The Best Friend and The Boyfriend

The woman’s blond hair flows out from beneath her in waves, its tips reaching the legs of the coffee table some feet away from her. Surrounding her body are multiple yellow number tags, indicating placements of the items strewn about the living room. Various items are spread across the area: a spiky hairbrush, a dictionary, an unopened box of condoms, a blood-stained rope. Her eyes are closed, her legs and arms splayed out, as if she was simply sleeping on her living room floor.

The female detective watches the man in front of her as she slaps down another picture of the woman. This time, a gloved hand holds open the woman’s eyelid. A bloodshot eyeball glares back at the man. His eyes are glued upon this photo. To the untrained eye, his expression does not change. But the seasoned female detective sees a small twitch in his right eye the moment she lays down the picture.

Interesting. Let’s try again.

She thumps down one last photo of the blond woman. A dark red line rounds her neck, cutting deep into her skin, with bloody scratch marks in the front. Her neck is stained with black and blue bruises, a stark contrast against her pale skin.

There it is again. The twitch of recognition. A small shifting in the seat. One corner of the detective’s lip lifts in satisfaction. Got him.

“I’ll ask again. Do you know this woman?” she says. She stabs her finger at the eyeball. The man takes a deep breath, knowing he’s been caught.

“Fine, yes. I do. She was my best friend. We’ve known each other for twenty years, met in elementary school.” The man leans forward, placing his hands on the table, lacing his slender fingers together. “Do you know who killed her?” he asks in an even tone. His voice is carefully devoid of any emotion. His eyes are on the first photo, drinking in the sight of the woman’s thin, pallid frame.

The detective sits down in the seat across from the man. She cocks her head to the side, eyes fixed upon his still face. “You seem awfully calm for someone who’s best friend of twenty years has just been murdered, Mr. Todd.” She adds in his name as if it’s an afterthought.  

He nods. “So, you don’t know. Well, I’ll tell you who did it.” Mr. Todd lifts his eyes up to meet the detective’s. “It was her boyfriend.”

------

The female detective yanks open the door and enters the room with an air of finality. She immediately makes eye contact with the young man on the other side of the table. His eyes are wide, and his hazel brown hair sticks up in different directions, obvious that he’s run his hands through them multiple times. The young man bolts up from his chair upon seeing the detective.

“What’s going on? Why am I here?” he asks. The detective hears the desperation, the note of hysteria that colors his voice. She places a yellow manila folder on the metal table.

“Sit down please.” He complies without hesitation. She opens the folder and pulls out the same gruesome pictures she showed Mr. Todd. Her hawk eyes examine this young man in a similar fashion, but there’s no need for that. The young man drops his head into his hands, elbows leaning on the table.

“Stop,” he sobs. “I’ve seen enough.” The woman places the photos back into her manila folder, closing the front.

“Please remove your hands from your face, Mr. Brady.” She tells him in a cool tone. Gathering himself, Mr. Brady lowers his hands. His eyes are watery and his face wet as he attempts to wipe his tears away with his large hands. The detective wordlessly hands him a tissue. “Do you know this woman?” she asks the young man.

He closes his eyes briefly, then opens them to look at the one-way window behind the detective. “Yes. She is—was my girlfriend. We’ve been together for five years now. W-what happened to her?”

He meets her eyes now. “W-what’s the meaning of all—all this?”

“Mr. Brady, your girlfriend was murdered.”

----

“I see. Mr. Todd, could you explain to me what happened to your hands?” The detective glances pointedly at his knotted fingers on the table. Red lines mark the edges of his fingers, with an angry red burn on the pinky edge of his palm.

Without missing a beat, Mr. Todd says, “I go to the gym often, and just recently took up rope climbing after a friend recommended it to me. It’s enjoyable but can take quite a toll on one’s hands.” She hums as she listens to his story. He pauses.

“You don’t suspect that it’s me, do you? It is most definitely her boyfriend. That shady Brady character.” He shakes his head slightly. For the first time, the woman detects a hint of disgust in his tone.

“And what makes you say that?” the detective prompts.

“He always pretended to be a knight in shining armor in front of her. Just last weekend, the three of us went out for dinner and he tips over her wine glass and stains her white dress. The man goes into overprotective boyfriend mode, puts his jacket over her shoulders, and rushes her out of the restaurant, telling her he’ll bring her home to get cleaned up.” Mr. Todd scowls. “Before they leave, he turns around and smirks at me. It was no accident, he did indeed spill that wine on purpose.”

“Why did he do it on purpose?”

The man scoffs. “Well that’s obvious. He was jealous of my relationship with his girlfriend.”

“And what kind of relationship would that be?”

