Homicide (18 page)

Pellegrini was different. He had his ideas about the case, to be sure, but his manner was so restrained, his speech so casual and slow, that in any debate the veteran detectives tended to run over him. At first, it was only moderately irritating, and how much did it matter, anyway? He really didn’t disagree with either Landsman or Edgerton in his choice of direction. He had been with them when they first focused on the Fish Man as a suspect and he had been with them when Landsman offered the theory that the killer had to live in that same block of Newington. He agreed with them when they had jumped on the old drunk living across the street. It all sounded reasoned, and whatever else you could say about Jay and Harry, you had to admit that they knew their business.

It will be months before Pellegrini begins to chastise himself for being so unassertive. But eventually the same thoughts that plagued him at the crime scene—the feeling that he is not completely in control of his case—will bother him again. Latonya Wallace was a red ball, and a red ball brings the whole shift into a case for better or worse. Landsman, Edgerton, Garvey, McAllister, Eddie Brown—all of them had a hand in the pie, all of them were intent on turning over the stone that would reveal a child killer. True, they were covering a lot of ground that way, but in the end, it wouldn’t have Landsman’s or Edgerton’s or Garvey’s name on the case file.

Landsman is definitely right about one thing: Pellegrini is tired. They all are. That night, as the fifth day of the investigation ends, every one of them leaves the office at 3:00
A.M
. knowing they will be back in five hours and knowing, too, that the sixteen-and twenty-hour shifts they have been working since Thursday are not going to end soon. The obvious, unspoken question is how long can they keep it up. Dark ridges have already become fixed below Pellegrini’s eyes, and whatever sleep the detective does get is often punctuated by nocturnal declarations from his second son, now three months old. Never much on appearances as a plainclothesman, Landsman is now shaving every other day, and his attire has spiraled down from sport coats to wool sweaters to leather jackets and denims.

“Hey, Jaybird,” McLarney tells Landsman the following morning, “you look a little beat.”

“I’m okay.”

“How’s it going? Anything new?”

“This one’ll go down,” says Landsman.

But in truth, there is little cause for optimism. The red binder on Pellegrini’s desk, number 88021, has grown thick with canvass reports, criminal histories, office reports, evidence submission slips and handwritten statements. The detectives have canvassed the entire block surrounding the alley and are beginning to cover adjacent blocks; most of those identified in the first canvass as having any criminal history have already been eliminated. Other detectives and detail officers are checking out every report in which an adult male so much as looks at any girl under the age of fifteen. And though several phone calls have come in with tips about possible suspects—Landsman himself spent half a day tracking one mental case mentioned by a Reservoir Hill mother—no one has come forward to say they saw the little girl walking home from the library. As for the Fish Man, he is accounted for on the critical Wednesday. And the old drunk is now, in fact, an old drunk. Worst of all, Landsman pointed out, they still haven’t found their murder scene.

“That’s what’s killing us,” Landsman tells them. “He knows more than we do.”

Edgerton, for one, is aware of the long odds.

On Tuesday, the night after they jack up the old drunk, Edgerton finds himself at a red brick Baptist church on upper Park Avenue, around the corner from Newington, walking slowly through the stifling heat of a packed sanctuary. The small coffin, off-white with gold trim, is at the far end of the center aisle. The detective makes his way to the front of the
church, then hesitates for a moment, touching the corner of the casket with his hand before turning to face the front row of mourners. He takes the mother’s hand and bends down, his voice a whisper.

“When you pray tonight, please say a prayer for me,” he tells her. “We’re going to need it.”

But the woman’s face is broken, empty. She nods abstractedly, her eyes washing over the detective to fix again on the floral arrangement in front of her. Edgerton walks to the side of the church and stands with his back to the wall, eyes closed more from fatigue than spiritual conviction, listening to the deep, gospel tones of the young minister:

“… though I walk through the valley of the shadow … and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying … no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Listening to the city’s mayor, whose voice breaks as he stumbles through his words:

“To the family and friends … I, uh … this is a terrible tragedy, not only for your family … for the entire city … Latonya was Baltimore’s child.”

Listening to the U.S. Senator:

“… the poverty, the ignorance, the greed … all the things that kill little girls … she was an angel to us all, the angel of Reservoir Hill.”

Listening to small, brief details of a child’s life:

“… attended this school from age three until the present time with a perfect attendance record … such involvements as student council, school choir, modern dance, majorette … Latonya’s goal was to become a great dancer.”

Listening to a eulogy, to reasons that never sounded more hollow, more empty:

“She is home now … because we are not judged by the fleetest of foot or the strongest, but those that endure.”

Edgerton follows the crowd that gathers behind the white casket as it is carried toward the front door. Already back at work, he corners a white-gloved usher to ask about obtaining a copy of the mourners’ book, signed by those in attendance. From a surveillance van on the opposite side of Park Avenue, a technician begins discreetly taking photographs of the departing crowd in the hope that the killer might muster enough remorse to risk an appearance. Edgerton stands at the base of the church steps, scanning the male faces as the crowd files slowly into the street.

“‘Not the fleetest of foot or the strongest, but those that endure,’” he
says, pulling out a cigarette. “I like that part … I hope he was talking about us.”

Edgerton watches the last of the mourners leave the church before walking back to his car.

