Homicide

by David Simon

  Then, suddenly, a little light began to show. Late September brought that three-for-a-quarter performance on the midnight shift, when Worden worked every body that fell within his field of vision. And one week after those clearances he picked up yet another whodunit on daywork. The case was a loser: a nude woman found carved up behind an elementary school on Greenspring Avenue, discovered by the post officer a good twelve hours after the murder. No identification, no match to any missing persons report.

  The beauty of Worden’s performance on that case would not come with its solution, although incredibly, he would come up with a suspect after staying with the file for more than a year. The beauty was that he refused to allow this woman to remain a Jane Doe— “a member of the deer family,” as he liked to put it—to be buried for $200 by the state without the knowledge of friends or family.

  For six days Worden was out in the street, looking for a name. The television stations and newspapers wouldn’t run a photograph of the woman’s face: she was too obviously dead. Her fingerprints didn’t match up with anything in either the local computer or the federal data base available to the FBI. And though the body looked pretty clean—an indication that the woman had been living somewhere—no one ever came into a police district to say that their mother or sister or daughter had not come home. Worden checked the group home for homeless women on nearby Cottage Avenue. He checked with the detox and drug treatment centers, because the victim’s liver looked a little gray at autopsy. He canvassed the streets around the elementary school and along the nearest city bus route.

  The break had come last night, when he paraded the photograph through every bar and carryout in Pimlico. Finally someone at the Preakness Bar remembered that the dead woman had a boyfriend named Leon Sykes who used to live over on Moreland Avenue. That address was vacant, but a neighbor told him to try 1710 Bentalou. There, a young girl listened to Worden’s story and took him to 1802 Longwood, where Leon Sykes looked at the photo and identified the dead woman as Barbara.

  “What’s her last name?”

  “I never knew.”

  But Leon remembered where the dead woman’s daughter lived. And thus, by pure police work, did Jane Doe—a black female, late twenties—become Barbara Womble, thirty-nine years, of 1633 Moreland Avenue.

  Those six circuitous days and nights in Pimlico left no one with any doubt: Worden was back, having outlasted his worst year.

  The Big Man’s triumphant return was also marked by his renewed and unceasing torment of Dave Brown, whose abandonment of the Carol Wright case had not exactly gone unnoticed by the older detective. For at least a part of September, Brown’s excuse was the Nina Perry investigation, which began when a couple of dopers were arrested in the car of a woman reported missing from her Stricker Street rowhouse a week earlier. Working with McLarney, Brown put that case together in fine fashion, pressuring one of the suspects to confess fully to the murder and then lead detectives to the victim’s badly decomposed remains, which he had dumped in a Carroll County backwoods.

  Worden watched the Nina Perry case unfold and thought that maybe, just maybe, a detective lurked somewhere within David John Brown. The Perry case was fine work, the kind that teaches a cop something about his craft. But Worden’s generosity went no further.

  “Clayvon Jones and Carol Wright,” Worden declared in late September. “Let’s see him do something with one of those.”

  But Clayvon Jones would not be the true test, not after Eddie Brown came strutting into the coffee room four days ago with a letter from the Baltimore City Jail in his right hand.

  “Speak to yo’ daddy,” said the older detective, dropping the letter onto the desk with a flourish. Dave Brown read about three lines before turning in prayer to the green bulkhead wall.

  “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Do I take care of you?” asked Eddie Brown.

  “You do. You mah daddy.”

  The letter had arrived in the admin office that afternoon, a hastily scrawled missive from a prisoner who had witnessed the murder of Clayvon Jones in that east side courtyard back in June. Three months later, this witness needed to barter out from beneath a drug charge. Addressed to the homicide unit, his letter included details about the crime scene that only a bona fide witness could know.

