By Public Consent
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 7
Camika had never been to Fourth Street before.
She knew where it was the way she knew where everything in a four block radius was. By proximity. By the accumulated geography of a neighborhood learned on foot over nine years of living in it.
But she had never had a reason to go to Fourth Street.
Until now.
Diana Reeves had called Anita Jamison the night before. Had told her what the evidence showed. Had explained in the careful measured language of a lawyer what the falsified autopsy meant and what the timeline discrepancy meant and what Josiah Butler’s photographs meant.
Anita had listened without speaking.
When Diana finished Anita had said one thing.
“So it wasn’t the boy.”
“No,” Diana said. “It wasn’t Jamal.”
Another silence.
“Then who?”
Diana told her.
The silence after that was the longest of all.
Camika knocked on the door at five thirty on a Friday evening.
Mildred had wanted to come. Camika had said no. Not because she didn’t want Mildred there. Because this was something she needed to do herself. She had told Anita Jamison she would come and she was going to come and she was going to sit across from this woman and tell her the truth in human terms the way only someone who had been paying attention from the beginning could tell it.
The door opened.
Anita Jamison was forty one years old. She had Tyrone’s eyes. Or he had hers. The same shape. The same particular quality of directness that didn’t look away from things even when things were hard to look at.
She had been crying recently. Not currently. The way Denise Wilkes had been crying recently when Nora came to her door. The accumulated evidence of days rather than the raw evidence of minutes.
She looked at Camika.
At this child on her doorstep.
“You’re smaller than I thought,” she said.
“Everyone says that,” Camika said.
Something moved across Anita Jamison’s face that was not quite a smile and not quite anything else.
“Come in,” she said.
The apartment on Fourth Street was three blocks from Butler Funeral Home and four blocks from the corner of Riordan and Fifth.
Anita had not been back to that corner since the night they took Tyrone from her arms.
She sat across from Camika at her kitchen table with her hands folded and her eyes steady and the specific quality of a woman who has decided to receive whatever is coming rather than brace against it.
On the wall behind her were photographs of Tyrone.
Every age. Baby. Toddler. Gap toothed elementary school. JV basketball uniform. The most recent one was from Christmas. Sixteen years old. Tall. His mother’s eyes.
Camika looked at the photographs.
Then at Anita.
“Thank you for letting me come,” she said.
“Diana said you would tell me what the lawyers can’t,” Anita said. “The human part.”
“Yes,” Camika said.
“Then tell me.”
Camika opened her notebook.
Not to read from it. She didn’t need to read from it. She knew every word of what was in it. She opened it because the notebook was part of how she thought and how she spoke and Anita Jamison deserved everything Camika had.
She told her.
Not the legal version. The human version. What happened on Riordan and Fifth that night in the sequence it actually happened. What Henderson did and what he decided and why he decided it and what he did after. What Marsh did. What Webb did. What the photographs from Josiah Butler’s phone showed and what they meant.
She told her about Jamal. Walking home by nine o’clock the way his mother taught him. Stopping because he didn’t run from things. Standing there in the rain not understanding what was being built around him.
She told her about the notebook. About Point A. About every piece of evidence that connected to every other piece until the picture was complete and undeniable.
She told her all of it.
Anita Jamison listened without interrupting.
When Camika finished the kitchen was very quiet.
Outside on Fourth Street Ten Pines went about its Friday evening. Music from somewhere. Children. The particular sound of a neighborhood that keeps going regardless of what happens inside any one apartment.
Anita looked at the photograph of Tyrone on the wall.
The Christmas one. Sixteen years old. Tall. Her eyes looking back at her.
“He was just walking,” she said.
“Yes,” Camika said.
“He wasn’t doing anything.”
“No.”
“Just existing. Just being alive on a street in his own neighborhood.” Her voice was controlled but only just. “And that was enough for that man to—” She stopped.
Camika said nothing.
She let the silence be what it needed to be.
After a long moment Anita looked back at her.
“I blamed that boy,” she said. “Jamal. I believed—” She stopped again. Her jaw tightened. “I said things. In the neighborhood. To people.” She looked at her hands. “I believed what they told me because why would I have any reason not to believe it.”
“They made it believable,” Camika said carefully. “That was the point. They needed you to believe it. They needed everyone to believe it so nobody would ask the question that would unravel everything.”
“What question?”
“Why was Henderson already there before anyone called it in.”
Anita was quiet for a moment.
“A child asked that question,” she said.
“Yes,” Camika said.
“A nine year old child asked the question that fourteen year veterans and prosecutors and the whole system didn’t ask.”
“Someone had to,” Camika said simply.
Anita looked at her across the kitchen table. At this nine year old girl with her notebook and her duct tape backpack and her eyes that were considerably older than the rest of her face.
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