A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) by Sister Souljah Page A

has—and no matter if he is holding a stockpile of weapons and ammunition—a trained warrior will disarm and disable or dead him in seconds, and everything he has or had becomes mine . . . if I want it.
    *  *  *
    “It stinks.” Hours later, the morning after the murder, two police in plain street clothes, wearing their badges like necklaces, entered the room. It was their beef stinking up their windowless side room. Now rotting meat mixed with the smell of their coffee and sugar doughnuts and the residue of their cigarettes, and a trace of alcohol on at least one of ’em. I had my head down on the table, not asleep anymore; my eyes were open and I was listening with my mind alert. Calm now, my thoughts dropping down rapidly, then shifting right into place like Tetris.
    “Wake up! We don’t sleep. You don’t sleep, either,” one of them said.
    But of course I knew they had slept. Why else would they leave me sitting in the chair for eight hours? Seated straight now, I put my blank face back on.
    “Get Officer Darby to escort this perp to the bathroom. It fucking stinks in here. Smells like he shitted in his diaper.”
    In the bathroom built with cement cinder blocks and no windows, I was about “to handle my business.” First time in my life I’d ever been in a public bathroom with other men who were not there to handle their own business in their own stall or individual urinal. These cops were here to watch me.
    “Bet you didn’t know you have to ask every time you want to go to the potty and pee-pee,” one of ’em joked.
    “If you don’t cooperate, you’ll be doing this all day every day for the rest of your life.” He exaggerated his threat. Still cuffed, I was standing, still adjusting. In a room where there was no way outexcept through the front door, in a heavily armed police precinct, where these two uniformed cops could’ve just posted at that front door and waited for me to finish, they chose to enter with me. One of them was walking in and out of each stall collecting the toilet paper.
    “If you want tissue for your ass, you gotta open your fucking mouth and ask me for it,” he said, juggling the rolls, dropping one or two and leaving them on the floor. I didn’t reach down for it. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You don’t have a name and you can’t talk,” he said sarcastically. “Go ahead. Take a dump. We ain’t got all day.”
    He watched. Must’ve been some twisted pleasure for him to see if I could manage in the bathroom cuffed. As I walked in a stall he ordered, “Leave the door open.” I pulled down my jeans and eased down my boxers. When I was done, I realized I couldn’t wipe my ass while cuffed. He was standing in the stall with me now, laughing.
    “Hey shitty ass,” he said. “Need some help? Ask me for it.” I didn’t. He uncuffed me but stood in the stall immediately in front of me. “I’ll let you wipe your ass if you ask me for the tissue,” he smirked. I didn’t ask. I stepped out of my jeans and removed my boxers and used them to wipe my ass. I threw the boxers in the toilet same as though they were toilet tissue. I flushed with my foot, and didn’t pay attention to the toilet clogging as I climbed back into my jeans. Now me and him are face to face in the tight stall. “Don’t you dare glare at me,” he said. “Hands!” he ordered and cuffed me. I waited till he stepped back out. He did. I moved past the cop to use the sink to wash my hands, and even washed the shit off the cuffs.
    “You should’ve emptied out the soap too,” his partner said, laughing at his failed attempt to get me to break my silence.
    Escorted out of the bathroom like a toddler, I listened with my brain and not my heart as they talked dumb shit.
    “Fucking animal, I’d put a bullet between his eyes if he ever glanced at my wife,” the cop who’d stood in the stall with me said to the other.
    He has a wife? I thought to myself. I pity her. She probably respects her husband, the