10/19/1988

Last Known Address:

2620 Wilder Street City, State, ZIP:

Philadelphia, PA 19147 Convicted of:

3123 Involuntary deviant sexual intercourse amp; rape of an unconscious or unaware person Phila Police Dept Case No.:

Kendrik LeShawn Mays's mother raised her eyebrows. But she did not appear at all surprised. Nor at all concerned that Will Curtis had her son's Wanted sheet.

She sighed.

"Yeah," she said, "that him. Guess he lied. Said he took care of that."

She looked at Curtis. "No check, huh?"

More like a reality check, Curtis thought.

He shook his head.

"No check." Will Curtis went down the unstable wooden steps into the basement. His left hand slid along the wooden handrail, and his right hand, holding the.45-caliber pistol, followed the wall of mostly busted Sheetrock.

There was some light from the small window at the far end of the room-the one the rats had gone through-but not enough for him to make out anything but vague shapes in the pitch dark.

There was a stench, although not like the putrid smell that had assaulted his olfactory senses at the front door. The odor here was a sickly sweet stench that became stronger the farther down the stairs he went. So far, though, it hadn't triggered his gag reflex, and he was grateful for such small favors.

At the foot of the stairs, Curtis stopped and listened. He could hear snoring about midway in the room.

That's two people snoring!

One deep as hell.

He felt around on the wall for a light switch. As best he could tell there wasn't one, just busted-up drywall.

He took another step, reaching farther down the wall, then felt his foot catch on a rope or cord or something.

Some kind of trip wire?

He carefully reached down with his left hand till he felt it.

It was a vinyl-covered electrical extension cord that had been run from upstairs. When he tugged on it, something attached to its far end started sliding across the basement floor toward him.

He pulled and pulled, and finally found at the end what had once been the guts of a lamp. All that was left from the lamp was a threaded metal rod attached to the receptacle that held a lone bare lightbulb. His thumb found the stick push-switch on the receptacle, and after positioning himself in a crouch and aiming his pistol in the direction of the snoring, Curtis pushed the switch on.

The bare bulb burned brightly, damn near blinding him until his eyes adjusted.

The only response from the middle of the room was another loud, deep snore.

After his eyes adjusted, Will Curtis could not believe what he was seeing.

The basement was the worst thing he'd ever seen in his life. It was completely trashed. The Sheetrock walls were all busted, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them in search of whatever treasure might be hidden behind them. And then he saw why: The wiring had been ripped from the wall power outlets and light switches.

It probably was cheap aluminum, not copper, wiring, making the effort mostly worthless. Idiots.

Desperate idiots…

Trash was strewn all across the floor. There were piles upon piles of dirty clothes that hadn't been touched in years. Dust and dirt were everywhere. And, in a far corner by a plastic bucket, he saw the source of the sickly sweet stench: mounds of dried human waste.

Indescribable filth!

Animals wouldn't live in this!

Just then, a rat ran across his booted feet, away from the light and toward the darkness of a far corner, along the way scattering what looked like rolling waves of cockroaches.

Jesus H. Christ!

This place should've been condemned a decade ago!

Then he looked to the middle of the room, to the source of the snoring.

There he saw a dirty and torn mattress set up on wooden pallets-presumably to keep it safe from the sea of cockroaches below-and on the mattress were two human forms lying side by side.

One, the deep snorer, was a black male whose coarse face made him look older than his picture in the Wanted mug shot. His hair was cut short, and he had a goatee.

The other was a very young black girl.

Twelve? Thirteen?

That sonofabitch!

Both were naked, the girl curled under a dirty bath towel she used as a makeshift blanket. Kendrik had a rolled-up jacket under his head, his right hand under it and his left hand resting on the girl's exposed bony buttock. It looked as if they had been spooning but the girl had crawled forward, away from Kendrik.

They look so dirty-so foul.

Will Curtis called out: "Kendrik Mays!"

Mays didn't move. The girl's left eye opened suddenly, then closed. She pretended to still be asleep.

Curtis walked closer to Mays, then kicked the mattress. "Kendrik!"

He saw a groggy Mays struggle to turn his head. Then he opened his right eye to look at whoever was disturbing his sleep.

From under his jacket he suddenly pulled out a small snub-nosed revolver.

Oh, shit! Curtis thought as he instinctively leveled the Glock at Mays.

Then Curtis saw that Mays's hand was shaking so severely he couldn't keep a grip on the gun.

Curtis kicked the hand, his heavy boot causing the pistol to fly across the basement. It landed in a pile of dirty clothes.

"Sit up, you sonofabitch!" Curtis barked at Mays.

It took Mays forever to comply.

When he had finally done so, the girl turned to look at Curtis.

And Will Curtis ached.

She was as badly bruised as Kendrik's mother. She wasn't as young as he'd thought-she can't be over seventeen, eighteen-and she was terribly skinny from the drug abuse. Her skin sagged from her small frame, and Curtis could see her bones clearly delineated under the loose flesh.

When Kendrik moved his hand to scratch his head, the girl flinched.

She's conditioned to getting hit for the slightest thing…

"You," Curtis said to her, kicking a ratty dress toward her. "Get dressed and get the hell out of here!"

She looked back wordlessly, her sunken eyes wide.

Then she looked to Mays, seemingly for permission.

Mays, his head cocked, stared belligerently at Curtis, his look saying, Who the fuck does this honky think he is, aiming a fucking Glock at Kendrik Fucking Mays?

Curtis motioned with the pistol toward the female. "Go! Now!"

Kendrik said, "Go on, bitch. I deal with you later."

She slid the dress over her head, not bothering to put on any panties, and then moved to the wooden stairs. She looked back over her shoulder, then turned and went upstairs as fast as she could.

Curtis, the pistol aimed at Mays's face, handed him the Wanted poster.

"This you?" Will asked.

Mays looked at it, then at Curtis. Then he smiled.

Will Curtis thought: Jesus! What rotted teeth!

At least the ones he still has.

He must be living on crystal meth.

Kendrik then said: "Fuck you! What if it is, old man?"

He spat on the floor.

"You do what it says you did?"

"Fuck you!" he repeated.

He tried to stare down Curtis. But then he suddenly started to shake uncontrollably.

After a moment, he said, "Maybe. What's it to you?" He shook again, then tried to puff out his chest. "Yeah. I done it. All that and more. Two years ago. Why you here now?"

"I'd say, 'May God have pity on you,' but I think you're past that point."

Kendrik barked: "Fuck you, motherfucker!"

Will Curtis nodded.

And he squeezed the trigger of the Glock.

The.45-caliber round entered Kendrik's right cheek, making an entrance wound just below the eye that looked like a pulpy crimson hole.

Kendrik LeShawn Mays's eyes rolled back as he suddenly slumped onto the filthy torn mattress. When he got to the top of the stairs, Will Curtis found Kendrik's mother standing solemnly in the middle of the shabby living room. She had her head down, her face expressionless. Her arms were tightly crossed over her chest, her hands squeezing her biceps. The girl was nowhere in sight.