Margaret Truman - Murder at Union Station

The reporter, an attractive young woman holding a microphone and clipboard, turned to him and shook her head.

“Russo,” Marienthal said automatically. “Louis Russo.”

The reporter pulled a cell phone from where it was clipped on her belt and said into it, “I’ve got a witness who sounds like he knows the name of the victim. Russo, Louis Russo.” She listened intently for the reply. Once she’d received it, she turned to talk to Marienthal. But he was gone, back inside Union Station and on his way to where Kathryn waited for him in the car.

If it weren’t that a vicious killing had taken place, the multitude of law enforcement officers in Union Station might have been viewed as a fashion show of uniforms. Amtrak’s own police force had been the first on the scene of Louis Russo’s murder. Simultaneously, a call went out to the Washington PD’s First District headquarters, under whose jurisdiction Union Station fell, and men and women from that agency converged quickly on the scene. The Capitol police also responded because of the station’s proximity to Capitol Hill, in the event the shooting had political overtones that might herald an attack on members of Congress. Outside, the park police attempted to maintain order, while officers from Washington ’s underground Metro system took up positions at Metro stops close to Union Station. And because of the elevation of the Technicolor terrorist alert system from yellow to orange, heavily armed members of the area’s national guard were being posted to stand grim-faced throughout the station. There were blue, brown, and white shirts; blue, tan, and black pants; a variety of ties; camouflage outfits; and plenty of tin, brass, and copper badges being flashed.

“Get these people outta here!”

The order came from MPD detective Bret Mullin, a bulky, crusty twenty-nine-year veteran of the department, who’d been parked in an unmarked car around the corner from Union Station’s main entrance when the call went out from a police dispatcher. Two recent muggings outside the station had prompted increased police scrutiny, and intelligence sources indicated an increase in small-time drug dealing. Mullin had been assigned to a surveillance detail and wasn’t happy about it.

There was a time earlier in his career that long stretches of surveillance didn’t bother him. He’d sit in a car and drink coffee and smoke and eat doughnuts and enjoy the parade of humanity. He’d watch men and women pass and wonder where they were going; where they lived; the sort of people they were close to-family, friends; the TV shows they enjoyed watching. Attractive women were mentally undressed as they moved by, and Mullin would speculate on the sort of men allowed to share their beds, starting with himself.

But there were times, especially when surveillance had to be conducted on foot and the weather was bad, that the urge to abandon the assigned post for the warmth of a dry and convivial bar and restaurant was too compelling to ignore. That was the beginning of the corpulent Mullin’s troubles, succumbing on occasion-on too many occasions, according to his superiors-to the warm ambience of neighborhood bars and fast-food shops, and the pleasures they provided a footsore, bored, and gregarious detective.

“Get ’em outta here,” Mullin repeated.

He stood in front of the swinging yellow doors, now propped open by rubber wedges provided by the station’s maintenance crew. Beyond the door lay the lifeless body of the victim, a pool of blood surrounding his head. His toupee had been blown off and was against a wall a few feet from the body, looking very much like a dead red rodent. His splintered cane had been blown a dozen feet up the hallway; the small suitcase he carried had split open on impact with the floor, its contents scattered.

The workers who’d been in the hallway at the time of the murder had been corralled at the far end.

“Get their statements,” Mullin instructed another detective in plainclothes. He said to other officers: “Fan out through the station and see if anybody saw anything-the victim, maybe the shooter.”

Evidence technicians in white lab coats entered the area, followed by a specialist from the medical examiner’s office. After conferring briefly with Mullin, they entered the hallway to begin the process of photographing the murder scene and identifying, documenting, collecting, and preserving what physical evidence might be present. Two empty shell casings between the body and the doors had already been noted and marked by small cards with numbers on them.

“I hate scenes like this,” Mullin grumbled to Vince Accurso, a detective with whom he’d been paired for the past two years. He looked back at the crowd that was still gathered and shook his head. “Give me a nice, empty dark alley anytime,” he said. “What the hell do they expect to see, the victim get up and do a buck-and-wing?”

Accurso laughed without a sound.

Mullin belched and inhaled noisily. His sinuses had been particularly bad the past few weeks.

“He got whacked by a black guy,” Accurso commented flatly.

“What evidence?”

“People,” Accurso said, nodding.

Witnesses to the shooting in the hall had blurted out their recollections of the shooter’s appearance to the first cops on the scene.

“Tall, thin, well dressed, brownish suit, carrying a raincoat,” Mullin said, reciting what he learned the workers had told the police. “Consistent.”

“How about that? Good, huh? Nobody saw a short, fat white guy in a blue suit.”

“Keep things going here, Vinny. I’m taking a walk.”

Mullin hitched up pants that seemed always to be slipping below his belly and pushed through the crowd.

“Who was he?” a woman who’d been there from the beginning asked. “A political big shot? Nobody else worth shooting in Union Station.”

“Go get a cup of coffee,” Mullin told her. “It’s over.”

“Are you a detective?” a teenager asked as Mullin gestured for him to get out of the way.

Mullin muttered something profane at the boy and continued walking through the train concourse until he reached Exclusive Shoe Shine, where Joe Jenks had just finished a customer’s shoes. Mullin was no stranger to the bootblack station and its employees, especially Jenks. Although never accused of being a fashion plate-sloppy was a more precise description-Mullin liked clean shoes and often stopped in Union Station to have Jenks practice his own special brand of spit-shine magic, minus the spit. At the same time, Jenks was one of dozens of people Mullin had cultivated in the area to lend their eyes and ears to any crime. Joe was at his post in Union Station every day, and on more than one occasion had called in a tip about someone he considered an unsavory character, or a potentially troublesome situation.

“Hey, Mullin, my man,” Jenks said. “Caught yourself a big one, huh?”

Mullin climbed up into Jenks’s chair.

“What happened, man?” Jenks asked as he pulled cloths and polish from a drawer beneath the chair. “Somebody says an old guy with a cane got it. I think I seen him.”

“Is that so, Joe?”

“Yeah. He limps on by and I ask him if he wants a shine. He looks at me like I just called his mother a dirty name, says somethin’ in Italian or Greek or somethin’, and goes on his way.”

“Italian or Greek?”

“He talked foreign, that’s all I’m saying. You nab the perp?”

Mullin gave forth what could be considered a laugh. He always found it amusing when people tried to speak cop talk.

“No, we didn’t nab the perp, Joe. Maybe you saw him.”

A shrug from Jenks as he brushed off Mullin’s shoes in preparation for shining. “Maybe I did. You know what he looks like?”