Twenty minutes after rushing out the front door, with an order to Aunt Mari not to take her nightly Lunesta pill yet, I’m standing in the front entrance of a mansion in Myers Park.
Trying not to vomit, as I look down at the completely naked man laid out in front of me.
“Is he dead? I think he’s dead,” Cami says beside me.
I respectfully have to disagree. Unlike Cami, I don’t think her father’s dead, I know he is.
There’s a kitchen knife with a worn wooden handle lodged where his heart would be. Perfect strike. And exactly zero signs of life. He lies completely still, and his skin has taken on a blue corpse pallor. There’s no doubt in my mind that his living spirit has left the building, even before I bend down to take his pulse.
And yep, he’s dead all right. Dead as a completely naked doornail.
“Please, tell me he’s not dead,” Cami pleads above me.
I gather my composure. Both of us completely losing it will only make the situation that much worse. “What happened?” I ask Cami, standing back up.
Her face crumples and her lips tremble. “I wasn’t trying to kill him. I just wanted him to stop him from hurting her.”
“But why were you even here?” I ask, cupping her shoulder. “After we agreed you’d stay clear?”
Cami looks away, lets out a huff of air.
“Cami, what aren’t you telling me?” I ask, alarm bells going off inside my head.
“I hacked his computer, okay?” she answers defiantly. “I’ve been watching him that way all summer. And he wasn’t doing anything suspicious. But when I went to check his feed after I got off my shift, I saw he’d accessed this forum on the dark web. He’d basically spent the whole day watching all these gross videos of father’s taking baths with their daughters, and I knew what he had planned, because that’s what he used to do to me. Bring me presents and show me videos of stuff he wanted to do during our special time.”
She lets out a shuddering breath. “I know I was supposed to wait, but I had such a bad feeling. So I came over here, used the key he keeps underneath the plant to let myself in and I went upstairs to hide in one of the guest rooms. I was just planning to…I don’t know, watch the hallway from, like, a crack in the door. But after hiding, I heard the sound of running water, and then he came out of the upstairs bathroom, dressed in nothing but a towel. I watched him…I watched him start walking toward Talia’s door. He had, like, this gross hard on because he was so excited.”
Cami visibly swallows and more tears pool in her eyes as she tells me, “He used to do that to me, too. Come visit me, when I was too sleepy to fight him off. So I pulled the knife and chased him down the stairs and cornered him at the door. I told him I was going to call the police. And you know what he said?”
Cami shakes her head, more tears streaming. “’Go right ahead. Nobody’s going to believe you. My social worker friend gave me the all clear, so everybody knows you’re a liar.’ That’s what he said. But I’m not a liar. I’m not, and I couldn’t let him hurt Talia again—oh my God, is he dead? Like, really dead?”
Yes, he’s dead. So, so dead. I should tell Cami that, then call the police to take a report. I know all the exact protocols to follow in this situation. But…I can’t bring myself to reach for my work phone.
God, I believe her. But her father was right. There’s no way the police will. And unfortunately, the fact that she hacked into his computer makes it even worse. I don’t have a law degree, but I can easily put together an argument that Cami, the computer science major, planted whatever the police found on his laptop.
I think of the sister who told the social worker that her father had never touched her inappropriately. “Is there any way your sister will corroborate the sexual abuse?”
Cami shakes her head. “I don’t know. It took me years to get up the courage to say anything. Even after he stopped messing with me.”
Ayayay…my mind works for something, anything that could solve this s-wordy situation. Maybe Talia would support her sister’s story. But it wasn’t guaranteed. She might even feel like everything that happened was her own fault.
And even if she did testify on her sister’s behalf, there was still no telling if a court would believe a homeless black girl over the man, the other social worker had called an “upstanding pillar of the community” in her report. Especially after he went on record, claiming that Cami had a history of mental problems and had attempted to blackmail him for money. Both claims were unsubstantiated, but I could easily see a jury deciding that Cami was the villain in this story.
No…the best-case scenario for this situation was Cami spending months to maybe the rest of her life in jail instead of completing her senior year at UNCC, while her traumatized sister got cycled through the foster system.
I look at the body. Look at Camille…then call my Aunt Mari.
“Mija, where you at? I’m not going to be able to take care of the baby tomorrow if I don’t get a full night of beauty sleep.”
“Do you have Stone’s number? I need it.”
“Why don’t you have Stone’s number?” Aunt Mari asks. “He’s your boyfriend!”
