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"And what happens then?"
"What you think gonna happen then? They’ll think he killed her."
"And you don’t think that they’ll think that I killed him for it?"
"No. Cops aren’t gonna think you had nothing to do with it. Not unless they think you had sex with him first. Listen, Devin, you don’t know what that mutha fucka was doin’. He would wait until you left, and then he was fuckin’ her after she passed out from them damn sleeping pills."
All of a sudden, something that Taye said to me once began to make sense. When Taye found out that I had sex with Sandra, she said that I forced myself on her.
"Stop lying to me!" I remembered Taye yelling that night. "I called your office—more than once; and never got an answer. Then you come home at ridiculous hours of the morning, do what you want to do to me, and run to the shower."
"What are you talkin’ about?"
"You forced yourself on me!"
"What are you talking about?" I had never forced myself on her, so at the time I thought that Taye was really losing her mind. Now it all made sense.
Winston always did have a thing for Taye, but I would have never thought that he would have sex with her while she wasn’t conscience. That shit was disgusting. No matter how disgusting I thought it was, I knew that once the police matched his DNA to the rape kit, I would be a suspect.
Yesterday, I got a call from the detective assigned to my case, asking if I would mind coming in to talk about the case. The detective told me that they were able to match the DNA sample to Winston.
"I don’t know what to say. I mean, I would have never thought he would do something like that. Are you sure it was him?"
"We were able to confirm from some of your neighbors that they had seen his car parked outside your house on several occasions late at night, when you weren’t there."
"And the robbery?"
"We think that it was just to cover up the murder."
It was lucky for me that I had an alibi for the night of his murder, or I would probably be in jail right now.
When I got to the address that Avonte had given me, I was a bit surprised at how nice a building it was. I went up to her apartment. "Hello, Devin," Avonte said when she opened the door.
"How’re you doing, Avonte? You didn’t sound too good on the phone."
"I don’t know where to begin," Avonte said, and led me into the living room.
"Start at the beginning."
"It’s about Qianna."
"I didn’t know that you were still dealing with her."
Avonte looked away. "I kept seeing her after I stopped seeing you. She’s like a drug to me. I can’t seem to get enough of her."
Knowing how good the sex was, and remembering how Avonte used to get off on Qianna, I wasn’t mad at her. A little jealous, but I wasn’t mad about it.
"Why are you telling me this now, Avonte?"
"I’m afraid of her."
"Did she do something to you?"
"Not to me, she killed my husband."
"What?" I said, and thought, Not you too. "You had her kill your husband?"
Avonte looked like me like I had lost my mind. "No. I would never do anything like that. I had nothing to do with it. I told her that I had signed a prenup and he was cutting off my money," she said quickly.