A Good Month for Murder

by Del Quentin Wilber

  Crowell then asks what Murray knows of Amber Stanley’s murder, and the hack says that all he’s heard is that the high school senior was shot and killed in her house. He learned about it, he says, after seeing reward flyers posted all over the neighborhood.

  “Who do you think did it?” Crowell asks.

  The taxi driver goes quiet and taps the table with his fingers. His eyes drift to the ceiling.

  “You know,” Murray says, “it could have been Crazy K.” He stares ever more intently at the ceiling tiles, as if concentrating in an effort to retrieve a distant thought. “Yeah, Crazy K!”

  “Crazy K, as in the letter K?” Crowell asks.

  Murray nods.

  Crowell asks Murray if he knows Crazy K’s real name.

  “No idea.”

  “Why is he called Crazy K?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Crowell tilts his head and purses his lips, signaling Murray to answer the question.

  “Because I saw him once at the gas station stabbing at the gas pumps with a knife. He even serves himself at KFC—just hops over the counter, fills up a bucket, and runs out.”

  “That’s crazy,” Crowell says.

  “Yeah, he’s Crazy K!”

  But Murray’s description of Crazy K doesn’t match the one of the killer provided by Amber Stanley’s sister. Besides, Crowell thinks, Crazy K seems too erratic to be the calm and collected gunman.

  The witness’s next tidbit, however, seems more promising. According to Murray, Denise and her sex clients sometimes visited a huge house in Woodmore, a well-to-do neighborhood about a mile north of Amber’s house. The home was abandoned, Murray tells the detectives; as far as he could determine, nobody had been in the place for months. Strangely, though, it was still furnished—big-screen televisions, chairs, sofas, closets full of clothes. “There was all kinds of sports stuff—signed helmets, signed pennants, jerseys on the walls,” Murray says.

  Crowell is intrigued, but he has never heard of a wealthy person vanishing and leaving those kinds of possessions behind. Sure, he thinks, poor people get evicted all the time. But rich guys?

  Although Crowell presses Murray, the details do not change, and the driver goes on to claim that he watched two of his friends have sex with Denise in the back of a silver sports car in the home’s garage. Crowell jots down the names of Murray’s two friends. One is the man Murray mentioned earlier, the twenty-year-old who caught the STD from Denise. The other is a teenager who is familiar to Crowell: his name had come up earlier in the investigation, but he has been ruled out as a suspect because he was in jail at the time of the rape and the murder.

  Crowell’s mind goes into overdrive as he considers Murray’s story about the mansion. If it’s true, Crowell thinks, the house has potential evidentiary value—two men, one of them a possible suspect, had sex with Denise in that house. Maybe the mansion was the site of Denise’s rape; if they get really lucky, they might even recover some physical evidence, like a spent condom or a weapon. And if Murray is fibbing and there is no rich man’s house, the detectives will have caught him in a lie, a mistake they might be able to exploit.

  Crowell stands up and stares down at Murray. “Okay,” he says, “we’re going to find this place—now.”

  * * *

  SEAN DEERE IS working at his desk, typing on his keyboard and clicking his mouse as he navigates through the information he downloaded from Murray’s phone—a call log and a few texts. So far he has found nothing incriminating or particularly revealing, just some calls between Murray and Jeff Buck and some texts to arrange rides and marijuana purchases. When Deere gets to the folder containing forty-three photos and videos, he feels mildly optimistic, allowing himself to believe that the folder could yield a trove of potential documentary evidence. The photos and videos might show Murray’s girlfriend and Denise, or Denise and Jeff Buck—or maybe even Amber Stanley. But his hopes dim the moment he opens the first file, a shaky video of Murray and his girlfriend having sex in the front passenger seat of Murray’s car.

  Deere clicks on the next file: same thing. And the next, and the next. The first thirty of the forty-three videos and photos depict sex acts by Murray and his girlfriend, all of them apparently taken by Murray himself. Deere is tempted to stop, but he has to open each file on the slight chance that Murray used his phone to capture something pertinent to the investigation. As he clicks on the thirty-first file, he senses a presence off his left shoulder. Turning, he sees Crowell, whose eyes are glued to the screen.

