The Sins of a District
by
A.J. Whittle
Part One (Nineteen Ninety-Five)
Chapter I
As the sun sets on a mild autumn evening on November 3rd nineteen ninety-five, the leafless trees in the inner city leave an almost desolate look to the tableau. In Washington D.C. a solitary van is seen parked near to the rear of the Lincoln Memorial. Later that night in the early hours of the morning, when the sun’s glare had finally disappeared from the landscape, a van pulls around to the steps at the front driving onto the public access section where people would enter the front of the memorial. The side door opens; the lifeless body of a young girl is thrown from the vehicle. The dark van speeds away, and the young girl’s body is left lying on the cold steps; her eyes still wide open, she gazes at the iconic statue that symbolized freedom for all.
The moon glistened off of the reflecting pool opposite, a mixture of sirens and a murmuring crowd of on-lookers can be heard as the Metropolitan Police clear the area and canvas the scene. Two young detectives of the Second District step through the tape and begin to walk towards the gruesome scene. Detective Ryan Mathers was a rising star in the PD and everyone knew it at the time. “First in his class at the academy with a perfect record,” everyone always used to say. He was the model citizen, handsome, newly married and a complete perfectionist to boot. His partner and best friend since high school was second in the academy class, Detective Harry O’Neal. The product of a tougher background, Harry had learned to do things the hard way, relentless in his dreams and ambitions. He always stated, “one day I’ll be running this department, and then we might get a few more things done.”
“Jesus, can’t we ever get a night off?” Harry groaned,
“I guess not,” replied Ryan in a subtle tone of voice.
As the two stood over the body a look of horror rose over Ryan’s face as he saw the young girl, aged no more than seventeen, lying there brutally stabbed several times and callously discarded.
“The human race never continues to surprise...How does something like this even happen? Tourist hotspot, potential eyes everywhere and this guy manages to dump a body?” Ryan asked throwing question after question about the case towards his friend Harry.
“You wait till the reporters get a hold of this; a young black girl found lying dead at the Lincoln Memorial, and the pressure’s going to be on us this time partner, public fucking uproar,” said Harry, whose hands had begun to shake, the pair of them still hadn’t averted their eyes away from the young African American girl. Harry looked at Ryan and immediately knew the pressure would be on, this time wouldn’t be any different for the two of them.
“Let’s just do our jobs. You talk to first on scene and check for any eyeballs at the time and I’ll stay here with her,” Ryan told Harry.
Harry walked away more annoyed he’d missed the chance to enjoy a decent night’s sleep for a change rather than the death of the girl, clenching his fist in frustration, he removed his notebook with the other hand. Ryan said that this had to be done swiftly and by the book, his biggest case so far. The Democratic capitol seat of the western world stood less than a mile from the crime scene and all eyes of the country would be on the detectives and the department from coast to coast within hours.
“No wallet, no ID, no witnesses, nothing, not a damn thing” groaned Harry, he walked back over some minutes later, having finished his final cigarette of the deck he purchased earlier that day. Stubbing the tail end of a Lucky Strike under his new shoes, he tore the wrapping remnants of a freshly cut pack and crumpled them with the lint in the bottom of his trouser pocket. He then reached for another lighting it with a match from a matchbook from one of the many bars and taverns he frequented, he practically collected them as tokens and trophies of a heavy nights drinking.
“You want one?” he offered to Ryan. Harry knew full well that Ryan didn’t smoke and would always refuse his generous offer.
“No. That stuff will kill you,” Ryan replied as the coroner’s van exited the scene with the body for a further examination back at the lab in the precinct.
When the pair of detectives returned to their parked car on 23rd Street where it curved around the rear of the memorial, Ryan’s phone began to jingle. It was Jessica, his new bride and love of his life who was currently eight months pregnant with a girl.
