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Relief came with a sharp pain. “I’ve got to get her back, Frankie. It can’t end this way.”

Frankie rested her head on his shoulder. “You’ll get her back. I’m not much on

praying. I figure God has enough to deal with without worrying about my petty problems, but I’ve been praying on this. You deserve to be happy, and she surely doesn’t deserve what’s happened to her. Just remember what I said before. You may have to show some real

tenderness.”

He pulled the little black box from his pocket. “I stopped on the way here and

bought this. I think it’s elegant, just like Chelsea. I hope she likes it.”

Frankie stared at the dazzling diamond set in a simple band. “She’ll love it.”

They talked and she rubbed his shoulders until he nodded in the chair. When his

cell phone rang, he jumped upright. The look on his face left little doubt that the conversation was about Chelsea.

“They found her car. It’s parked three blocks from the loft,” he said on his way to the door. “I’ll call you later.”

* * * *

“Thank you for letting me come here to get my medicine, Ray.” Chelsea moved

from behind the dumpster in the alley across from her house. Red welts had practically covered her face and neck, sending Ray into an even greater panic. “They’re gone. Everyone has left.”

“You ain’t dyin or nothing, huh?”

“No, Ray. I’m not dying, but I could if this condition remains untreated. It only happens when I get really upset. I have medicine that makes it better. I do wish you would quit staring. It will go away before the day is over once I just get to my meds.”

He held his arm in front of her when she started to move. “Don’t try nothing.”

She kept talking. “You’re upset, too. I see how you’ve been holding your head. I’ll bet you get headaches when you’re really upset, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“I don’t see anyone around. I’m sure the police have been here, but they’re probably looking for us uptown. I’m sure they’ve visited your mother by now.”

“No-o-o.” He shook his head, and in doing, shook water from his eyes. “Momma will

make me move back home. I don’t want to move back home. I take my pills everyday, so I won’t have to move back home. She treats me like a retard.” His face was a mass of fright.

“Did you take your pills today?”

“I have to eat first.”

“Okay. You have to eat and I have to get my allergy medicine. We’ve come this far. Let’s go to my place so I can get better, and then we’ll make sure you get your pills.”

“And then you’ll tell the police I made you sick, and I’ll go to jail.”

“Ray, you kidnapped me. Held me at gunpoint. You know you’ll have to pay for that.

I’ve told you I have a lot of clout with the authorities. I’ll tell them you didn’t hurt me, that you were ill and needed your meds. If you tell me why you did this, I’ll try and make a good case for you not going to jail. I’ll recommend you just need help with your headaches.”

She lightly touched his left hand. “I know you must be hungry. I’ll give you something to eat and something for your headache.”

“No! I don’t want your medicine. You’d probably give me poison so you can get

away. You don’t mean what you say.”

She pointed to her face. “Does this look like I’m trying to trick you? Listen to

me, RayRay. I have a disease and I have to take medication just like you do. I’m also in pain. My shoulder is aching, my head is throbbing. I’m afraid if I don’t put something on my wrists, I’ll get a really bad infection. I could die from it. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t care.”

“If you didn’t care you could have killed already.” She nodded. “You’ve got the gun.”

“You just like ev’body else. You think I’m crazy.” He grabbed his head. “I ain’t crazy. I just need my medication.”

“And so do I.” She raised her right hand to brush her hair back. “I want you to look at this scar here on the side of my head. Look at this. I had headaches just like you’re having when I was younger. I couldn’t drive a car. I would get so dizzy it was hard for me to stand up. I needed help, just like you do. The doctor cured that problem. Now, I take medication for this hives. I haven’t had a flair-up in a long time, but then, I’ve never had anyone holding a gun to my head.”

His sad face was compelling enough to entice comfort. “I’ll help you, Ray. That’s a promise. I’m not going to lie and tell you there won’t be consequences for the things you’ve done. That’s part of my job—to make sure crime victims are vindicated. To punish people for doing wrong.”

“You didn’t punish that woman for laughing at me.”

“Who laughed at you? You know I’ll find out, so make it easy on yourself and tell me now. The more I know, the more I’ll be able to help you.”

He stopped talking. She persisted. “Why do you hate me enough to take me from my

home and keep me tied up all night? Why are you doing this?”

