A Good Month for Murder

by Del Quentin Wilber

  Dressed in a tan overcoat, Brooks scowls downrange at the gaggle of commanders and officers. “This is a clusterfuck,” he says. “But at least it will get the old-lady heat off me.”

  Reilly shakes his head. “No, it won’t, Andre. This kid may be a freshman, but he’s eighteen.”

  “Shit,” says Brooks, realizing that his case, the murder of Geraldine McIntyre, easily trumps Watts’s. “I thought he was fourteen.”

  Reilly shrugs and then glances over to the gathering of commanders and officers at the other end of the parking lot. As the lieutenant and his detectives watch, the group breaks up and the assistant chief speed-walks back to his car. It’s obvious to Reilly and the others that Davis, too, has just learned that the night’s victims are eighteen, not fourteen. In the cold calculus of red ball murders, a slain adult high school student is not nearly as tragic as a dead fourteen-year-old, and thus it does not require such a high-ranking commander at the scene.

  Reilly turns back to his detectives and continues with his briefing. He points to his right; Watts and his two colleagues squint into the darkness and see evidence technicians scouring a grassy area by the light of a portable flood lamp. Reilly says both victims were shot more or less where the techs are working. Shuford fell near the site of the shooting, whereas Kidd turned and ran some three hundred yards before collapsing in a courtyard about one hundred yards to Reilly’s left.

  Reilly tells Watts and the others that one witness reported seeing the gunman sprint from the scene and then double back to collect shell casings. Another witness watched the gunman pedal away from the apartment complex on a bicycle. “There is a blood trail out of this development,” Reilly says, pointing over Watts’s shoulder toward the street. “It’s like a drop every ten yards, or two drops. It’s along the bicycle’s path, and there is no other reason for it to be there. It’s fresh.” Reilly doesn’t have to explain the significance of the blood: it is entirely possible that the shooter was also wounded during the altercation.

  A third witness, the lieutenant says, is an elderly man who claims he heard three or four gunshots, looked out his window, and saw Shuford on the ground and a man firing a gun from behind a tree on the edge of the parking lot. Other witnesses reported hearing ten to twelve gunshots. “They hear three to four initially and then five or six more,” Reilly says.

  “How many casings?” Watts asks.

  Brooks, who has already spoken briefly with the evidence techs, replies, “They haven’t found any yet.”

  Watts frowns. “We should get some more lights—and metal detectors. He couldn’t have collected them all, not in the dark.”

  “On it,” Reilly says, setting off to find the county’s top evidence technician.

  Watts respects evidence technicians, but they sometimes need prodding, so he and Brown head across the parking lot to the area where the two victims were shot. In the glow of a portable light attached to a generator that sounds nearly as loud as a jackhammer, two techs are placing yellow numbered placards next to pieces of clothing and other items. Watts knows both techs well, and he is pleased to see that the lead on the scene is Alana Andrews. A redhead dressed in a black sweatshirt and black fatigue pants with a digital camera slung around her neck, Andrews is respected by PG homicide detectives.

  Watts asks Andrews what she and the second tech have discovered thus far. She admits they haven’t come up with much, despite extensive searching for bullets and casings. Later, she says, she’ll scan the area with metal detectors, and she’s weighing whether to summon a sufficient number of police officers to conduct a slow line search for potential evidence.

  Motioning for Watts and Brown to follow her, Andrews gives the detectives a tour of the scene. She begins by pointing out what she and her colleague have cataloged: earphones, a hairbrush, a cell phone, a pair of shoes, clothing that had been yanked off by paramedics. Next she brings Watts and Brown to the spot where a large kitchen knife with a wooden handle and a six- or seven-inch blade is lying on the ground. “There is something smeared on its handle and blade,” she says. “It could be blood, but I think it’s dirt.”

  Brown stoops to inspect the knife. “Looks like dirt,” he tells Watts, his voice barely audible above the thundering generator. “Someone brought a knife to a gunfight.”

  Watts squats down and studies the knife. He suspects that it belonged to either Kidd or Shuford. Maybe, Watts thinks, one of them used the knife to threaten a robber or rival drug dealer, who in turn pulled out a gun.