  No, the Clayvon Jones killing would not be much of an education. In Worden’s considered opinion, its easy solution became simply another laurel beneath the weight of Brown’s ass. That left Carol Wright, the woman run down on the South Baltimore parking lot. For a few weeks, Brown had at least talked about picking up the Carol Wright file again and sorting through the old leads. But as far as the board was concerned, the Carol Wright case still wasn’t a murder and therefore it didn’t exist. These days, he wasn’t even mentioning the case and, as Brown’s sergeant, McLarney wasn’t making much of a stink about it either. Indeed, with Nina Perry and Clayvon Jones both safely in the black, McLarney had a new appreciation for Dave Brown’s talents.

  In McLarney’s mind, the Perry case in particular counted for a lot. Brown had worked hard and a tough case involving a genuine victim had gone down. That arrest had elevated Brown to hero-of-the-week status, and he was therefore entitled to a beer or two at Kavanaugh’s with his loving and devoted sergeant. In fact, McLarney was so pleased with the Perry case that he stayed with Brown through its aftermath, sharing the remaining paperwork and evidentiary details. He only balked when it came time to pick up the victim’s maggot-infested clothing at the ME’s office.

  “Fuck this, Dave. I’ll give you a hand with this tomorrow,” McLarney said after getting a quick whiff of the stench. “Let’s come back for this stuff in the morning.”

  Dave Brown readily agreed and drove back to headquarters a contented man, at least until he realized McLarney wasn’t scheduled to work the next day.

  “Wait a second,” he said, parking the Cavalier in the garage. “You’re off tomorrow.”

  McLarney giggled.

  “You little Irish potatohead.”

  “Potatohead?”

  “You did me, you goddamn mick.” That was the new and improved Dave Brown talking, a far cry from the detective who had penned that please-keep-me-in-homicide missive the month before. A man has to feel fairly secure before he’s willing to call his immediate supervisor an Irish potatohead, even in the casual environment of a homicide office. And of course McLarney loved it. Sitting at an admin office typewriter that same evening, he immortalized the deed in a memo to the lieutenant:

  To: Lt. Gary D’Addario, Homicide unit

  From: Sgt. Terry McLarney, Homicide unit

  Subject: Ethnic/Slurs Comments made by Det. David John Brown

  Sir:

  It is with sorrow and disappointment that I call to your attention the flagrant and wanton infliction of emotional distress which was wrought upon this supervisor on this date. It is something which I have never faced in this enlightened department, and hoped that I never would. However, you should know that on this date Det. David John Brown twice made vicious verbal attacks on my ancestry, once referring to me as “a little Irish potato head” and later calling me “a little mick head.”

  You, being of negligible ancestry yourself, can certainly understand my shame and chagrin. As you know, my dear mother was born and raised in Ireland and my father is the issue of fine people who were forced to flee that sainted isle during the terrible potato famine, which made the potato head remark particularly painful.

  Sir, I would prefer that this matter be handled in-house by you as I would like to avoid the anguish and shame that my family would endure as a result of publicity generated by trial boards and civil action. Thus, I have decided not to make a complaint with the department’s civil rights advisory board, though I reserve the right to file with the National Labor Relations Board should in-house remedies prove insufficient. Brown used to walk foot in the Inner Harbor; he knows the area. In fact, he knows
most of Edmondson Avenue, also …

  Funny stuff. A little too funny, thought Worden, reading a copy of the memo. McLarney’s obvious delight in Dave Brown was helping to turn Carol Wright into nothing worse than a vague and distant memory. If the Nina Perry case meant anything at all, Worden thought, then now was the time for Brown to show it. Did he really want to work murders? Did he even know exactly what that meant? Or was he up here to submit overtime slips and close Kavanaugh’s every other night? If McLarney wasn’t going to stick a finger in Dave Brown’s eye, then the Big Man would take that responsibility upon himself. For three weeks running, in fact, Worden had been knee deep in the younger detective’s shit, waiting to see some movement on a case that Brown would like to see disappear. It’s been the full Worden treatment—cold, demanding and a little bit vicious. For Dave Brown, a man who wants nothing more than to bask in the latest success, there is no joy, no mercy, and absolutely no chance of escape.

