Both the Howards shook their heads. “Many of them—the ones who this happened to years before us—have passed away. Because of their ages, most people assumed they died of natural causes. The coronertoldthe public that anyway, but he’s in it with them too.”
Nahla made a note to research the coroner.
“There is a man—a goodman—rotting in a jail cell as we speak because he tried to push back on all this. I know another guy who’s livin’ on the streets now,” Mr. Howard said, then shook his head.
“Nah, people are too scared to talk to you, Miss Avery. The police force, the politicians, the zoning board . . . they’re all crooked. A lotta people around here think your little stories are gonna do more harm than good.
“We have faith that they’ll make a change, though. That’s why we’re here, talkin’ to ya.”
“I appreciate that,” Nahla said.
Mrs. Howard shook her head fiercely. “Do more than appreciate it. Do right by us and all the other people who have lost everything behind this. Promise us, Miss Avery.”
Nahla began nodding, but Mrs. Howard continued. “Promise us that you won’t give up on this. Promise us that you won’t stop till you take ’em down.”
Nahla watched as Mrs. Howard searched her eyes. She could only hope they would convey the sincerity behind her next words.
“I promise you both that I’ll bring the truth to the light. No matter how long it takes, I won’t stop until the right people are behind bars and your land is returned to you.”
The couple nodded, and Nahla closed her notebook. Determining that she had enough information from them, she decided to just sit with them a while longer and get to know them as people. The longer she spoke with them, the more determined she became.
When it was time for her to head back to her hotel, she left out of the door, silently vowing to make this right for them. Forallof them.
Nahla sipped from her coffee cup as she stared at her laptop screen with satisfaction. The last day of her weekend trip to Lyle had been a success. Her tablet was filled with timelines that connected several of her unanswered questions, interview notes, and other discoveries she’d made in the last two days.
She had been working nonstop, but her hard work had paid off in a major way. In addition to getting the Howards’ story, she also confirmed three more instances where people of color had been threatened into signing temporary forfeiture documents. She had even gotten one other witness to go on the record with his testimony. His story was just like the others: Lawenforcement showed up, forcing papers he barely understood in his face, and taking the land he had worked his entire life to earn andown.
Also, like the other stories, once everything was said and done, each individual experienced a burglary that resulted in the disappearance of their copies of the documents. This one fact made Nahla’s story sound like a bunch of well-crafted rumors, so she needed something to make it all stick.
And she got it.
It occurred to her that the company responsible for ruining lives was probably a shady LLC. She had an inkling that someone in the police force was behind this but that they’d do their best to keep it away from themselves. Still, Nahla didn’t have much faith in the intelligence of these small-town criminals, so she went digging for evidence on the Secretary of State’s online database.
She found several registered LLCs based in Lyle, Chaney, but only three weren’t connected to a long-standing brick-and-mortar business in the city. Of the three, one—Blue Stone Holdings, LLC—was registered to Wanda Miller, the wife of Deputy Allen Miller. By all accounts, Deputy Allen was the sheriff’s right-hand man.
Putting her money on that one, she put all her effort into uncovering information on Wanda’s so-called business. Every single property that had been taken traced back toBlue Stone Holdings. It wasn’t actually difficult to uncover. They had been going after senior citizens who probably weren’t aware of all the research that could be done to end this.
Their victims were also longtime Lyle residents who had been indoctrinated in the systemic racism of the city. They had lived their lives believing that no one could beat the system they lived in, so instead of hiring lawyers who could have uncoveredthis criminal enterprise themselves, they gave in and tried to move on.
The whole thing pissed Nahla off, and she was determined to get each family their property back. This piece of evidence was her golden ticket. She now had proof attached to her notion that all of this was nothing more than systemic theft disguised as justice.
So, this was why she had just spent the last four hours drinking coffee and typing up all her findings. She was running on caffeine and adrenaline and couldn’t sit on the information until she got home the next day. But . . .
Now that she was done, she still felt restless. She checked the time on her laptop.
Ten forty-five p.m.
It was late, but she knew she wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon. She had already planned to take the morning off from work the next day, so wouldn’t it be better to drive an hour and a half tonight and get even more rest in her own bed?
She decided it would be. Closing her laptop, she began packing up her small travel bag, and within twenty minutes, she was giving the hotel room a brief once-over. Once she was satisfied that she wasn’t leaving anything, she left the room, excited to be returning to her own home earlier than scheduled.
She had a short, creaky ride on the outdated elevator, and when the doors opened, she pulled her keys from her purse while stepping off. She walked toward the glass entry doors and prepared to step out into the crisp night air, but what she saw as she looked up stopped her in her tracks.
Under the dim lights that lit the streets at this hour, Nahla couldjustmake out two figures dressed in all-black, approaching her car. Both individuals were wearing hoods, but their statures told her they were male. She could also see thehand of the one carrying a tire iron, and he looked to be Caucasian.
“What the fuck?” she mumbled. It didn’t take a genius to predict what was about to happen next, and Nahla knew it would be dumb of her to run out into the night at this hour—in this city—with no one to have her back. Not taking her eyes off the door, she reached into her purse again, fumbling for her phone.
She had just retrieved it when the man with the tire iron swung it above his head. Knowing what was coming next, she winced, forcing her eyes closed, but the crash she should have heard from her windshield glass shattering never came. She opened her eyes again, to find that the two men were no longer alone. There was now a third individual, also dressed in all black, but with his hands exposed, and she could clearly tell he was a Black man.