  As he stands up again and surveys the scene, Watts hears music in the distance. It is difficult to discern over the generator, but it sounds like a gospel hymn coming from a second-floor window. Perfect, he thinks. Maybe the music will summon God and help me close this case.

  “It looks like your one victim ends up here,” Andrews says, pointing to the spot where Shuford was found, “and the other flees that way. You see the towels and the blood up there, in the courtyard?”

  Watts shakes his head; he hasn’t been to the courtyard yet. He looks into the distance but can make out only the parking lot and the dark forms of the apartment buildings.

  “We walked that whole thing,” Andrews says. “It looks like the suspect was shooting at the guy as he ran away.” The tech then points to a building across the parking lot and tells the detectives that a resident there reported that her windowsill had been hit by a bullet. Watts finds this plausible: if the gunman had been firing at the sprinting Kidd, a shot could have sailed over the teenager’s head and struck the building.

  Satisfied that Andrews and the second tech are doing everything they can to find shell casings and collect other evidence, Watts and Brown head back to the parking lot. From there, they carefully trace Kidd’s path to the spot where he collapsed in a courtyard. As they stand over the two towels mentioned by Andrews and a small spot of blood in the grass, Watts coughs and sniffles, as does Brown. Both are weathering heavy colds, their condition only made worse by a grueling week on the midnight shift that will not end for two more days.

  Alone in the courtyard, the two detectives scan the area in hopes of finding a security camera or a new witness. They see nothing. As they head back to the parking lot, Watts and Brown run into a detective who specializes in gang-related crimes. The investigator explains that the gang operating out of this complex is called the National Society. The gang, of which Kidd was a member, is involved in assorted offenses ranging from drug possession and distribution to burglary. “‘Gang’ is kind of a strong term for the group, though,” the detective says. He’s watched a number of videos that show the gang members rapping, smoking weed, and brandishing guns for the camera. “They think they’re tough,” he says.

  Watts thanks the investigator, and he and Brown divide up their duties for the next couple of hours. Brown will hit the office to write reports and review other investigators’ notes; Watts will visit Prince George’s Hospital Center to check on the victims’ families and oversee the collection of evidence.

  Brown walks to his car and drives off. Watts, after opening the door to his red Impala, pauses. Narrowing his eyes, he wonders what he might have overlooked during the last hour at the scene, but he can’t think of anything. He coughs, then coughs again. He feels like crap, but he knows he will have to bull through the illness if he hopes to solve this case.

  After he gets behind the wheel and starts the engine, Watts pulls out his phone, dials the number for the communications department, and gives the operator his badge and cell number, telling her he will be the detective getting all the callouts during the midnight shift. He hangs up, opens his notebook, jots down the time—8:58 p.m.—and writes that he has cleared the scene. But his long night has only just begun.

  * * *

  AN HOUR AND a half later, Watts is standing in the bustling trauma bay of Prince George’s Hospital Center. To his left is a dead teenager, to his right a dying one. Aaron Kidd’s body lies on a gurney and is covered by a white sheet; across the room, a
large breathing tube snakes from Andre Shuford’s mouth to a machine. Watts overhears two frustrated nurses standing by Shuford’s gurney complain to each other that they’ve paged a doctor six times in the last hour. They need a physician to tell the dying teen’s parents how to fill out a “do not resuscitate” order; otherwise, they’ll have to continue pumping him full of medicine to keep his heart beating. “He’s going to crash at any moment,” one nurse tells the other above the constant pinging of monitoring alarms signaling Andre Shuford’s plummeting blood pressure.

  Leaving the trauma bay, Watts heads for the waiting room and finds Detective Paul Dougherty in the hallway. Dougherty has the build of an aging power forward in basketball and a reputation in the Homicide Unit for being brusque, impatient, and opinionated. It makes Watts more than a bit nervous that Dougherty has been assigned to handle the victims’ families.