His left hand curled into a fist. Tears ran from his eyes.

“If I understand you correctly, you’re saying a woman laughed when you tried to seduce her. She was very wrong for laughing, but that’s not a crime, RayRay. It just shows that some people are mean and thoughtless. I don’t want to see you go to jail. You have a problem, an illness, just like I had when I was young. I have one now. You can see that. I want you to get help. You haven’t eaten and you’re afraid to go inside a restaurant. Cops are all over the place now, and you can’t go back home, so you tell me what you think we should do.”

“I can think. I’m not stupid.”

“Ray, I don’t give a damn if you’re Einstein. You’re calling the shots. If you think I’m trying to manipulate you, then you tell me what we should do. Let me get my medicine and I’ll have my doctor treat your headaches. I’ll pay for it myself if I have to.”

She watched the lines of confusion deepen on his face and knew she had to keep

hammering, but not enough to cause him to go completely berserk.

“Tell me why you’re doing this, RayRay. What have I done to make you hate me

enough to hurt me this way?”

His chin remained on his chest.

“Are you doing this because some woman treated you badly? Laughed at you? Is that

what this is all about? Are you hurting me because someone hurt you? If you are, I’m sure you know that’s wrong.” She tried another angle. “You read the bible. You know God’s word, and I don’t have to tell you, He’s not pleased with you right now.”

“You don’t know nothing! The bible said an eye for an eye. If you hurt me, I can hurt you back. That’s in the bible. I read it.”

“And just what did I do to hurt you? I don’t even know you.”

“You want to hurt my brother. You and them others trying to put him jail and then I won’t have nobody to take care of me.”

“Is you last name Hamilton? Ray, is Curtis Hamilton your brother? Is that why you want to keep me away from the courtroom? You’ve got to tell me. I can’t help you if I don’t know why you’re doing this.”

“My name Ray Mickleson. My mommy’s name is Isabelle Mickleson. Curtis momma

name Mary Hamilton. My daddy…I can’t ‘splain it to you.”

“Well, regardless of how you’re related, this is only going to hurt Curtis more. Instead of being punished for beating Barbara Colbert, the court will charge him with conspiracy to my kidnapping. Do you know how serious kidnapping is, Ray? Holding someone hostage? On top of that, the doctors aren’t sure Barbara Colbert will live. If she doesn’t, the charges against Curtis will be upgraded to murder. He’ll spend most, if not all of his life in jail. Holding me will not keep that from happening. I’m not the only prosecutor at the DA’s office.”

He grabbed his head with both hands, pressing the pistol barrel into his temples.

“Are you having headaches, RayRay? Do you have medication to take for that?”

“I can’t get it now.” His eyes bulged then almost closed.

“Why don’t we go to my place? I don’t have your medication, but I do have pain pills that will help your headache. I could put a cold cloth on your head, or a warm cloth. I’m not sure which one would help, but we’ve got to do something.”

“No! You trying to trick me.”

“You kidnapped me from my house and kept me tied up all night. You hit me, yanked my arm damn near out of the socket, and caused my wrists to be cut from whatever you tied around them. You say an eye for an eye, well, tell me how this works, RayRay? You’re in deep shit for kidnapping me. If I take you in, I’ll get help for your headaches. If the cops catch you, they’ll probably end your headaches forever. They probably have the Feds in on this by now. They’ll blow your brains out, Ray. They’ll kill you dead. Bullets, just like the ones in your pistol, only larger, will rip through your body. Your head. Your chest. I’m not lying when I say I don’t want that to happen. Your brother beat a woman within an inch of her life. I can’t tell you that’s okay, because it isn’t. I’m sure you’re smart enough to know that.”

Tears ran from his eyes. “Curtis didn’t beat that woman. He just slapped her ‘cause he paid her money to be with me and she wouldn’t do it.”

“Is that why you and Curtis are so close? He takes you out to be with women? He pays women to be with you?”

“If I tell you, you’ll laugh just like she did.”

“Look at me, Ray. Please. I know I look a mess, but look into my eyes. You can tell a lot about a person by looking into their eyes.” She wanted to cry, but could not make the tears start.

