shit,” he cursed, flipping through the stack. He looked up and saw that the other detectives were staring and laughing at him. Brice’s insides churned.
“The new guy gets the dogs. You know, the shit nobody else wants. We don’t care how much cops and robbers you played as a street cop. Solve those sons of bitches and you really earn this promotion,” Sergeant Carruthers said, popping his suspenders that looked stretched to the limit over his huge gut.
Brice reluctantly flipped through several of the cold case files. Many of the cases were related to indigent people found dead under bridges and in abandoned buildings. Some were of known gang members found dead in project elevators and stairwells, and others of dead crackheads. But one case stood out from all the rest. A fourteen-year-old girl had been found bludgeoned to death in a dumpster behind a Brooklyn bodega.
Brice opened the folder, and on the inside cover were several crime scene photographs. Brice winced and almost gagged, thinking of the pain the girl must have endured. He could hardly make out the girl’s face in the pictures. Her head, from the neck up, resembled a blob—a red clump of flesh with no definition. Brice wasn’t able to distinguish her eyes or nose. Her hair was matted with blood. Whoever had murdered her left her butt naked. She’d been beaten all over her body and then dumped atop bags of trash, an indistinguishable mass of flesh and blood. Bugs had already started eating away at the flesh by the time the pictures were taken.
Brice shuffled the photos and looked at the girl after she had been cleaned up by the medical examiner. Although her face was completely disfigured, Brice was able to tell that she was just a baby, her breasts barely developed, her fingers small and slender like delicate straws. The medical examiner had ruled the cause of death as a brain hemorrhage.
Who would beat such a young girl so unmercifully? he thought with his fingers closing tightly around the file.
He meticulously reviewed each piece of paper and flipped through all the notes. A handwritten Post-It note had been left in the file, where someone had scribbled: Runaway prostitute got herself killed. Case closed. Brice squinted his eyes into little slits and feverishly turned the pages to find out which detective had been assigned the case.
“D’Giulio,” Brice mumbled under his breath. “It fucking figures. A white prick. If she was a white runaway, would he have come to the same conclusion?” Brice asked himself under his breath. It was apparent that the detective who had been assigned the case didn’t bother to fully investigate before deeming it a cold case.
Eager to get his career off to a good start, Brice glanced at the address where the body had been found. He grabbed his gun out of his desk drawer and put it in his shoulder holster.
“I’ll be back!” he yelled to no one in particular.
Little did Brice know back then that the cold case would be the real start of his career as a detective and also the beginning of a series of events that had changed his and his sister’s lives forever.
* * *
“Well, let’s change the subject,” Brice said to his sister, finally snapping out of his reverie. He’d let the long stretches of memory interrupt their date long enough. His therapist had tried to help him control the nightmares and flashbacks. It didn’t always work out so well. He’d been doing much better with it than in the past, but he still wasn’t free of what he believed was karma for what he’d done as a kid.
“Yes, thank you,” Ciara said, her words coming out on a long sigh.
Brice opened his hands as if to say, Well, talk.
Ciara picked up her water again. “I’m dropping out of college,” she said as she put the glass down. She looked at Brice and quickly averted her eyes.
Brice’s nostrils flared, and he immediately knitted his fingers together to keep them from curling into fists on their own. It was a method his therapist had recommended.
“Say what?” They were the only words Brice could muster at the moment.
“I’m leaving college because school is just not for me, Brice. I’m twenty years old now. I have the right. I will not have my feet held to the fire for the rest of my life for something that happened when I was sixteen. It was a childish mistake back then, and I’ve moved past it, even if you and Mommy haven’t,” she said flatly but with enough feeling that the words felt like ice cold water had been thrown in Brice’s face.
He balked a little, taken aback all over again. This time, instead of getting angry right away, Brice cleared his throat—another therapy-taught method to slow down his racing brain and to keep him from saying something he’d later regret. Brice still couldn’t help his rocking jaw, though.
“So, how will you take care of yourself in the future if you don’t go to college?” he asked levelly. “You know the job situation all over the United States... no education, no life.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Ciara said tentatively, gnawing on her bottom lip like she always did when she knew she was about to piss her brother off.
Brice raised his eyebrows as if to ask, Really? He just knew his sister must be losing her damn mind if she thought he was going to take care of her financially as an adult. He’d done enough for her in the absence of what her own father could do.
Brice had grown up in the Kingsborough projects in Brooklyn. As a child, he had watched helplessly as his alcoholic stepfather beat his mother. Each time Brice had tried to help her, he’d end up beaten up so badly that he’d have to miss school the following day. Brice took to the streets and started acting out as a way to vent his frustration with his home life, but when Ciara was born, one look at her and Brice vowed to always take care of her. Up until this moment, Brice had lived up to his end of the promise, although his sister never made it easy.
“It’s not what you think,” Ciara clarified as she watched Brice’s facial expressions display ten different emotions at once. “I not going to sit around doing nothing, Brice. I’m going to move to Vietnam and teach over there,” she announced, smiling as if she’d just said something good. “It’s such a good opportunity to give back and do some good for the world.”
Brice felt like five bombs had gone off in his ears. He instinctively put his fingers to his temples and moved them in a circular motion. Speechlessness was something that didn’t happen to Brice too often, but right then, Brice couldn’t find one word. Ciara had put Brice and his mother through enough, but this would take the whole entire cake. He swallowed hard, still at a loss for words.
Just then, his work cell phone vibrated next to him on the table. It was his lieutenant.
“I have to take this,” Brice huffed, shooting up from his chair, completely relieved for the distraction. Work had saved the day once again.
“Of course you do,” Ciara mumbled, shaking her head. “Nothing has changed.”
Chapter 2
Brice
Brice rushed to his black Suburban and sped down to Brooklyn Hospital. There would be no stopping for lights or stop signs that day. Not after the call he’d just received.
When Brice pulled up to the scene, his eyes grew wide. He didn’t think so many vehicles could even fit on the already crammed Brooklyn block.
“Damn,
