Melinda would have none of that. She knew that if Ben had gotten waylaid, he would have called on the car phone. That’s what the damn thing was for. Emergencies.

At eleven-thirty that evening, the boys knocked on the bedroom door and asked why their mother had been locked in her bedroom for the past hour and a half. Not wanting to alarm them, Melinda said she was helping a friend in crisis.

“Where’s Dad?” asked the youngest.

“Out helping someone else.”

The sons had no problem believing the story. Ben was always helping someone.

Melinda told her sons to go to bed and began making more phone calls. An hour later, when Melinda still hadn’t heard from Ben, her closest friends came over to stay with her until this ordeal resolved. Their corresponding husbands had been sent out to look for Ben and/or his car.

The dreaded call came in at three-thirty in the morning. Ben Little’s Mercedes had been spotted—the sole vehicle in a paved lot at Clearwater Park. The police had been called. Two squad cars eventually arrived at the location.

The interior of the Mercedes was empty and there was no sign of Ben anywhere. As the group decided on their next move, a particularly alert officer noticed that the back of the Benz was sagging, and something was dripping from the rear of the car. Gloving up, one of the uniforms fiddled with the lock until the trunk popped open.

Bennett Alston Little was fully clothed. His hands and feet had been tightly bound by generic shoelaces, and a blindfold had been placed over his eyes. He had been shot three times in the back of the head.

Again Melinda found herself talking to the police.

This time they had taken her very seriously.

THE FIRST THING Decker did was sort through photographs. In cases where he wasn’t the original primary detective, he liked to have clear mental images. The premortem snapshots showed that Ben Little had been a very handsome man: sharp light eyes, a wide, bright smile, a strong chin, and an athletic build. The file contained two head shots and one with Ben and his family.

In contrast, the postmortem shots showed the hapless teacher in the fetal position with his knees bent and touching his forehead—an odd position to take after death. Ben’s head was resting in a big pool of blood. Decker continued to read the crime scene report until he found what he was looking for. Several bullet shells had been found inside the trunk, which probably meant that the trunk was the original crime scene. Ben had been living when he had been placed inside and had instinctively curled up in a defensive position. Then he had been executed.