“Just look at me, Ray.”

Ray lowered his hands, but only glanced at her briefly before dropping his head.

“I’m scared to look at you.”

“That’s okay. I’m sure I’m pretty scary looking right now, but I promise you I will not laugh. No matter what you tell me.”

“I’m twenty-one. I ain’t never been with a woman.” He looked up. “Go ‘head and laugh.”

“Oh, Ray.” Tears burned her swollen eyes. “No one should laugh at you for that. Did Barbara Colbert laugh because you’d never been with a woman?”

He nodded. “She took the money from Curtis ‘cause she thought she would be with him.

He brought her back behind the trees where I was and she started pulling at my clothes. I got scared and pushed her away. Curtis told her I was just shy ‘cause I never done that before. That’s when she started laughing. Said she didn’t need money bad enough to be with a retard who didn’t know what he was doing. I heard my momma say I was a retard. Kids call me that all the time. Curtis don’t say it. He the only one that treats me like a man.” His eyes finally met hers. “If you send him to jail, ain’t nobody will treat me right.”

Chelsea felt his desperation. “RayRay, listen to me. Move the gun from my side, RayRay and listen to me. Please.”

He lowered the gun but moved close enough for her to smell his sweat and fear.

“RayRay, we all have some kind of problem, some kind of handicap. First of all, it wasn’t right to pay this woman to be with you. That’s not legal. She shouldn’t have laughed at you. That was wrong. But you and your brother shouldn’t have beaten this woman senseless because she laughed at you. When I was younger, I had a big gap in my teeth. Kids laughed at me all the time. They called me junction mouth. Said a freight train could go through that gap. I was in junior high before I got that gap closed, and my father is a dentist.”

“But you pretty.”

“Thank you for saying that, but when I was younger, I had a big space right here.” She used the ball of her hand to lift her lip. “If you look close, you’ll see where the dentist put the cap there to bring those two teeth together. I had to wait until my teeth stopped growing to have it done and a lot of kids laughed at me. Said a lot of mean, cruel things that hurt.”

“That was wrong.”

“It was wrong and it really hurt my feelings. RayRay, I want you to tell me exactly what happened in that park. I have to know in order to help you and Curtis.”

He dragged the toe of his shoes against the ground. “Curtis only slapped her cause she was laughing at me. She said she didn’t care what he did, she . . . she kept laughin. Laughin. She wouldn’t stop, so I hit her hard. I kept hittin her. I had to make her stop laughin.”

“So you and Curtis both hit her?”

“He slapped her. She throwed the money back at him, pointed at me and kept laughing. I hit her. I hit her again. Curtis tried to make me stop, but I’m stronger than him. He told me not to tell nobody I did it ‘cause they been trying to put me away for a long time. Curtis said he’d get off, but I wouldn’t. He said they’d send me to prison for crazy people and I’d never get out.” He looked at her. “I bet that’s what you plan to do.”

Chelsea was no longer listening. She saw the picture now, vividly clear. Curtis was very fair skinned while his parents were both darker, but she thought he was adopted or had another biological parent who was fair skinned or white. Living in New Orleans, she had not given it too much thought.

“I understand, Ray. At least, I understand most of what you’ve said. Did you break into my apartment early Sunday morning?”

He nodded.

“And you were there to kidnap me?”

“I didn’t want you to go back to that place and tell them to send Curtis away.”

“How did you get in?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” He moved away.

“My brother was there, Ray. He almost shot you. Did you find my key? Did you

come to my room?”

“That key was right there in the light. I wudn’t lookin’ for it. I just saw it up there and took it. I took it a long time ago when you first said bad thing ‘bout Curtis.”

“And did you come to my room when you broke in?”

He shook his head. “You got to quit askin me stuff. You makin my head hurt. I need my medicine. I need my…” He placed his face in his hands and sobbed. The gun wobbled between his fingers.

Knowing he had not come into the privacy of her room somehow made her feel

better, but left many uncertainties. She did not want to upset him, but had to learn the rest of the story. That was the only way she could escape. The only way she could help the young man who was not criminal minded, just misunderstood.

“I have one more question, Ray, so please listen and tell me the truth. Did you see my brother? Is that why you left without bothering me?”