Chaser (18 page)

I
woke up to the sound of Nasir’s voice. I lifted my arm and placed my cell phone as close to my ear as possible.

“Nasir?” I muffled, still somewhat dazed.

“LEAH!”

“Nasir? Am I in heaven?”

“No, baby. Heaven ain’t ready for you yet. I need you to stay with me for a while. You hear me?”

“I must be in heaven if I’m talkin’ to you.”

Nasir said, “No, Leah. Look around you. You’re home, right? Tell me you’re at your house.” His voice was cracking as if he was crying.

I opened my eyes, and although everything was blurry, I recognized where I was. “Yeah. I’m in the hall,” I told him. My throat was so itchy.

“Okay, now who is there with you?”

“I don’t see anybody. But”—I coughed—“it’s smoky.”

“Smoky? Like how smoky?”

I couldn’t answer him because I couldn’t stop coughing.

“LEAH! LEAH! GET YOURSELF TOGETHER, LEAH! CAN YOU MOVE? ARE YOU ABLE TO GET UP?”

I panicked as I grabbed the banister with my free hand and pulled myself over closer to the stairs. There was a fire in my living room.

My mind told me to run for a window, but my body wouldn’t budge. I lost my self-control as I was filled with terror. I started screaming and crying at the same time.

“HELP ME! HELLLLPPP! SOMEBODY!!!!” I freaked out.

“LEAH! WHAT’S WRONG? WHAT DO YOU SEE?”

“NASIR, MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE! I CAN’T MOVE! I THINK MY LEGS ARE BROKEN! I CAN’T MOVE! I’M GOIN’ DIE, NASIR!” I screamed and then began choking.

“NO! YOU’RE GONNA BE FINE! I’M FIVE MINUTES AWAY! NOW I NEED YOU TO CALM DOWN. I’M GONNA CALL THE POLICE ON MY THREE-WAY, OKAY? AND I’MA NEED YOU TO GIVE THEM YOUR ADDRESS!”

I heard Nasir, but I couldn’t respond to him. My lungs were trying to fight the thick smoke that quickly clogged the air. I was choking to the point of vomiting.

“LEAH! STAY WITH ME!” I heard Nasir shout. I wanted to keep the phone to my ear, but I was feeling too weak. I was looking around for something to cover my nose with to keep from inhaling the smoke. I noticed my overnight bag on the top step. I tried sliding over to it. Meanwhile, I put Nasir on speakerphone and put my cell phone in my bra. That way I could use both my hands to get me across the floor.

“LEAH, ARE YOU STILL WITH ME?”

“I’m trying to get to air,” I said, my voice growing more raspy.

“Okay, okay. Good,” Nasir said. I’m goin’ to call—”
UUURRRRKKKKK! BOOOOOOM!

A loud crash interrupted Nasir’s sentence. Before I could say anything, I heard another loud boom. That time, though, it didn’t come from the other end of the phone. It came from downstairs.

“HELLLPPPP ME! HELLLPPPP ME!” I used all the energy I had left to scream.

I heard many deep voices giving commands back and forth. Then I heard footsteps rushing toward me. I cried at the sight of three firemen appearing through the smoke.

“Nasir!” I tried to yell. “Nasir! They’re here!”

I didn’t get a reply. In fact, I didn’t hear anything coming from my phone. Nasir must have hung up.

I was carried out of my burning house and placed on a stretcher.

My eyes closing, I said, “I think my boyfriend was in a car accident. Can y’all send somebody to help him?”

At that, an oxygen mask was put over my nose and mouth. I was lifted into the back of an ambulance and given an IV. Moments later an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion came over me, and I closed my eyes.

B
y the time my car had stopped spinning, police cars were already on the scene. That was a good thing, too, because I could get one of them to follow me to Leah’s house before it was too late.

“Officer!” I shouted out as I limped toward the many cop cars that were blocking the intersection of Presidential Boulevard and City Avenue, some feet up from where my car was hit.

I had just gotten off the Lincoln Drive and was going through the light when a car came speeding off the expressway ramp, slamming into my passenger side. Apparently after the crash the driver of the other car coasted up the street some before the cops cut him off.

“Officer!”

“Freeze!” the cops yelled, pointing their guns.

I stopped and raised my one arm.
What the fuck,
I thought.

Then I noticed the driver of the other car slowly dropping to his knees, and I realized the cops weren’t paying me any attention. Instead, they were all focused on the guy who was surrendering in the middle of the street.

The cops ran toward him, turned him around, and slammed him facedown on the ground so they could cuff him. I got a quick glance at the guy whose head was gushing out blood from the crash and wondered what the hell he had done that would make the cops more eager to arrest him than to get him to the hospital. Then I concluded that he must have been in a chase with them, which would have explained why he ran his light and hit me and why the cops were on the scene so fast.

I started walking toward the cops again.

“I need help! Officers!” I began to yell.

“Get back, sir,” a white man met me as I was getting closer to the cops. He wasn’t in a police uniform, but the gun and badge on his hip told me he was a cop.