“Is that the new wife? Thought of any names yet?” Harry asked trying to bring Ryan back to normality. He knew he would get too involved with the victim as always, he could see it on his face when he first saw the body of the young girl. Harry wasn’t sure why, because Ryan never talked about his past before they both met. All he knew was that he’d lived with his grandmother for a time in his life. What Harry also knew was that he was his means of emotional support both at work and in his social life, the one who was always there for him, since they were teenagers, the one Ryan would always look to, and Harry knew that, no matter how bad things got, he could snap him back to reality.
Ryan took one look at the caller ID on his phone after removing it from his inside coat pocket and disconnected the incoming call. From his body language and his reaction Harry could tell that Ryan was in no right mind to talk to his wife at that particular moment in time. As the pair drove home Ryan acted silent and preoccupied the whole way until Harry pulled up to his house in the dead of night. Rain began to fall onto the hood of the vehicle as Ryan got out the Sedan and walked up to his front porch.
“Not even a thank you for the lift? I thought not,” grumbled Harry. As he sped away waking every animal in the near vicinity with his car, Ryan just glanced back then continued towards his front door.
* * *
It was an old building, looking similar to a brownstone in design, only with red brick and old windows that still needed replacing. The narrow steps at the front were slippery this time of year with the mixture of fallen leaves and heavy rain, the street lights weren’t working either so only a narrow doorframe and the small light of the front porch flickering almost like a beacon were there to guide him. As he reached for his keys, he could hear the faint sound of the door unlocking from the other side and the face of his new bride Jessica peered round the corner to let him in. The two didn’t share a word, just a glance at each other before she clenched and grabbed her back turning and walking away. She was clearly struggling from both the stress and the physical toll on the body of being eight months pregnant.
“So how was it?” she asked hoping one of these days he may actually answer her and tell her about the tough evening at work he’d had.
“It was fine, just going to have a shower and try to get some sleep, early start tomorrow,” Ryan replied.
She heard the shower begin to run and the clunking of metal as she realised he had locked the bathroom door, almost the same way he just locked Jessica out. She stood staring into her bedroom mirror at her stomach poking out of the bathrobe she hadn’t been able to fasten in nearly three months, she found that she couldn’t help wondering if she was doing the right thing. The right thing by marrying Ryan who she knew wasn’t exactly husband material, and the right thing by choosing to keep her child. She was raised on “old fashioned values” as they used to say. She had been a respectful young Catholic girl in her youth, but had almost given up her faith in recent years, probably due to the hardships of a relationship with a man with whom she was completely incompatible. Just as the shower stopped she quietly hurried as fast as her physique would allow her back under the quilt in her bed,so as to give the impression everything was alright, and as Ryan climbed in not even a goodnight was uttered, just the noise of the bedside lamp switch as the room descended into darkness.
Chapter II
> The next day Ryan arrived for work this time in his own car and with a plastic take-out coffee cup in hand. You could tell it was cold and had rained heavily the previous night as the roads and the sidewalks were icy under foot. Icy like the reception the reigning Commissioner of the Metro PD was getting while he addressed the vast array of reporters gathered at the front of the building. The smell of coffee, cigarettes and cheap suits was more than apparent when you entered, the station was a loud network of ringing phones that were going unanswered, people talking, cramped desks where towers of brown files were stacked and the occasional laugh, although these days the laughs were few and far between, especially after last night the noise was somewhat subdued as the entire department was gathered around a television the size of a hatbox to watch the Commissioner’s press conference to the media.
“You know he’s going to get bombarded with it right?” Harry said as he passed a coffee that smelt as bad as it looked in a cup with stains still on the side from the last person.
“Bombarded with what?” Ryan replied.
“You know? Whether it was racial?” Harry responded
“Oh right, who cares if it was? A crime’s a crime, we need to head downstairs, see what Daniels has for us, enough politics for one morning.” Ryan said authoritatively.
While Harry and Ryan headed down the stairs Daniels was already waiting for them at the bottom. Doctor Claire Daniels was well respected as a forensic pathologist amongst the men at the precinct, most probably due to her father who was currently “handling” the media upstairs.