“He’s not—” I start to argue, but then I stop myself and say, “I just don’t, Tia. Could you please give it to me? It’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency—oh wait, here he is. Just came in the door. Stone, mijo, Naima’s trying to get ahold of you. Says it’s some kind of emergency.”
A voice rumbles in the call’s background. Then Stone’s on the other end of the line, demanding, “Where are you? Tell me right fucking now.”
His imperious demand would have annoyed me just a few minutes ago. But now my heart floods with relief, hearing his voice. “I need your help,” I tell him. And I give the address without any argument.
It takes him even less time to get here than it did me.
I open the door and stand back with one arm wrapped around Cami’s shoulders. I expect him to come in hot like I did, throwing panicked questions before they all die in his throat.
But Stone’s eyes barely flicker when he steps inside the front entrance and sees the dead body lying on the floor.
He simply looks at it, looks at me, then asks, “You okay?”
“We’re fine,” I say, squeezing Cami’s shoulders. “But he isn’t.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Looks like a story.”
“Yes, it’s a story for real,” I answer, before giving him the short version of what happened.
His eyes light on Cami when I’m done. “So you decided to just go ahead and knife your old man?”
“Stone, don’t…” I plead. Cami is no kind of emotional state to handle him right now.
“I didn’t mean to,” Cami whispers, her voice broken and sad. “I just wanted to stop him from hurting my sister.”
“Nah, you need to own that shit,” Stone answers coldly. “He came after your little sis, and you did what needed doing. Respect.”
Both Cami and I blink at him, probably both shocked that he not only believed her story without any follow up questions, but also gave her kudos for killing a man.
“Um, Cami, maybe you should go upstairs and check on Talia,” I say. “Stone and I need to talk about how best to handle this.”
“No, don’t go back upstairs. This scene’s already a DNA nightmare.” He points to the grand staircase, leading to the second level of the house. “Sit right there. And don’t touch any fucking thing else while the grown-ups figure this shit out.”
Cami doesn’t have to be told twice. She retreats exactly as instructed, taking a seat on the bottom stair, with her hands carefully placed on her knees.
As soon as she’s safely out of earshot, I lower my voice to say, “Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Yeah, if you call the police with that thin story, Lil Miss UNCC is looking at ten-to life, no parole, for being a crazy brat. Even if she had her reasons.”
I would have put it, like, any other way. But I have to admit that Stone’s assessment of the situation is chillingly spot on.
“Is there anything you can do to help her?”
“I can do more than help her,” Stone assures me. “I know guys that can have all this cleaned up before midnight. As long as Cami doesn’t rat anybody out, she can be back in How to Be Too Edumucated 101 tomorrow, like none of this shit ever happened.”
“Oh thank God,” I say, laying a hand over my still rapidly beating heart. “But how about Talia?”
Stone shrugs. “We’ll have to leave her alone overnight. But I’ll send in a couple of guys to watch the house.”
“Wait, guys?” I ask. “You have guys down here? Like other criminals?”
Stone continues on like he didn’t hear any of my questions. “As long as you’re there when Talia gets put into the system because her dad’s nowhere to be found, we’re golden.”
I nod, his plan crystalizing in my head. “Yes, that could definitely work. I just have to figure out a foster situation. Talia’s and Cami’s grandparents are dead, and both their parents were only children. There’s no one else to take care of them. But I can figure something out.”
Stone tilts his head down. “Cami killed for her little sister, you don’t think she’d be willing to raise her?”
“On the contrary, I know she wants to do just that,” I answer. “And she’s old enough, but she’s currently living out of her car, which means she wouldn’t be eligible as far as the state’s concerned.”
Stone gives this last obstacle a few seconds of thought, before saying, “I got a place she can stay.”
My eyes widen, my whole heart going soft with gratitude. And I find myself smiling up at him as I say, “Oh, Stone…”
“What?” he asks, as if my smile irritates his skin way worse than my usual resentful glare.
“I’m just not used to so much save the day from you,” I answer. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you to be Cami’s superhero.”
“That’s cuz I don’t have it in me,” he answers bluntly. “I’m no hero, and I don’t fuck with capes. My help comes at a cost. Would’ve thought you’d assume that.”
All those warm feelings fade right out of my heart. Of course, it came at a price.
“How much?” I ask as bitter disappointment settles in my chest.
“More like who much,” he answers.
A warning zaps through me and I swallow my instinctive cry of alarm. “What do you mean,” I ask softly, my heart beating too hard and too fast.
Those cold, unemotional eyes skip over my face and lingers. But he does not speak. Instead, he pulls out the velvet ring box I left on the table this morning.