  Dougherty tells Watts that Kidd’s family has left the hospital but Shuford’s is behind the door of the waiting room to his right. “Andre’s mom is very good people,” Dougherty says in a rapid-fire whisper. “The dad is amazing—twenty-seven years military. Mom says Andre smoked marijuana. They have six kids. The youngest three are adopted. He was adopted. He dropped out of school before he turned eighteen. Since turning eighteen, he has been acting like a knucklehead and is the most fucked-up person in the family. He’s homeless, sleeping in apartment hallways, laundry rooms. They all know he is breaking into houses.”

  Watts asks Dougherty whether Shuford’s relatives have the passcode to his phone, which could contain a trove of photos, text messages, and social-media postings. Dougherty says he’ll find out and ducks into the waiting room. After Dougherty leaves, Watts realizes he had no cause to worry about him: his colleague is doing a fine job.

  A minute later, Dougherty pokes his head out and summons Watts inside. Dougherty politely introduces one of Shuford’s sisters to Watts, telling her that his colleague is the lead detective on her brother’s case. Watts gently asks if she has the code to her brother’s phone; wiping tears from her eyes, she tells him that she doesn’t know it and that her brother only used his phone for listening to music. Watts apologizes for bothering her, hands her his card, and asks her to call if she hears something or has any questions.

  As he leaves the room, Watts looks back at the half dozen family members. They’re all still wearing their winter coats, and without exception they are sobbing, crying quietly, or staring vacantly into space. Andre Shuford might not have been the world’s most upstanding young man, Watts thinks, but it is clear that he was loved.

  Watts returns to the trauma bay to wait for an evidence technician. He stops next to Shuford’s gurney and watches as a nurse checks his victim’s vital signs. The detective catches the nurse’s eye and raises an eyebrow: How much time does he have?

  “Not long now,” she says, pointing to the base of Shuford’s skull. “Brain matter.”

  Watts leans close and sees pus seeping out of a gauze bandage. He nods.

  Realizing he hasn’t heard from his partner since they left the crime scene, Watts calls Brown and learns that he was dispatched to a hospital in the District to check out a stabbing victim. Their sergeant had hoped that the victim might be the guy who fled the scene of their homicide on his bike. Brown answers his phone and tells Watts that, unfortunately, the stabbing is not related to their case.

  After hanging up, Watts turns to find Detective Dave Gurry sitting on a chair by the rear wall of the trauma bay. Gurry, who came to the hospital with Dougherty to help handle the families, is clad in an oversized winter coat and has a phone pressed to his right ear.

  “Um, she was facedown?” Gurry asks. “Pants around the ankles? Hmm. Money beside her? Okay.”

  When Gurry hangs up, Watts asks what’s happening.

  “Suspicious death,” Gurry says. He goes on to tell Watts that other detectives from the unit had just arrived at a scene to find a fifty-five-year-old woman dead by her back door. Her death seems to indicate foul play, but until they roll the body and examine it more closely, they won’t know whether she was murdered. Gurry is at bat for the next homicide, which is why he was called.

  “It’s probably a natural, but I’m ready to go if they find her throat slit,” says Gurry.

  “Sounds like it’s either nothing or something,” says Watts, who massages the dark patches under his eyes and his wan cheeks, then coughs into his right fist. Fucking cold, he thinks. At least his nose is so congested that he can’t smell the room’s heavy odor of disinfectant.

  Gurry’s phone rings again. “Hi, Sarge,” the detective says into the receiver. “Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. Any witnesses on the scene? He is ten-seven? Almost? Okay. Going to United Medical? Seven-A recovered? Victim shot a couple times in the head? Suspect there? Okay. Cool.”

  The detective hangs up, a smile on his face. Gurry, more than most of the PG homicide detectives, speaks in police-radio 10 codes: 10-7 means “out of service”; 7A means a gun was recovered. During the conversation with his sergeant, Gurry learned that the victim at another scene is dying and on his way to the hospital; he also learned that a weapon has been recovered and a suspect has been arrested.

  Watts knows why Gurry is smiling: he’s caught a smoker. After investigating two murders that will probably never go down, Gurry desperately wants an easy homicide. His last case, the slaying of a drug dealer, is so barren of clues that he held a quasi-séance with a witness in the interview room because she claimed she could speak with the dead.