“You know he’s retiring soon. The word is Ellis is his replacement.” She said as she led them down yet another flight of stairs into the morgue.
“Oh please, Ellis is an asshole,” replied Harry who was never short of such kind things to say about the current District Commander Nathan Ellis, the pair had been at it since they were in a patrol car for a brief stint in nineteen ninety-two.
“One of these days you’re going to have to tell me just what the heck happened that night on your stakeout of the old Johnson place” Claire jokingly said, it was very rare that she didn’t know the answer to something. Claire worked a number of high profile cases in previous years and was known for being very meticulous, especially in her delivery of reports and trace evidence found on the bodies. Although this time Ryan noticed something was odd, she never waits at the bottom of the stairs, she seldom leaves her lab during work hours except for lunch and the occasional smoke when her father wasn’t roaming the office.
“So that victim you got from the Lincoln Memorial, the “Jane Doe”, found nothing on her, no trace, nothing under the fingernails, no defensive wounds on her hands. All I can tell you is; that her blood alcohol level was point one eight, well over the legal limit, due to lividity of the blood and how far along rigor was I would say she died around 1am. Also that she was stabbed six times through the chest, stab number three was the one that killed her, it completely severed the aorta. Not with a knife, something slightly shorter and thinner” Once again Claire’s attention to detail impressed Ryan, although he was never one to share what he was thinking.
“I’ll run her fingerprints through the system, see if we get a match.”
“Don’t bother.” Claire quickly replied, “She’s not in the system I checked.”
“So you’re telling me we have no way of knowing who this girl is unless someone bothers to come forward?” Asked Ryan, with a confused look on his face a simple nod at the doctor was enough to signal that he had seen all he needed to see.
* * *
A full two days had passed and still no one had come forward to help positively ID the young black girl as Ryan stared hopelessly through dossier after dossier of “missing persons” reports hoping to catch a break. The pile was so tall it was effectively the height of his desk, when he threw the last file in his hand back on top of the mountain of binders he turned to Harry who was at the time flicking number two pencils at the ceiling trying to make them stick to the insulation he acknowledged that he had finished scanning through 1994.
“This is going to take weeks.” He said with a sigh in his breath.
Just at that moment another detective poked his head around the pile of files and said,
“CCTV is finally in, word is it catches a glimpse of your scene.”
“Oh hallelujah! For a moment there I thought we were going to have to go door to door with a picture of the girl, these are new shoes.” Harry said gladly welcoming the news of a potential break in the case.
As the pair sit down to view what’s on the tape they notice that at around 1am a camera adjacent to the southeast corner of the monument where the road intersects catches a glimpse of a dark van, possibly black or navy blue driving onto the scene.
“With no plates and around the time our victim was killed this HAS to be our guy.” Proclaimed Harry, but Ryan wasn’t so sure it was much of a lead, there must be thousands of vans in the inner city area finding one with plates would be hard enough let alone one without.
“I’ll put out the APB on the van and have uniforms keeping an eye out.” Said Ryan in the hope that this might scare up a new lead, as the lead investigator on an already too political case in the media it had worked its way up the ladder after just two days and was on every TV and news outlet in the country and was a national talking point, that pressure alone could be enough to make someone nervous.
For lunch the two detectives frequented a nearby vendor each and every day, they would then sit and eat at their desks, this was their daily routine, nothing glamorous at all to say they were in D.C. But on a cop’s salary with a family, neither could afford a fancy restaurant so when you only have five dollars at the bottom of your pocket a Pepsi and a salami sub go down quite nicely with the boys on the force. Plus it’s a breath of fresh air for Ryan, away from the smell of stale cigarettes, at least until Harry light’s up that is.
