What You Don't Know, page 17
Cookie was still looking down.
In one quick swoop, Blair grabbed the scissors and hid them behind her, quickly tucking them in the waistband of her workout pants. She adjusted the hem of her top to conceal them, before reaching back into the kit to retrieve the instant ice pack.
Cookie looked up briefly and flashed a bored look in their direction before letting her eyes drop once more to the infinitely more interesting show being put on by her cuticles.
This was good. The spandex would keep them snug against her back. No chance of them falling from a baggy waistband and clattering to the floor or poking a hole through pants pockets.
She’d just have to find the right time to use them.
Blair doused a cotton ball with peroxide and dabbed at Farrah’s split lip. Her daughter winced and took a few deep, shuddering breaths.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” Blair whispered as she continued to dot Farrah’s mouth and lips with peroxide.
“It’s okay, Mom.”
Cookie banged the back of her foot against the cabinets below, her eyes back on mother and daughter. She whistled softly between her teeth before lapsing into humming. Blair snuck a look at her. What she wouldn’t give right now, right this instant, to jam those scissors anywhere into that girl’s body.
“Yo, you almost done?” Cookie asked.
Blair turned on the faucet and ran a washcloth under the warm water. “Almost.”
Cookie fell silent again and Blair gently wiped away the blood trailing from Farrah’s nose and coating her cheeks. She finally turned her attention to the blood on Farrah’s thigh, the long rip in the skin bubbling white when Blair dabbed it with peroxide.
“You got any more kids?” Cookie asked.
“No.”
“Just Ol’ Girl, huh?” Cookie resumed kicking the cabinet with the back of her shoe.
“Would you stop that?” Blair snapped.
“Bitch, I’ll do whatever the hell I want to.” However, she complied and looked at Farrah. “You remind me of my sister.”
Farrah didn’t respond, letting an equally silent Blair continue tending to her wounds.
“My sister try to act like she better than everybody, talking all proper.”
“You shouldn’t be mad because your sister wants to better herself,” Blair murmured.
“You don’t know nothing about her, so shut your damn mouth!” Cookie yelled before falling quiet again, her gaze drifting back to Farrah. “Anyway. All I know is, I ain’t never going to be like my moms or my sister. I’m going to have a whole different life from them.”
Blair looked away, uncomfortable, not really wanting to know anything about this troubled girl’s home life. Not caring. She probably should have compassion for these monsters. They didn’t come from the factory this way. She’d grown up with kids like these, poor kids scratching for every scrap of anything. She’d been that kid. The spawn of mothers, too addicted, too self-absorbed, too tired from working three jobs to care. Fathers either passed out drunk, high, or never around to begin with. Even if Blair was so inclined to empathize, because she knew, she knew—just like Cookie, she could have very easily been Bonnie to someone else’s Clyde—it was out of her hands. Cookie was not her problem to fix.
She knew all about trying to fix problems.
That was how she thought of her mother. A problem to fix. Maybe if she could fix Bibi, wipe away all her troubles, she’d be happy. She’d act like a mother. The kind of mother she’d tried to be to Farrah. The way Bibi would hound her for money back when she first got into Captivate. All hours of the day and night. Incessant phone calls, telegrams. Every time, Blair told herself this time would be the time. Her mother would be grateful.
The gratitude never came though. It only got worse after she and Malcolm got married. Charge accounts at stores, credit cards. A car and driver at her disposal. A penthouse apartment in Manhattan. If Blair was an ATM, Malcolm was the Fed.
And still, Blair waited for the gratitude.
Then the lung cancer diagnosis came. Blair insisted on moving her into the house, Bridget following not long after. Yes, Bibi was awful. Yes, leaving the woman to fend for herself against a savage illness was her first instinct. In spite of how revolting Bibi was, she was her mother. That’s all Blair could say. She was her mother.
