Triptych

“No,” Cedric insisted. “She would’a told me.”

Will didn’t know if that was true or not. Jasmine wanted to protect her brother. She wouldn’t have told him something that might put him in danger.

Cedric reached into his pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. “This is what she wanted,” he told Will. “I took the money he gave her for making the phone call. That’s why she was chasing me.” He was trying to give Will the money.

“Hold on to it for me,” Will said, knowing he couldn’t do anything with the bill. “Jasmine didn’t leave because you took the money, Cedric. You know that, right?”

The boy shrugged, and the mail slipped from his hands. Will bent down to help pick it up. From the colors, he gathered they were mostly bills with about ten pieces of junk mail thrown in. Will probably had the same limited-time offers waiting for him back home.

He looked up at the mailboxes. “Cedric?”

“Yeah?”

“Did Aleesha have a mailbox here?”

“Yeah,” Cedric answered, pointing to one of the higher boxes.

Will stood, making note of the number. “Let’s get you back inside, okay?”

“I’m all right.”

“I need to check something in Aleesha’s apartment. Let me walk you up.”

Cedric was slow going up the stairs. He used his key to get into his grandmother’s apartment, but didn’t go inside. Instead, he watched Will continue up to Aleesha Monroe’s place. Will felt the boy’s silent disapproval burning into his back: Where are you going? You promised you’d help.

Will still had the key in his vest pocket from earlier. He slipped it into the lock and turned it to the side, hearing the bolt engage. He tried the knob but the door did not open. Will was the first person to admit- at least to himself-that he had trouble with left and right, and God knows it got worse when he was tired, but even he had opened enough locks to know which direction to turn a key in order to open it. He slid the key back into the lock and tried the other way, hearing the bolt click again. This time, the door opened.

The apartment still had that same feel to it, like something bad had happened. He stood in the doorway with only the light from the hall illuminating the room. Will saw a drop of blood on the floor and knelt beside it. Without thinking, he put his fingers to the drop to check whether or not it was dry.

His fingers came back clean, but Will hadn’t noticed the drop the first time he had come into the apartment. He flipped on the lights, thinking about the lock. This morning, Jasmine and Cedric had been making a racket when Will was locking the door. Michael and Will had run down the stairs at full speed. Maybe Will hadn’t locked the door all the way. He’d certainly been in a hurry.

But Will remembered locking that door, hearing the bolt catch.

He checked the apartment, making sure nothing was missing. Because of his reading problem, Will doubted he had a photographic memory, but he could memorize scenes. He remembered where things went and he knew when they were out of place.

Still, something was off. The room just felt different.

The junk drawer looked the same, the ring of keys still tucked into the corner under a couple of store receipts. Will checked through them until he found a smaller key like the one Cedric had. Every cop who came into this building had to pass those mailboxes. Will had, too, though, and he hadn’t asked if Monroe had any mail. Then again, Will wasn’t the lead detective on the case. With Michael on leave, the inimitable Leo Do

Will made sure to lock the door, checking it twice before heading back down the stairs. As with every other surface in the Homes, the mailboxes were sprayed with graffiti, and Will identified Aleesha’s by the obscene drawing that pointed up to it. He slid in the key and turned the lock with some difficulty. He found the problem when the door swung open. The small compartment was packed with mail. Will took out the envelopes in clumps, noting the colors and the bright logos adorning the outsides. There was a plain white envelope in with the rest. A bulge was in the bottom corner, and he felt it with his fingers, guessing something metal was inside. From the shape, he thought it might be a cross. Someone had addressed the envelope by hand in a looping cursive that Will could not begin to decipher.

He looked at his watch, really looked at it like he never did, until he could make out the time. It was almost midnight. Angie would probably be getting home from work soon.

Will sat on Angie’s front porch, the hard concrete making his bottom numb. He had no idea where she was and his cell phone battery had finally died, so he wasn’t even sure of the time.

He had put the phone to good use before it had quit on him, calling a contact at the Atlanta police, making sure the report on Jasmine Allison wasn’t filed away like the thousands of other missing persons reports the city collected each year. They had put out an APB on Jasmine, and Luther Morrison had found a highly a

Will had a bad feeling about Jasmine’s disappearance. According to Cedric, Jasmine had seen something, talked to someone who was co

This train of thought had persuaded Will to break down and call Michael Ormewood to find out if the girl had said anything to him before she’d escaped up the stairs. Michael could have been the last person to see her. Unfortunately, the detective either wasn’t home or wasn’t picking up the phone.

Angie’s black Monte Carlo SS pulled into her driveway. The engine sounded like it was ru

Angie threw open the car door and demanded, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He couldn’t help but notice that she was dressed for work. The way she sat in the car gave him and everyone else on this side of the street a clear view right up her short skirt.

Will asked, “What did you do to the car?”

“Drove it.” She got out and slammed the door so hard the car shook.

“There’s oil all over the driveway.”

“You don’t say.”

“Did you even get it serviced?”

“Where would I do that?”

“There are ten billion garages around here. You can’t throw a rock without hitting one.”

“If I was going to throw a rock, it’d be at your head, you stupid shit.” She pushed him away from the front door so that she could open it. “I’m tired and I’m pissed off and I just want to get to bed.” She tossed him a look over her shoulder, like she was just waiting for him to say something about joining her.

He said, “I need to talk to you.”

“Will, why didn’t you use your key?” She didn’t have to crane her neck to look at him and he realized she was still wearing her high heels. She said, “You still have your key. Why did you sit out here in the cold?”

He smelled alcohol on her breath. “Have you been drinking?”

She sighed, giving him another whiff of what had to be whiskey. “Come in,” she said, shoving her key into the lock. “My neighbors get enough of a show with me flashing my cootch every time I get out of the fucking car.”

Will followed her inside and closed the door behind him.