The Way Home

by George Pelecanos

  “Okay, Renee. Thanks.”

  Chris called his father. He briefly considered telling him that Ben had phoned in sick, but he decided to be truthful, take the hit, and say that Ben was MIA.

  “This is bad,” said Thomas Flynn. “You’ve got two jobs today.”

  “I know.”

  “Why would he do this to us? To you.”

  “We don’t know that he’s done anything. You should wait to speak to him before you pass judgment.”

  “Thanks for the lecture. But see, I’m trying to run a business. If he went out and overdid it, and now he’s got the Irish flu, that’s not something I can excuse.”

  “You don’t know that. He could have taken a walk and got hit by a car. Could be he’s lying in a hospital bed right now, somethin like that.”

  “If you think so, then maybe you ought to call the police.”

  “No,” said Chris, too quickly. “I don’t think we need to go there just yet.”

  “Fine. You better get on out to the warehouse, then. I’ll pull Hector off Isaac’s crew, and the two of you can work today’s jobs.”

  “Okay, Dad. Okay.”

  Chris stood by the white cargo van but didn’t get in right away. Ben had no relatives that Chris knew of, and a small circle of friends. It was possible that Lawrence Newhouse had got up with him and they had been clubbing, drinking, or drugging, spending some of the money Lawrence had stolen. Chris would be disappointed in Ben if that were the case, but it was understandable. Ben was a young man, and maybe he was still bitter about having left the cash in the row house and wanted to try some of it out. Chris didn’t know how to get up with Lawrence and he really didn’t care to. But Ali would find a way to reach Lawrence. And it could be that Ali had heard from Ben.

  Chris phoned Ali and had a brief conversation. Later in the day, while Chris was doing an install, Ali reached him on his cell and told him that he had spoken to Lawrence, who claimed he hadn’t seen or heard from Ben.

  Chris and Hector finished the job. Hector was animated as always, moving quickly while he talked, humming and making jokes. Chris worked quietly, with a gathering sense of dread.

  THAT EVENING, Amanda stood in the kitchen and listened as Flynn spoke to their son from their house phone. Amanda could hear the impatience in her husband’s voice, and noted the way he cradled the receiver a little too roughly at the end of the conversation.

  “He went by Ben’s apartment with Renee,” said Flynn. “She’s got a key. Ben’s stuff is intact. Doesn’t look like he packed up anything or took a trip.”

  “Chris is worried,” said Amanda.

  “Yeah, he’s worried. But he doesn’t want to call the police. It’s partly because he doesn’t know what Ben is into. Could be, you involve the law, you’re gonna get the young man in trouble. But there’s that other thing, too. These guys, with their histories, they’ve got that code. They don’t like to give up information, and the last person they want to talk to is a police officer.”

  “Do you think Ben’s done something wrong?”

  “I don’t think of him as a guy who holes up in a motel room with an eight-ball and a couple of whores, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I don’t think of him that way, either.”

  “So I should probably call the police myself. Report him as a missing person.”

  “That means they’re going to come here and take a statement. His past might come up in the course of the conversation. Chris’s, too.”

  “It might. If they’ve done nothing wrong, then it’s not a problem, right?”

  “Right,” said Amanda, without conviction.

  “Look, Ben is my responsibility. More than anyone else who works for me, this company is his only family. Do you get that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do me a favor and go down to the office and pull his file, okay? I’m gonna need the information at hand.”

  Flynn punched a number into the phone as she left the room.

  MONDAY HAD brought tension, but Tuesday was worse. Renee called in sick to the nail salon, and Chris’s installations were completed in a satisfactory but perfunctory manner. Even Hector, for a change, was subdued.

  Flynn had reported Ben as a missing person to the MPD, but he knew from his brief experience that they would be busy with crimes of the here-and-now and would not actively investigate his disappearance, which, after all, could be nothing more than a young man gone out of town. Ben would be just another name added to a database, the daily sheets, and eventually the missing persons Web site.

  From Chris, Flynn learned that Ben often haunted the Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery. Because he had been in Brookland doing an estimate on his last call of the day, Flynn decided to stop by the cemetery grounds on his way home on the chance that he might speak to someone who was on duty Sunday or find something of importance.

  In the main office, near the front gate, he was directed to the office of security, where he found a middle-aged man who had been on patrol Sunday evening past. This man, a Mr. Mallory, said that he knew Ben as described by sight but not to name, and that he had seen him sitting on the retaining wall near the pond, reading, and that he had indicated by signal that the cemetery would be closing and that Ben should prepare to leave. Mr. Mallory had not seen him go and could recall no suspicious visitors or unlawful activity for the remainder of the night.