  Now, on today’s quiet eight-to-four shift, the younger detective is actually foolish enough to be caught reading the new issue of Rolling Stone in the coffee room, an act of utter indolence. Worden needs only to enter the room and ascertain that the Carol Wright file is not visible on Dave Brown’s desk.

  “De-tec-tive Brown,” says Worden, imbuing each syllable with contempt.

  “What?”

  “Detective Brown …”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ll bet you like the sound of that, don’t you?”

  “The sound of what?”

  “Detective Brown. Detective David John Brown.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Worden.” Worden stares at the younger detective intently and for so long that Brown can no longer concentrate on the magazine.

  “Quit staring at me, you old bastard.”

  “I’m not staring at you.”

  “The fuck you aren’t.”

  “It’s your conscience.” Brown looks at him, uncomprehending.

  “Where’s the Carol Wright case?” says Worden.

  “Hey, I’ve got to type the prosecution report for Nina Perry …”

  “That was last month.”

  “… and I got a warrant out this week on my boy Clayvon, so gimme a fucking break already.”

  “My heart pumps purple piss for you,” says Worden.

  “I didn’t ask you about Clayvon Jones, did I? What’s new with Carol Wright?”

  “Nothing. I got my dick in my hands on that.”

  “De-tec-tive Brown …”

  Dave Brown pulls open his top right drawer and grabs the .38, pulling the gun halfway out of the holster. Worden doesn’t laugh.

  “Gimme a quarter,” says the older detective.

  “What the hell for?”

  “Gimme a quarter.”

  “If I give you a quarter, will you shut the fuck up and leave me alone?”

  “Maybe,” says Worden. Dave Brown stands up and fishes a coin from his trouser pocket. He throws the quarter at Worden, then sits again, burying his face behind the magazine. Worden gives him a good ten seconds.

  “De-tec-tive Brown …”

  NINE

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13

  At its core, the crime is the same.

  This time she is shot, not stabbed or garroted. This time the small frame is just a bit heavier and the hair is down, not pulled back in braids with a brightly colored beret. This time the vaginal swabs will provide proof of the rape in the form of seminal fluid. This time she did not disappear while walking to a library but to a bus stop. And this time the dead girl will be a year older, twelve instead of eleven. But in every important way, it is the same.

  Nine months after Latonya Kim Wallace was discovered behind a Reservoir Hill rowhouse, Harry Edgerton is once again staring at an act of unequivocal evil in a Baltimore alley. The body, fully clothed, is crumpled at the edge of an old brick garage foundation behind a vacant rowhouse in the 1800 block of West Baltimore Street. The single bullet wound is to the back of the skull—a .32 or .38 from the look of it—fired at close range.

  Her name was Andrea Perry.

  And her mother knows when she watches the evening news and catches a glimpse of the ME’s attendants carrying the gurney out of an alley a block away from her Fayette Street home. Andrea has only been missing since last night, and the unidentified victim on television is initially believed to be an older girl, possibly a young woman. But her mother knows.

  The identification process at Penn Street is achingly painful, hard even for the ME’s attendants, who can do this sort of thing four or five times a day. Later that day in the homicide office, Roger Nolan has barely started to interview the mother when she breaks down uncontrollably.

  “Go home,” he tells her. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  At about the same moment, Edgerton stands in the autopsy room and watches another postmortem of another murdered child. This time, however, Edgerton is the primary detective. In fact, he’s the only detective. And this time, he tells himself, it’s all going to end differently.

  But if the Andrea Perry case is now the exclusive property of the homicide unit’s consummate loner, it is also a contradiction in terms: behold, the one-man red ball.

  The Andrea Perry murder has all the earmarks of a major case—a dead child, a brutal rape and murder, a lead story on the six o’clock news—yet this time there are no special details, no herd of detectives at the crime scene, no second-day cadet searches. This time the brass is nowhere to be seen.

