You need to prepare yourself for what you’re about to see. That’s the standard line, as if it’s even possible. They take the photograph. Something goes out of them, like a sail losing its wind. There’s no longer any doubt, but they still have to say it. They have to give you the verbal identification. Yes, that’s him. That’s my boy. Nine times out of ten, it’s a male.
I’m sorry for your loss. The next standard line. They hardly ever break down when they’re in the station. They must save that for home. While they’re here they summon up the strength to keep it under control. It never fails to amaze me.
The sergeant led me to another interview room, just down the hall from where I had been going through the mug shots. He opened the door, and I stepped into that drywall box of absolute misery.
The husband was sitting on one side of the table. He was wearing a golf shirt, and his hair was pressed down where he’d obviously been wearing his golf hat. I pictured two cops having to go out onto the course and find him. Interrupting him right in the middle of his round to give him the news. Or maybe he was already done. Heading for home, heading for dinner with his wife. Now he was here in this room, looking down at a clear plastic bag on the table. I recognized the pieces of the diamond bracelet I had found. He was framing the bag with his hands, like he wanted to pick it up. I was sure the detective had told him not to touch it. Not until it had been processed for fingerprints. He kept staring at the bag, not even blinking when the door opened.
The father and mother stood together behind him. The father was wearing casual clothes that looked expensive. The mother, too. I didn’t get a good look at her at first, because she stood with her face against her husband’s chest. He stroked her hair, and otherwise had the same faraway look as his son-in-law.
A young man sat in the corner, by himself. More nice clothes, another blank stare. He was working his hands together, like he was getting ready to hit somebody.
That left Detective Bateman. He was sitting at the far end of the table, writing in a notebook. He looked up as the door opened.
“Officer McKnight,” he said. “Thank you. I’d like you to meet Tanner Paige, Elana’s husband. These are her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Grayson. And her brother, Ryan.”
The husband and the father looked at me. The mother kept her face hidden. The brother kept working at his hands and ignoring everything else in the world.
“You saw him,” the husband said to me. “The man who did this.”
I looked at Detective Bateman. He gave me a slight nod.
“I saw the man who we believe is the suspect,” I said. “We’re going to do everything we can to find him.”
The husband wanted to say more, but he seemed to be struggling to find the right words. I was waiting for him to lash out at me. To ask me why I hadn’t caught him.
“Can you tell me…” he finally said. “I mean, why would anyone do something like this? For a diamond bracelet?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.”
“I told her not to wear this down here. It was just asking for trouble.”
I noticed the brother glancing up for one moment. He stared at the husband, then closed his eyes and went back to working his hands together.
“You need to find him tonight,” the father said, still stroking his wife’s hair. “He could be a thousand miles away by the morning.”
“Yes, sir. Like I said, we’re gonna do everything we can.”
“It’s something we don’t usually have,” Bateman said. “A police officer who’ll be able to give us a positive ID. When we catch him, and we will catch him… it’ll be an airtight case.”
“Like that will do any good,” the brother said, finally speaking up. “Some gangbanger goes away for life. Is that going to bring her back?”
His mother looked at him, taking her face away from her husband’s chest. Her face was ruined with tears, and there was a great stain on her husband’s shirt.
“Ryan, please,” his father said. “Of course it won’t bring her back. But at least…”
“At least what?”
“He has to pay. Whoever did this. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure he pays for this.”
The brother waved this away, getting to his feet and starting to pace up and down his side of the room like a caged animal. I watched him, waiting for him to punch the wall. Or something. I wouldn’t have blamed him for anything at that point. I honestly could not even imagine going through what these people had to go through that night.
“This isn’t happening,” the husband said. He was still staring at the bracelet in the plastic bag. “I’m going to wake up and she’ll be right there next to me.”
“It’s happening,” the brother said. “It’s happening because you can’t even walk down the street in this city anymore. Why the hell would you even let her take a class at Wayne State, for God’s sake? Some ghetto school in the middle of the worst city in the world.”
The husband was looking at him now. In about two more seconds, the brother would launch himself over the table and we’d have a full-blown melee on our hands.
“This is not helpful,” Bateman said. He stood up and put himself in the brother’s way. He grabbed both of the young man’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes.
“Let go of me.”
“You need to calm down. You need to respect everyone else in this room. And you need to let us try to solve this horrible crime.”
The brother seemed to run out of steam then. He dropped his head and brought one hand to his face. He started to cry.
Bateman hugged him. It was not something you were supposed to do in a case like this, but as soon as he did I could see it was the right play. The brother cried for a while, and then he stopped. He sat back down in the chair.
“Officer McKnight,” Bateman said to me, “I know you have work to do. I’m glad you got the chance to meet the family. The next time you see them, I hope it’ll be when we tell them we’ve made an arrest.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to everyone else in the room. One of those standard lines you say, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
Then I went back to the mug shots.
Franklin left for home eventually. I thanked him for everything he’d done that day.
“Just doing my job,” he said.
I kept looking through the mug shots. Detective Bateman came in a while later. His tie was loose. His eyes were red. It was the first time I’d ever seen him looking like something less than a human dynamo.
“I take it you don’t have an ID yet,” he said to me. He sat down in the chair Franklin had just vacated.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then we need to get the sketch artist in here. Get this down on paper while it’s still fresh in your mind.”
“I can’t believe this guy hasn’t been in the system before,” I said, flipping through more pages. “He gave me a pretty stone-cold look on the other side of that fence. Like he was about to laugh in my face.”
“Jeans and a gray shirt. Nothing on the shirt? No logos or anything?”
“No. Plain gray. He did have an Oakland Raiders hat on.”
Bateman nodded. “That’s how you do it if you’re street smart. No markings, no weird hair. A hat you can throw away in a second. Just blend right in.”
“Are you telling me he’s so smart we’ve never had him in the system before?”
“That would be just our luck,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“Why cut her up so bad?” I said, the scene at the station coming back to me, whether I wanted it to or not. I knew it would be there in my head forever.