WE STEP inside the house: squeaky hardwood floor; mismatched, torn furniture.
An African American woman, early twenties—the mother, Janiece Moreland—tears streaming down her face, cradling her young daughter in her arms, as if she were a newborn, not a four-year-old girl. The little girl—LaTisha, I’m told—head in her mother’s lap, pigtailed and chubby-cheeked, dressed in a red T-shirt with what appears to be a large squirrel on the front. Her eyes are closed peacefully. Her lips are pursed as if she were blowing a kiss. She would look like nothing more than a cute little girl sleeping in her mother’s lap if not for the dark, mushy wound above her pigtail where the bullet hit. The white wall behind them is spattered with blood and small fragments of little LaTisha’s brain.
I open my mouth, but words don’t come out.
“Ms. Moreland,” says Carla, “I’m Detective Griffin, and this is—”
A garbled cry from the mother, fresh tears. “You’re not taking my baby. Ain’t nobody taking my baby!” She lowers her cheek against her dead daughter’s, that cherubic face.
I feel it across my chest first, radiating heat, then a thud thud pounding between my ears, sweat bursting from every pore, the images everywhere—
The memories from four years ago:
The hospital smells of iodine and bleach. The gentle beeps and whooshes and gurgles from the machines keeping her alive.
Her tiny hand engulfed in mine. My mumbling whispers: C’mon, you can do it, wake up, honey, please wake up.
Knowing she’d never wake up.
Praying to God to bring her back. Begging and pleading and bartering with Him. Take me instead of her. Berating and threatening and shouting at Him. How could you let my three-year-old daughter die?
An elbow pokes my arm. My daughter’s face dissolves into the past. I turn to Mary Bryant as if jarred awake from a dream, her eyebrows creased in concern, a curt nod of the head, as in Get a grip or You okay?
I snap out of it, nod, draw a breath. I traveled there and back, but my feet are still planted where they were, next to Carla, who is squatting down, speaking with the mother in hushed tones, the woman struggling to answer amid heaving gasps.
I wipe my arm across my greasy forehead, useless and shaky, a spectator in my own investigation. I’m joining the conversation late, but I get the gist of the mother’s story, most of which we already knew—she was at work, left LaTisha here with Shiv, her boyfriend. Got the call to come home and hasn’t let go of her daughter since.
I follow Carla and Mary outside, feeling better with fresh air, no matter how thick and humid. Hoping that my new partner didn’t notice me getting lost in there. She has a low enough opinion of me already.
“Poor woman,” says Bryant. “No one’s been able to find it in their heart to make her let go of that little kid.”
I see Detective Soscia and his new partner slip under the yellow tape, heading toward our scene. That’s good. I could use a friendly face on this one.
“So the only eyewitness is in surgery and might not survive,” I summarize.
Bryant nods. “Unless one of the neighbors saw something. Anyone taking bets?”
Her skepticism isn’t far off; there will be plenty of nope-didn’t-see-nuthin’ in our canvass. But there are a lot of people out here who don’t want to live among this violence and who will stick their necks out, even at risk to themselves. We just have to find them.
“Keep us posted on the canvass,” I say to Mary. “We’re gonna do some of our own.”
“Will do.” Mary walks carefully down the porch steps.
I look at Carla, blinking away tears in her eyes. At least I wasn’t the only one affected. “Both girls were collateral damage,” she says, clearing her throat, nodding at the young woman lying on the porch. “And the courier wasn’t the target. It had to be a hit on Shiv.”
“Looks that way, yeah. Why hit a lieutenant with the K-Street Hustlers?”
She shrugs, looks out over the street. “We can hope he owed someone money, or he was doinking someone else’s lady.”
That would make it easier, if this whole thing was personal. Maybe LaTisha’s mommy inside used to go with another guy who wasn’t too pleased when Shiv stole her away. That would be easy.
But Carla doesn’t think that. Neither do I.
No, this doesn’t seem personal. This feels like business.
I tap her on the arm. “You didn’t say ‘turf war.’ I didn’t say ‘turf war.’”
Because if the gangs are fighting over territory, this would be only the first shot in a long, bloody fight.