Deliberately not touching anything, Anna gazed out the window. A brawny man in a white T-shirt and baggy jean shorts was walking up the driveway. He was carrying an orange soda and a small plastic bag from the Circle B. Anna recognized him immediately. Her heart started racing.
“There he is!” she said excitedly, pointing out the window. “It’s D’marco Davis!”
Sergeant Ashton strode to the window and looked to where she was pointing, then made a quick hand gesture. The other officers instantly dropped to the floor or flattened themselves against the walls, pulling their guns up to their chests. Jack shot his arm across Anna’s chest, pushing her away from the window and pressing her against the wall. “Get down,” he whispered. They sank to crouching positions next to the window. Ashton gestured to his colleagues, and he and six other SWAT officers trotted silently from the apartment. The others started to fan out along the hallway.
Moments later, seven officers burst from the front door of D’marco’s building, guns drawn. D’marco was about twenty yards from the building. “Police!” Ashton yelled, pointing his gun at D’marco. “Get down! You’re under arrest!” D’marco took one look at the men in black paramilitary uniforms—and sprinted in the other direction. The officers lowered their guns and ran after him; they couldn’t shoot at someone who hadn’t threatened them. They shouted commands without much hope that D’marco would obey.
“Hold up! Hold up! Hold up!”
“Stop! Police!”
“Get the fuck down!”
Up in the apartment, pressed against the wall, Anna heard the shouts and then the retreating thuds of running footsteps. Jack drew his hand off of Anna’s chest, looking embarrassed to find it there. Anna stood up and peered out the window. A dark swarm of SWAT officers was chasing D’marco down the street. She watched until they turned a corner, out of her sight. Jack stood next to her and looked out the window, the planes of his face drawn tight with tension.
“Will they get him, Mr. Bailey?” Anna asked.
“We’ll see.” The Homicide chief turned to her. He seemed to notice her, really notice her, for the first time today. “Good eye. You can call me Jack.”
12
Sergeant Ashton sprinted after D’marco Davis, down the sidewalk of Alabama Avenue. The other officers were at various distances behind him. Ashton was running flat out, as hard as he could. D’marco had a clear advantage—unlike the SWAT officers, he wasn’t encumbered by twenty pounds of police gear—but Ashton was still gaining on him. It was his job to outrun criminals, and he was good at it.
A few citizens watched the chase from the windows of the apartment buildings, but no one came outside. They would come out after the suspect was apprehended, but they didn’t want to get in the way of any stray bullets now.
Ashton chased D’marco past several public housing complexes, and then the suspect turned onto a street lined with brick row houses. As he followed the suspect around the corner, Ashton was breathing hard, but feeling good. The distance between him and D’marco had closed to less than fifteen yards. His legs were a black blur, his arms fired like pistons. He was flying over the sidewalk, closing the distance. He felt a hard, relentless satisfaction. This was his favorite part of his job.
Then he saw D’marco cut into an alley between row houses. Shit, Ashton thought. Not this again. He raced into the alley, swerving to avoid crashing into a rusty Dumpster. Not the fire escape, he thought. Not the fucking fire escape.
In defiance of Ashton’s mental command, D’marco scurried up the ladder to the black metal fire escape bolted to the brick building. The ladders were supposed to be kept elevated to avoid people coming up from the ground like this, but they often didn’t follow that code. “Shit,” Ashton said aloud this time. All the thugs were doing this lately. He stopped at the foot of the ladder and pulled his radio off his belt. “Fan out!” he called into it. “Fan out! Target’s going on the roof!” He clipped the radio back onto his belt and followed D’marco up the ladder, which then became black metal steps. As Ashton ran up them, he could hear the metal rat-a-tat-tat of people following him. He glanced down. Two of his officers were following him up; the other four must be spreading out around the block. Good.