  “Porn! Come on, Sean,” Crowell says.

  Deere laughs. “Nah—this guy has a shit-ton of homemade stuff in his car, with his girlfriend. I still have more to go through.”

  Crowell stifles a laugh. The file’s video has just finished loading, and an enormous erect penis fills the monitor. “Well,” Crowell says, jerking his thumb in the direction of the interview room in which the girlfriend is being held. She is from a well-off family, and the detectives have been wondering why she would want to date a homeless taxi driver. “Now we know what she sees in him.”

  Crowell briefs Deere on what Murray has told them—about Crazy K, the guy who caught the STD, his girlfriend pimping out Denise, and the abandoned mansion.

  With one eye on the video running in the background on his monitor, Deere listens to Crowell and wonders whether the new details will help him build a case against Jeff Buck.

  “Field trip?” Crowell asks, eager to check out Murray’s story about the house. “It helps us either way—he’s lying or he’s telling the truth. Maybe that’s where she was raped, maybe there’s something there.”

  Deere turns his attention back to the computer and sees that the sex video has finished. He hovers the mouse over a folder and confirms that he has a dozen more videos and photos to review. The choice is easy.

  “Let’s go,” he says.

  * * *

  FORTY MINUTES LATER, Deere, Crowell, and Boulden pull their Impalas to the curb in front of a large brick colonial on a street of similar houses with manicured lawns in a neighborhood about six miles east of the homicide office. Deere strides to the front door, where he studies a vacancy notice that has been posted on behalf of the owner’s mortgage company. He returns to the driveway and addresses Murray, who is sitting in Crowell’s car. “It’s vacant,” Deere says.

  Nodding, Murray steps out of the car. “We can get in around back,” he says, leading the trio of investigators around the side of the house to a rear door. But when Murray tries the handle, it won’t budge. Crowell shakes his head, skeptical that the guy really knows how to get into the house.

  “I can climb through the window,” Murray says. “It will open. Watch.”

  Before Deere or Crowell can stop him, Murray pushes on one of the windows. After its top half slides down, he scrambles awkwardly through the opening and crashes into the house. Deere grimaces, thinking about the mounds of paperwork required to explain how a witness fractured his neck while breaking into a house. A minute later they hear more banging; a lock flicks and the back door swings open, revealing a beaming Murray, who steps aside and dramatically ushers the three detectives into a messy kitchen.

  Papers are strewn everywhere, and drawers and cabinets yawn open. There’s an unopened FedEx package dated two years earlier, as well as utility bills and bank statements. The contents of the shelves and cabinets litter every surface—broken dishes, bowls, cereal boxes. A pile of clothes sits in a far corner. The refrigerator’s doors are open, revealing a dark, empty space.

  Crowell instinctively tries a light switch, but there is no power. He pulls a flashlight out of his pocket and shines the beam around the kitchen. “Which way to the garage?” he asks.

  Murray points to his right, through the kitchen, and starts in that direction, the detectives in tow. A few moments later, the investigators are studying a silver Nissan 300ZX sports car with flat tires. They are somewhat surprised at the accuracy of Murray’s memory, considering his heavy dr
ug use and poor sleeping habits.

  Crowell approaches the passenger window and aims his flashlight into the dusty interior.

  “In the back seat?” he asks.

  “Yes,” says Murray. “She was in the back seat.”

  “And he was, you know, fucking her in the back seat?” Crowell says, referring to the twenty-year-old who caught the STD. “There is room for that?”

  “The passenger seat was pushed all the way forward,” Murray says.

  “And your man was standing half in and half out of the car?” Crowell asks. “And he was buck naked?”

  “Yeah.”

  Crowell tilts his head to the left, staring into the back seat.

  “Two guys?” Crowell asks, remembering that Murray said the twenty-year-old had been joined by his teenage friend. “One at a time, obviously—right?”

  Murray nods, and Crowell tilts his head to the other side, trying to figure out the mechanics of the act.