All of them in the house together. The longest two years of Blair’s life. She lost count of how many times Malcolm walked out. She couldn’t blame him. Hell, she wanted to beg him to take her with him. How their marriage didn’t implode beneath the weight of her affair, her family, Farrah, could only be described as a miracle. He didn’t realize when he took the vow of “for worse,” Blair would endlessly put it to the test.
“I’ll get you something to help you sleep,” Blair said to Farrah, as she snapped back to her current nightmare. She applied two fat Band-Aids to Farrah’s thigh before she repacked the first aid kit and put it back into the medicine cabinet. She crossed over toward the door to Malcolm’s bathroom, causing Cookie to jump up, her hands reaching for her weapon in her waistband.
“Bitch, I will put a damn hole in your face—”
Blair stopped and held her hands up. “I’m—I just want to get a sleeping pill for my daughter, out of my husband’s medicine cabinet in his bathroom.”
Their eyes remained locked until Cookie lowered the gun a few inches, her face still in awe.
“All right,” she said. “But don’t try nothing.”
Blair edged toward the door and headed straight for the medicine cabinet, searching for the big bottle of sleeping pills, plucking it out and opening it. She dumped a pill into her hand then bit it in half, depositing the leftover chunk back into the bottle.
“That’s nasty.” Cookie grimaced from the doorway. “What you do that for?”
“She doesn’t need more than a half.”
“No, I mean, why did you put that back into the bottle after you had your mouth all over it?”
“I do it for my husband all the time. It’s fine.” Blair handed the jagged half pill to Farrah, who bent over the sink, wincing, as she took a gulp of water from the faucet.
“Come on.” Cookie grabbed Blair’s arm. “Tree’s turn.”
“Let go of me.” Blair wrenched out of Cookie’s grasp. “I’m going to put my daughter to bed and I’m going to stay with her until she falls asleep.”
“You supposed to take care of T—”
“I will take care of my daughter first.” Blair paused. “And then, I’m going to take care of Tree.”
The Suspects
Isabelle Ryan: Terrell Winters emigrated to the United States from Jamaica when he was three years old with his seventeen-year-old mother, Marilyn. For a few months, the two lived with relatives in Kansas City before eventually settling on the South Side of Chicago. It’s fair to say he had a horrific childhood.
* * *
Skye Stafford: Terrell’s biological father died when he was about six months old. His mother came to America for a fresh start and she hoped—better opportunities for her and her son.
* * *
Elena York: Terrell’s mother remarried and had six more children. His stepfather regularly beat her, beat the children and, by all accounts, Terrell received the brunt of his rage. His mother tried to be a buffer, but she was terrified and so dependent on her husband, she wasn’t able to do anything to protect Terrell or any of the children from his wrath.
* * *
Isabelle Ryan: Beatings with electrical cords, kicked, punched, a broken leg, broken wrist, burns … these were all a part of Terrell’s daily existence.
* * *
Skye Stafford: Terrell dropped out of school when he was fourteen and by the time he was sixteen, he’d been in and out of juvie multiple times: possession, intent, weapons charges, robberies. He hadn’t yet graduated to murder, but it was only a matter of time.
* * *
Elena York: When he was nineteen, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for a series of car-jackings, assault charges, and burglaries. So, this already hardened young man goes into jail with rapists and murderers. There was just no good path for him.
* * *
Yvonne Pilley, Terrell Winters’ Neighbor: Even with all the evil in that house, Terrell, for a long time, was a nice little boy. He could be charming, even. He would always say hello to me, ask me how I was doing. Had the biggest smile. And he would give me the most amazing pictures. He could draw anything—buildings, people, trees, birds, whatever. He loved to draw the skyline. I still have every picture he drew for me. I tried to let him come over and watch TV, give him a little something to eat, but his father, or I guess it was his stepfather, he put a stop to that. It was almost like he didn’t want anyone showing that boy any bit of kindness.