The man’s face settles down into a neutral expression again. “I told you, we were best friends for twenty years. We knew everything about each other.” He stresses the word ‘everything’ when he speaks.

“Everything?” the detective echoes.

“Everything,” he confirms. “Down to the darkest secrets within us.” His eyes darken at those words, remembering the feel of her beneath him, above him, wrapped around him. She was gone now, his sins erased from upon this world. There was no need to unearth them now.

The detective’s words bring him back to the present. “And what’s your relationship like with Mr. Brady?”  

“Mr. Brady. Where shall I begin?” he taps his long fingers on the metal table, quiet knocking sounds bouncing around the walls of the small room. It’s silent as he thinks about how to answer this loaded question.

“She introduced me to him five years ago. I knew the moment I met him that he was trouble.”

----

If Mr. Brady’s eyes got any wider, the detective was sure his eyeballs would pop out of their sockets. There is quiet at first. The detective sees Mr. Brady’s lower lip trembling.

And then Mr. Brady stands up abruptly, sending the wooden chair he had been sitting on flying backwards. It crashes into the brick wall behind him. “W-what do you mean murdered? Who killed her? Who’s the son of a bitch who killed her?” His meaty hands slap down onto the table with a large bang.

The detective’s hands fly to her waist. The cool metal of the gun holstered there calms her down as she relaxes her shoulders. “Mr. Brady, take a deep breath, pick up your chair, and sit down.” She pushes the jacket of her dark blue pantsuit aside so that the gun peeks out.

Mr. Brady’s hands shake when he sees the gun. He steps back, and without turning around, puts his hands behind him as he fumbles around searching for the chair. It takes a while. The detective straightens out her suit, hiding the gun. Mr. Brady finally succeeds and sits back down with a sigh, back straight in his chair.

The detective regards him with a glint in her eye. He had quite a delayed reaction to the news of his murdered girlfriend. Was it an orchestrated reaction? “Can you tell me about your relationship with your girlfriend?”

“S-she was my first girlfriend and w-was going to be my last. From the moment I saw her, I fell in love. She saved my life.” Mr. Brady’s voice grows quiet and his shoulders lower from their stiff position. “Five years ago, I was going to jump from the top of my apartment building. I had lost my life savings in a business scam. She—she saw me on the edge of the roof, convinced me to give life another chance. She told me it wouldn’t be so bad to start anew, and that this time, it’d be better. Two weeks later, we started dating.”

“You said she was going to be your last girlfriend. What did you mean by that?” The detective asks.

“I-I was planning on proposing to her,” Mr. Brady’s eyes are glassy as tears begin rolling down his stubbled cheeks once again. “I was going to marry the love of my life.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the detective replies, almost robotically. She wasn’t sure if she believed anybody at the moment. For the detective, it was guilty until proven innocent. And if there was anything being a homicide detective for the last ten years taught her, it was to never trust the boyfriend or the best friend.

Mr. Brady nods in response. The detective allows him a moment to dry his tears before asking, “What was your relationship with Mr. Todd?”

“Well, Mr. Todd was her best friend, so I saw him very often. The three of us went out for dinner together every now and then. We didn’t get along too well at first.” Mr. Brady scratches the right side of his chin, fingernails leaving behind red tracks on his face. He continues scratching. His beard and mustache are growing back, giving the detective an unkempt impression of Mr. Brady. She estimates that he hasn’t shaved in a few days.

Mr. Brady continues his story. “Two years ago, he came over to my house holding a knife and reeking of alcohol. He screamed at me to stay away from her or else I’d regret it. Told me he had known her longer, that his relationship with her runs deeper than mine and hers would ever be, and that I didn’t deserve her.” Mr. Brady shudders. “I still have nightmares of him waving his knife in my face and calling me a shithole. The guy is crazy. From that day on, I never touched alcohol again. Can’t stand the smell of it.” He winces a bit. “I only put up with him because they were best friends, but I’m pretty sure Todd was jealous of our relationship.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. I loved her so much, and she loved me more. There wasn’t room for Todd.” Mr. Brady’s tears are dried now. His face seems calm, empty as he recounts his memories. Instead, the detective sees fire brewing in his narrowed eyes.

----

“Why did you think he was trouble?” the detective asks. She raises her eyebrow. What game is he playing now? First, he was unwilling to associate with the victim, and now he’s volunteering information?

“He was the only secret she kept from me. When I met him, the two were already dating for three months. We used to see each other every other day, but around that time, our pattern stopped. I suspected something was happening, and there was. We would agree to meet at a restaurant and have lunch together, but she stood me up on many occasions, of which later I would find out was because she was meeting him.” He pauses for a bit.

“And how did that make you feel?” the detective probes.