  Crowell casts a glance over his left shoulder at Murray. “What was he, King Dingaling?”

  Deere stifles a chuckle, thinking, Only Crowell. He’s probably already fantasizing about doing the same thing with his wife in his BMW.

  Pacing around the car, Deere shines his flashlight beam on the floor, looking for a discarded condom or a cigarette butt, anything that might have DNA. But there is only dust. After five minutes of scouring the garage, the detectives head back to the kitchen, where Deere picks up some of the mail and tax documents and pops the name he presumes to be the owner’s into his smartphone’s Web browser. The owner is not dead or missing or in hiding—in fact, he had been active on social media as recently as a few months ago.

  Deere shrugs and follows the crowd into the living room, which is arranged just as Murray had described it. A half dozen swanky swivel chairs face a television screen the size of a compact car. On the wall is a signed professional athlete’s jersey.

  On the second floor Deere and the others find two bedrooms, each with a bare mattress on the floor. One bedroom is mostly empty; in the other, clothes, toys, and board games are scattered across the plush beige carpet.

  “Why did they have sex in that little car if they have mattresses up here?” Crowell asks.

  “No idea,” Murray says.

  “I like this layout,” says Boulden, standing on a balcony and looking down into the living room. “It’s nice.”

  “Probably cost him four hundred and fifty thousand,” says Deere.

  “Depends when he bought it,” says Crowell. “I wonder if he bought it before the height of the market.”

  Since the onset of the Great Recession, the detectives have been inside plenty of abandoned homes; as in many suburbs, those in PG County were hit hard by the financial crash and the foreclosure crisis. The detectives have a rule when entering such houses: Never lean against a wall. A stain might ruin a perfectly good suit, or you could find a cockroach crawling across your arm. But this place is different. Though cluttered and moldy, the house feels relatively clean.

  On a hallway wall, Deere spots a pennant signed by what must be a professional sports team’s entire roster. “You didn’t take anything?” he asks Murray. “Not a Redskins helmet or a jersey or something?”

  “What would I do with that? Where would I keep it?”

  Makes sense if you live in your Honda, thinks Deere.

  He trails Crowell and Boulden into the mostly barren master bedroom and stands next to them as they stoop to study deep impressions in the carpet.

  “Those are from a water bed,” Crowell says. “I had one of those once. It was fun.”

  While Crowell and Boulden debate the merits of waterbeds, Deere heads into the master bathroom. He checks the toilet; it’s dry, the water obviously having been shut off long ago. He steps over to a square window and looks out at a nearly identical mansion across the street. Then he turns and catches himself in a large mirror. Fuck, he thinks, I look old and tired.

  Dropping his eyes to the sink, he spots a toothbrush and a hairbrush on the edge of the basin. To his right, a towel has been flipped casually over the shower stall. If the water hasn’t been working, Deere thinks, that means the towel and brushes weren’t left by vagrants—the owner must have departed his house rather suddenly after taking a shower and brushing his teeth and hair. Maybe he expected to return, maybe he didn’t. It’s impossible to know.

  After frowning once more at his face in the mirror, Deere rejoins Crowell, Boulden, and Murray, who are still gabbing about the benefits and disadvantages of waterbeds. Deere gestures for the group to head downstairs, and they retrace their steps out the back door and around the house to their cars. There they stand in the driveway, all staring at the beautiful house and its immaculate lawn, pondering the incongruity of what they’ve seen.

  “Will we be finished soon?” Murray asks the detectives.

  “No,” says Deere. “No, we have more to do.”

  9:50 a.m., Wednesday, February 6

  Detective Eddie Flores’s eyes are burning. He hasn’t slept more than eight hours since he stood over his corpse two days earlier, and he has enjoyed only two power naps in his cruiser and a brief visit home for a shower and a short snooze. Even so, he has no desire to sleep. The first crucial piece of his puzzle has fallen into place: he’s put a name to his victim.

