Hero

Chapter Twenty-Two

The first thing she was aware of was the pain.

She hurt everywhere. Her mind felt cloudy again, this time from soreness and fatigue, swimming to the surface in a sea of pain that enveloped her from head to toe. The worst of it was in her head, which rang as if it were a bell that had been clanged in a church tower. She didn’t even try opening her eyes. To do so would let the light in, causing more sparks of pain to shoot inside her head.

She remained lying down, becoming gradually aware of her surroundings as her body and mind slowly woke up.

Voices from close by. Male. “…lucky she’s alive…”

She felt herself sink into unconsciousness again, slipping back into that black sea. She stared at the IV hooked to her arm, watching it drip slowly as her vision blurred and fell asleep once again.

When she came back up again, not knowing she’d even gone under, the voices were still conversing. “…has been convicted of aggravated assault and robbery…served five years of a twenty year sentence and…”

“…just don’t believe that he’d…”

“…I know… I know…”

“…I’ve been trying to pin him to something for awhile now… I have it on good authority that he’s killed…”

“…on life support now…”

“…well, she’s a hero for what she did…”

“…the family’s been contacted… didn’t tell them how she was killed…”

She slipped back into unconsciousness.

She didn’t realize she was talking until she heard her voice. How long she’d been carrying on a conversation with whoever was talking to her, she had no idea. She blinked, the room becoming more focused and she saw she was in a hospital. A middle-aged Black man in a suit was sitting in a chair by the bed. Two other men, both White and dressed in suits, were standing near the doorway to the room, looking at her.

“…I just… reacted… and I… I…” She blinked, suddenly aware of where she was.

The men were silent, waiting for her to continue. The man sitting beside her bed nodded at her.

“Go on, ma’am.”

She took a deep breath. Collected her thoughts. What had she told them?

A tear slipped down her cheek.

“Mrs. Smith…is she okay? Is she alive?”

“Adelle Smith?” The man by her bed asked. “You mean…”

“She’s alive,” the White man standing by the door said. “She’s in ICU.”

She wet her lips; her mouth was suddenly very dry. Her heart pounded.

“And… the others?”

They said nothing. The man by her bed traded a glance with the other two standing by the door. It was obvious to her now that they were cops. Detectives.

“You need your rest,” the detective sitting beside her said. He stood up. “We’ll come back later.”

“No… please!”

The three detectives left the hospital room and closed the door behind them.

Leaving her wondering…

“Something doesn’t seem right,” Detective Carl Hendrix said. The three of them were standing together near the nurses’ station in the ICU wing of Philadelphia General Hospital.

“I agree,” Detective Robert Lennon said. He traded a glance with his partner, Brian Swinson. Robert and Brian had observed the interrogation from the doorway and Robert could tell from his partner’s troubled features that what they’d heard just didn’t add up.

It should have been open and shut. Noted civil rights activist and a hero to many of the people in the North Philadelphia neighborhood she lived in suffered a stroke. Her daughter, Tonya Brown, arranges for home care nursing. Hospice Nursing in Philadelphia sends two of their best, Natsinet Zenawi and Rachael Williams. At some point during the two plus weeks Mrs. Smith is receiving in-home care and rehabilitation Mike Simmons, a notorious crime figure in the neighborhood who’d once served time for aggravated assault and was a known drug dealer and criminal, broke into the apartment and repeatedly raped Rachael Williams and Adelle Smith, carrying on a three day session of torture and abuse towards both women before finally killing the nurse and dismembering her. When Natsinet arrived at her scheduled time she walked into a house of horrors; during the ensuing fight with Mike Simmons, she suffered serious injuries and managed to wound Mike with several stab wounds. Tonya Brown arrived soon after and that’s when all hell broke loose.

“Any word on Tonya’s condition?” Detective Swinson asked one of the nurses manning the ICU desk.

“She’s in a coma. Critical condition,” the nurse answered.

“And Mike Simmons?”

“Still unconscious.”

“So what about her?” Detective Swinson asked, jerking a thumb back in the direction of the room they’d just exited.

“She took a fifty caliber bullet in the hip. It looks like she’d been strangled as well. There were large contusions around her neck. Someone beat her up pretty good. She’s lost a lot of blood. She may not walk again if the doctor can’t reconstruct her hip bone. Even then it’s going to require months of physical therapy.”

“Damn, that’s terrible. Thank you, nurse.” Detective Swinson turned back to his partner and Detective Hendrix.

“So let’s get this mess straight for the report.”

