The Good Cop Read Online Free PDF Page A

willing to waste a little time on it. Except now I had deprived myself of the opportunity.
    “Why doesn’t it feel right?” she asked. “Because his mom told you how happy he was as a little boy playing with his G.I. Joe?”
    “Come on, Tina, it—”
    “No, you come on. I know you spent the morning with his family, but we’re going to have to write that off. You’ve got that public housing story to finish.”
    “And I will. I’m mostly just waiting for documents anyway. I could keep juggling that while I plug at this for a few days.”
    Tina shook her head. “Brodie is really hot for that project. I told him we might have copy by the end of next week and—”
    “Then I’ll get you copy by the end of next week. I can do both without—”
    “No, you can’t. I can see it in your eyes. You’re going to spend all your time chasing this fairy tale while—”
    “It’s not a fairy tale! Look, I know Brodie’s thing about suicide. But I’m saying this is one of the times when we should ignore it. Can’t you just trust me that I’ve been around long enough to have decent instincts?”
    “Was I talking too quickly for you before? Let me slow it down for you: nnnooo,” she said, sounding like an annoyed cow. “You have important work to be doing on a real story. I’m not going to have you wasting time on a nonstory.”
    “A nonstory, huh? You’re really so certain—based on all you know about Darius Kipps—that this might not be something?”
    “Monkeys will fly out of my ass first,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I’m so certain I don’t want you spending another second on that, I want copy on the housing project story by the end of this week so I can read it over the weekend. So you might as well get out of here. You’ve got work to do.”
    “Fine … fine! I’m going to have lunch now! And you can’t stop me!” I said defiantly as I stood up.
    But Tina was already ignoring me.
    *   *   *
    I scooted out of the building and walked down the street toward my favorite pizzeria, a place where I often went to sort messy mental laundry. I’m not sure if it was the two steaming slices or the cold Coke Zero, but somehow it always helped me gain perspective on things. Plus, Pizza Therapy is a lot cheaper than counseling.
    Except this time I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about Darius Kipps. Eventually, I began flipping through my notebook to look for something I might have missed—and to imagine what might be missing. Did happy-go-lucky Darius have a quiet, brooding side no one talked about? Was all that drinking he did in his early twenties self-medication of some kind? Was there some hurt in his childhood no one wanted to tell me about?
    Midway through my flipping, I bumped into that photo of Darius at his birthday party. I sat there, studying it for a good three minutes, looking at his wall-to-wall smile, a smile with seemingly no reason to end.
    A reporter comes to understand that H. sapiens is a highly unpredictable creature; that our large, cunning brains make us capable of a greater range of behavior than any other animal on the planet; and that the ability to hide our emotions, from others and even ourselves, is one of our defining traits. How many times had a neighbor told me that so-and-so “never let on” or “she seemed so upbeat” or “he must have just snapped.”
    It happened all the time. But had it really happened to Darius Kipps?
    Finally, just to sate my curiosity, I grabbed my phone and called Newark Police Department Detective Rodney Pritchard. When I met him, Pritch—as everyone called him—had been in homicide. He had recently switched to the Gang Task Force, though since gangs were responsible for most of the homicides in the city, I’m not sure there was much difference. We had done a couple of stories together, including several that made him look pretty good. We had developed a relationship where he knew he could whisper sweet somethings in my ear