by Neely Tucker
“I paid him triple, cash up front, and told him I was meeting the chief of police at a crime scene. Plus, he dropped me two blocks up.”
“You took a taxi from your house?”
“I was visiting a friend,” he said.
“At three in the morning?”
“A special friend.”
“She won’t be thinking your ass is that special for long, running out in the middle of the night,” John said. “Ask me how I know.”
He was wearing what appeared to be jeans and a pullover shirt beneath a long black trench coat, the belt knotted, the tails flapping around his knees in the wind. Jeff, shifting his weight from foot to foot, jeans and a leather jacket zipped up all the way, a Yankees baseball cap tugged down. Everybody coming out here on the hotfoot, Sully looking dapper by comparison.
“So dear old Tony and Carlos, the talented Hall brothers,” Sully said, looking down. “Four shells—two shots each? That’s what we’re talking about?”
“Appears to be,” John said, moving to his left, between Sully and the corpses, kneeling to pull the sheeting back. “Gangland action. Carlos, he took one in the back of the head, close range, then another one in the side. Tony—here—took a pair, one behind the ear, one up there at the temple. See that? Damn.”
The brothers lay facedown in the mud and dirt, the scrubby grass. Their jeans, already baggy, sagged well below their hips. Tony’s T-shirt was hitched up in the back, leaving a stretch of his back and buttocks exposed. It was a pretty lousy way to die. Tony lay with his arms at his side. Carlos, his arms were thrown above his head.
“Tony got shot first?” Sully said.
John nodded and stood up. “Hey, you get a gold star. Tony had no warning, I’d say,” flicking a hand toward the body. “Dropped like a ton of bricks. Ever see a boxer get knocked cold? He falls without getting his hands in front of him, just bam, facedown on the canvas? That’s how Tony dropped.”
He moved over a few steps, rubbed his eyes, and flicked the right hand again. “Now, Carlos, here, the way he fell, like he got in a step running before he got popped. Them arms out in front of him.”
Sully walked around both bodies, staying behind Jeff, looking for anything that stood out as unusual. Seeing a lot of war killings—bombs, grenades, air power, machine guns, pistols, machetes—led to a certain detachment at the scene of a fresh kill. It was a crossword puzzle with gore.
The way to work a fresh murder was to sequence the action, starting out with the highest elevation, when everybody was standing up, because that’s when everyone was alive and yet to be wounded. You started high and worked down low. Blood on the walls? Pick the highest splatter and that’s likely where it started. Thin, watery streaks? That was going to be aspirated blood, meaning the victim had coughed or spit, and that meant they’d already been shot in the chest. When you had a body with three or four bullet holes, that sort of intel helped you sequence the shots.
But outdoor shootings could screw you over, at least if you were reading the body of the victim or their blood. Splatter just arced and fell on the ground, with no trace of the elevation from which it started. Fingerprints weren’t going to be left behind on grass and dirt. You might get a footprint, but if it wasn’t in blood, then it didn’t help all that much, particularly in a public park.
All of these were reasons, Sully thought, why the shooter might have brought the Hall brothers outside, particularly in the Bend. Looking at how the bodies fell, and the location of the wounds, was going to be about all they had in order to try to re-create how it went down.
“You got to love the irony,” Sully said.
“Come again?” This was John.
Sully nodded, coming closer now, tilting his head to look at just how they had fallen, five or six feet apart, both toward the water. “The Halls. Twins. Born at the same time. Died at the same time.”
Jeff, nodding. “That’s hard. That’s hard.”
“What’s their momma say?” Sully asked. It was instinctive.
“We got somebody up at her house,” Jeff said, “taking a statement. She got a place up there in Brookland. They bought it for her, I guess. A little laundering. When things were better, going better for them.”
Jeff looked down at the bodies. “Nobody thinks they ever going to die.”
“Canvassing the Carolina, the apartment building?” Sully said.
