The Avenger

"Blunt impact of torso . . . lacerations of liver and right adrenal gland . . . hemorrhages of lung, bowel and pancreas." Jeffries is reading from her proffer to the court, describing Mianni's fatal injuries.

Whitehead, 22, an 11th-grade dropout from Ballou, is listening impassively. He's maybe 6-3, 6-4. Skinny, a foot taller than Jeffries. Soft-spoken, at least in court. Short dreadlocks.

He's pleading guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter and one count of second-degree cruelty to children.

" . . . a cluster of at least seven curved, linear reddish abrasions on the right lateral chest . . . consistent with having been caused by fingernails."

In the spectators' rows, attorneys wait on cases to be called, reading newspapers or leafing through heavy court files. People come in and wander out a few minutes later. Apparently only one relative of Goodine has bothered to come, a grandmother. The child's mother will come, but be so late that she misses the entire hearing.

Jeffries finishes, her narrative at an end.

Christian, to Whitehead: "Are the facts related by Ms. Jeffries true?"

"Yes."

Plea accepted. Business of the court rolls forward. Whitehead eventually gets nine years, three fewer than what Jeffries sought. He will be a free man by the time Mianni would have been in fourth grade. Nothing is as it should be, and everything is just the way it is.

Jeffries walks out of the courthouse, back into the freezing rain. Steam rises from the grates. You dream of summer, of a beach, of anything a million miles away from the short life and miserable death of Mianni Goodine.

Straight Talk

Ask Jeffries how she's doing. "Cool and mellow," she'll say.

Sometimes she refers to women in an offhand manner as "that babe" or "homegirl," and this includes her mom, Bettie Lue, who moved in with her a few years back. Jeffries herself was a single mom. Her only child, Rudy, is in college in Colorado.