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“Yeah. Sure. Just so I gets my reward.”

“Right. We’ll get to that, Ms. Mays. First, Kendrik Mays is your son, correct?”

“Yeah. He my boy.”

“Can you tell me what happened to Kendrik?”

“He got hisself killed.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m aware of that. How did it happen?”

“He was doing bad. Long time. He had it coming.”

“Because he beat you? You did say he’s responsible for the bruises on your body.”

She looked at him oddly. “I don’t understand.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No! I told that first cop that!”

“Okay, then how did it happen, Ms. Mays?”

“I guess that bullet killed him.”

Payne exhaled audibly. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Who had the gun?”

“A delivery guy. He come in with Kendrik’s paper. That paper I had that the cop took?”

“The Wanted sheet?”

“Yeah, that’s it. He come in and—No, wait. First he say he got a check for Kendrik. And when I let him in, he give me the paper. The sheet. Said there was no check.”

“This began at what time?”

She cocked her head. “Time? This morning, all I know. Ain’t no clocks in a crack house!”

Payne nodded as he wrote that on his notepad and thought, Right.

If something’s not nailed down, it’s sold for drugs.

My God, what a way to live.

“What did this guy look like? And was he alone, anyone else in the house?”

“Just him. Old white guy, maybe my age. Tall. Kinda skinny.”

Payne wrote that down and asked, “He give you a name? You ever see him before?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I think Kendrik did something bad to this guy. Or maybe to his family. Robbery, rape, something. Once my boy got in the drugs, he was no good.”

Payne noted that on his pad, then said, “This old white guy your age—anything unusual about him? Anything at all special or different you remember about him?”

She thought about that for a moment. Then she grinned.

“He give me money. A hundred dollars, he did! How many times that going to happen? Some white guy come in your house and give you a hundred dollars, then tell you how to get ten thousand more!”

She’s almost giddy.