“Two teams on it right now,” John said, shrugging. He sneezed. “Like somebody in there’s going to say something.”
“What floor did Tony and Carlos stay on in there?”
“They had a couple of units, safe spots, girlfriends’ places, you can’t really say they lived here or they lived there,” John said. “Stayed with their momma as much as anywhere. But they tended to hole up in 318 in the Carolina there. It’s up there on the top right. Overlooks the channel.”
“Mind if I take a peek?”
“When we’re done here, I’ll tell the unit up there you can look in the door. Can’t let you in the place itself. All I need, this comes to trial, defense gets a list of people who been in that apartment and I got to answer for you.”
“Did it look like they got rousted up there, then dragged down here?”
“Nothing one way or the other. Drug dealers, they tend not to be much on the housekeeping tip.”
“But no blood, no holes in the wall.”
“Don’t I wish.”
It didn’t appear as if the Halls had planned to be outside long. The spring weather had turned chilly, but they had on short sleeves and no jackets. The way the bodies had fallen—well, if the bodies were hands of the clock, their feet would be at the center of the dial and their bodies would be at twelve and two, with Tony at twelve. The feet, what, maybe three feet apart? The torsos five. So they had been standing together, almost side by side, when they got shot. The shooter had to have been standing behind them, just off to their left, the shooter’s right. The way he saw it: The gunman raises a right hand, the barrel almost touching the back of Tony’s head, blam, then moves the barrel to the right, blam, shoots Carlos from three feet. Doesn’t take a step. A second between shots. When they were both on the ground, he steps to both of them and puts one more in each brain. Whole thing, ten seconds.
“You roll them yet?” he asked, still circling.
“Yeah,” said John. “Just a half-turn, see if there was more damage to the front. Wasn’t any, so we laid them back till they get bagged. This right here is how they dropped.”
“Ligature on the wrists?”
“None apparent.”
“Knees muddy?”
“Nah. You thinking a classic execution, somebody ties their hands, brings them out here, puts them on their knees, blam blam. It didn’t go down like that.”
“So give me your scenario.”
John tilted his head to the left, then to the right, studying the corpses, looking at them like something was going to materialize if he just stared hard enough.
“I’d call it they were standing together, a little bit apart, casual like,” he said, finally. “Tony here gets the first one back behind his ear—the entry is clean, neat.” He kneeled down next to the body now, pulling a pen out of his coat pocket, using it as a pointer. “The other one he got, right in front of his ear? That’s just a kill shot. Look at the stippling.”
“So the shooter was right on him for that.”
“Barrel almost pressed the skin. Now, ask yourself: Is Carlos going to stand three feet away and watch his brother get shot in the head, fall down, and keep watching while the shooter puts the barrel to his head and shoots again?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not. So, the sequence. They came down to the channel, everybody looking at the water. The shooter is standing behind and to the right of Tony. Pops him right behind the ear. Tony drops, dead before he hits the ground. That’s
shot one.”
“Okay.”
“Now, shot two,” John said, stepping around the first corpse to get to the second. “Our shooter takes a step over, like I just did. Carlos starts to turn. Shot two knocks Carlos down and takes him out of commission. See the one almost right in his ear? Like maybe he was turning toward Tony? Like he’d heard the first shot, turns and blam? So he goes down awkward. But the kill shot on him? Just like the one to Tony. At the temple. The stippling. Shooter had the barrel almost touching his head.”
Sully, nodding. “So you figuring the cleanest shot was the first one.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“The kill shots, the third and fourth ones fired, those come when they’re on the ground.”
John stood up, flexing his knees. “Like I said.”
“So you’re figuring one shooter.”
John looked at him, then to the lead detective. “Jeff?”
Jeff held up his index finger, looking from Jeff to Sully. “One,” he said.
“Talk to me.”
“The initial shot comes from behind on both. Tony, Carlos, they don’t fuck around. They come down to the water, take the breeze in the middle of the night, blow a joint, take a piss? Yeah, fine, their turf. One guy walking with them, maybe, drifts behind them when they all get down here to the water? Somebody they know? I can see that. But two guys? Right up on them like this? I don’t like it.”