When he got to the rooftop, Ashton stopped and looked around, pointing his gun across the roof as he looked for the suspect. The roof stretched out for half a block, the length of six row houses. It was covered in blacktop and there was a tall chimney in the center of each house’s roof, six chimneys in all. Piles of garbage dotted the roof, as well as scattered needles, empty bottles, used condoms, and one soggy mattress. D’marco wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Ashton waited until the two other officers made it up to the roof. Keeping his gun pointed ahead of him, he gestured with his chin to the first large chimney. It was four feet tall, big enough for a man to crouch behind. The other men nodded and pointed their guns ahead of them. Ashton went to the left of the chimney, the other two went to the right, quietly approaching it with their guns drawn.
Ashton’s movements were controlled, but he knew what danger he and his men were in. They didn’t know where the suspect was; they didn’t know whether he was armed. But the officer was used to this kind of risk. He was in the superalert state of someone experienced in harnessing his adrenaline rush. He heard every note of his feet crunching softly on the blacktop, he smelled the tar of the roof and the grass below, he heard a car starting several blocks away. And then he saw the shadow move on the other side of the chimney.
“Freeze!” he yelled, pivoting around the chimney. D’marco bounded up like a sprinter out of the blocks, running wildly across the rooftop. The officers grunted and ran after him. They passed chimney after chimney, until they were approaching the edge of the roof.
Ashton wondered what the guy would do. Was he a jumper? The distance between this roof and the next one was about seven feet. A narrow alley ran between this set of row houses and the next. They were three stories up. A fall from this distance could kill a man. As they reached the edge of the rooftop, D’marco didn’t slow down, and Ashton knew what the other man would do a few seconds before he did it. D’marco sprang off the edge of the roof.
Ashton pulled himself to a skittering stop at the edge of the roof, and held his hands up to make the other officers stop. He held his breath as D’marco flew over the abyss. D’marco landed with a crashing thud, half on, half off the other rooftop. His chest and arms were on the roof, but his legs dangled off the side of the building, kicking without finding purchase. D’marco grunted and tried to scramble up. His fingers reached for something to grab, and found nothing. For a moment, Ashton thought the man was going to fall to the alley below. But then D’marco somehow leveraged his huge arms and heaved himself onto the roof. He lay there, crumpled and panting, for a moment. Then he picked himself up with effort and kept running away from them, limping now.
The three officers stood at the edge of the roof, panting, watching the suspect trot away in a jerky, uneven lope. They were a good team, these officers, but they weren’t insane. This was an alley you jumped only if your life or your freedom depended on it. Theirs did not. And they each had twenty pounds of police gear strapped onto their bodies. Sergeant Ashton wouldn’t risk his own or his men’s lives foolishly.
There were men below who might still be able to catch D’marco when he went down. And they had other tools. Ashton brought his radio to his mouth. “I need a helicopter,” he barked.
• • •
Back in D’marco’s building, the remaining SWAT officers were leaving the apartment to help their colleagues search for D’marco. Anna heard the radio traffic and understood that D’marco had gotten away. The officers would keep searching the neighborhood, but from the sound of the grumbling officers in the apartment, it didn’t seem like anyone thought the prospects of catching him today were good. Anna felt a shiver of unease run down her spine, knowing Laprea’s killer was still on the loose.
Jack and McGee took of
f their bulletproof vests. McGee gestured for her to do the same, but Anna hesitated. Seeing her face, McGee smiled. “Don’t worry, Counselor,” he said. “There’s one place that D’marco Davis won’t be coming today, and that’s right here.” She took a deep breath and unfastened her bulletproof vest. They handed their vests to the last SWAT officers heading out the door.
“Come on.” Jack beckoned McGee and Anna into the hallway outside of D’marco’s apartment. “It’s gonna be a long day.”
McGee turned to Anna. “We’ll talk to the neighbors, see if anyone heard anything on Saturday night. We’ve gotta do it now, before people start forgetting. Memories are short around here.” Anna nodded, it made sense, but she couldn’t believe they were doing this with D’marco lurking out there somewhere. She glanced nervously around the hallway.