  As Gurry gathers his things to head to the next homicide scene, an evidence tech finally arrives. Lugging a large equipment bag and wearing the all-black uniform typical of her tribe, Kelcey Miller looks slightly beleaguered; her squad has been hopping tonight. After adjusting her square-rimmed glasses, she strides up to Watts.

  The detective gives Miller a quick update on what he has and then asks her to swab Shuford’s hands for DNA and other trace evidence. Watts is in something of a hurry: he is concerned that they’ll lose the opportunity to collect evidence from the dying teenager if the nurses and doctors keep working on him or he gets taken to surgery.

  “Are you sure I’m allowed to do that?” Miller asks, looking over at the gurney, where two nurses are hovering. A twenty-four-year-old, she joined the police department the previous year.

  “I’m sure, but go ask,” Watts says.

  Miller walks over to the gurney, and after a nurse tells her to go ahead, the tech swabs Shuford’s hands. When she returns to Watts’s side, he points to the second gurney and tells her to “bag” Aaron Kidd’s hands—wrap them in large brown paper bags—so evidence can be preserved and examined for clues at the morgue. He also asks her to take detailed photos of Kidd’s clothing and a small-caliber bullet that was discovered in the ambulance. Watts suspects that the bullet fell out of Kidd’s clothes; after penetrating a body, a bullet sometimes gets caught in a shirt or jacket.

  After Miller pulls back the sheet covering Kidd, she and Watts inspect the body for wounds. The detective is the first to notice a small bullet hole between the victim’s right armpit and nipple and another small wound on his left elbow. Both wounds support Watts’s suspicion that Kidd was hit by a small-caliber round, a theory that will be confirmed at the next day’s autopsy.

  Once they have cataloged all of what they call the “defects,” Watts and Miller examine the corpse for other potential clues.

  “What does that say?” asks Miller, leaning close to a tattoo that runs down Kidd’s right arm.

  “‘Respected,’” says Watts.

  Miller runs her gloved hand over a similar tattoo on the left arm. “R-E-G,” she says.

  “‘Regarded,’” Watts says.

  While recording the tattoos in his notebook, Watts hears a doctor loudly telling a nurse to make sure she keeps up the medications so Shuford can live long enough for them to harvest his organs. The detective looks up and sees Shuford’s family shuffling into the trauma bay. With tears streamin
g down their cheeks, they crowd close to the gurney and begin saying their good-byes.

  Watts watches them for a few minutes, feeling neither sadness nor empathy. He has witnessed countless similar scenes over the years; to him, the family members are no more than potential witnesses. Glancing down, he checks his watch—it is nearly 11:30 p.m. As the family grieves, Watts studies his notes, making sure he hasn’t forgotten anything.

  * * *

  BILLY WATTS SWEARS he hears a telephone ringing. It rings and rings—somewhere, just out of reach. He cracks open an eye and realizes the sound is coming from his nightstand. He knows it can signal only bad news, and he groans as he contemplates the possibility that something awful has happened with just a few hours left on the final day of his week on the midnight shift.

  He left the office two hours earlier, thanks to the generosity of Ben Brown, who’d volunteered to hold down the fort for his sick partner. Almost thirty hours have passed since Watts watched Andre Shuford’s heartbroken family in the trauma bay, and since then the teenager has died, officially making his case a double homicide. Yesterday, while tracking down leads, Watts was dragging badly and regularly popping ibuprofens. When Brown offered him the chance to get some rest, he eagerly accepted.

  “Hit me if you need help,” Watts said as he left the homicide office.

  The phone won’t stop ringing. It can only be Brown, and he must be too overwhelmed to handle whatever has happened. A typical death investigation or a suicide—even a run-of-the-mill homicide—would be no problem for his partner.

  Watts struggles to open his other eye. He looks at the clock next to his bed—it’s just shy of 5:00 a.m.—and then smacks his nightstand with his right hand until he feels his phone. After pressing a button, he puts the phone to his ear. Shari, his wife of sixteen years, doesn’t stir; her nights have been interrupted so many times by such calls that this one doesn’t even register.