“That means he’s got a couple of years before he has to murder someone,” Ham said. “Make his bones.”
“If they do consider Jamal one of their own, they’ll look on Malcolm as a little brother. They’ll demand payback for his death,” Grace said. “If they know who ran over him …”
Ham picked up another photograph, scowling, then his face softened as perhaps he, too, remembered the funny little boy Malcolm had once been. Malcolm had a thing about the zoo—loved the snow leopards. And sour candy, like Clay.
“A death for a death,” Ham said. “Law of the streets.”
“Good. Let ’em kill each other,” Grace muttered. “Swear to God, I’d just nuke ’em if I could.”
There was silence. No one was inclined to argue. Emotionally, anyway. But they were the real law. They were not someone like Timothy McVeigh—or even God—intent on hitting reset by committing a major act of terror—in one case, a bombing; in the other, a big, fat flood. No, they had to follow the rules and bring in the guilty. Even protect them, until they got a fair trial. But the anger she felt was righteous anger, for a little boy who had never done anything wrong. Her heart was hurting for the injustice of his stupid, senseless death.
Maybe senseless, maybe not, her cop brain argued back. For kids who lived like the Briscombes did—in poverty, in ghettos, with black faces—the line between right and wrong was often very blurry.
“I need to be lead on this case,” she said quietly. “Us.” She looked at Ham, who nodded emphatically. He was in, and she was grateful down to her boots. Together they would make this right.
Just not together together.
“You’ve got it,” Captain Perry said.
“Thanks.” Grace rose from her chair. Her legs felt more solid now. For a few moments she’d been lightheaded with anger and sorrow. But she’d found her source of gravity again: Malcolm was going to get some justice.
“Malcolm is personal. For the whole squad. I’ll tell Butch and Bobby to give you an assist.” Captain Perry gathered up the photographs and slid them into a case folder.
Then she gazed at each detective in turn. “The faster you move, the better. Before Jamal does something that ruins his own life.”
“Sixteen, dead brother, pissed as hell,” Grace said. “Not a great combination.” She patted herself down for her car keys. “What was all that bullshit on the news this morning?”
Captain Perry pursed her lips. “You’re talking about Kendra Burke’s report.”
“Damn straight. Gang violence is sky-high. There’s a turf war on. People should be staying off the streets after dark and locking their doors.” Grace frowned at Ham, who was obviously drawing a blank. “There was this puff piece Kendra did, about how violent crimes are down in Oklahoma City.”
“Say what?” Ham looked from Grace to Captain Perry and back again. “Why’d she do that?”
“Guess someone’s planning their reelection campaign,” Captain Perry bit off. “Used her as their mouthpiece. Only you did not hear me say that.”
“Shit,” Ham said, scowling. “What’s Butch got to say about that?”
Grace realized the question was largely rhetorical—what Ham was really saying was that Butch’s choice in fiancées was questionable at best. Grace liked Kendra but she had to agree; nevertheless, she moved back to more important matters.
“We should go find Jamal before he does something that he can’t fix,” Grace said to Ham.
“His grandfather has no idea where he is.” The captain spread her hands over the case folder.
Ham grunted sympathetically. “Poor old man. One grandson dies, the other hits the streets.”
“He did everything he could for those two 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 this is a terrible time. But we need to find Jamal.”
“Malcolm, Malcolm,” he wept.
Grace kept holding his hand. Her heartbeat ticked away the seconds but she kept every single emotional impulse in check. This was the edge cops had—to wall off their feelings so they could concentrate on their work. She was very walled off at the moment.
But as he sobbed, she could feel the cracks starting to form.
Ham shifted. Grace read his body language: He didn’t want to hurt Mr. Briscombe, either, but if Jamal’s grandfath
er knew where his surviving grandson was, he would be doing him no favors by withholding information. In the gang life, Jamal had revealed weakness and/or betrayal by walking out on his “brothers.” If he tried to rejoin, they might brutalize him as punishment, or as a test of his loyalty. The Sixty-Sixes “beat in” their recruits—made them endure a beating for sixty-six seconds. If any of them had discovered in the meantime that Jamal had been a CI, they’d kill him. Slowly. In bits and pieces. Grace and Ham had picked up the pieces of some of those lessons. And deposited them in dozens of evidence bags.
“I know this is terrible. I know that you’re hurting,” Grace said. “But we need to focus on Jamal right now. If he does something to strike back—”
“It’s that goddamn gang,” the old man broke off. “Vampires. Monsters.”
She couldn’t argue. It was such a vicious cycle-gangs, injustice, rage, violence. And kids, in the mix. It was so wrong that kids got sucked in and flattened by the whole horrible machine. But they did.
