Page 118 - Ext. Listening Reading_Neat

Emmitt said, glaring at Rierson. “He’s A month passed, and they were no closer
been in trouble, but nothing to earn him
something like this.”
“I didn’t say he had. Just that none of
these kids were angels. They ran in rough
circles and it got them killed.” Rierson
stalked off before Emmitt had a chance to
reply.
“Sorry, Emmitt,” Phoebe said. “He’s
frustrated and taking it out on everyone in
reach. What do you know about Bryan?”
“His mother contacted CCS for help about
a year ago when he was arrested with a
bunch of kids who were vandalizing cars
in West End. He’d been skipping school
and hanging with gang members. She
wanted to get him into a program, get him
turned around before something more
serious happened. The last I heard, he
was doing better.” Emmitt turned to
Phoebe. “If I remember right, he was
referred to the same church group as
Deshawn Reeves.” “Then they might have
known one another,” Phoebe said. “We
were never able to find any connection
between Ramirez and Reeves. The Ramirez
family left town as soon as the M.E.
released the boy’s body. We couldn’t locate
them after Reeves was shot.”
“Did you talk to anybody at the church
about Deshawn?”
“Rierson did. The pastor told him
Deshawn quit the program a couple of
months before his death. Just stopped
coming.” Emmitt thought back to the
conversations he’d had with Deshawn’s
grandmother after the boy’s death. She’d
been distraught and insistent that
Deshawn was doing well, staying out of
trouble. At the time he suspected it was
wishful thinking on her part; this news
pretty much confirmed it.
“It’d be worth checking to see if Bryan ever
attended the program,” Emmitt said. “We
might get a lead that links these kids.”
The first two deaths had been connected
by police suspicions and, apparently, not
much else. This third shooting made it
clear… someone was out there killing
kids. “I want to be in on this, Phoebe.”
“There’s going to be a taskforce. We can
use all the help we can get.”
**
114 | Extensive Listening & Reading
to catching whoever had shot three
teenage boys and dumped their bodies in
public places around a city that had never
imagined itself the home of a serial killer.
The SBI and FBI consultants were
stumped. There was no sign of a sexual
angle, which made their profiles useless.
Emmitt had interviewed family members
and friends of the victims, to no avail. No
one was able to provide a clue as to why
the boys had been killed or who was
responsible.
Working for weeks through contacts in the
Hispanic community, Emmitt finally
spoke with the Ramirez family by
telephone. In the country illegally, they
returned to Mexico after their son’s death
and were reluctant to talk to the police.
From them, he heard the same refrain as
he had from the other families: their son
was off drugs, going to school, on the right
track. Those people at the church were
miracle workers. The family had no idea
who wanted Juan dead or why. Emmitt
finished the call and thanked the young
woman who graciously agreed to translate
for her help. When he returned from
escorting her out of the maze of cubicles
occupied by the Criminal Investigation
Division, he sank into his chair with a
sigh. To hear the families and friends tell
it, the boys—while not exactly model
citizens—were living the straight and
narrow at the time of their deaths. For
weeks, he chalked it up to no one wanting
to speak ill of the dead; now he was
beginning to wonder. He paged Phoebe. It
had been a few days since they’d spoken,
neither wanting to discuss the lack of
progress. When his phone rang, he was
still trying to decide how to convince her
to see things his way. The whole
investigation proceeded on the premise
that the boys were involved in something
that had gotten them killed. That they had
seen something or known something that
made them a danger to the drug or gang
community. So far, nobody had been able
to come up with anything that linked the
boys to illegal activity at time of their
death, or to each other. Emmitt picked up
on the second ring, “Phoebe, just wanted