“Good luck, Gus.”
“You, too.”
Detective Bryant drove a maroon Impala to the school in Northeast. She ducked the crime tape, then spoke briefly to Jack Harris, the first officer on the scene, and to the three young brothers, who had been detained for her arrival. She entered the opening in the north wall of the school and held a handkerchief to her face as she had a look at the body, which was being attended to by a Mobile Crime Lab tech named Karen Krissoff, wearing a surgical mask and a smudge of Vaseline under her nose. Portable lights had been set up in the room, and flies buzzed and moved through the blasts of white.
“Karen.”
“Sondra.”
“How long’s he been here?”
“Won’t know till we get him back to the ME. The heat and the rats didn’t do us any favors. Neither did the flies.”
“Cause of death?”
“Multiple stab wounds, so far. Marks on the wrists indicate he was bound or cuffed.”
“Any identification?”
“No wallet, no cell, no business cards.”
“I need prints on the deceased.”
“I already got ’em and sent them out.”
“Thanks, Karen.”
“Go get some fresh air.”
Sondra Bryant went back outside and met up with Detective Joseph DeLong, who had come to assist her. DeLong, known as “DeSchlong” in the unit just because, was an affable fellow who worked many overtime hours after a divorce had left him lonely and rather helpless. Bryant and DeLong split the east and west sides of the street between K and L and canvassed the residents of the houses. This took a couple of hours. Bryant then drove over to the 3500 block of V Street, NE, to the Crime Scene Examination complex. Because of Ben Braswell’s priors, there had been a hit on his prints.
Bryant sat at a computer station and typed Ben’s name into the WACIES program, which brought up his profile. His father was unknown and his mother had been dead since he was two years old. He had no known relatives or known accomplices. She read his charges, convictions, and history of juvenile incarceration. She then switched programs and searched the missing-persons database, and her hunch came up aces. The man who had reported him missing, a Thomas Flynn, was identified as his employer.
Sondra Bryant picked up the phone.
Thomas Flynn took the call. He listened intently, asked a few questions, and told the detective that his son, Chris, was the person closest to Ben. He mentioned Ali Carter and told her the name of the place where Ali worked and the nature of his business. He told her that Ben had a girlfriend named Renee. He agreed to meet with Sondra Bryant later that night and have Chris in attendance. Flynn would supply Renee’s full name and contact information, which he could get from Chris, when Bryant arrived. He was trying to be as cooperative as possible.
Amanda stood beside him, tears streaming down her face, when Flynn phoned Chris at his apartment. After he gave his son the news and told him the few details he knew, there was a long pause on the other end of the line. When he spoke, Chris’s voice was even.
“I’ll call Ali,” said Chris. “Me and Katherine will go over to Renee’s place. I think we should tell her in person. Then I’ll swing by your house and talk to the detective.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Chris, I need to ask you… I promise I’m only going to ask you this one time.”
“I don’t know anything, Dad. I don’t know why Ben was killed.”
“I’ll see you in a little while. Take care.”
When Flynn hung up, Amanda said, “How is he?”
“Same as ever,” said Flynn unhappily. “Tough.”
Flynn phoned his friend, the attorney Bob Moskowitz.
After Chris spoke with Ali and Katherine, they agreed to go together to Renee’s apartment on Queens Chapel Road, not far from the District line. Chris and Katherine met Ali in the parking lot, and they steeled themselves before going inside. Predictably, Renee became hysterical upon hearing the news of Ben’s violent death. Thankfully, her mother was there, so Chris, Ali, and Katherine were not entirely helpless in the face of the young woman’s loud outbursts of emotion. Her mother, a devoted churchgoer with a quiet manner, had sedatives in her purse for whatever reason, and gave one to Renee. Chris hugged her on the living-room couch for a long while, Renee sobbing and shaking in his arms. After a while her breathing evened out and she lay down there, her mother sitting by her side. Chris, Katherine, and Ali quietly left the apartment house.
“I gotta go speak to the homicide detective,” said Chris to Ali, standing by their cars in the lot. “Lady named Bryant. I expect she’s gonna get up with you, too.”
“She already called me,” said Ali. “I’m hooking up with her first thing in the morning.”
“You might want to put her up with Lawrence.”
“You think-”
“I don’t think anything. Lawrence was with Ben recently. That’s all.”
“Listen,” said Ali, “I’ve got to go to a funeral tomorrow in Northeast. Boy I was working with who didn’t make it. I figure you’re not going in… ”
“I’m not.”
“Come with me, Chris. I don’t feel like being alone tomorrow.”
“All right. Swing past when you’re done with the detective.”
They gave each other backward glances as they walked to their vehicles. Chris joined Katherine, waiting for him in the van.
Thomas and Chris Flynn sat in the living room of the Flynns’ home with Detective Sondra Bryant and Bob Moskowitz. Bryant had a small notebook in hand and was making notes in it with a Parker pen. Amanda and Katherine were in the kitchen, quietly talking. Django was asleep at Chris’s feet.
Bryant had remarked that it was unusual for an interviewee who was not a suspect to ask for the presence of a lawyer at this point in the process. Thomas Flynn was forthright and told her that his son and Ben had been incarcerated together as juveniles at Pine Ridge, that both had led straight and productive lives since, but that the scars of the experience made Chris extremely cautious about speaking with police.
“I get it,” said Bryant. “All right, Mr. Moskowitz. Is it okay for me to speak with your client?”
“Chris will answer any questions you have,” said Moskowitz, who had found diet religion and was now a slim bald man nearing fifty whose suit was too large for his frame.
Bryant asked Chris a series of questions. He answered a bit robotically and with little eye contact but did so to her satisfaction. He had a hard exterior, but she could see from his red-rimmed eyes that he had cried at some point in the evening and was grieving. He obviously came from a good family, or at least one that was intact. She believed that he had no direct involvement in his friend’s murder and felt, with a lesser degree of certainty, that he had no knowledge of the causes or circumstances surrounding Ben Braswell’s death. But she was unconvinced by Chris’s repeated claim that Ben had no enemies and had done nothing wrong.
“I had a look at Ben’s record,” said Sondra Bryant. “There was an incidence of violence at Pine Ridge that kept him incarcerated for a longer period time than was indicated by his original conviction.”
“That was an accident,” said Chris. “Ben was just defending someone. He wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. That kind of thing wasn’t in him.”
“Maybe the boy he hurt had relatives or friends who didn’t see it that way.”
“No,” said Chris. “This wasn’t a revenge thing. Everybody liked Ben.”
“Somebody didn’t.” Bryant had a sip of water and placed her glass back on the table. She looked at Thomas Flynn. “I know this is difficult. May I speak freely?”
“Go ahead,” said Flynn.
“We have a saying in our offices. A gun murder is often business. Killing by knife is almost always personal. This victim was stabbed, many, many times. He had been cuffed or had his hands tied. It’s possible he was
