Free The Bridge by Solomon Jones Page A

a few seconds before looking away.
    â€œWhere’s the child now?” the captain asked him.
    â€œWe don’t know yet, sir. But we’re holding her aunt back at Central. The suspect in the pursuit was the aunt’s boyfriend, Sonny Williams. We have reason to believe that Williams knows where the girl is.”
    â€œAnd what reason might that be?”
    â€œThe aunt and a neighbor said he was molesting her.”
    The captain mulled the answer for a few seconds, then pulled Lynch aside, leading him away from his car. Daneen and Wilson looked on for a moment, then turned to watch a news van fly past them.
    The captain shook his head and turned to Lynch.
    â€œYou know, you were going to get your lieutenant’s bar next month,” he said, turning around to watch as the news van disappeared on Oxford Street on its way to the accident scene.
    â€œWere?” Lynch said, his face etched in confusion.
    The captain paused.
    â€œYou’re the best detective in Central,” he said. “And I don’t want to lose you. But what happens to you is out of my hands now, especially if the guy they’re cutting out of that car on Oxford Street doesn’t make it.”
    â€œI don’t understand, sir.”
    â€œI guess you didn’t hear with all the confusion of the chase,” the captain said, searching Lynch’s eyes for comprehension.
    â€œHear what?”
    â€œIt’s Judge Baylor in the accident. He was on his way home when your suspect hit his car and it flipped. Rescue’s been on the scene for about ten minutes now. They said it looks like his skull is fractured. He might not make it.”

    Lynch said nothing. But his mind raced as he digested what it would mean if Judge John Baylor were to die because of his decision to chase Sonny.
    Baylor—who’d escaped his hardscrabble upbringing in the Crispus Attucks housing project with a thirst for education that had led him to law school—was a man whose influence went well beyond the bench.
    In the midst of the drug wars that erupted in the late eighties, Baylor trod where even the police dared not to. When gunshots split the night air and dead bodies greeted morning, Baylor stood on corners and showed manhood to gun-toting adolescents by convincing them to lay down their arms.
    When Charmaine and her cousin were shot to death by June on the eve of her testimony at his murder trial, it was Baylor who consoled her family and raised money to pay for proper burials.
    Because of his rare combination of compassion and strength, entire blocks fell silent when his powder-blue Mercedes rounded the corner. When he emerged from the car, the distinctive white Afro that topped his diminutive frame conveyed wisdom even before he spoke. And when he fixed people in his gaze, the coal-black, silver-ringed eyes that peered out from mahogany skin were captivating.
    John Baylor had gained with strength of character what legions of drug dealers had tried to gain with bullets. He’d gained respect. Not just in the black community, but everywhere.
    For conservatives, his rise to the bench was proof that racism did not exist. For liberals, his commitment to equal justice provided hope for change from within the system. And for the poverty-stricken blacks who’d watched him escape the streets and then come back to tame them, he was simply a hero.
    Baylor had been planning to run for district attorney as an independent candidate in the upcoming general election. He was just about ready to resign from the bench, announce his candidacy, and
secure endorsements. And with the fund-raising ability of some of his key supporters, he was expected to win easily.
    But none of that mattered now, because Baylor wasn’t going to make it through the night. The judge’s blood and the dashed hopes of an entire community would be on Lynch’s hands.
    As he got into his car and peeled away from the corner with Daneen and Wilson in