Cry Me a River Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Do you know why Malcolm was in that neighborhood last night? It was a school night. Shouldn’t he have been home? It was after curfew.”
    “I thought he was in bed. He came in my room and kissed me good night. Must have snuck out.” He shut his eyes tightly as if he could blot out the horror. “I wish to God I had woken up. I’d have stopped him.”
    Grace wondered if Malcolm had joined the Sixty-Sixes, too. There were a hundred reasons for a thirteen-year-old to sneak out at night—hell, she’d done it—and none of them were good. Less so, if you lived in a neighborhood like this one.
    God, she felt so sorry for this old man.
    “I want to go to see Malcolm again,” he said, opening his eyes. “I got to see him. Maybe it’s not him.” He sounded too excited, a little manic. “Maybe—”
    “No, it’s him,” Grace said, gently but clearly. “You shouldn’t do that.” That mangled carcass in Henry’s fridge was Malcolm no longer.
    He went silent. She could hear him panting. His hand was shaking so hard she was afraid it would break off at the wrist if she continued to hold it.
    “Then I want to go to my church. I want to see Reverend Stone.” He started to get up.
    “We can call him for you. He’ll come over here,” Ham said. It was the first time he had spoken other than offering his condolences to Mr. Briscombe. Grace’s partnerhad great instincts about when it was better to let her do the talking. Sometimes it was a woman thing, sometimes it was because she was short and, therefore, less intimidating. Sometimes, it was just because she was Grace.
    “I need to go,” Mr. Briscombe said. “I need to talk to my pastor.”
    “What if Jamal comes back? He’ll need you. You need each other,” Grace insisted.
    She didn’t mention that the apartment was being watched. Butch and Bobby were in an unmarked car up the street, waiting for Jamal to show.
    “I got to go. I’ll take the bus,” he insisted.
    Grace had seen grief before. She knew it was fragmenting him, scattering his thoughts. She had watched a wife do a load of laundry for a husband who had just died, a brother call a brain-dead sister’s place of employment to explain that she wouldn’t be in today. Your life just blew apart, and you worked overtime to put it back together.
    “We’ll drive you,” Grace said.
    “No.” Mr. Briscombe emphatically shook his head. “I can’t be seen with y’all. If Jamal’s back with the Sixty-Sixes, it’ll go even harder for him if they see his grand-pop with the police.”
    “This isn’t Sixty-Six territory,” Grace pointed out. “And maybe if he sees Ham and me, he’ll know we care about him and want to help.”
Remind him that he risked his life to give us information on his homeys and if they find that out, they’ll come for Grandpa, too. Maybe seeing us together will scare him shitless back to the light. Or maybe I’ll scare him myself. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it. Especially if he can help me find out who did this
.
    Mr. Briscombe didn’t know Jamal had become a CI, only that someone on the police force who happened tobe named Grace Hanadarko had taken a special interest in his grandkid, and given him a hand up. That had astonished the older man, who’d taken a beating from a white cop when he’d sat at a segregated lunch counter, and avoided white people for the rest of his life. Avoiding white people was actually—sadly—pretty easy to do, even in these days of so-called integration.
    “You’re my little white angel,” he said suddenly to Grace. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
    Grace jerked. Why the hell had he said that? Did
he
have a last-chance angel, too?
    “Thank you, Mr. Briscombe,” she said.
    He exhaled and began the long, painful struggle to get out of his recliner. The walk-up had no elevator; with her hands wrapped around his, she had a brief, disturbing image of him getting sick up here, too weak to get downstairs for groceries and help. She made a