A Fatal Friendship

I was on my way home when I received a radio message of a murder on Gordon Street. By the time I arrived at the scene of the crime, my partner Angelo was standing by the side of the road. The look on his face made me hesitate to open my car door; a decade in homicide and I had never seen him like that.

The second I walked up to him, I knew why. The crime scene was not what I expected, though, in my experience, it was hardly a term with a clear definition. Before me was the body of a young boy who couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. My guts wrenched at the grizzly site as my head grew heavy. The child had several stab wounds all over his body.

I turned around to walk away and catch my breath when I saw officer Rohini Charles struggling to prevent her tears from rolling down her cheeks. She was quick to wipe them off when she saw me. Being a female cop was tough enough as it is; she didn’t want to let herself look ‘weak’, even in front of a fellow female colleague.

“Onella, what’s happening?” came a voice from behind me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“Captain! I—”

“We found the murder weapon in the woods nearby. The killer seems to be an amateur,” Angelo said while walking up to us.

“Good work. Keep me updated.”

The captain left right after and I thanked Angelo for saving my hide. I wouldn’t have been able to come up with an excuse that fast.

“What else have we got, Angelo?”

“It looks like this kid was attacked in the woods, but managed to escape his attacker. The killer probably bolted without chasing him out into the open here.”

“I don’t know what kind of monster could do something like this to a child.”

“Neither can I; but we’ll find them soon.”

We drove back to the station in my car without speaking a word. I had to shake my head from time to time because that poor child’s face kept coming to my mind. The victim’s name was Sam Pereira, aged fourteen. He had been stabbed seven times. DNA results from the murder weapon pointed at another fourteen-year-old boy: Alan Gomez, Sam’s best friend.

Gomez didn’t open up at first, but we eventually got him to crack. The reason behind the crime was jealousy: Sam and Alan were both interested in the same girl, named Janice. Sam had assured Alan that he wouldn’t flirt with Janice, but Alan had found them talking after school one day and questioned Janice the following day about it. She had confessed to having feelings for Sam, and that he felt the same way about her. Alan said that he was furious. He confessed to calling Alan and planning a game night at his house. They had met at Gordon Street to head to a video game shop when Alan had called him into the woods, saying he had something to show Sam. There, he had confronted him about Janice and, in a fit of rage, had stabbed him and run away. Alan insisted that he didn't mean to kill Sam, and that he had brought the knife just to scare him; he said he didn't know what came over him.

His confession left Angelo and me speechless. I couldn’t believe that even children could act so rashly. Moments later, there was a tapping on the door. It was Ryan Gomez, a public defender—and Alan’s father.

“Alan, stop talking. Detectives, I need a moment to talk to my son, and remember that anything he told you so far is invalid because there was no adult present.”

“We didn’t force him to tell us anything. He chose to speak up, himself,” I replied before shutting the door.

Even though Alan was still a minor, his crime fell under premeditated murder. He planned the visit and took a knife with him; there was no way I was going easy on him, he needed to be tried as an adult. Angelo was still on the fence about it because of Alan’s age, but I had already made up my mind. He killed his best friend without a second thought. Sam didn’t deserve it. He had his entire life ahead of him and it was stolen from him in mere seconds. Minor or not, Alan needed to face the consequences of his actions. Ryan Gomez soon walked out of the interrogation room and approached us.

“You need to forget about what my son said and release him on bail.”

“I’m sorry, but it's too late for that. Come to courts tomorrow to see him,” I replied.

“Come on, he's just a kid; you can’t keep him here all night.”

“Yes, we can. After all, it will be good practice for when he has to spend twenty years in prison.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it. If anything happens to my boy, I will have your badges, remember that,” Gomez replied, storming out.

“With his attitude, I’d try him if I could as well,” Angelo said.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

We were heading back to our desks when a woman called out to us. “Excuse me, but do you know where my son is?”

“Are you Alan’s mother?” I asked.

“No, I’m Emily Pereira: Sam’s mother,” she replied.

I felt a knot form in my throat, tightening and twisting as my heart began to race. Whoever called her had not broken the news to her. We sat her down and explained to her what had happened, and the horror in her eyes said it all. I felt so sad and angry at the time; I wished I had not joined homicide.

Emily had been a model before she had him. She had quit her job to take care of him because her husband was a soldier and was always away. He, too, had passed away just two years before. Emily said she couldn’t fathom how Alan could have even thought about committing such a crime. She had often taken him to school and even babysat him whenever his father was working late because his parents were divorced.

The case went on for months, but at last, the sentencing was done. Alan was tried as a juvenile, but Angelo and I agreed to try him as an adult when he turned eighteen.