A tear slid from Mr. Briscombe’s left eye and zigzagged down his sunken, wrinkled cheek, clinging to the end of his nose. He began to make a strange hitching sound, and for a second Grace thought he was having a heart attack or stroking out. But it was his grief speaking. Sucking the life out of him, and making him even older.
“He said he had to do this for Malcolm,” Mr. Briscombe said, in a thin, papery voice. Grace went on alert. He was going to tell them where Jamal was. She and Ham exchanged glances and stayed quiet, giving Mr. Briscombe time to say what was on his mind.
“I begged him not to. I told him to stay here, with me. I said, ‘Boy, they’ll kill you.’ But he told me they all loved Malcolm like a little brother, and that they’d get the people who had done this.”
“We’ll get those people,” Grace half whispered. “That’s our job.”
Jamal had been eleven years old when he’d joined the Sixty-Sixes. When they’d beat him in, he’d cracked a rib that never healed properly, because he never got medical attention for it. He started breaking into houses and stealing cars, working his way up to the things he kept from her.
She had asked him point-blank if he’d ever murdered anyone, and he’d crossed his arms and looked away when he’d told her that he hadn’t. The main reason he’d gotten out was to keep Malcolm from going in.
This is so damn twisted, Grace thought. We do crazy-ass things to save the people we love. Decades ago, she had nearly bitten off Father Patrick Satan Murphy’s tongue rather than let him use it on her little sister, Paige. Like he had on her.
“Things was getting better for my boys,” Mr. Briscombe ground out. “Why did this have to happen?”
It was a question Grace asked a million times a week, as she watched lives fracture and go down the sewer; and it was one for which she had no answers. If Earl were here, he’d remind Grace that life wasn’t fair, and it was up to you to play the cards you were dealt as best you could. That was her main beef with her angel—as far as she was concerned, the Great Dealer in the Sky was using a stacked deck, and the House always won. And Earl was like a pit boss, making sure everybody abided by the House’s rules.
Okay, I have sucked that metaphor dry, she thought.
She waited a bit longer, but Mr. Briscombe had fallen silent. Then she said, “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 partner had 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 to be 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 mental note to investigate some services for him. Make sure he had a landline and/or a cell phone charger, that kind of stuff. If Jamal was gone, his grandfather would need someone to do his laundry and wash his dishes. Meals on Wheels. If they’d even come to this neighborhood.
As they exited the apartment, Grace got a text message from Henry Silver, their medical examiner, informing her that he had begun the autopsy on the John Doe dealer.
The trip down the stairs was long and arduous. Grace was very worried about the difficulty Mr. Briscombe was having. Shock could do that, but so could a medical condition. She gazed past the old man’s bowed head at Ham, who was bringing up the rear. He blinked, echoing her thoughts. Mr. Briscombe was in bad shape.
Across the street, a shadow darted behind a rusted jungle gym and some dried-out bu
shes clicking like castanets in the wind. Grace crossed her fingers that it was Jamal. Ham’s posture shifted, straightening just a fraction of an inch: He’d noticed, too. Stay alert, stay alive. She remembered how scared she’d been as a rookie beat cop, bracing herself for a bullet every minute of her shift. How exhausted all that fear had made her. She never told anyone about it. She just drank it away as soon as she could. Screwed it away. Got back up the next day and did it all over again.
That was exactly what it was like to be in a gang, only there was never any downtime. It wasn’t a shift at a job you could walk away from, close your door, watch your TV shows. It was your life. If you wanted to become a full member—a Full Patch—you joined the army of darkness. Getting beaten, shot at, killing people on command. If you were a woman, you had to have sex with everyone in the gang to get membership. More than one gang’s female initiation included consent to sex with a known HIV-positive male.
Suddenly Mr. Briscombe started crying again.
“I feel old today,” he said.
“Me, too,” Grace told him, holding his hand very tightly as they finished getting down the stairs. They reached the curb and started to cross the street. She knew Butch and Bobby were watching.
Mr. Briscombe hesitated and looked over his shoulder at his building. “I feel like if I fall, I ain’t never going to get back up.”
“You won’t fall,” Grace promised. “I’ll hold you up.”
“My angel, you’re my little white angel.”
She jerked. Why was he calling her that?
And the shadow stepped from its hiding place.
It was Jamal. One eye was swollen shut; his lip was split and the rest of him was one big set of bruises on top of more bruises. He was wearing a black T-shirt with 66 embossed in gold and a big gold pendant around his neck. His open eye was jittering. He was on something. Weirdly, he looked younger now, on the street, despite his pumped biceps and the stubble on his chin. His do-rag hung low over his forehead, concealing a cut, maybe. It took all her self-control not to rip it off and stomp on it. But he already knew what she thought of his gang.