“We’ll know if it was one or two guns used when we get the ballistics,” John said. “But look here. I can go one trigger man—but I don’t know that our shooter was down here alone with them. Look at them both—short sleeves? Tonight? No, they weren’t planning on coming out here. Or, if so, it was just for a second. Could have been a rival crew, the South Caps, somebody like that, got the drop on them up there in their apartment, rousted them down here and bam—so, yeah, you wind up with one shooter, but more than one guy involved.”
Sully shrugged. “But why not just pop them up there in the building?”
“Too much attention. Too much noise. Too much chance of leaving evidence. Out here? Less evidence. Pitch-black dark, no wits.”
“Okay, but yeah, if you go to all that trouble, why not throw them both in the water, like the rest? Dee Dee, Billy, Antoine—all of them got dumped. And these dudes, they not twenty feet from the waterline.”
John shrugged, sniffling, sounding like he had a cold coming on. “Goes back to Jeff’s one-shooter theory. It’d take too long to toss them. These brothers ain’t little. Besides, we find Tony and Carlos Hall in the middle of the Potomac? We already know they got tossed from the Bend. It wouldn’t fool nobody.”
“But, you know, it’d help get rid of evidence, take longer to find the bodies, all that.”
John shrugged. “You get a clean kill, you don’t need it. And this is looking pretty clean.”
“What time did this go down?”
“We got reports of gunshots about twelve thirty, twelve thirty-five, like that,” John said. “We got the call from uniforms at one oh five that it was Tony and Carlos.”
“So one guy gets Tony and Carlos to come out to the waterline after midnight on a spring night, cold and breezy.”
John held up a hand, sneezing again. “I’m not saying that. What we know is that Tony and Carlos come down to the water, either with our shooter or were ambushed by our shooter. No sign of violence, of struggle. That’s all the evidence says.”
Sully, nodding, pointing to the orange cones. “So, the shells. I mean, they tell you anything?”
Jeff cut his eyes to John, just that quick, and Sully caught it. He turned to John.
“We off the record, Carter?”
“Yeah. I mean, same as always—you let me inside the tape, I clear everything with you before publication.”
John let out a deep breath, the creases in his face working themselves out, then knotting up again, a man not at ease with himself.
“Okay. Okay. Look. Not for print or publication, attribution or deep background or whatever. But we got the murder weapon. Up against the wall to the fort there. Down in the rocks by the water. Shooter man threw it for the water but not far enough. Maybe it hit the wall and bounced off.”
“Well, shit, that’s going to narrow it down—you get the prints, the serial—”
“Not in the way you’re thinking. You know anything about guns?”
“They go bang. Some. I grew up with—”
“If I say, ‘M1911A1 .45,’ that mean anything to you?”
“Not really.”
“Fucking civilian. It was the standard officer’s sidearm in the U.S. military from the nineteen twenties through the seventies, sometimes used in the early eighties. You got police forces use it today.”
“It was—”
“I made sergeant in Vietnam and I was proud of mine. But this piece? Our murder weapon, bagged and up there in the tech van? This one is your vintage World War Two model, a Singer, brother—a Singer. The people what made sewing machines. Coltwood grips. The whole nine.”
“I don’t get this.”
“Because you’re a civilian. Look, before and during World War Two, they were making guns as fast as they could. You had three or four manufacturers of the forty-five, Remington being the biggest. And I’m talking, like, a million units. But the piece we picked up over there by the water—four rounds gone from the magazine, it’s the murder weapon—was manufactured by the Singer company. Only a few hundred ever made.”
“You’re telling me somebody shot the Halls with a, a, what, sixty-year-old gun?”
