Homicide (60 page)

“Geraldine, this is a search-and-seizure raid. You’re now charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three attempted murders …”

The other occupants of the room stare as deep gurgling noises begin to rise in Geraldine Parrish’s throat. She falls to the carpet, clutching her chest and gasping for air.

Childs looks down, moderately amused, then turns calmly to the Eastern uniform. “I guess you might want to call for that medic now,” he says, “just to be on the safe side.”

The sergeant returns upstairs, where he and Keller continue dumping every document, every insurance policy, every photo album, every slip of paper into a green garbage bag—the better to sort through it all in the relative luxury of the homicide office. Meanwhile, the paramedics arrive and depart within minutes, having judged Geraldine Parrish healthy in body if not in mind. And across town, at the Division Street rowhouse of Geraldine Parrish’s mother, Donald Waltemeyer is executing a second warrant, digging out another thirty insurance policies and related documents.

It is the case to end all cases, the investigation that raises the act of murder to the level of theatrical farce. This case file has so many odd, unlikely characters and so many odd, unlikely crimes that it almost seems tailored for musical comedy.

But for Donald Waltemeyer, in particular, the Geraldine Parrish case is anything but comedic. It is, in effect, a last lesson in his own personal voyage from patrolman to detective. Behind Worden and Eddie Brown, the forty-one-year-old Waltemeyer is Terry McLarney’s most experienced man, having come to homicide in ’86 from the Southern District plainclothes unit, where he was a fixture of large if not legendary proportion. And though the last two years have taught Waltemeyer everything he needs to know about handling the usual run of homicide calls, this case is entirely different. Eventually, Keller and Childs and the other detectives assigned to the case will return to the rotation and it will be Waltemeyer’s lot to serve as primary investigator in the prosecution of Geraldine Parrish—a probe that will consume half a year in the search for victims, suspects and explanations.

In a unit where speed is a precious commodity, it’s the rare case that teaches a detective patience, providing him with those last few lessons that come only from the most prolonged and complex avenues of investigation. Such a case can transform a cop, allowing him to see his role as something more than that of an ambulance chaser whose task is to clean up one shooting after another in the shortest time possible. And after a month or two, or three, this sort of sprawling case file can also drive a cop to the brink of insanity—which for Waltemeyer isn’t all that long a journey in the first place.

Just yesterday, in fact, he was gnawing on Dave Brown’s leg about one case or another when Brown felt compelled to whip out Rule 1, Section 1, from the department’s Code of Conduct and read verbatim, to wit:

“‘All members of the department shall be quiet, civil and orderly at all times and shall refrain from coarse, profane or insolent language,’ And,” added Brown, glaring at his partner, “I emphasize the word ‘civil.’”

“Hey, Brown,” said Waltemeyer, making an obscene gesture. “Emphasize this.”

It isn’t that Dave Brown doesn’t respect his partner, because he does. And it isn’t that they can’t work together, because when they have to, they do. It’s just that Waltemeyer is constantly trying to explain police work to Brown, an exercise in condescension that Brown will accept only when it comes from Donald Worden, no one else. But even on his best days, Waltemeyer is quite possibly the most volatile detective in homicide, with a hair-trigger temper that never ceases to amaze the rest of McLarney’s squad.

Once, soon after Waltemeyer had come downtown, McLarney himself happened to be busy talking to one of several witnesses from a murder. He called Waltemeyer over and asked him to handle one of the interviews, but as he began explaining the details of the case, he quickly realized that it was simply easier for him to talk to the witness himself. Never mind, McLarney explained, I’ll do it myself.

But later, at several points during the interview, McLarney looked up to see Waltemeyer’s face staring at him from the hallway. Three minutes after the end of the interview, Waltemeyer was in the office, pointing a finger in McLarney’s face and raving wildly.

“Goddammit, I know my job, and if you don’t think I can handle it, to hell with you,” he told McLarney, who could only watch with detached awe. “If you don’t trust me, then send me back to the goddamn district.”

As Waltemeyer stormed away, McLarney looked around the office at his other detectives, who were, of course, biting the sleeves of their sport coats to keep from laughing aloud.

