The blow didn’t knock Kaleb unconscious. He lay on the carpet and stared at Thorpe with wide, terrified eyes. Thorpe searched Kaleb’s person and found a voice-activated digital recorder in a pocket of his jacket. Thorpe hit rewind on the small machine and then pressed play. Some of the discussion he and Kaleb had had on the trip over played on the machine. Fucking snitches, Thorpe thought as he rewound to the beginning and hit play again. The recording began in the middle of his earlier phone conversation with Kaleb. After the phone conversation terminated, a woman’s voice could be heard: “Who’s that?”

“Fucking pigs again. They won’t leave my ass alone. I ain’t done shit,” Kaleb replied on the recording.

“What they want?”

“They keep trying to blackmail me into giving up my homies. I ain’t told them nothin’. Just keep feedin’ ‘em fulla shit.”

“Tell them to fuck off,” replied the woman’s voice.

“Baby, who’s going to take care of you if they send me to prison on some bullshit case?”

“Always fuckin’ the black man,” the female agreed.

“Ain’t that da truth. Don’t tell anybody what I’m doin’, baby. Nobody will understand I’m just playin’ em.’ I’ll shovel some shit into this cracker and be right back.”

Thorpe pressed stop on the recorder. “Kaleb, Kaleb… I wish you hadn’t told your girlfriend.”

The girl presented a problem but there was nothing he could do about it. Thorpe pulled out his knife—the act instantly eliciting muffled cries and a thrashing on the floor. Thorpe carried the knife to the bed where he cut off a section of plastic and spread it on the floor. Then he propped a wooden chair in the middle of the plastic before lifting Kaleb off the filthy carpet and setting him on the seat. All of Thorpe’s actions were purposely theatrical.

Thorpe used duct tape to secure Kaleb to the chair by wrapping it around his chest. Finished, he stepped toward the door and engaged the deadbolt and chain. Then he moved to the bed and opened his backpack. For added effect, he removed several crude instruments, including a small pair of pruning shears and a rusty hacksaw. After, Thorpe approached his captive but stood to the side where he couldn’t be kicked.

“Kaleb, I need you to listen very carefully. Are you listening to me?”

Kaleb nodded his head briskly, causing several beads of sweat to drip onto his lap.

“Good. First of all, I apologize for lying to you. It was the only way I could get you here without making a scene. I don’t like scenes.” Thorpe was doing his best impression of a man deranged; then again maybe an act wasn’t required. “Second, as you may have figured out, I’m not a detective with Internal Affairs, but I assure you I am a cop. My real name is Thorpe, Sergeant Jonathan Thorpe. Maybe you’ve heard my name mentioned before…about thirteen months ago?”

It took some time register, but Kaleb’s eyes morphed from confused fear to terror.

“I see you recognize my name. Good, then you know why you’re here.” Thorpe was almost whispering now. “Kaleb, you’re going to tell me who killed my family, and if you try to play ignorant…” He nodded toward the instruments on the bed, “… you’re so going to regret it. If you don’t cooperate, you’re leaving this room piece by piece in bloody sheets of plastic. I realize that’s pretty fucked up, but given the circumstances, you can understand I’m pretty pissed off. Can’t you, Kaleb?”

Kaleb didn’t, or couldn’t, respond, and Thorpe decided to ease up on the scare tactics before his captive went into shock. Kaleb wasn’t like Marcel Newman; the man was already broken. Thorpe snapped his fingers in front of Kaleb’s face.

“But none of that has to happen, Kaleb. Just answer my questions truthfully. Some things I already know, so it’d better match up. I’m going to remove the tape now, and you’re not going to scream are you?” Kaleb shook his head, and Thorpe removed the tape. “Who killed my family?”

“Deandre and Damarius Davis,” Kaleb stated. His body and voice trembled so violently he was difficult to understand.

“How do you know that?”

“They called the night they done it. Wanted to meet. They said they was doing something for somebody and they…”

Thorpe held up a finger, walked over to the bed while repeating Kaleb’s words, and reached for the pruning shears. “Something for somebody?”

“Okay! Okay! Deandre called and said he had to see me right now. Me, Deandre and Damarius was real tight, friends since back in the day. I talk to the police, but I would never rat on them. We was like brothers. Anyway, he calls, and I can tell he’s spooked. Wants to meet me at my apartment. Tells me to kick whoever I got inside the fuck out. So I tell my girl to get lost, that some serious shit is going down and she don’t need to be a part of it.”

Kaleb spoke fast, not the kind of speech pattern a person uses when he’s fabricating details. He rattled off information rapid fire, his adrenaline causing him to speak in streams.

“Anyways, Deandre and Damarius show up a while later, and they’re scared crazy. Deandre says he met Stephen Price earlier and Price gave him a half key of cocaine. Says he wanted them to plant the coke in some cracker’s house to set him up….”

Stephen Price? Thorpe felt an acute pressure inside his head, as if he’d plunged to the bottom of a deep pool. He momentarily lost his auditory senses and had to steady himself against a wall. His heart rattled like a drum, and his throat tightened. He began employing relaxation techniques and hoped Kaleb hadn’t registered his shock. When Thorpe finally regained control of himself, he found Kaleb still rapidly imparting information. As stunned as Thorpe had been, it didn’t come close to what his captive was experiencing. He didn’t want to interrupt Kaleb’s recounting of events, but Thorpe had missed a good portion of what the man had said.

“Hold on, Kaleb, I lost you back there. Start again at the point where Stephen Price gave Deandre a half-kilo of cocaine. You do mean Stephen Price, the Tulsa police officer, don’t you?” Thorpe asked, hoping against logic that Kaleb was referring to a different man with the same name.

“Yeah, Stephen Price, the cop. So Deandre says Price gives him a half-kilo of soft and wants him to hide it in this cracker’s house on the south side of town. We’re all tight: the brothers, Price, and me, and we’ve all done work before. But this shit was different, so Deandre asks Price what’s up. Price won’t tell him shit, says the less he knows, the better—won’t say who the cracker is or anything. He says if they do this they’ll be taken care of… forever. He tells them the job’s a piece of cake; that he got someone watching the place, and no one is home. He even gives them a key to the fucking house.”

Kaleb suddenly stopped talking and looked hesitant to continue.

“Go on, asshole, I already know how this story ends.”

“Price gives them directions and describes what the place looks like. Well, Deandre and Demarius go over and check it out. They see lights on, but they don’t see anybody moving. Shit, everybody leave their lights on when they’re away anymore, so they figure Price knows what he’s talking about. They find a place to park and decide to go in the back. They get to the back door, and there’s two locks. The key fits one of the locks, but not the other. Now they’re like, ‘What the fuck we do now?’ So they end up kicking the back door. What stupid fucks. I mean, they’re there to plant drugs in a fucking house, and they end up kicking in the back door. Kinda fucks up the purpose, don’t it?”

Thorpe nodded his head. “Yeah, real dumbasses.”

“Sorry man, I…”

“Just go on,” Thorpe interrupted, not wanting concocted sympathy from a man he was going to kill.

“Anyways, they kick in the back door and get in the house when a woman comes down the hall with a fucking gun in her hand. They told me they had no choice but to…shoot her. Then they hear a scream and see this little girl standing at the bottom of the stairs. I guess the girl…your girl…well, those dudes didn’t have any masks on or anything…they decide they had to…”