McGee caught the nervousness in Anna’s glance and smiled. “It’s a homicide case, sweetheart, not a bake sale.” His voice was joking, and his eyes were kind. “Don’t worry.” He patted a lump under his lime pinstripes. “I’m a good shot. Most of the time.”
Jack knocked on the door to apartment 215, the unit right next to D’marco’s. The walls in this building were thin; the resident who lived here might have heard some of D’marco and Laprea’s fight. Anna stood behind Jack and McGee. She could hear somebody shuffling around the apartment, but no one answered the door. Jack knocked again, more forcefully this time. Finally, the door opened two inches. A single brown eye peered at them suspiciously from the crack. The chain lock was still fastened.
“What?” the eye’s owner asked. From the sliver that Anna could see, it was an older woman, with slicked-back gray hair and smoke-stained yellow teeth. The single eye was bloodshot, and its owner had dragon breath. The woman had obviously lived a hard life; she looked like she was in her sixties, but was probably just pushing forty.
“Good morning, ma’am,” Jack said with quiet authority. “I’m Jack Bailey, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I was hoping to talk to you about an incident that took place Saturday night.”
“I don’t know nothin’,” the woman said. She started to push the door shut. McGee stepped forward and jammed his foot against the door, his enormous body easily bracing it open.
“Hey now, purty lady. Ain’t no call fo’ that.” McGee smiled as he slipped into a perfect Southeast street dialect. “How’m I supposed to ax you out, if you be slammin’ this door in my face?”
The woman favored him with a small smile, which turned to a frown when her eye flicked to Anna. But Anna hardly noticed. She was looking at the detective in surprise. When he’d spoken to Anna and the other police officers, McGee had used a newscaster-bland accent. She realized he had the capacity to effortlessly switch dialects. He sounded like a different person here, and she wondered which was the real McGee. Both, she concluded after a minute. McGee was a little bit of both worlds. That was part of what made him a good detective.
“Many witnesses don’t realize that the little bit they do know is important,” Jack said pleasantly. “I don’t expect you’ll be a star witness.” No one who lived in this building would want that. “But if you have time to talk for just a moment, it would be very helpful.”
“I ain’t gotta talk to you.”
“That’s true, you don’t. But I would appreciate it.”
“No.” She turned to McGee. “And getcho damn foot out my door.”
Jack sighed. “Just a moment.” He pulled a form out of his briefcase and quickly scribbled on it. He handed the paper through the crack in the door.
“Waddis?” she asked angrily.
“A subpoena. It’s a court order telling you to come to my office this Thursday to testify in the Grand Jury. You don’t have to talk to me now, but you will have to answer some questions there.”
“I ain’t comin’ down to the snitch building!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jack said quietly, “but you don’t have a choice. If you don’t come, they’ll send the marshals to arrest you.”
“This’s fucked up! I ain’t done nothin’, and you harassin’ me!”
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience. You’ll get forty dollars to compensate you for your time and travel expenses.”
“Yeah?” Her voice softened. “I know lots a things ’bout a lot of people. I might have to come down a coupla times.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Have a good day.”
Jack nodded at McGee, who pulled back his foot. The door slammed in Jack’s face. He looked down the long hallway and sighed. They would knock on every door in the building “One down, fifty to go.”
“Hope you brought a lot of subpoenas,” McGee said.
“Do you want me to take some?” Anna asked Jack. She was over her nervousness, or at least she wasn’t going to let it slow her down. If this had to be done, they might as well do it efficiently. “I could knock on some of the doors.”
Jack considered her offer for a moment. She could see the calculations in his head: dozens of doors to knock on, hours saved, versus giving this responsibility to an unseasoned prosecutor.
“No,” he said at last. “Thank you, though. Just stick with me.” She was an unproven quantity. He might be forced to have her tag along, but he didn’t have to let her do anything.
They moved to the next door.