  Flynn thanked him and drove down to the pond. There he found a copy of a book called Blood on the Forge, still wet from a late-afternoon thunderstorm typical to Washington summers, face-up on the stone wall. Inside the cover, Ben had printed his full name.

  Flynn called the police, used the case number as reference, and reported his discovery to a nameless listener with an uninterested voice. He then phoned Chris and told him what he had found. Chris agreed that Ben would not have left his book behind, even if he were done with it. Chris did not tell his father that he was certain now that something bad had come to Ben.

  That night, Chris drove the streets, looking for his friend.

  ON WEDNESDAY morning, three brothers, Yohance, Ade, and Baba Brown, residents of the neighborhood of Trinidad and all under twelve years old, were walking south from their row house with a bat, one mitt, and a tennis ball, looking for someplace to play, when they came upon the old Hayes School at 6th and K, Northeast, now fenced in and shuttered. They saw the possibilities in the broad north face of the building and its weeded blacktop, and went to the gate to see if they could find a way to dismantle its Master padlock. To their delight they found that the chain had been severed and by unthreading it through the links of the fence, they could simply walk onto the school grounds.

  They played stickball against a wall where a rusted sign reading “No Ball Playing” was anchored into brick. They commented on the putrid smell of the area around the school, accusing one another of incomplete wipes and dirty asses, but played on because they had found a spot where they could throw hard, swing freely, and enjoy a summer day.

  Around eleven o’clock, the youngest of the brothers, Yohance Brown, noticed that the white-painted square of plywood covering the middle window of the first floor was fitted poorly and askew. He used the bat to push the plywood and watched it fall into the dark of the room beyond. Immediately the awful smell that they had been commenting on hit them full force. Because they were boys, the three of them had to know, and they stepped into the space, now faintly illuminated by sunlight, and, holding the bat as a club, the oldest brother, Baba, led them to where hundreds of flies buzzed deeply and furry rodents scrambled back into the shadows, leaving a thing that had once been a man lying in the center of the concrete floor. What they saw would trouble them into adulthood and haunt the youngest for the rest of his life.

  Five minutes later, a 1D patrolman named Jack Harris drove his cruiser east on K and saw a boy run into the street, his arms waving, horror and excitement in his eyes.

  * * *

  SERGEANT SONDRA Bryant, a homicide detectiv
e in her midforties with almost twenty in, was on the bubble when the body was found, and caught the case. She did not jump up from the seat behind her desk, located in the offices of the Violent Crime Branch behind a shopping center in Southeast. She was a slow, deliberate mover anyway, what with the extra weight she was carrying these days in her hips, belly, and behind. Sondra Bryant was known as a good detective, intuitive and conscientious, as she liked to put down cases for the white shirts and her own pride. But she was in no hurry to get to the crime scene. The victim had been dead for a couple of days. Her thought was to let the techs do their scene work, and meet them on the tail end of their task.

  After speaking to two of her children on the phone and attending to a personal item, she got up out of her chair and headed out to find a car in the back lot that she could use. She went by a medium-size detective with a black mustache and a good chest, who was standing in his cubicle, a dead telephone receiver in his hand, staring down at his desk.

  “Your kids again?” said Bryant.

  “My son,” said the detective. “My wife found some marijuana in his bedroom. A package of Black and Milds, too.”

  “No stroke mags?”

  “Those are under my bed.”

  “Could be worse. She could have found a gun or a kilo of somethin white.”

  “I know that. I’m just disappointed, I guess.”

  “It’ll pass.”

  The detective looked at Bryant, carrying her oversize purse, her badge on a chain around her neck. “You caught one?”

  “I’m the primary. Kids came up on a body in the old Hayes School. Wanna ride along?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll send DeSchlong down when he comes back.”

  “You busy with something?”

  “I’m gonna go to the boys’ room and practice looking hard in the mirror, so I’m ready to talk to my son when I get home.”

  “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 tortured.”

  “Ben didn’t do anything to anybody,” said Chris very quietly.

  “I believe he’s answered the question, Detective Bryant,” said Moskowitz.

  “Right.” Bryant closed her notebook and dropped it into her purse. “We’ll speak again. In the meantime, I’ll leave you good people and let you have some peace. Have a blessed evening.”