Free Black Princess Mystery by Jim Power Page A

children
watched the whole thing from the back seat of the car. It was really sad.”
    “He sounds
like he wasn’t too happy.”
      Tasheka shook her head. “He wasn’t happy. He’s
a really good-looking man, charming, accomplished, but he wasn’t happy. It
doesn’t matter what you have, even if you’re rich, if you’re not happy in life,
you have nothing. I felt sorry for him.”
    “Felt sorry
for him or had a crush on him?”
    “He asked
me to meet him at a motel one night for drinks, you know.”
    “But he
was married?” Mrs. Green said with a penetrating look.
    “Still
is,” Tasheka replied. “Anyway,” she continued, intent on changing the subject,
“I switched from male to female serial killers and it was an eye-opening
experience.”
    “How so?”
Mrs. Green asked, sipping her tea.
    “You begin
to look at the world differently, Momma. In a lot of ways, women demonize men
and blame them for everything. We say that they’re the ones who start the wars,
cause fights at dances, and prey on innocent women. They’re the violent ones.
We’re the mothers, sisters, and daughters. It’s a comfortable way of seeing the
world, but the reality is that women can be brutal. Now I not only distrust
men, I distrust women, too. I find myself suspecting everybody of concealing
secrets. I even noticed that with Henrietta today.”
    “Yes,” her
mother interrupted, “I suppose we all have our secrets. Wouldn’t you say so,
Tasheka?”
    “I suppose
we do, Momma.”
    “Do you
have a secret you wish to share with me, honey?”
    “No,”
Tasheka said strangely, a pained expression on her face.
    A long
pause followed.
    “What I’ve
found,” Tasheka continued, “is that there’s a monster lurking inside people. It
just waits for the perfect chain of events to be set free.”
    “I don’t
think so, dear,” Mrs. Green disagreed, fixing her hair. “I think very few
people are capable of monstrous acts. We are not murderers by nature.”
    “Human
beings are well capable of destroying their own kind,” Tasheka said, enjoying
the lively exchange as a diversion from the reality of her dead friend and his
bloody hand. “History has shown us this truth over and over again.”
    “Granted,”
Mrs. Green countered, “there is nothing new in senseless human violence. But
are all of us capable of terrible acts, or only a few? Do all of us, as you
say, have a monster lurking inside?”
    “I think
there is inherent evil in all things,” Tasheka said, “just as there is good in
almost all things. And I don’t mean evil only in people. When one tree outgrows
its neighbor, it steals the light and kills the weaker one. Even animals are
evil.”
    “Animals
are evil?” Mrs. Green said with fascination. “What do you mean?”
    “Some
people think animals live in the perfect world of an animated movie. The rest
think animals kill only for food, so therefore the killing is natural and
justified. This isn’t true. Male lions will kill the cubs of a pride they’ve
overthrown so they can bring the females back into estrous and father their own
young. Bears do the same thing. They might eat the cubs, they might not, but
they definitely murder them.”
    “But is
that evil?” Mrs. Green asked.
    “When you
kill your own kind, that’s murder. Fish eat their siblings without a shred of
compunction. Even female deer chase their young away when food is scarce.”
    “People
might kill for sport,” Mrs. Green said, “but would an animal ever do that,
Tasheka?”
    “Kill for
sport? Oh, yes. I have a man in my psych class who worked in an African hunting
concession as a guide. He said there was this baboon, a big male called Brutus.
He was huge and extremely powerful. Sometimes he would sneak away from the
troupe and work his way through the tall grass toward unsuspecting grazing
animals. Then, all of a sudden, he would leap out of cover and grab a small
gazelle or a baby wildebeest, ripping out its throat. The other