  Flores learned the identity of the corpse the previous day, thanks to some flirting by Detective D. J. Windsor with a female customer-service representative for the bus company that transported the man from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Washington. After complimenting the call taker’s southern accent, Windsor charmed her into violating company policy and providing him with the phone number of the person who had purchased the one-way ticket. Jeff Eckrich then called the number and asked the woman who answered about the ticket’s provenance. She said her mother had purchased the ticket for a cousin and gave Eckrich his name: Salaam Adams.

  A search of databases revealed that the twenty-year-old Adams had a lengthy criminal history, including arrests for auto theft, robbery, and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. As Flores and Eckrich reviewed Adams’s eleven-page rap sheet, Eckrich recalled the murder scene and the angel wings in the dirt. “Well,” he said to Flores, “he certainly was no angel.”

  This assessment was confirmed by one of Adams’s aunts, who told Flores that her nephew lived in Durham, North Carolina, and had been a cocaine dealer. Adams’s criminal history and his out-of-state residence ensure that there will be no pastor-led candlelight vigils, no calls from county council members demanding an arrest, no coverage by the media. For better or worse, Salaam Adams’s murder will now be recorded as a statistic: the county’s eighth homicide of 2013, the first in the month of February.

  The killing will also be added to the numerator in a quotient that drives homicide detectives to distraction: solved murders divided by total murders produces their clearance rate. If there is any pressure on Flores to solve this case, it will stem from that simple statistic, which is tracked daily by the detectives’ supervisors, the assistant chief, and even the chief. Yes, the captains and lieutenants care about a victim’s family, and they take seriously their responsibility to speak for the dead. But they also like their jobs, and the clearance rate is the measure by which their work is judged. On this account, the PG police department does a good job of solving homicides: in 2012, for example, the unit mustered a 73 percent clearance rate, significantly better than the 62 percent national average. The commanders and chief would dearly like to keep the rate where it is, if not improve it.

  Since learning his victim’s identity, Flores has been trying to reach Adams’s mother. She was informed of the death in person by a North Carolina police officer, so Flores doesn’t have to take care of that sad task, one of the worst parts of the job. But the detective would still like to express his condolences and try to build a bond—he knows mothers are often amazing conduits of intelligence. He has traded two messages with his victim’s mother alre
ady, and he decides it might be time to try again. After checking the clock on the wall between Interview Rooms 2 and 3 and deciding that it’s not too early to call, he punches in the mother’s number.

  This time he gets through; when she answers, the detective introduces himself and says he is sorry for her loss. After promising to do his best to arrest her son’s killer, Flores gets down to business. Why, he asks, was her son coming to Washington?

  “He was visiting a friend to watch the Super Bowl,” she says.

  “Do you know who that is?” Flores asks, pulling out a pen and flipping to a new page of his steno pad.

  “No, but I might have the man’s phone number,” she says. Flores hears fumbling, as the mother presumably consults her phone’s memory. Twenty seconds later, she’s back on the line. “My son called this number from my house, and it called back,” she says. She gives Flores the phone number, repeats it, and then says, “I think this is who he went to see.” She says the call was made on Friday, two days before her son left town.

  Flores smiles. With today’s advanced tracking capabilities and call registers, a phone number is often as valuable to an investigator as a name.

  The detective thanks Adams’s mother for her help, hangs up, and walks around the row of workstations to Eckrich’s desk. Flores tells his partner that Adams called a friend before coming to Washington and asks Eckrich who he thinks his victim was calling.

  Eckrich ticks off the possibilities: a drug connection, a fellow gang member, a friend, or maybe all of the above. The detectives simultaneously raise their eyebrows as they both come to a realization: if Adams called a friend or business partner, the person who received that call might be at risk, since presumably the man who shot Adams would have no qualms about hurting one of his friends.

  Back at his desk, Flores queries a commercial database and determines which cell-phone carrier owns the number he’s been given. After filling out a request for subscriber information, recent call data, and updates on the phone’s location, he faxes it to the company. As soon as the carrier replies, he will give the information to the police department’s fugitive squad, a sergeant and five detectives who spend their days rounding up witnesses and suspects. With a little luck, they’ll be able to track the phone and grab its owner.