Triptych (Will Trent #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,99
kids sit in the back or if she would have dragged him by the ear to the front row, yelling at him for not knowing the answer to the question on the board.
“All right,” Eleanor decided. “I assumed Jasmine was in her room doing homework. When I called her for supper, she didn’t come. I looked in the room and she wasn’t there.”
“What time was this?”
“Around five o’clock.”
Will glanced at his watch, but the digital clock on the TV told him the actual time. “So, to your knowledge, she’s been gone about five hours?”
“Are you going to tell me I need to wait another day before it matters?”
“I wouldn’t drive all the way down here to tell you that, Ms. Allison. I would just call you on the phone.”
“You think she’s just another black girl run off with a man, but I’m telling you, I know that girl.”
“She wasn’t in school today,” Will reminded her.
The old woman looked down. Will saw that her hands were like claws in her lap, arthritis twisting them into unusable lumps. “She was suspended for back-talking a teacher.”
“Cedric, too?”
“This is turning adversarial,” she noted, but she still kept talking. “I don’t get around very easily, especially since they took my Vioxx away. Their mother has been incarcerated for more than half of Cedric’s life. She’s a heroin addict, just like Aleesha Monroe. The only difference is that my Glory got caught.”
Will knew better than to interrupt.
“I laid down the law with Glory. Stayed up nights, followed her whenever she left the house. I was that child’s skin, I was so close to her. She hated every minute of it—still hates me now—but I was her mother and that’s what I was going to do. Same with them.” With difficulty, she lifted a hand, indicating the closed bedroom door. Will saw a shadow move underneath and guessed that Cedric was listening.
Eleanor continued, “Glory pretty much let those two run wild. She didn’t care what they did so long as she didn’t get into trouble and could still keep putting that needle in her veins.” The woman sighed, lost in her own memories. “Jasmine’s as wild as Glory was, and I can’t keep up with her. It took me five minutes to walk to that doorway tonight to see what Cedric was running on about.”
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,