Cry Me a River Read Online Free PDF Page A

boys,” Captain Perry reminded him. “At some point they made a choice.”
    “Yeah, join my gang or get your head stuffed up your ass,” Ham muttered. He exhaled slowly. “We had him out, man.”
    “Maybe we weren’t enough,” Grace said. Her thoughts flew, as they often did, to Clay. Doubtless rocket club had been canceled. He’d be eager for the overnight, but maybe she should bail, stay on the job—
    No way. As sorry as she was about Malcolm, Clay came first. Then Malcolm, then Haleem. Last night, she’d promised Haleem she’d catch his killer. Last night, he was number one on her list. Or was that just something she’d said to hear herself talk?

CHAPTER
         FOUR
    Grace wanted to go directly to the crime scene, to see where Malcolm had died, but it was more important to locate Jamal. The lowering Oklahoma sky pushed against Grace’s back while she and Ham worked the mean streets, two white faces in a blasted-out black-and-brown neighborhood with a prison-style perimeter of hurricane fences plastered with posters for cheap car repairs, bail bonds, hip-hop concerts, and Mexican cheese. Styrofoam fast-food containers and paper plates twirled and spun in the damn wind that would not let up; they had to yell at people to be heard, and everyone pretended to be deaf anyway. When you were poor and hopeless, you admired power. The cops didn’t have power here. The gangs did.
    The scenic stretch of dollar stores, thrift shops, liquor stores, a closed bank, and a grocery store with a broken window belonged to the 13X Boyz. When Jamal had left the Sixty-Sixes, he had moved his grandfather and little brother out of Sixty-Six territory, but he couldn’t manage to leave gangland behind. He didn’t have the cash. Yet. Jamal had been working on his dream—a little house farther away from all the bad guys, like in Norman. Saving all his paychecks.
    Or so he told her. Maybe he’d been lying to her to make her feel better. Maybe he’d known that Norman was a lot farther away than the road atlas indicated.
    “How long has he been gone?” Grace asked Jamal’s grandfather when she and Ham arrived at the Briscombes’ run-down apartment, located over a garage that had, in the past, served as a meth lab. Casa Briscombe was the home of someone who had diligently followed the rules and gotten smacked around because of it. Threadbare carpet, church-donated refrigerator, two-ring cook stove. It smelled like oil changes and alley garbage.
    “He took off soon as we got the call. I had to go down to the morgue by myself, make what you call a positive identi …” He trailed off, staring at his hands as if he had never seen them before. “Make sure it was my boy.” Tears slid down his face.
    Jedidiah Briscombe had always looked older than his sixty-five years; tonight he looked three hundred and change. Seated in a vintage brown-and-orange frayed recliner, he held the framed photograph of Jamal and Malcolm at the party the squad had thrown when Jamal supposedly got out of the gang. There in the photo stood Grace, with a turquoise feather in her hair, and Rhetta, in a dress; Ham, and Henry. Butch and Bobby. And Lieutenant Yukon, grinning from ear to ear with his arm around Jamal’s shoulders. Lieutenant Yukon had been their boss before his POS addict brother shot him dead, right in the squad room. He had died in Grace’s arms.
    Grace remembered the taste of chocolate cake and icy fruit punch; how Jamal’s white teeth had outshone all the cop badges in the room. How awkward he had been as the center of attention, but how pleased and proud. Everybody had pooled their money to buy the J-man some good clothes for job interviews; Butch’s mom whispered into a couple of ears, got him something in a mail room for a foundation whose board she sat on. Next stop, community college, maybe a trade school. A
life
.
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Briscombe. I really am,” Grace said. She squeezed his trembling hand. “And I know