• • •
It was almost seven by the time they finished at D’marco’s building. No one had let them into their apartment except Ernie Jones, who seemed to feel guiltier than Anna, if that was possible. They gave the rest of the residents subpoenas through doors that differed only in how far they were cracked open. Ernie would be a great witness, McGee told Anna, but they shouldn’t expect much out of the other residents’ testimony.
And they would have to work with the warrant squad to help find D’marco. A few hours earlier, Sergeant Ashton had called Jack to say that D’marco had gotten away. He could have hidden on a rooftop, or jumped to another building, or gone down into someone’s house, or just slipped off a fire escape that wasn’t being guarded. SWAT would get him, the Sergeant promised—eventually. The prosecution could help by questioning witnesses about his friends, family, and hangouts. The SWAT team would use the information to locate him. Anna was doubtful. They were having a hard enough time convincing anyone to talk to them at all, much less to disclose where their murderous friend was hiding out.
As they piled back into McGee’s car, Anna looked around the street half expecting to see D’marco behind a dark tree or a parked car. But the street seemed to be empty. She settled into the backseat, feeling more exhausted than she ever had in her life.
“Can I drop you at your home, Counselor?” McGee asked her from the rearview mirror as he started the car.
Although he had been engrossed in his work throughout the day, McGee had made a point of being nice to her, explaining things as they went along. She got the impression that now that she was on his team, McGee would look after her like a loyal watchdog.
“I should go to the office,” Anna answered. “I’ll start a chain-of-custody log for the evidence you seized today.”
“No,” Jack cut in. “It’s been a long day. Go home. The evidence will be there tomorrow.”
“I want to get started,” she protested. It had been a long day, but she hadn’t done much except watch the officers search. She knew she had a long way to go to prove herself.
Jack turned to face Anna in the backseat and shook his head. “This is a marathon, not a sprint. I expect another long day tomorrow.” Jack turned to McGee. “Can you swing by Anna’s house, and then mine? I need to relieve the nanny.”
McGee nodded and eased the car onto I-295. Anna sat back and closed her eyes, secretly relieved that Jack insisted that everyone go home. She was bone-tired, emotionally drained, and dreading the next thing she would have to do.
As they crossed the bridge back into Northwest, Anna’s cell phone vibrated silently with a new call. Speak of the devil, she
thought. It was Nick. He had called several times today. She pressed the button to decline this call, too. A minute later, the phone buzzed with a new text message. She opened it. Nick had written: “Call me as soon as you get this. It’s important.”
She glanced up. Jack was gazing out the window; if he’d noticed her buzzing phone he gave no indication of it. Anna flipped the phone closed and slid it back into her purse. She would wait until she left the police car to face the looming crisis in her personal life.
13
An hour later, Anna sat at her kitchen table, staring at the phone in her hand. The microwave beeped for the fifteenth time, vainly trying to remind her that the dinner she reheated was getting cold. Anna tried her sister’s number yet again, but there was still no answer. She had hoped to talk to Jody before confronting Nick, but she’d run out of time. She would have to figure this out herself. Nick would be here any minute.
Raffles rubbed against Anna’s leg and mewled for attention. Anna picked up the cat and scratched him behind the ears. She once had a case where a woman threw a cat out of a sixth-story window after the woman learned that her husband’s lover had given it to him as a gift. Not what you’d think of as a federal crime. Because Washington, D.C., was a federal city, federal prosecutors handled the street crimes that would have gone to the local District Attorney’s office anywhere else. Before Laprea’s death, Anna thought that the Washington U.S. Attorney’s Office held the best of both worlds: she could have the prestige of being a federal prosecutor while fighting violent crime. Now, Anna wished she was an AUSA in any district except D.C., just a regular federal prosecutor handling a tidy Medicare fraud case rather than a player in this horrible bloody world where nice women were killed by the men who were supposed to love them.
There was a knock at her front door. Anna wished she had more time to think, but this was it. She put her hand on the doorknob, steeled herself, and opened it.
Law of Attraction Page 10
