Triptych

Will wanted to say that he was sorry, but knew she would only correct him, remind him that her condition, the miserable way she must have spent her life trying to do the right thing while the walls fell in around her, was not his fault.

Eleanor told him, “Cedric was a baby when Glory lost custody.” She managed to lean forward. “He’s a smart boy, Mr. Trent. A smart boy with a future if I can keep him out of this mess long enough for him to grow.” She pressed her lips together. “There’s something he’s not telling me. He loves his sister and she loves him-loves him like a mother because that’s what she had to be when Glory was busy shooting that trash into her system.” She paused. “I think I have more influence on him. And there’s no denying Jasmine loves him. She doesn’t want him mixed up in the life around here, the thugs and the gang bangers and the hoodlums. She embraces it, but she knows her baby brother can do better.”

Will asked, “Has Jasmine run away before?”

“Twice, but always because there was a fight. We didn’t fight yesterday. We haven’t fought all week, for a change. Jasmine wasn’t angry with me, or at least no more angry than any teenager is at the person in charge.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“Boy? He’s fifteen years older than she is.”

“What’s his name?”

“Luther Morrison. He lives on Basil Avenue, about three miles from here, in the Manderley Arms. I already called him. He says she’s not there.” She explained, “Each time she ran away before, I called him. Both times he told me she was there. Luther pretends that he believes Jasmine is seventeen, but he knows that child’s age just as sure as I’m sitting here and he’ll do anything I say to keep me from calling the cops on him.”

Will had to ask, “Why haven’t you called the police on him? She’s thirteen, he’s almost thirty. That’s statutory rape.”

“Because I learned with her mother that a girl who’s set on destroying herself will not be stopped. If I get this one arrested, she’ll just go to the next one, and he’ll be even worse than this Morrison, if that’s possible.”

“Gran?” Cedric asked. He was still in the bedroom, peeking around the edge of the door. “I finished cleaning the room.”

“Come here, child.” She reached out her arm for him and he came. She told Will, “I called the police as soon as I realized Jasmine was missing. I’m sure you can guess their response.”

“They told you to give it twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight if they know she’s run away before.”

“Correct.”

Will addressed his words to Cedric. “You sounded pretty upset when you called me. Can you tell me why?”

Cedric looked at his grandmother, then back at Will. His shoulders went up into a shrug.

The old woman stirred, reaching into the front pocket of her house-dress. “Walk Mr. Trent out and check the mail for me, baby. Mr. Trent?” Will struggled to get out of the chair. “Thank you for your concern.”

“Please don’t bother,” he said, noticing that she was trying to stand. “I’ll let you know what I find out.” He reached out to shake her hand, remembering at the last moment that the arthritis would make it too painful. She grabbed his hand before he could stop her, and he was surprised by the intensity of her grip. “Please,” she begged. “Please find her, Mr. Trent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, knowing that she was proud and that it took everything she had to ask him for help.

He followed Cedric down the stairs and out into the parking lot. The overhead lights cast a strange glow over everything and Will realized that it was only a few hours past the time that Aleesha Monroe had been murdered on Sunday night. Cedric walked to the grassy area by the mailboxes where Jasmine had jumped him this morning.

Will watched the boy slip his key into the lock, waiting until he’d retrieved the mail to tell him, “This is serious, Cedric.”

“I know.”

“You’ve got to tell me what you know about Jasmine. Why did she tell you not to talk to the cops?”

“She said y’all are bad.”

That was a sentiment shared by pretty much everyone within a five-mile radius. “Tell me what happened on Sunday.”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not going to work this time, Cedric. Jasmine’s gone, and you heard your gra

Cedric licked his lips, sorting through the mail.

Will knelt down in front of him, put both his hands on Cedric’s shoulders. “Tell me.”

“There was a man,” Cedric finally admitted his grammar improved now that his guard was down. “He paid Jazz some money to make a phone call. That’s all.”

“What kind of phone call?”

“To the police. To say Leesha was being hurt.”

Will looked over his shoulder at the pay phone. The booth was dark, the overhead light busted out. “He told her to call from the pay phone?”

Cedric nodded. “Didn’t make no sense. She could’a used her cell. Everybody knows y’all can’t trace a cell.”

“Did he pay her?” Will guessed.

“Twenty bucks,” Cedric admitted. “And then he gave her a dime for the phone.”

Will dropped his hands and sat back on his heels. “What’s that phone cost, about fifty cents?”

“Yeah,” Cedric answered. “Jazz told him that a dime don’t buy shit, and then he got all nervous and gave her two quarters.”

Will wondered what the odds were that they’d find two quarters in the coin box that had the murderers fingerprints on them. Then he wondered if it was Aleesha’s murderer who had paid the girl to make the call. Why would the killer pay someone to report his own crime?

Will asked, “Did you recognize the man?”

The boy went back to shuffling the mail in his hands.

“Do you think you’d remember him if you saw a picture of him?”

“He was white,” Cedric said. “I didn’t see him too good. I was over here.”

Will turned back to the phone booth. The lights around the parking lot and the mailboxes were strong enough to blind a grown man, but none of them would have illuminated the pay phone.

He asked Cedric, “What do you think happened?”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he started shuffling the mail again. “She always told me before,” he said. “When she was going off with Luther, she always told me so I wouldn’t worry.”

“After Jasmine made the call, which way did the man go when he left?”

Cedric pointed up the street toward the exit.

“He didn’t have a car?”

“Don’t know,” the boy admitted. “We was out here on our way to Freddy’s, and then he hollered us over. Jazz told me to go on see Freddy, but I stayed around to make sure she was okay.”

Will wondered at the girl going up to a strange man in the dark. Maybe she was heading down that wrong path faster than her grandmother thought.

He asked, “Where’s Freddy’s?”

Cedric pointed across the street to another building.

“Did Jasmine go with you after she made the call?”

“After, yeah.”

“And the man left up the street, toward the main road?”

Cedric nodded, chewing his bottom lip like he had more to say. Will gave him some time, and eventually, the boy said, “Jazz say she heard screaming in the stairs. Leesha was yelling.”

“What was she yelling?”

“Jazz don’t know. She was just yelling like she was being hurt, but she done that before, you know? Leesha takes up men sometimes and they kind of mean, but she say she don’t mind.”

“Cedric,” Will said, putting his hands back on the boy’s shoulders. “I need you to be straight with me now. Did Jasmine see who was hurting Aleesha? Did anyone talk to her, say anything to her?”

Cedric shook his head. “She told me she didn’t see nothing, didn’t hear nothing.”

“”Was she saying it like she did today, where if you thought about it awhile, you might think that what she was really saying was that maybe she did hear something, but she just wasn’t going to tell anybody?“