Blood will tell
Two brothers walked into the apartment in Harlem. One was the executive vice president of a bank. The other was an associate professor at Hudson University. They both had wives and kids, both showed aptitude and passion for their work. When they walked into that miserable apartment in a building that hadn't caught the eye of any of the throngs of rehab junkies, nothing about them gave an impression that only one of them would walk out.
The body had no identification, no clothes to give the police any simple way to know what family to notify about the death by misadventure. Misadventure was the very polite way of saying 'having his brains splattered all over the bathroom walls and no gun left behind.' His prints were in the system from a protest bust in his early twenties, so once they ran those, Eames and her partner could finally talk to someone who might know anything more than that a man was dead.
The grieving widow couldn't imagine who would do such a thing. There were no secret debts, no hint of a mistress, nothing that would suggest a motive. Asking at work brought no better answers. It took going over every scrap of paper in the dead man's office at work before they found one clue. One thin, tenuous idea of what might be the answer.
Two court orders for medical records later and they had a possible motive. The dead man had been diagnosed with Parkinson's. He went to a new doctor for the diagnosis so he wouldn't have to tell his family. When the nurse at the new doctor let slip they had another patient with the same last name who came in at the same time, they finally had something to move on.
The brother broke in no time flat. He hadn't wanted to do it. He wouldn't have done it himself, if he'd gotten the same diagnosis. Still, they were brothers and sometimes that bond meant you did things you thought were wrong when your brother needed you.
Alex watched Bobby's face during the confession. Maybe no one else would have seen it, but his hands tensed ever so slightly and his lips turned down just a touch. When he snapped at the professor, she wasn't surprised by his words.
"Next time you want to do someone a kindness, you might consider helping someone live their life and not help them throw it all away."
The body had no identification, no clothes to give the police any simple way to know what family to notify about the death by misadventure. Misadventure was the very polite way of saying 'having his brains splattered all over the bathroom walls and no gun left behind.' His prints were in the system from a protest bust in his early twenties, so once they ran those, Eames and her partner could finally talk to someone who might know anything more than that a man was dead.
The grieving widow couldn't imagine who would do such a thing. There were no secret debts, no hint of a mistress, nothing that would suggest a motive. Asking at work brought no better answers. It took going over every scrap of paper in the dead man's office at work before they found one clue. One thin, tenuous idea of what might be the answer.
Two court orders for medical records later and they had a possible motive. The dead man had been diagnosed with Parkinson's. He went to a new doctor for the diagnosis so he wouldn't have to tell his family. When the nurse at the new doctor let slip they had another patient with the same last name who came in at the same time, they finally had something to move on.
The brother broke in no time flat. He hadn't wanted to do it. He wouldn't have done it himself, if he'd gotten the same diagnosis. Still, they were brothers and sometimes that bond meant you did things you thought were wrong when your brother needed you.
Alex watched Bobby's face during the confession. Maybe no one else would have seen it, but his hands tensed ever so slightly and his lips turned down just a touch. When he snapped at the professor, she wasn't surprised by his words.
"Next time you want to do someone a kindness, you might consider helping someone live their life and not help them throw it all away."