AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Probably at home,” I shrugged.
“Probably?” The second detective repeated.
I cut my eyes at him and gave the first detective my attention.
“I can’t be sure, but that’s where I usually am if I am not at work.”
I didn’t know what this was all about, so I was not about to tell them anything. I didn’t know if one of my boys was in trouble or what, but they wasn’t about to get me to snitch.
“Oh, I get it. You think you have some power here, boy,” Detective Beatty said. “Well you don’t, and you are going down for what you did to those people!”
What I did? To what people?
I looked at him and rolled my eyes. I was a little shook by what he’d just said, but I wasn’t about to sweat in front of these pigs. I knew I hadn’t hurt anyone.
Detective Brown reached into a folder and produced some pictures he slid across the table. I looked down at the picture on top and nearly threw up the dinner I was enjoying with my mother before the cops busted in.
It was a picture of a man with half of his head blown off. The remaining half was swollen and bloody. Lying next to the man was a woman whose entire chest was saturated with blood. I’d seen things like this on TV, but I’d never seen a real dead body. My stomach churned with nausea. I pushed the picture across the table, but the table wasn’t large enough for me not to be able to see it.
“Now you are going to try to play like you’ve never seen Mr. Caldwell like this! This is how you left him after you broke into his home and raped his girlfriend!”
“WAIT, WHAT! I ain’t never raped or killed nobody! What in the hell is you talkin’ bout?”
In what seemed like one fluid motion, Detective Beatty jumped up from his chair, reached for my head and slammed it onto the table.
He applied pressure to my head as he spoke, “You worthless, bottom-feeding, piece of shit, you are going to tell us the truth! We know you did this!”
I held in the tears that were stinging the backs of my eyes. I cleared my throat and said, “Lawyer.”
I’d watched enough TV to know I was in trouble and I wasn’t going to say anything else until somebody with some sort of power came to my rescue.
Samuel
~1994~
“Valentine, you have a visitor!”
I was escorted from my cell to the attorney visiting room, which was different than the room where I was visited by my mother and sister. I sat across from a table with my attorney, but I spoke to my family through glass. I hadn’t hugged my mother in over a year. My life was miserable.
After speaking with the detectives the night I was arrested, I was taken from the interrogation room and was booked. My arraignment on the charges of murder and resisting arrest, took place a few days later. The prosecutor asked that I be denied bail due to the heinous acts committed against the two people. The judge agreed, and I spent the next year in Saint Louis County Detention Center awaiting my trial date.
My public defender, who I met the day of my arraignment, informed me I was being charged with the murders of Charles Caldwell and Valencia Grenred. They lived in the suburbs of Saint Louis County. Their home was burglarized. Ms. Grenred was raped before she was murdered. I had never laid eyes on either one of those people while they were alive, and I shol’ wasn’t in the area where they were killed. I never went to that part of the County.
I walked into the visiting room and saw Mom and Torrey sitting with my attorney. Mom looked like she’d aged some in the past year, but she was still beautiful. Torrey looked a lot like Mom. They shared the same burnt sienna skin and round brown eyes, and they shared the same smile. They could pass for sisters since Mom was only seventeen years older than Torrey. Torrey was six years older than me.
“No contact,” the guard barked while assisting me to the chair across from them. He handcuffed me to the table then left the room.
As soon as the door closed, Torrey and Mom came over and hugged my neck. I couldn’t hug them back because I was handcuffed but having their arms around me gave me a level of peace I hadn’t felt since being locked up. They both kissed my face at least ten times. I enjoyed every single one. I wished I could collect a hug and kiss and save it for later.
Seeing them here gave me hope this nightmare would be over soon. I’d heard of innocent people being jailed, but I can’t say I ever really believed it. Now, I knew it to be true.
“Mr. Valentine, I brought your mother and sister with me today because there is a deal on the table from the DA. I think it’s a good one, but I wanted you to be able to discuss it with your family before you accepted it,” my public defender, Ms. Tyler explained.
I sat up straight in my chair.
Maybe I will be able to leave soon. Perhaps they want me to cop to the resisting arrest charge. I will do it as long as they let me out.
“A deal instead of a trial?” Mom questioned.
