“Yo. Heard from Jamal?” Cuddy runs a pick through his high-top fade and grooms the suspect beard he’s trying to grow. I’m immediately deflated at his question. I didn’t want his first response to be a question about whether I’d heard from Jamal. I want him avoiding talk about Jamal, so then I’d know that they’ve been in touch.

“You still doing these?” Demarcus looks at the flyer. “Are they any good? Seems like they’re not much help when it’s shoot now, ask questions later.”

“It’s mostly not like that, but you still gotta stay fresh on this stuff.”

“I’m always ready.” Cuddy towers over all of us.

I look away. I froze at the sight of the officer’s gun aimed at me at the Pike. I was able to keep my hands up high, out and in view. But I was terrified. Even armed with the knowledge about my rights, all that went out the window. I couldn’t replace the fear with my life on the line.

“What do you know about Jamal and Angela?” I ask.

“This why you out here so early?” Demarcus shakes his head.

“I caught them together, so it’s not like you’re telling me something I don’t know. I’m trying to clear my brother’s name. If the word is out about Angela and Jamal, that means Chris knows. You know I saw him at the police station the day after she was murdered, and he had a black eye.”

“I trust Tracy,” Quincy says. “Maybe not anything else but trying to free a Black man. Yeah, you can trust her.”

“Is that a compliment or…?” I try to say it with a straight face, but I feel my cheeks going red.

“Probably both,” Quincy says. “But for real, if you know something, you gotta say.”

“What about you? If anybody knows anything, it’d be with you,” Cuddy says.

Quincy shakes his head like he knows nothing, and I don’t give a clue, either. The less people who know we’ve been in touch with Jamal, the better.

“Chris’s black eye might not have had anything to do with Angela,” Cuddy says. “Scott and Chris got into a fight at lunch. I saw them down by the Pearl Coffee and Tea shop off East.”

“The same day Angela died?”

“I think so,” Cuddy says.

“Was Scott at practice the next morning?”

“Nah.” Demarcus sips his Gatorade. “He off the track team.”

“Why?” I’m shocked.

“Some shit he did. Coach kicked him off a few weeks ago. He’d been wanting to for a while because Scott was skipping practice, complaining about not being in the four hundred when Todd was out,” Cuddy says. “No loss. He was always trying to train without us.”

The ten-minute-warning bell rings.

“We still gotta shower.” Demarcus nudges Cuddy.