“I’ll admit, I was angry at first. She had been using our time together to meet him behind my back. And when I finally did meet him, he treated me like I was nobody important. He even ignored me when I tried to get to know him better. But I got over it. The two have been together for five years already.” The man shrugs. “Although, one day she confessed to me that the day she met Mr. Brady was the day he attempted suicide. I always suspected that one wasn’t quite right in the noggin. He seemed obsessive and crazy.” Mr. Todd shakes his head.  

“So, you were against the two dating?”

Mr. Todd leans back in his chair, placing his hands in his lap. “Of course. Anyone would be. I saw her on the street while she was shopping one day. Just as I was about to say hello, I saw Mr. Brady following her. He was darting behind cars and lampposts. So, I followed him. I was curious. He was writing things down in this little notebook.” He chuckles humorlessly. “He was probably taking notes on where she was going and who she talked to. The man was stalking his girlfriend. So, yes, I was very against the two of them dating.”

“Did you ever think to tell her that Mr. Brady was following her?”

“I was going to at some point. I’d warned her about him multiple times, but she always put it as a sort of responsibility. She told me that if she left him, she was afraid he would attempt suicide again.” Mr. Todd snorts in disdain.

“She was wrong. She did not love him, and that is why he killed her.” At that, Mr. Todd goes silent. He looks down at the table, the right side of his lips pulled down into a smug little smile. He had nothing more to say on this matter. He was going to make sure that bastard rots in jail even if that’s the last thing he’d ever do.     

----

“She loved me so much,” Mr. Brady repeats under his breath. He nods to himself. Of course, she loved him.

The detective had the notion that he was trying to convince himself, but she wasn’t here to baby this man. She was here for the facts. “Mr. Todd tells me that he saw you stalking your girlfriend while she was shopping the other day. Can you tell me about that?”

Mr. Brady’s face twists in anger, his neck becoming a deep shade of red, darker than that of dried blood. He once more bangs his fleshy hands upon the surface of the table. “How—how dare he spread such—such lies about me,” he bellows out. His eyes dart to and fro. “H-he must’ve said I killed her.” His hands shake. His eyes snap up to the detective’s and he tries to grab her hands. She snatches her hands away at the last minute.

“He’s lying! He’s a pathological liar. You’ve gotta protect me, he’s probably going to come after me next! Oh, god, he’s going to kill me.” Mr. Brady rocks back and forth in his chair, hands clenched and back in his lap.

----

“Mr. Brady says that a few years ago, you walked into his house drunk and waved a knife in his face to threaten him. What happened?” The detective asks Mr. Todd.

He raises his eyebrow at the detective. “That didn’t even happen. I’m not the insane one.” He shakes his head.

----

“Mr. Brady. I would like you to take a Breathalyzer test for me.”

Mr. Brady glares up at her. “Why? I told you. I don’t freaking drink.” He was at his wit’s end with this interrogation. He wished they would just arrest that good-for-nothing Mr. Todd so that he could go home.

“I believe you. However, it is protocol to prove that you were not under the influence when you gave me so much evidence against Mr. Todd. I want to make sure this is done right so that we can arrest him.” The detective offers the Breathalyzer to Mr. Brady.

Mr. Brady did like the sound of that. He supposes taking the Breathalyzer wouldn’t hurt, if Mr. Todd goes to jail. He reaches out to take it.

“Thank you for complying, Mr. Brady.” The detective takes back the Breathalyzer when he is done. “Mr. Brady. I want to inform you that Mr. Todd confessed that they were indeed having an affair. He says it began two years ago.” She watches Mr. Brady carefully.

Mr. Brady clenches his hands until they turn white. His nostrils flare and his jaw tightens. The detective thinks he looks akin to a bull right now.

“I knew they were fucking behind my back! I knew it! I’m gonna kill him!” Mr. Brady jumps to his feet, and rushes towards the door. He bangs on the door, but it’s locked. The detective puts a hand at her waist, fingers brushing her gun.  

“Mr. Brady. Your Breathalyzer test here says you have a BAC of 0.06. I thought you never drank alcohol again after what Mr. Todd did to you?” Realization spreads across Mr. Brady’s face. His eyes are wild, his hair half sticking up and half in his eyes. The detective can practically see steam puffing out his ears.

Mr. Brady paces back and forth in the small room. He pounds the table, then turns around and smashes his fist into the brick wall. The metal table is dented. “Fucking bitch. I loved her so much, but she spent all her nights with that-that pretty boy.” He waves his hands in the air.  “When I wrapped that rope around her neck, she begged me. She told me how much she loved me. I believed her. That’s why I had to k-kill her. I-I couldn’t let her hurt ever again.”

The detective shakes her head as she exits the room. Mr. Todd never told her about their affair. And the Breathalyzer test said his BAC was 0.0.