* * *
Isabelle Ryan: In between his criminal activities, Terrell stayed incredibly busy fathering children by multiple women. By the time he was twenty, he was the father of seven children by six women. By all accounts, Terrell was a deadbeat dad, spending little to no time with any of his kids.
* * *
Skye Stafford: Terrell met Courtney Miller, nicknamed Cookie, at an under-twenty-one club downtown. She was seventeen and he was twenty-eight. Again, nothing good could possibly come from this.
* * *
Elena York: Seventeen year-old Courtney Miller, nicknamed Cookie, was born into a middle class family in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Her mother, Margaret, was an elementary school teacher and her father, William, owned a very popular haberdashery in the neighborhood. Courtney was an honor student, she volunteered at the local community center. Very nice, very bright, very smart young lady.
* * *
Elva Haines, Courtney Miller’s Neighbor: Courtney was the sweetest, smartest little girl. Always with her nose in a book. Always. I would see her walking home from the library down the street four or five times a week with a stack of books in her hands.
* * *
Skye Stafford: Courtney’s parents did everything “right”—provided a stable, loving home, took Courtney and her sister on vacations every summer. She wasn’t spoiled with wealth by any means, but she had a very nice, very comfortable life.
* * *
Crystal Miller, Courtney Miller’s Sister: I honestly don’t know what happened to my sister. She was on the straight and narrow her whole life. Never gave my parents any trouble (Sighs). I guess Terrell happened.
* * *
Skye Stafford: The attraction was instant. Terrell represented the bad boy for Courtney, a way for her to break out of her good girl persona. And of course, her parents were horrified, which probably sweetened the deal all the more for Courtney.
* * *
Isabelle Ryan: It was like a switch flipped in Courtney. Gone was the sweet, smart, dutiful all-American, straight-A student who volunteered at the library on the weekends, played the piano, and taught tumbling to little girls at the community center. Literally, overnight, she starts lying to her parents, smoking pot, drinking, and staying out all night. Stealing money from them so she could shower Terrell with gifts, float him money whenever he asked for it, which was often. She let him borrow her car on numerous occasions, which he racked up a number of parking tickets on. Her parents took the car away, grounded her, forbade her from seeing him. They even tried to have Terrell arrested for statutory rape, but were unable to make the charges stick as they had no direct evidence. Cookie was fascinated by his dangerous lifestyle and in fact, saw them as some sort of power couple, an epic, us-against-the-world love affair. His being a bad boy, her parents’ vehement disapproval … all of this just heightened his appeal in her eyes.
* * *
Elena York: And then her parents’ worst nightmare comes to bear. Courtney becomes pregnant with Terrell’s eighth child. Her parents plan to send her out of state to Louisiana to live with her grandmother, and try again to have him arrested. Before they can, Courtney runs away and moves in with Terrell and three other guys, in, what was essentially a flophouse. One of the guys who doesn’t live there, but is around quite frequently is Lenard “Dio” McKinney.
* * *
Skye Stafford: Lenard McKinney was the oldest of three children, born and raised on the South Side. His mother, Rosemary, worked overnights in a nursing home, and a part-time job as a custodian, so very similar to Terrell he very rarely saw her. This left him to look after his brother and sister the best he could. This also left him free to run the streets and fall in with the wrong people.
* * *
Isabelle Ryan: Another issue that Dio had to grapple with was his father’s sexuality. His father was gay and though he’d only seen him a handful of times in his life, the last of which was when he was around fourteen, fifteen years old, this was an incredible source of embarrassment to him. Everyone in the neighborhood knew about his father. His entire family gossiped about it. It didn’t help that his mother was incredibly denigrating toward his father, blaming him for her lot in life and displaying general bitterness toward homosexuality, which rubbed off on Lenard.
* * *
As a result, he carried a huge chip on his shoulder about his own sexuality and was known to be incredibly taunting toward members of the LGBTQ community. It sickened him.