Swinson pulled out a small spiral notepad and flipped to a blank page as he removed a pen from his shirt pocket. He began flipping back and forth between the notes he’d written down earlier while jotting down more notes, trying to fill in the blanks.

“According to the first officers on the scene, Mrs. Smith had the pistol in her hand when they arrived. They think she may have shot Ms. Zenawi accidentally while trying to protect her daughter. Simmons must have dropped the gun during his fight with the nurse and Mrs. Smith was trying to pick it up when the gun went off.” Hendrix began, while flipping through his own notes.

“Damn. She must feel terrible. I mean, if that’s really how it happened.”

“Yeah, if.”

“So Michael Simmons was the one who killed Rachael Williams, cut her up, and stuck her in the refrigerator?” Swinson asked.

“And the freezer.”

“Then he beats the hell out of that African nurse, Zenawi or whatever her name is, and tries to strangle her to death?”

“That’s how it appears.”

“He’d also been abusing Adelle Smith for two or three days?”

“As far as we can tell.”

“But yet she has bruises on her that look like they’re at least a week old as well as burn marks that have almost entirely healed?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out myself. Maybe Simmons had been sneaking into the apartment and torturing her for a couple of weeks and no one noticed? Maybe that’s why he started torturing Rachael Williams? Maybe she caught him in the act?”

“Uh-huh. So then Tonya comes home and he starts beating her up too, but somehow the nurse manages to wake up after being choked unconscious and beaten half to death by a guy who outweighs her by more than a hundred and fifty pounds, stabs him twice in the abdomen and in the process accidentally stabs Tonya Brown in the chest, then gets shot accidentally by Adelle Smith who is lying on the floor and can barely move? Yeah, something definitely does not sound right about that story. Too much accidental shit going on there. I suggest you wait until one of the other victims wakes up before putting that garbage in a report.”

“That nurse, Natsinet Zenawi, has already corroborated most of the story.”

Detective Swinson rubbed his balding scalp and shook his head, squinting an eye at his partner before turning to look back at Detective Hendrix.

“I’d wait to hear what Mrs. Smith has to say about it before turning that report in. You’re right. Something just doesn’t fit. When Tonya Brown wakes up from surgery she might be able to piece together a little more of the story.”

“You don’t buy any of this shit do you?” Detective Carl Hendrix asked.

“Not a single word.”

“I hate to say this after all she’s gone through, getting beaten and choked unconscious, then getting shot and waking up in the hospital with a permanent limp if she’s lucky and isn’t stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.”

“What are you thinking, Carl?”

“I think Miss Zenawi is hiding something. Either she’s the victim she appears to be and she’s just in shock so her story isn’t making sense, or she’s somehow involved. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was fucking that drug dealer and they tortured Rachael Williams and Adelle Smith together.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened,” Detective Swinson added, “You know…a boyfriend and girlfriend team torturing and killing, even raping. There’ve been serial killers whose wives and girlfriends were in on it with them. This could be one of those deals.”

“But then why would she stab him?” Detective Lennon asked.

“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe it was Tonya Brown who stabbed him and then Natsinet took the knife from her and stabbed her in retaliation. Maybe she got jealous. Maybe Tonya Brown and Big Mike were having some kind of affair and so she stabbed them both in a jealous rage.”

“That would explain why Mrs. Smith shot her.”

“It makes a lot more sense than her story, actually.”

“We’ll have to see what the lab comes back with on the fingerprints.”

“Do you know what will happen to that neighborhood if we don’t get this all figured out and soon?”

Brian huffed. “Riots and lawsuits and protesters marching on City Hall, Civil Rights leaders giving speeches about how the Philly P.D. is dragging its feet on the case because she’s Black. Conspiracy theorists will claim that we beat her up ourselves because of her protests against police brutality thirty-five years ago and are trying to cover it up and frame an innocent drug dealer.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Brian,” Hendrix said. ”They’ll blame it all on us even if we do solve the case.”

The nurse came back into the room.

“Mike Simmons is awake. He’s still pretty out of it. He just had a pretty large blood transfusion, but he asked to speak to you.”

The detectives all turned to look at one another, stunned.

“He asked to speak to the police?” Lennon asked.

“He insisted, actually. Adelle Smith is awake as well.”

“Can she talk?”

“Her speech is still impaired from the stroke. She speaks really slowly and her words are a little slurred…but yeah, she can talk.”

Detective Hendrix turned to the other two detectives.

“You two take Simmons. I want to hear what Mrs. Smith has to say before I join you. We might just get out of this okay after all.”