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The sugar must really be kicking in.

She squinted her eyes at Payne and wagged her right index finger at him. “And I want my reward!”

“This man had a gun?”

She looked at Payne with an expression that suggested he was nuts. “How else Kendrik get shot? Had to! I never saw it. But it made a loud noise. Sounded like a cannon boom in the basement.”

“That’s where Kendrik was shot, in the basement? Do we have your permission to go through it and search your whole house?”

She nodded, then snickered. “If you want. Sure. Just try not to make a mess.” She looked at Payne and said, her tone flat, “That was a joke.”

Now she’s feeling so good she’s a damn comedienne.

Payne nodded, then said, “You do know it’s against the law to tamper with the scene of a crime, remove or otherwise alter evidence?”

She shrugged.

Payne raised an eyebrow, then went on: “Okay, do you know the cabbie who helped you?”

She shook her head. “No. He just the first one who’d help me. Had to walk four blocks till I found him on Reed Street. Only charged me twenty bucks. Said he was sorry for me but glad to see Kendrik got what he deserved. Nobody liked that boy.”

Payne wrote that as he asked, “And this cabbie helped you do what?”

“He’s a really big guy. He took that rug and rolled Kendrik up in it, then carried him to the car.”

“Ms. Mays, that’s the tampering with evidence I’m referring to. You should’ve called 911 and—”

She laughed. “Call 911? What? I ain’t got no phone. And I sure as hell wouldn’t call no police if I did.”

Payne stared at her.

Amazing. You get beat to hell and back, someone blows away your son in your basement, but whatever you do, don’t call the good guys. . . .

He went on: “Are you also aware it’s against the law to harbor a fugitive?”

“Harbor?”

“Let him live with you.”

She sat up in the chair, puffed up her chest, and in as loud and angry a voice as she could muster said, “I didn’t let him live with me! I throwed him out over and over. But he come back. And when I try throwing him out again, after he been in jail, that’s when he beat me really bad. What can I do? I got no money to move out, so I just deal with it all . . .” Her voice trailed off. She reached for the soda bottle and drained it.

Then she crossed her arms and glared at Payne. “I want my reward!”

Payne looked back at her, then glanced at his watch and said to the recorder, “Interview paused at one-forty P.M.”

He stood, stuck his notepad in his pocket, and said, “I’ll be right back.”

He left the handcuff off her but, using the sliding bolt, locked the interview room door from the outside.

Only Jason Washington was in the small observation room when Payne entered.

“The minute you got her permission,” Washington said, his deep, sonorous voice answering the unasked question, “Tony went to get a Search and Seizure warrant signed by the judge and sent the Crime Lab to her house.”

“If that house is anything like its resident, I doubt we’re going to get anything of real use. Other than maybe a bullet fragment. The shooter probably collected his shell casings.”

Washington nodded and said, “You’re probably correct, Matthew. But you know to ‘never say never.’”

“And ‘always check the rock under the rock,’” Payne said with a smile, citing Washington’s well-known rule of thumb for conducting thorough investigations.