Read The Clouds Roll Away for Free Online

lobby, I showed my credentials to the receptionist while two officers—one white, one black— listened to an elderly black woman. She wore a ragged wool coat and her rebukes sliced like knives.
    â€œRight on your car it says ‘Serve and Protect,’” she was saying.
    â€œSo how come I never see you when bullets are flying past my grandbabies? You want to tell me where you at?”
    The receptionist buzzed the door and I walked down a hallway lined with softball trophies. A police cliché, but softball was the game for this job, leaving time for deceptive small talk. You hear about the old woman who wouldn’t leave? Claimed her family’s blood was on our hands. She’s crazy, right? Right?
    Just after the vending machines, I found the pebble glass door with one name removed. It said D ETECTIVE J. N ATHAN G REENE .
    I knocked, waited for word to come in, then got the look salesmen get used to.
    â€œYou don’t look happy to see me,” I said.
    â€œI’m surprised,” he said. “They let you come back?”
    Since the last time I saw Detective Greene, his thick mustache had sprouted gray and new lines etched his brown face. Though not yet forty, he looked old, especially around the eyes. Six months ago his partner, Detective Michael Falcon, plunged six stories to the sidewalk. Another man fell too, both killed on impact. The detective was white, the other man black, and the city divided on race. The mayor called in the FBI to decide if the white cop threw the black man off the roof or the other way around. I was the agent heading up the civil rights case. I was suspended while working it.
    â€œGot a minute?” I asked.
    â€œNo.”
    I stepped inside.
    He sighed. “Nothing’s changed.”
    I sat down in a chair so old the wood cried. The cold-case detectives had furnished the small office by diving into Dumpsters behind city schools, and the concrete block room was just big enough for two dilapidated desks.
    â€œDo you have any old files on the Klan?” I asked.
    â€œWhy?”
    I told him about the cross burning at Rapland and my visit with Hale Lasker. “Lasker’s the last thing in our files on the KKK. He went to prison eight years ago. I was hoping you had a cold case with a newer name.”
    â€œYou need it right now?”
    â€œIt’s a hate crime.”
    He nodded, wrote a note, and pushed it over by his phone. It was an old phone, the numbers rubbed off. “How was Oregon?” he asked.
    â€œWashington.”
    â€œWhatever. Now you’re back. Working another civil rights case. Really moving up in the world.”
    â€œI’m working a task force too.” I felt pride rising to my defense. And I felt stupid the moment the words left my mouth.
    â€œWhich task force?”
    â€œSouthside gangs.”
    â€œI’m working that.” He frowned. “I haven’t seen you at any briefings.”
    â€œI just started. What’s your connection to our task force?”
    â€œGangbangers create half my cold cases. Nail these guys, I might close twenty cases. Plus I’ve got the informant you Feds need.”
    Richmond’s cold cases numbered in the hundreds. The files were stored in dented metal file cabinets that stretched behind Detective Greene’s desk. One of those files was my dad’s unsolved murder and every time I walked in here, I tried to forget it. And failed.
    â€œWhat part are you working?” he asked.
    â€œSurveillance.”
    â€œWhereabouts?”
    I stared at the floor. It was the cheapest vinyl, scuffed. “Okay, I’m on the phones.”
    â€œMan, she really doesn’t like you,” he said, referring to Phaup.
    I didn’t trust my voice, or my words, so I didn’t say anything.
    â€œOkay, Klan info,” he said, changing the subject. “That it?”
    â€œI also need a dictionary.”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œFor what I