* * *
Elena York: Dio was not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Like Terrell, he’d been in and out of trouble most of his very short life, though his transgressions were limited to misdemeanors: shoplifting, trespassing, disorderly conduct, some marijuana charges. He also had a borderline IQ and was very susceptible to going along with the crowd as it were, making him the perfect pigeon for Terrell.
* * *
Yvonne Pilley: I didn’t know Lenard as well as Terrell. More like I knew of him. He seemed nice, though yes, there were rumors or comments that he was a little slow in the head. But like I said, from what I saw, always nice. Always looking after his brother and sister, walking them to school every morning and bringing them back in the afternoon. From what I seen (shrugs), he seemed like a nice boy.
8:25 p.m.
Malcolm watched Tree massage his hand as he lolled on the bed, mesmerized by whatever movie he was now watching. Even from across the room, he could see the knuckles rising like dough. Cookie lay sprawled next to him. Dio was rooted to the floor, curled into himself, staring at the TV, though Malcolm doubted he absorbed much of what was flashing on the screen.
His bladder wasn’t bothering him, but he wouldn’t have minded walking around to relieve the cramps invading his joints. A bucket of ice for his hand would have been welcome.
He wouldn’t have minded punching that punk Tree right in the mouth for what he’d done to Farrah. For all of this.
He wouldn’t have minded getting more than just that contact high of Kush.
Malcolm lit up a few mornings a week, depending on how many cobwebs were hanging over his brain from the night before. He’d felt fine today. He probably wouldn’t tomorrow.
It was funny. He’d been such a straight arrow his whole life when it came to drugs. No roids, no dust. Creams, pills. Sure, he liked his drinks, but he wasn’t trying to have his whole career go up his nose in a cloud of powder.
Then the headaches started about five years ago. Like a sledgehammer to his temples. Couldn’t get out of bed some days, it was so bad. His lifelong mental sharpness began to fade. He became forgetful. He’d always been a talker, but there were times he couldn’t put any kind of brake on his brain. He’d chalked it up to getting older, the natural order of things.
The mood swings had done it, though. Blair’s were bad enough. There couldn’t be two of them in that house undulating back and forth like pendulums. They’d kill each other.
Malcolm didn’t want to admit what he knew was likely the cause. The dirty “C” word.
And indeed concussion was the diagnosis.
He was lucky. Unlike so many of his former teammates and rivals, he could afford the doctors and neurological treatments he needed to keep him functioning. They recommended crosswords and jigsaw puzzles to keep his brain busy. His brother, Mitch, told him to get on the blunt. After all, it was medicinal, and he could afford the best of the best. He’d resisted for a long time. The Admiral wouldn’t go for his prized QB dipping into the herb and even after all these years and everything he’d accomplished, there was still that part of him that couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing his father.
Malcolm crossed and uncrossed his legs before splaying them out in front of him. He moaned at the relief of his limbs finally lying in a long straight line, at the explosions in his joints as they were released from the stiffness and forced immobility. He could’ve done cartwheels, it felt so good.
Blair came out of the bathroom, her arms still around Farrah, her eyes vacant as she fought sleep. His daughter’s mouth was slightly ajar and Malcolm gasped to himself at the sight of her decimated teeth. The swollen, misshapen face. Blair stroked the girl’s hair. His hand involuntarily curled into a ball. She gently laid the girl down on the couch, propping throw pillows under her head and draping her with the gray afghan hanging across the back.
“All right, Wifey, you done. You gotta fix me up now,” Tree said, sitting up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“As soon as she falls asleep,” Blair murmured as she looked down at a drowsy Farrah. “In the meantime, let my husband use the bathroom.”
Tree was quiet for a moment before cocking his head toward his minions and pointing in the direction of the bathroom. Cookie and Dio untied Malcolm and ripped the tape from his mouth before shoving him in the direction of the bathroom. Within seconds, Tree flew across the room, the menacing endpoint of his gun pressed to Blair’s temple. She didn’t gasp, barely even flinched. She chewed on her bottom lip and closed her eyes. His own heart stopped.