“I need help! A girl’s house is on fire! Her boyfriend tried to kill her! She lives around the corner! I need y’all to follow me over there before it’s too late!” I rambled on.

The cop frowned and asked, “Are you talkin’ about Leah Baker?”

“Yeah! She called me,” I tried to explain as I patted my jeans pockets in search of my cell phone.

“Calm down, calm down,” the cop said, his hand on my shoulder. “Ms. Baker has been taken to the hospital.”

Instantly, I was able to relax some. But in seconds I was back to being worried.

“Well, is she okay? I mean, she sounded like she was dyin’ on me.”

The cop nodded and said, “She’s doin’ okay. Um, what is your name, sir?”

“Nasir,” I said. “Nasir Freeman.”

“And who are you to Ms. Baker?”

“A close friend. I was on my way to her house to help her when this idiot came out of nowhere and hit my fuckin’ car!”

“Well, I’m glad the idiot hit you. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you’re not hurt. But that idiot is the boyfriend who tried to kill Ms. Baker. There’s no tellin’ how long we would have been chasin’ him had it not been for you.”

I was registerin’ what the cop told me. When I realized that the guy the cops had apprehended was Kenny, I had mixed feelings. I was happy they caught him, but I wished I could have gotten to him first. And fuck fightin’. I would have tried to kill that nigga.

I dropped my head in my palm and stood there in the middle of the street gathering my thoughts. Once I was able to digest everything, I started thanking God repeatedly in my head. My heartbeat had begun to slow back down to normal. And it felt like a ton had been lifted off me. The crazy journey I had traveled with Leah and Kenny had come to an end. And I had to smirk that it had ended the same way it began—with an accident.

I asked if I could be taken to the hospital to see Leah. The cop said of course and reminded me that I needed to be seen and treated for injuries myself. Aside from minor scrapes and bruises, my shoulder was in a lot of pain.

An ambulance drove me to the University of Pennsylvania emergency room. I was given a bed next door to Leah. She wasn’t in her room because she had to be taken to get chest X-rays and blood tests. But I felt good just to be next to her.

As soon as I got settled, I called my mom and dad to tell them what had happened. They were already en route to the hospital. Apparently they’d heard about the collision over the scanner, and then one of my dad’s chasers called him and told him that it was my car that was in the accident.

I braced myself for what they were goin’ to say and how they were
goin’ to feel about my decision to leave to help Leah without first running it by them. I could hear my mom:
You could’ve gotten seriously hurt or killed even.
And my dad:
How you know she wasn’t tryin’ to set you up? You know she can’t be trusted.

I knew I had it comin’, but it didn’t even matter. I knew the truth now, and I was content with it. I wanted to be with Leah despite my mom and dad’s feelings about it, and with Kenny out of the picture, it would be more feasible. My mind was made up. It was what it was.

I
t was my last day in the hospital after having been in there for a week, longer than expected because I had developed pneumonia as a result of the smoke inhalation. My list of injuries included a miscarriage and two broken ribs due to the blows Kenny delivered to my stomach and chest. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel sad or depressed, or even mad, for that matter. I guess I was just grateful to be alive.

I was sitting in the bed watching TV waiting for my doctor to come in with my discharge papers. The program I was watching had been interrupted by breaking news. Hillary Clinton had suspended her campaign and endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency. I shook my head. I couldn’t believe a black man was running for president of the United States. I felt good about that and better about the fact that he actually had a chance of winning the election.

“Leah,” I heard Detective Daily say just above a whisper.

I turned toward the door and smiled.

“Hello,” I greeted him.

He still had sorrow in his eyes even after I had told him over and over again that I accepted his apology for not protecting me. It wasn’t his fault. When I called him and asked if he had heard Kenny’s confession, we both thought Kenny had gotten in the car with his brother and left. Neither of us knew that Kenny sent his brother ahead without him. So when the rental car pulled out of our garage, the cops followed it without hesitation. Neither they nor I had felt the need to have someone stay behind with me because Kenny was gone, so we’d thought.

But anyway, it was in the past. Lessons were learned, and fortunately lives were spared.

“I have some good news and bad news,” the detective told me. “Which do you want first?”

I thought about it briefly and said, “Save the best for last.”

“Well, the bad news is we most likely won’t be able to get a conviction on Kenny for murdering my partner, Detective Marshall—”

“What? Why not?”

“His lawyer brought up some tactical issues about how we went about getting Mr. Courtland on a wire tap. There were some loopholes on our end, and he’s going to request that that evidence be suppressed.”

“That’s crazy!” I was appalled. “So he’ll just walk free, then?”

“Well, no. Here’s the good news. With your testimony we will be able to convict him of first-degree murder of your unborn child.”

My face wrinkled with confusion. “That’s possible? Even though I didn’t have the baby yet?”

Detective Daily nodded. “Pennsylvania passed a fetal-homicide bill acknowledging the unborn to be a human life from the moment of conception. So all we would need is your testimony and, of course, medical records and other physical evidence.”

“Well, you’ll have my testimony, Detective. That’s a given.”

The detective gently patted me on the shoulder and nodded. “Let’s finally put this monster behind bars where he belongs,” he said.

