Oh, I’d be happy to corner Quincy.

Ummm…Never mind. I’ll call him again.

Hater. Let me know if you want me to come through.

K. Love you.

I should turn the TV off, but I can’t help myself. I turn up the volume. Susan plays footage of Jamal’s interview. They replay Mama saying Daddy is innocent, then Jamal smiling onstage. The words The calculated act of a killer? flash up on the screen.

The news continues, except this time Susan’s talking about Daddy. His mug shot goes up with sketches from the courtroom. It’s been so long since I’ve seen his story on the news. Flashes of old memories run through my mind. Déjà vu.

Jamal Beaumont is the son of convicted killer James Beaumont. Cathy and Mark Davidson were killed by gunshot in their downtown Galveston County office. A second suspected shooter, Jackson Ridges, barricaded himself in his home and died when police attempted to bring him in for questioning. James Beaumont stood trial. Upon conviction, he was the only one to pay for the crime in the Davidson family massacre.

“Jackson was murdered, too,” I say to the television.

The district attorney wanted Daddy to take a plea deal, say it was self-defense, anything to get the death penalty off the table. Daddy’s attorney thought he should take the deal because of the way the case was building against them. But Daddy wouldn’t do it. Not when he was innocent. He also believed if he took a deal, then he wouldn’t just be pleading guilty for himself; he’d be claiming that for Jackson, too. He couldn’t help justify Jackson’s murder, so Daddy didn’t take a plea deal.

We lost.

Even with the gun missing…even though there was no blood or marks on Daddy…even though he had multiple people who could confirm his alibi…we lost.

My father’s alibi was trumped by white witnesses in the neighborhood who swore they saw Daddy’s Buick, with two Black men inside, leaving the Davidson office late that afternoon, not at noon like Daddy said. I used to ask Daddy if he thought things would be different if he’d had a Black attorney, that maybe his attorney would have understood the bias in the trial more. Daddy squashed that. It wasn’t about the race of his attorney, but about being a Black man on trial in a town that never accepted us. Everyone wanted an answer to a heinous crime, and it was easier to think it was an outsider—someone “not like them.”

I won’t let Jamal go down like that. Not this time. Not if I can help it.

We can’t lose again.

POLICE STATE