That was Waltemeyer. He was the hardest worker in McLarney’s squad, a consistently aggressive and intelligent investigator, and two days out of every five he was a confirmed mental case. A Southwest Baltimore boy and the product of a large German family, Donald Waltemeyer was a source of endless delight to McLarney, who would often distract himself on a slow shift by goading his new detective into a tirade against Dave Brown. If Brown could then be made to respond, the result was usually better than television.

Heavyset, with a ruddy face and a mop of thick, coal black hair, Waltemeyer suffered his most embarrassing moment in homicide one morning at roll call: a sergeant read an announcement that Waltemeyer had been named the hands-down winner in a look-alike contest for his portrayal of Shemp, the forgotten Stooge. In Waltemeyer’s considered judgment, the author of that little item would survive only as long as he remained anonymous.

Neither temper nor appearance had prevented Waltemeyer from becoming a first-class street police in the Southern District, and he still liked to think of himself as the same down-in-the-trenches patrolman he had always been. Long after his transfer to homicide, he made a point of staying close to his old bunkies in the district, often disappearing at night with one of the Cavaliers to visit the Southern’s holes or shift-change parties. It was as if there was something a little disreputable about his having gone downtown to CID, something for which a real cop ought to apologize. The vague embarrassment Waltemeyer so obviously felt at having become a detective was his most distinctive trait.

Once last summer, he made a point of taking Rick James out to lunch at Lexington Market, where the two bought tuna sandwiches from a carryout vendor. So far, so good. But then, instead of taking the meal back to headquarters, the older detective drove to Union Square, parking the Cavalier in his old patrol post.

“Now,” said Waltemeyer, pushing the driver’s seat back and spreading a napkin over his trousers. “We’re going to eat like real police.”

In McLarney’s opinion, Waltemeyer’s unswerving adherence to the patrolman’s ethic was his only real weakness. Homicide is a world unto itself, and the things that work out in the district don’t always work downtown. Waltemeyer’s written reports, for example, were no better than district quality when he first came to homicide—a typical problem for men who spent more time on the street than at the typewriter. But in homicide the reports genuinely mattered, and what fascinated McLarney was that after mentioning the value of coherent paperwork to Waltemeyer, the detective set out on a successful, systematic campaign to improve his writing ability. That was when McLarney first realized that Waltemeyer was going to be one hell of a detective.

Now, neither McLarney nor anyone else could teach Waltemeyer much that was new about working murders. Only the cases themselves could add to his education, and only a case such as Geraldine Parrish could qualify him for the advanced degree.

The case actually began back in March, though at the time, no one in the homicide unit recognized it for what it was. In the beginning, it appeared to be nothing more than a routine extortion case: a complaint from a twenty-eight-year-old heroin addict who claimed that her uncle wanted $5,000 to keep her from being murdered by a contract killer. Why anyone would want to kill a brain-dead like Dollie Brown was unclear; the girl was a fragile little wraith with no known enemies, tracks on every appendage and very little in the way of money. Nonetheless, someone had tried to kill her, not once, but twice.

The first attempt was almost a year ago, when she was shot in the head during an ambush in which her thirty-seven-year-old boyfriend had been slain. That, too, had originally been Waltemeyer’s case, and though it was still an open file, Waltemeyer believed that the boyfriend had been the intended victim and that the shootings had been drug-related. Then, after being released from University Hospital’s shock-trauma unit back in March, Dollie Brown had the misfortune to be standing on Division Street when an unknown assailant cut her throat and ran away. Again, the girl survived, but this time there could be no doubt of the intended victim.

In any other environment, two such assaults in a six-month period may have led an investigator to believe that a campaign to end Dollie Brown’s life was indeed under way. But this is West Baltimore, a place where two such incidents—absent any other evidence—can be safely regarded as coincidence and nothing more. The more likely explanation, Waltemeyer reasoned, was that Dollie’s uncle was simply trying to capitalize on her fears and cheat her out of the $5,000 check she had received after the shooting from the state’s crime victims compensation board, a government agency that provides financial assistance to those seriously harmed by violent crime. Her uncle knew about that money and told his niece that in return for the cash, he would intervene by killing the man who had been trying to kill her.

