she was saying. "Your mother has sent me here with a news crew to film." She looked around. "I wasn't aware that you were already on location."
I took my hands out of my pockets, yanking my phone with one of them. "I was with the deceased when he died," I said. "Set up. What's your story?"
"She wants it to focus on what the black man did to warrant him being shot," she said. "To...raise doubt that it was racially motivated."
"It was racially motivated," I blurted. "Both of them were shot. I wasn't."
She blinked. "Should we disclose that you were on the scene, sir?" she asked. "Would you like to speak on camera?"
"No," I answered. "Just do your job as an impartial journalist. This isn't the time for some right-leaning bullshit."
She nodded slower than I'd ever seen someone nod. "But sir, your moth-"
"-my mother is not the CEO of this company, I am," I bit. "I say what goes. And I gave you a direct order."
She then nodded quicker than I'd ever seen anyone nod.
A tap on my shoulder pulled my away from her. Another cop. "We need to get the body to a hospital," he said.
"He's already dead," I mumbled. "Your friend over there killed him."
He didn't respond to that. Not emotionally. "We understand that, but the morgue in the hospital needs to see him so we can contact family." He looked back to where Kenzie was, seated next to Dennis on the ground with police cars positioned not far from them. "We need you to talk to your friend and get him to move."
"He won't listen to me," I said. "The one person who he'll listen to is not answering his phone."
"Look," the cop exhaled, "we don't want to use any tear gas or anything...so we need him disarmed and removed or we might not have a choice."
Fuck. "Okay...I'll try."
I turned and slowly started to walk over. Funeral procession walking.
What on earth was I going to say to Kenzie? I had no idea how it felt to lose a best friend. I had no idea what it was like to see someone gun down in front of you, not until just now.
His eyes were closed and his lips were moving quickly. I assumed he was spitting every profane word he could find under his breath, anything to get out his aggression, to calm him down and not get shot again. There were a lot more guns out here now and a damaged vest would not save him.
But as I got closer to him, rocking slightly on the ground, braids hiding his eyes. I heard what he was saying.
"Our father, who art in heaven. Hollowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, they will be done. On earth, as it is in heaven...."
"Kenzie?"
"What, gringo?"
I took a moment to kneel down next to him. "They need you to move. We have to get Dennis somewhere so his family can identify his body. There are mothers, including yours, probably watching this on the news scared to death that it was there son that was shot and killed. We need to put their minds at ease, while breaking the news to a mother that her child is gone."
"Nah, b," Kenzie answered, shrugging, still rocking, in and out those lines he was repeating, "I think I'm going to wait until they gun me down next."
"You don't want to die, Kenzie," I said. "And Dennis wouldn't enjoy this standoff."
He laughed. "Because you know him so well." He looked up through his braids. His eyes were flaming red. "A few hours ago you were at each other's throats. Don't you fucking dare sit here, trying to tell me about loss and about my nigga when you ain't even like him. You was too busy tryna brand my brother like he your new slave."
"Leave Ashley out of thi-"
A gun was in my face.
Kenzie was biting his bottom lip so hard I saw trickles of blood dropping. But my eyes pulled away from that to stare at the gun barrel in my face, staring back at me. "Say one more word, about anything involving someone that I know better than you white boy, and I am putting a bullet between your eyes."
Ashley
"We're turning you in, Erika," I said. We had all gathered back in the newsroom. She was sitting at a desk, with one of her legs crossed. The lights were n now and I saw Erika in plain view for the first time in hours.
"You can't," she simply said. "If you turn me in, you have to turn yourselves in."
"We know that," I replied. "We've come to the conclusion that duty before self is our new motto."