  It might have gone this way even if someone other than Edgerton had taken the call. Because once already this year, D’Addario’s men had spent themselves in a communal fight, gathering the entire shift for an absolutely essential case. For one little girl, they had called in extra troops from the districts. For one righteous cause, they had pursued their best suspects for weeks and then months, sacrificing other cases in the campaign for a single, small life. And none of it had mattered. The Latonya Wallace case had gone sour, reminding every man on the shift that all the time and money and effort mean nothing when the evidence isn’t there. In the end, it was an open file like any other—a special tragedy, to be sure—but an open murder now in the care of one solitary detective.

  Success is its own catalyst; failure, too. Without any arrest in the death of one child, the same shift of detectives had very little to deliver in the death of another. For Andrea Perry, there will be no general mobilization, no declaration of war. It is October; the arsenal is empty.

  That it is Edgerton’s case simply makes all of this easier. Of all the men on D’Addario’s shift, he is the only one who would never think to ask for more troops. Nolan is with him, of course; Nolan is always with him. But beyond the sergeant, everyone else in the squad holds to his own cases. Even if Edgerton wants their help, he wouldn’t know how to ask. From the crime scene forward, he is on his own: So be it.

  From those first moments at the scene, Edgerton tells himself he will not make the same mistakes that he believes are buried in the Latonya Wallace file, and if he does, they will be his alone to deal with. He has watched Tom Pellegrini waste most of a year kicking himself for investigative flaws, real and imagined. Much of that is the kind of second-guessing that accompanies any unsolved case, but some of it, Edgerton knows, has to do with Pellegrini’s feeling that the red-ball treatment had taken away control of the case. Landsman, Edgerton, Eddie Brown, the detail officers—every one of them had become a force for Tom to reckon with, particularly the veteran detectives who had so much more time than Pellegrini and, as a result, tended to influence the case to a greater degree. Well, thinks Edgerton, that was Tom. I won’t have that problem.

  For one thing, he has a crime scene—not just a site where the child’s body has been dumped, but a bona fide murder scene. Edgerton and Nolan had taken the call alone, and for once they had taken their goddamn time with the body. They made sure to do everything in the proper order, to let the little girl be until they were absolutely ready to move her
. They bagged the hands at the scene and carefully chronicled the exact array of clothing, noting that while she was fully dressed, her jacket and blouse seemed to have been improperly buttoned.

  Working closely with the lab tech at the scene, Edgerton managed to pull several hairs from the victim’s blouse, and he carefully noted even the smallest scars and injuries. Walking the length of the alley, he found a single .22 casing, though the head wound appeared to be the result of a larger caliber. With a wound to a fleshy part of the body, a detective can’t really tell, because the skin expands at the point of contact and then returns to its shape after the bullet passes, leaving a smaller hole. But a head wound retains an accurate circumference; chances are good that the .22 casing had nothing to do with the murder.

  There was no blood trail whatsoever. Edgerton carefully examined the victim’s head and neck at the scene, satisfying himself that she had done all of her bleeding right there against the low brick foundation. In all probability, she had been led into the alley, forced to kneel down, and then shot, execution style, in the back of the head. Nor was there an exit wound, and a clean, remarkably unmutilated .32 round is subsequently recovered at the autopsy. In addition, the vaginal swabs will later come back positive with the seminal fluid of a secreter—a male whose ejaculate contained sufficient blood to type or DNA-test against any potential suspect. In contrast to the Latonya Wallace case, the killer of Andrea Perry has left behind a wealth of physical evidence.

  But the interviews with two young men brought downtown by the first uniforms provide little. Apparently, neither one was the first to discover the body. One tells detectives that he learned about it from the other; the second says only that he had been walking on Baltimore Street when an old woman told him that there was a body in the alley. He had not gone to investigate, he tells Edgerton, but had simply told the second man, who flagged down a cop. Who was the old woman? The first young man has no idea.