By the time they had returned to their desk sandwiches out ready a note had been left on Ryan’s desk saying,
“Patrol found your missing van dumped in a scrap yard, it’s coming from the impound lot this afternoon boys.” Ryan felt tremendously relieved, he knew that if this led somewhere it could make his career instead of break it. That afternoon the celebrations were cut short when the van arrived on the back of the flatbed truck, in the shape of a cube. Relief quickly turned to despair for the two investigators, as they both soon began to realise that another lead was going nowhere. The rain clouds blackened the afternoon sky and light droplets of rain began to land almost as if to create the perfect backdrop for the adversity Ryan faced at this time in his life. With his tribulations at home and now at work he was like a ticking emotional time bomb ready to erupt at any moment, how long he could he honestly last while still holding thing’s together. Ryan wished he was more like Harry sometimes as he seems to be able to separate his feelings from his work, if there is one thing Ryan has realised with his last few years on the job is that you bury your feelings, before they bury you. Just as Ryan was set to leave the station that evening, his mind-set already on an ice cold beer and his desire to regress to a nice warm bed for an early evening, he was called into District Commander Nathan Ellis’s office who was demanding an update on the case two days after they found the girl. With Harry having already gone home Ryan simply put it to Ellis, “The case has gone cold, no leads, and no witnesses.” He just didn’t care at this point anymore he simply wanted to go home, but he knew Ellis’s wrath would be forced upon him at some point for not turning up any suspects, he has his bosses he must answer to as well, including Daniels who is being berated by the media nearly every day on national television. Just at that moment Ryan notices a man in the corner of the room nearly hidden from his line of sight by the heavy door, he looks at him and realises that the man is,
“District attorney Eli Walker” he says as he offers his hand out to Ryan.
“I was just about to say it’s nice to meet you.” Ryan replied
as he shook his hand, he had a firm grip that must come from glad-handing many people and Walker was a tall almost dominant figure stood in front of Ryan. Walker was known for being overly political and everyone knew he was planning to run for public office again sometime soon, he lost the previous election onto the city council a few years back. Now he all but admits he will run again on a regular basis with his hard stance taken on crime, especially repeat offenders he may be able to help do some good for the city. His hand was heavy and soft almost as if Walker had never done hard day’s work, as he shook it Ryan caught a glance of a particularly startling gold ring that was on the index finger of his right hand, it looked garish and loud almost like he wants people to know it’s there. The inscription doesn’t say much at all it simply reads in Latin “Veritas” on a small crest in the centre, it simply meant truth and was the official seal of Harvard, and he recognised the ring as one given to graduates. Ryan knew this probably already entitled him to higher level of self-importance than his own, the job title wasn’t needed.
“Fancy joining me for one at Mickey’s?” the district attorney asked Ryan.
* * *
Mickey’s bar was a well-known watering hole and was a popular hang-out for the younger crowd these days on the corner of 14th and Corcoran. When they entered into the establishment, as Walker raised his hand towards one of the bar staff and indicated clearly too where he planned on sitting to one of the barmen. All Ryan’s eyes could see were row after row of dark booths filled with vainglorious young businessmen and their trophy girlfriends acting amicably to everyone they knew. The house jazz band stood tall in the far corner of the bar amidst a ray of smoke and stage lights. The sound of the cash register as willing patrons gladly forked over their hard earned dollars and cents into an already fruitful business, were exchanged for many tall drinks in slim glasses. That looked a bright and gaudy colour would only last a few minutes in the hands of one of these button-down clones Ryan mused. The place had a certain blandness in taste and style but was just synonymous with the rich and powerful and Ryan couldn’t help feel a little out of place, “Harry would feel right at home here, he’s never one to turn down an opportunity for an evening out, when he’s not betting all his earnings on sports,” He thought to himself as the pair sat down in a booth, Ryan expected to be grilled about the case but instead was handed something ghastly looking by the waiter which he then gulped down. Ryan knew he had to be careful, he wasn’t much of a drinker in his youth but he had been known to fly off of the handle every once in a while when let loose.
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