Erika snorted. "How noble." She clapped three times. "You know Ashley, I see myself in you. I always have. Which is no mistake. I have groomed you since you came to me – broken – after your father had been arrested and after Dee had broken your heart. Men were the enemy. But a father figure you needed, as all young black men do. And I stepped into that role." She sat herself up in the chair. "I suppose it makes sense. A woman can't be as manipulative as a man. She won't cheat on you. She won't lie to you. She'll protect you. I showered you with good sense, fed you, clothed you, held you when you cried. I became your father. Of course that was after I poisoned your thoughts on your real father. Telling you he left you, he was selfish for it, and you'd be a better man in spite of him. I became as close to your earthly god as anyone could possibly become. Why? You ask?" she queried, although none of us had spoken. "You see, Lola is a good soldier, but she isn't as half as smart as she thinks she is. Nikko is all brawn and little of anything else and Pete is in the late stages of a particularly potent case of white guilt. But you Ashley?" she sighed, wistfully, "you were perfect. Smarter than anyone on my executive team. Braver. Not too light skin so that blacks could still identify with you and but enough so the white liberals that support us wouldn't be wary of you. You were perfect – you are perfect and tonight was a test. To see if all my teachings had sunken in enough that I could finally explain to you a few things that I had strategically omitted." He smile fell. "You failed."
"And what things are those?" I questioned.
She swiveled in the chair. "My father was killed by police," she looked passed me at presumably Lola, "I have repeated that to Lola since she had become old enough to think and repeated it year after year so nothing else would seem like the truth. And it was the truth. He was killed by police. Except, he was always guilty to begin with."
"So, Dad didn't die unjustly?" Lola asked.
"He did," Erika replied. "He pickpocketed a man and when the officer confronted him, he ran. When the cop fired a shot, Dad fired back at him. So, yes, Dad was killed by a cop. He just wasn't as clear cut innocent as I had previously lead you to believe."
"So, you lied?" Pete breathed.
Erika shrugged. "I have come to accept a more flexible definition of truths and lies."
"So, you're using this movement as a basis for your revenge?" I barked at her. "Do you know how damaging this all could be?"
"I am fully aware of the collateral damage, Ashley," she said. "And can you imagine the damage this would do to the blacklivesmatter movement?" she asked. "If this ever got out? The white media would pounce like a pack of hyenas on this. Funding would be pulled, celebrities drop out, rallies cancelled. You would all be responsible for scorching the earth and poisoning the fields."
"If you think you are going to manipulate your way out of this, you're wrong," I told her, sternly. "There is no way out."
"That is where you're wrong Ashley," she said. "There is always a way out. And stop this holier than thou crap. If you believed in the movement you would have been on the scene where a black young man had been shot right now, not here trying to make yourselves feel good by putting me, and yourselves into prison." She actually had the gall to laugh. "So I killed a few people, so what? They weren't innocent. Think of me as Batman, a vigilante."
"Batman doesn't kill," I said. "You're no Batman."
She smirked. "Perhaps." She stood. "But what I am is a ticking time bomb. Nuclear. I will not just detonate and destroy everyone in my surrounding area, I will devastate this whole country. I am willing to take down this entire movement if you decide to turn me in. Then those people who are chanting blacklivesmatter right now will look stupid and the people who chant alllivesmatter will have something to rejoice. Because they want to demonize us so badly, they want to find just one kink in the armor to harp on, to de-legitimize us. And RED News is in going to be leading the charge." She took several steps back. "I've won. I will see all of you bright and early tomorrow morning to organize a protest against the killing of the unnamed black man yada yada yada."
Erika turned on her heels and went from the door. "Oh," she said, still walking. "And since we're telling truths," she looked back hands on the door frame, "Lola, you're adopted."
And with that she left.
"She's fucking crazy," Nikko admitted.
"Amy Dunn in the flesh," Pete added. "She's almost genius."
"Everyone out." I looked back at them. "Wait outside."
Lola stepped forward. "Why?"
"Wait. Outside."
Nikko threw his hands up. "Fine." He was the first to walk out, followed by Lola.
Pete lingered for a moment. "I don't like that look in your eyes, Ash," he wearily admitted. "It looks like that of a man with nothing left to lose. And you have so much more than you can lose."
"You guys called me Darth Vader and Erika, Palpatine?" I asked, brushing passed his assertions.
"We did," he answered, swallowing.
"But riddle me this: Who killed whom?"
Pete slowly nodded. "Darth Vader died as well, you know."
"I didn't say I accepted the metaphor wholly," I replied. "Wait outside, Pete." A moment passed. "And call 911, tell them that a fire is raging at U-and-LT."
Pete's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Because I'm about to burn this motherfucker to the ground."