By Public Consent
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 1
Anita Jamison was washing dishes when her neighbor Cheryl knocked.
She knew from the knock. Not what it was. Just that it was something. The specific quality of a knock that arrives too fast and too hard from someone who has been running.
She opened the door.
Cheryl’s face told her before the words did.
“Anita,” Cheryl said. “It’s Tyrone.”
She ran the four blocks.
Later she wouldn’t remember running. Wouldn’t remember the cold or the wet pavement or the police lights turning the rain red and blue at the corner of Riordan and Fifth. Wouldn’t remember tearing through the crime scene tape or the officer who reached for her arm or the sound of her own voice.
She would only remember the shape under the sheet.
She knew that shape.
She had known that shape since the moment he was placed in her arms sixteen years ago. Had memorized every inch of it through childhood fevers and growth spurts and the particular way he slept with one arm thrown over his head since he was three years old.
She knew her son.
She went ripped the tape.
The officer said something. She didn’t hear it. She was already on her knees on the wet pavement and her hands were on the sheet and then the sheet was gone and there was Tyrone.
Her boy.
Her son.
She picked him up. Both arms. Pulled him against her chest the way she had held him when he ⁸was small and frightened and needed to know the world was safe. Cradled his head against her bosom. Rocked him in the red and blue light on the wet pavement of Riordan and Fifth while the rain came down around them.
“My boy,” she cried out. The sorrow of a mother’s grief from her child’s life stolen from him.
It came from somewhere beneath language. Beneath thought. From the place where a mother’s love lives that has no name and no ceiling and no floor and goes on in every direction without end.
“My boy. My boy.”
She rocked him.
“They killed my boy!” She cried out demanding justice. Looking up at nothing. At the rain. At the lights. At the faces around her that had no answers. “They killed my son!”
She didn’t know who.
She didn’t know why.
She only knew the weight of him in her arms and the specific stillness of a body that had been warm this morning and was cold now and would never be warm again.
“My son,” she sobbed. Rocking. “My son. My son. My son...”
The officer who had reached for her arm stepped back.
Nobody moved her.
Nobody touched her.
The rain came down on Anita Jamison and her son on the corner of Riordan and Fifth in Ten Pines and the police lights turned the wet pavement red and blue and she rocked him and said his name in the dark until they finally gently took him from her arms.
She let them take him.
Because she had no strength left.
Because he was already gone.
She knelt on the wet pavement after they took him and fell prostrate on the wet pavement and put her face in her hands. Then stretched up a hand as if reaching out to heaven attempting to feel the specific shape of a world with her son removed from it.
It had no shape at all.
Three blocks away on Riordan Street Mildred Foster was making dinner.
Patrick was doing homework at the kitchen table.
Camika was in her room reading.
None of them knew yet what had happened on the corner of Riordan and Fifth.
None of them knew that in about an hour a knock would come at their door.
Three soft.
One hard.
And everything would begin.
The knock came at eight forty-seven on a Tuesday night.
Camika knew it was important before she opened the door. Not because of how it sounded. Because of what it wasn’t. It wasn’t the easy familiar knock of a neighbor. It wasn’t Patrick forgetting his key. It wasn’t the particular rhythm of anyone she expected.
It was the knock of someone who needed something and had come to the only door they could think of.
She opened it.
Denise Wilkes was still in her work clothes. Burgundy scrubs under a winter coat she hadn’t bothered to button. Her hair still pulled back from her shift. Her eyes red and dry the way eyes get when the crying has temporarily run out and left something harder in its place.
Camika had seen her around the neighborhood her whole life. Knew her face the way you know everyone’s face in a four block radius. Knew she was Jamal’s mother. Knew she worked hard and kept her boys close.
She had never seen her look like this.
“Ms. Wilkes,” Camika said.
“Is your grandmother home?” Denise said. Her voice was careful and controlled in the specific way of someone holding something together through sheer will.
“Yes,” Camika said. “Come in.”
Mildred came out of the kitchen when she heard the door. She took one look at Denise Wilkes and did what Mildred always did when someone came through her door carrying something too heavy.
She put her arms around her.
Denise held on for a moment. Then she stepped back and pressed her lips together and looked at the ceiling and pulled herself back from the edge of whatever was threatening to come up.
“Sit down baby,” Mildred said. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
They sat at the kitchen table. Mildred brought coffee. Patrick came out of his room and took one look at Denise and stayed in the doorway without being asked to.
Camika sat across from Denise and waited.
“They arrested Jamal,” Denise said.
The kitchen was very quiet.
“Tonight,” she said. “About an hour ago. He was walking home from Marcus’s. He texted me he was leaving.” Her jaw tightened. “He was following the rules. Home by nine. Always home by nine.” She looked at her coffee cup. “He heard a shot on Riordan and Fifth and he stopped. Because that’s Jamal. He doesn’t run from things.” She paused. “And the police came and they saw him standing there and they took him.”
“What are they charging him with?” Camika said.
“Murder,” Denise said. The word landing flat and enormous in Mildred’s kitchen. “They said he killed that boy. Tyrone Jamison.” She looked up. “Jamal didn’t kill anyone. He doesn’t own a gun. He’s never been in trouble a day in his life.” Her voice cracked on the last sentence and she pressed her lips together again and held it.
Camika looked at her notebook on the table. She’d brought it out of habit when she heard the knock. The way she always brought it.
She didn’t open it yet.
“Ms. Wilkes,” she said carefully. “Did Jamal use his phone call yet?”
“He called me,” Denise said. “First thing. He said Mama I didn’t do anything and then they took the phone.”
“So he hasn’t called anyone else.”
“No.”
“Good,” Camika said. “He needs to stop talking. Completely. Not to the officers. Not to anyone in that precinct. Not until he has a lawyer present.” She paused. “Has anyone contacted you about a lawyer?”
“I can’t afford—”
“That’s not what I asked,” Camika said gently. “Has anyone contacted you.”
“No,” Denise said.
Camika looked at Mildred.
Mildred looked at the clock. Eight fifty four.
“It’s not too late,” Camika said.
She picked up her phone.
Malcom Forbes answered on the second ring.
“Camika,” he said.
“Mr. Forbes,” she said. “I’m sorry to call at this hour.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “What do you need?”
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