M
ONDAY
, F
EBRUARY 8

Donald Worden sits in the coffee room and scans the metro section of the paper, half listening to the roll call taking place in the outer office. Wordlessly, he sips his coffee and takes in the headline:

Worden lets his eyes drift slowly down the entire column, then turns the page and begins reading the jump on 2D. It only gets worse:

Worden finishes his coffee and hands the newspaper to Rick James, his partner, who rolls his eyes and grabs the newspaper from the older detective.

Wonderful. For the first time in two months they catch a break in this star-crossed case, only to have Roger Fucking Twigg, the morning paper’s veteran police reporter, spray it across the front page of the city section. Lovely. For two months, no one in the neighborhood around Fulton and Monroe will admit to knowing anything about the murder of John Scott. Then, a week ago, Worden finally digs out a reluctant witness—possibly an eyewitness—for the grand jury. But before prosecutors can lean on this man, pressuring him to testify under threat of a perjury charge, the
Baltimore Sun
calls him a suspect. Now it’ll be hell getting this guy’s story into the grand jury room, because if he reads the newspapers—if his lawyer reads the newspapers—prudence suggests that he invoke the Fifth Amendment and remain silent.

Twigg, you miserable bastard, thinks Worden, listening to D’Addario run through the day’s teletypes. You did me. You really did me on this one.

That Worden has come up with any kind of witness is testament to how hard he has worked the case. Since the discovery of John Scott’s body in early December, he has conducted four separate door-to-door canvasses of the area around the 800 block of Monroe Street, with the first three efforts producing little. It was only on the fourth canvass that Worden learned from a neighbor the name of a possible eyewitness, a resident of the 800 block who had parked his car on Monroe Street next to the mouth of the alley and had told several others that he had been outside when the shooting occurred. When Worden got to the man, he found a middle-aged laborer who lived with his girlfriend and elderly mother on Monroe Street. Nervous and reluctant, the man denied that he was on the street when the incident occurred, but he admitted that he heard a gunshot, then from his window saw a police car leaving the 800 block with its lights out. He then saw a second police car turn onto Monroe Street from Lafayette and stop near the mouth of the alley.

The man also told Worden that after police began gathering in the alley, he had called his son to tell him what was happening. Worden then interviewed the son, who remembered the phone call and remembered further that his father had been quite specific: He had seen a police officer shoot a man in an alley across the street from his house.

Worden went back at the witness, confronting him with his son’s
statement. No, said the man, I never told him that. He stood by his previous account involving the two cars.

Worden suspected that his newfound witness had seen a good deal more than the arrival and departure of the radio cars, and the detective had two possible explanations for the man’s obvious reluctance. First, the witness was genuinely afraid of testifying against a police officer in a murder trial. Second, there never was a radio car that fled down Monroe Street with its headlights out. The witness had instead seen a confrontation between John Scott and another civilian, a neighbor or friend, perhaps, whom the witness was now trying to protect. For that matter, the confrontation could have involved the witness himself, who had parked his own car at the mouth of the alley a few minutes before the shooting.

Technically then, this morning’s newspaper article is correct in asserting that the witness can also be considered a potential suspect. But what Roger Twigg does not know—or has not been told by his sources—is that this new witness was not discovered in a vacuum; other evidence is leading Worden back in the opposite direction, back toward the police.

It’s more than the shirt buttons found at the edge of the alley. And it’s more than the fact that too many of the officers involved seem to be having trouble keeping their stories straight. The most unnerving piece of evidence in Worden’s case file is a copy of the Central District radio tape, which had been sent to the FBI for audio enhancement. Deciphered by the detectives and transcribed weeks after the murder, it revealed a strange sequence of radio transmissions.

At one point on the tape, a Central officer can be heard broadcasting a description of the suspect seen running from the passenger seat of the stolen car.

“It’s a number one male, six foot, six-foot-one, dark jacket, blue jeans … last seen at Lanvale and Payson …”

Then, a Central District sergeant, a seven-year veteran named John Wylie, cuts in. Having followed the chase into the Western District, it is Wylie who first found the body of John Scott.

“One-thirty,” Wylie says, giving his unit number. “Cancel that description at the eight-hundred block of Fulton … or Monroe.”

One of the officers involved in the early chase breaks in, assuming that the suspect is in custody: “One twenty-four. I can ID that guy …”

Moments later, Wylie comes back on the radio. “One-thirty. I heard a gunshot before I found this guy.”

“One-thirty, where is that, the eight-hundred block Monroe?”

“Ten-four.”

Then, several moments later, Wylie can again be heard on the radio tape, acknowledging for the first time that there is a “possible shot victim in the alley.”

The transmissions presented Worden with an obvious question: Why would the sergeant cancel the description for the suspect unless he believed the man was already in custody? The buttons, the radio tape—such evidence led not toward a civilian suspect but toward the pursuing officers. And yet for every officer working a post anywhere near Monroe Street, Worden and James had checked and rechecked the run sheets—required departmental paperwork that chronicles every uniform’s entire tour of duty from one call to the next. But all of the radio cars in the Central, Western and Southern districts appeared to be accounted for at the time of the shooting. The officers involved in the chase of the stolen Dodge Colt and the subsequent bailout had already given an account of their movements in supplemental reports, and the two detectives reviewed those as well. The investigators had found that most of the officers had encountered one another during the incident and could confirm each other’s reports.