John sneezed, bent, put a hand over his nose, coughed. “Gonna get a cold out here. Can feel it coming on, you know? That tickle you get, the back of the throat? No, no, that’s not just what I’m telling you. I’m telling you this pistol is a collector’s item, something you only see in gun shows. It’s worth something like ten grand, no, this one, I’d go fifteen.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“Not at all. I myself have never handled one until today. They’re like purple unicorns. Always talked about, never seen.” John coughed again, deeper in the chest now. “I got to get inside now. Jeff, you keeping an eye on this till they bag these guys? The ME’s been waiting on us. Good. I’ll meet you down there at the cut.”
He started walking back up the park, Sully raising a hand in farewell toward Jeff, catching up to walk alongside John, the wind at their backs now. He sneezed again, Sully said, “Bless you,” and John waved it off, walking fast up the incline, the park deserted, the yellow tape across the entrance, the lone cop still standing there, hands in pockets.
“Now, what we’re going to find?” John said. “We’ll run a trace, see if somebody has reported this thing stolen. But I’m guessing all the military officers around here, maybe right over there in Fort McNair? One of those vets had this thing. Somebody from the hood goes over the wall, breaks in someplace, pulls that gun back over here, sells it, somebody else resells it and it eventually gets used to clock the Halls. That’s my first thought. My second one is that it’s going to be some dumb fuck who had no idea—no idea—of the gun he was holding.”
They stepped over the yellow tape.
“So, you got somebody rousting the South Caps?”
“Right now, you damn straight,” Parker said. “Maybe we’ll get somebody to roll over on somebody else. But, you know, that’s a death sentence so, I’m saying, probably not.”
“Probably not,” Sully said, the scene from the other night in T-Money’s house blossoming anew in his mind.
“So when you writing something about this?”
“I got suspended, John, you remember? Not necessarily at all. I don’t know. The paper will do something on Tony and Carlos getting shot, yeah, but that won’t be me.”
“Fine. Whatever, whenever, you decide to write? You talk to m
e before. Because look. This is the Hall brothers. The Hall brothers. This is not your garden variety hit. This, this here, changes business.”
And then he walked off, a curt wave, his Crown Vic three or four cars down. Sully stood there on the sidewalk for a minute, watching Parker pull out, the muscles under his jaw cramping up. He rubbed it, gingerly, opened his mouth, worked his jaw around.
The minute Parker had described the murder weapon it had hit him who killed Billy Ellison, as bright and clear as a spotlight in the dark. He’d had to keep it off his face, keep his jaw steady and his eyebrows level the whole time, just standing there, nodding, acting like the world hadn’t just blown up.
THIRTY-SEVEN
YOU HAD TO secure the beachhead first, make sure you had a safe base of operations, communications, resources. This was his mantra of working in war zones—keep your supply and communication lines open behind you, make sure whom you could trust before wading out into open conflict where all sorts of shit could happen, most of which you could not see coming and none of which you could control.
It really wasn’t any different now. The people he could trust, with Alexis gone back abroad, were zero. The base of operations was the hotel, where nobody could find him. And his source of power, of influence, was Billy Ellison’s golden fucking thesis. Well. The research for it, anyway. The kid never had the chance to write it.
He didn’t risk going by his house, not even in a taxi. He was willing to bet dollars to doughnuts it had already been ransacked by Stevens’s investigators and was almost certainly being watched.
It was a long goddamn walk, a mile or better, before he got back up to the National Mall and found a taxi, the driver on his way home, picking him up as a last fare, Sully promising him a $20 tip.
The first thing he’d thought he’d do, upon getting back to the room at the Four Seasons, was take a shower and fall into bed. But Billy’s research and notes were spread over everything; you could barely walk in the place. It looked like, when he opened the door to the suite, he had gone as mad as Billy. Stepping over one pile of documents and between another two, he found himself looking down at it all, then lying on the floor to read back over some of it, and when he blinked again daylight was streaming through the windows. His back hurt. When he rolled over to sit up, he got a whiff of his body, a stale, dank odor of sweat and meaty flesh.