Working with a special undercover unit of the Maryland State Police, Waltemeyer had Dollie and her sister, Thelma, wired up with Nagra recorders and sent under police surveillance into a meeting with her uncle. When the man again demanded the money to prevent the impending murder, the extortion attempt was captured on tape. A week or so later, Waltemeyer made an arrest and closed the file.

Only in July did the Dollie Brown case become truly bizarre, for only then did a murder defendant with the singularly appropriate name of Rodney Vice begin talking to prosecutors, trying to cut a deal for himself.
And when Rodney Vice opened his mouth, the plot didn’t just thicken, it positively congealed.

Vice had been implicated as a go-between in the contract slaying of Henry Barnes, a middle-aged West Baltimore man who had been killed by a shotgun blast as he warmed up his car on a cool morning in October. The victim’s wife had paid Vice a total of $5,400 for his services in procuring a gunman to kill her husband, thereby allowing her to collect on a series of life insurance policies. Vice had given a Polaroid photograph of Barnes and a shotgun to a tightly wound sociopath by the name of Edwin “Conrad” Gordon. Told that the intended victim usually warmed his car in front of his rowhouse every morning, Gordon was able to get close enough to use the shotgun at point-blank range. Henry Barnes left this world never knowing what hit him.

All would have gone according to plan had Bernadette Barnes been able to keep her silence. Instead, she admitted to a co-worker at the city social services building that she had arranged her husband’s death, telling the woman, “I told you I was serious.” Alarmed, the co-worker called the police department, and after several months of investigation by the detectives on Stanton’s shift, Bernadette Barnes, Rodney Vice and Edwin Gordon were all in the Baltimore City Jail, tied together in a single prosecution report. Only then did Rodney Vice and his lawyer begin shopping some cooperation around, searching for a ten-years-or-less deal.

At a July 11 proffer session with lawyers and detectives at the Mitchell courthouse, Vice was asked how he had known that Edwin Gordon was a man capable of carrying out a contract murder. Nonplussed, Vice assured the detectives and prosecutors that Gordon had been in that line of work for some time. In fact, he had been killing people for an East Baltimore woman by the name of Geraldine for several years now.

How many people?

Three or four that Vice knew about. Not to mention that one girl—a niece of Geraldine’s—who wouldn’t die no matter how many times Gordon tried to kill her.

How many times did he try?

Three, said Vice. After the most recent occasion, when he had shot the girl in the head three times to little effect, Gordon was particularly disheartened, telling Vice, “It don’t matter what I do, the bitch won’t die.”

Checking back with Dollie Brown that same day, Waltemeyer and Crutchfield confirmed that Geraldine Parrish was indeed her aunt and that the young woman had indeed been assaulted a third time. She had
been walking with Aunt Geraldine back in May, when the older woman told her to wait on a Hollins Street stoop while she went to get something. Seconds later, a man ran up and shot her repeatedly in the head. Again, she was treated and released from University Hospital; incredibly, she mentioned nothing to the investigating officers about the previous attempts on her life. McAllister handled the Hollins Street shooting, and knowing little of Waltemeyer’s extortion case two months earlier, he wrote nothing more than a brief 24-hour report.

As Vice spoke, a new tale was being added to the lore and legend of the BPD homicide unit, that of the Unsinkable Dollie Brown, the hapless, helpless niece of Miss Geraldine Parrish, alias the Black Widow.

Rodney Vice had a lot more to say about Miss Geraldine, too. After all, Vice told the gathering, it didn’t exactly stop with Dollie Brown and the $12,000 in insurance policies that Aunt Geraldine had obtained in her niece’s name. There were other policies, other murders. There was that man back in 1985, Geraldine’s brother-in-law, who had been shot on Gold Street. Edwin Gordon had taken that contract as well. And then there was the old boarder who lived at Geraldine’s house on Kennedy Street, the elderly woman whom Gordon had to shoot twice before he finally killed her off. It was Miss Geraldine herself who sent the old woman out to a Chinese carryout on North Avenue, then signaled Gordon, who walked calmly up to the target and fired one shot to the back at point-blank range, then issued a coup de grâce to the head after the victim fell to the sidewalk.