It's Hard Out Here for a Player

Meanwhile, Edwards’ firearms charges were sent over to federal court, where he faces at least five years in prison if convicted. In March, Edwards asked Judge Carlos Murguia to find him unfit to stand trial because of his bipolar disorder. The judge rejected his request, and Edwards' trial on the gun charges is scheduled for August 6. In January, a jury found Brown not guilty of aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery charges. Green pleaded guilty to the firearms charges on March 16 and received a sentence of time already served.

Kristie Vital's apartment is a modest first-floor space in southwest Lawrence, just off Iowa Street. The day she talked to the Pitch was warm, so she opened the front windows, allowing a steady breeze to stir through the room. Outside on the front patio, Kristie's sister entertained her daughter with a plastic tricycle and a couple of dolls. Sitting on the living-room couch, Kristie tearfully recounted her last day with Vital: how he washed her car, how they went over to his mother's house for his mother's gumbo. Even when the chaplain and the police officers told her what had happened, she didn't believe it until she saw Anthony's bruised, swollen face a few days later at the funeral home.

Still, Kristie has remained patient, refusing to jump to conclusions about who did what to her husband. "I'm going to let the police sort this out, let them take the time they need." As she said this, she began to choke up. She turned her head away, in the direction of the open windows. "I sure want some closure or something someday," she said. And then, a bit more hopefully: "Someday the truth will come out."

She talks with detectives nearly every week, hearing the latest on the investigation — at least what they will tell her, which, she admits, "isn't all that much."

Kristie takes solace in memories now. Her wall is adorned with a T-shirt that reads "Anthony Vital, R.I.P." Da BombSquad's second album, I Got Work, sits on the DVD player. She and her younger brother, Justin — one of Vital's best friends — have between them more than 300 bulging notebooks filled with Vital's unpublished lyrics. "He scribbled lyrics on everything," Kristie says with a laugh. "Napkins, coasters, anything you can think of." In one rap, written just two months before the murder, Vital seems to be speaking to those he left behind:

To my little bro keep your head up the game is twisted

Just like the world is wicked catch the boat man don't miss it

When it rains it pours don't get washed up on the shore

Bow your head and pray to the Lord

Because He's the guiding light through the dark tunnel of life

Don't worry if I die tonight because I'm happy where I'm headed.

"That was Anthony," Kristie says.

Kristie insists on showing off the photo collages she made for the funeral, collages that now decorate her bedroom. They flash pictures of Vital with Da BombSquad members, with his mother and stepfather, with his niece and with her. Kristie smiles as she points out Vital with a microphone and a mischievous grin. She lingers over a photo of Vital looking over his shoulder, the same picture police used in press releases following his death.

"All I can do is wait," she says. And, then again, "All I can do is wait."