I nodded and, with tears in my eyes, responded, “Let’s do it.”

I needed a moment to myself after Detective Daily had given me the news about the possible ways of convicting Kenny. I couldn’t believe that I had risked my life and lost my baby by wearing a wire and that the evidence we had gotten from it wouldn’t even be permissible in court. However, it was gratifying knowing that Kenny would, indeed, be punished for taking my unborn baby’s life. And that realization sent chills through me. It definitely made me look at abortions differently. And if I had it to do all over, I would have decided to keep my baby right off the bat.

By the time I was discharged, I felt like a whole different person. I felt more humbled. Small things that had mattered to me before no longer mattered. To me, breathing was a privilege. Life was a miracle. And every day was truly a gift.

My mom, who had visited me every day, practically become my caretaker and was there to accompany me to the hotel that the cops had arranged for me to stay in for the next month or so until it was time for me to testify at Kenny’s trial.

While in the hotel, I got used to seeing the same faces I had seen every day while I was in the hospital: my mom, Detective Daily, the three cops who took turns watching over me twenty-four/seven, and the person I was most happy to see, Nasir.

For the next thirty days I concentrated on recovering and rested every chance I got. I didn’t do too much thinking about testifying until the time for me to do so drew near. I got extremely nervous the day of the preliminary hearing. Up to the point that I was still second-guessing whether or not I wanted to testify. I hadn’t seen Kenny since he had beaten me and set our house on fire, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to face him in court.

Before we were scheduled to leave the hotel, there was a knock on the bathroom door.

“Come in,” I said.

Through the mirror I saw Nasir. He wrapped his arm around me from behind and buried his head in the back of my neck.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“I wish I could trade places with you,” he said. “I wish I could relieve you of this burden. I know you’re scared to do this, and I feel like I want to be able to protect you from having to, but I can’t. Just like I couldn’t protect you from being hurt by that nigga. Just like I couldn’t protect Brock and just like I couldn’t protect our child…”

I turned to face him. Shaking my head, I explained, “You had no control over any of that. It was nothin’ you could have done.”

“That’s the problem. I feel like it was. I shoulda been washed my hands of that nigga. And even now up to this day, I feel like I ain’t doin’ what I’m supposed to be doin’.”

“And what is that, Nasir?” I asked him.

“I should be puttin’ two in that nigga’s head,” Nasir said, gritting his teeth. “I feel like a real pussy right now, Leah. Like I’m takin’ the easy way out by lettin’ you take the stand.”

“What do you mean the easy way out? This is by no means easy. Not for me or for you. So don’t even say that. I think about what I shoulda done and what I coulda done, too, but at the end of the day what I did freed us both from Kenny, and I’ll be damned if I let you jeopardize that.”

“I understand all that, but it don’t sit well with me. It hasn’t since he got locked up. I mean, yeah, he’s locked up, but it don’t feel like he’s gettin’ his due for all the bullshit he put us through, Leah. It don’t feel like revenge to me.”

I grabbed Nasir’s hand and squeezed it. “That’s because you’re not lettin’ go and livin’ your life. Let livin’ be your revenge. ’Cause it’s damn sure goin’ be mine.”

And with that I made Nasir’s weakness my strength. I went to court with my head held high. I took the stand and gave my testimony with ease. I was able to look Kenny in his eyes and everything. I wanted him to see that he hadn’t killed me at all, not physically and not emotionally, either. I had survived him.

When it was all said and done, I never had to step foot back in a courtroom again. Kenny’s case never went to trial. After the preliminary hearing, I was told that Kenny took a plea deal. Instead of the twenty-five to life he would have gotten had he been found guilty, he was sentenced to twelve years. He thought he had got off good, too, until immediately after sentencing he was brought up on charges for the murder of Brakir “Brock” Jackson.

Nasir found a way to fulfill his urges of getting revenge. He came forward to police that Kenny admitted to him that he killed Brock. And being an eyewitness at the scene, Nasir agreed to testify against Kenny.

Kenny didn’t take a plea. He wanted to fight the case, and he even tried to discredit Nasir by bringing up the fact that Nasir had been involved in a hit-and-run some years earlier. But the prosecution argued that Kenny’s withholding that information about Nasir’s hit-and-run made him an accessory to the crime. His dumb ass immediately withdrew his statement.

After a long, drawn-out trial, Kenny was found guilty on several counts, the biggest one being murder in the first degree.

He was sentenced to twenty-five to life, and it was to run consecutive with his prior sentence, which meant he was basically going to die behind bars.

Meanwhile, I ended up getting in touch with Sammy, Kenny’s accountant, and getting all the money Kenny had left behind. It wasn’t just handed over to me, of course. I had to threaten Sammy that I would go to the police with evidence that he had laundered money for Kenny. Sammy didn’t want his ties to a cop killer made
public, and he definitely wanted no part of jail, so he wound up complying with me.

I took the money and moved out of Philadelphia. I went somewhere where the weather was warm all year round—Orlando, Florida. With me, I took my mom and a promise from Nasir to join me as soon as Kenny’s trial was over.