David Simon - Homicide - A Year On The Killing Streets

“If you caused someone to be shot, then you’re guilty of murder, Geraldine,” says Waltemeyer.

“Can I have my medicines?”

“Geraldine, listen to me. You’re charged with three murders already, and before this is over you’re probably going to be charged with some others. Now’s the time to tell us what happened…”

Geraldine Parrish stares up at the ceiling, then begins babbling incoherently.

“Geraldine…”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout, Mistah Poh-leeces,” she says suddenly. “I didn’t shoot no one.”

Later, when the detectives have given up on the notion of a coherent statement, Geraldine sits alone in the interrogation room, waiting for the paperwork to catch up with her before she is transferred to the City Jail. She is leaning forward, her head resting on the table, when Jay Landsman walks by the one-way window and glances inside.

“Is that her?” says Landsman, who has just come on the four-to-twelve shift.

“Yeah,” says Eddie Brown. “That’s her.”

Landsman’s face creases into an evil grin as he slams an open palm hard against the metal door. Geraldine jumps in her seat.

“Whhhhooooaaaaaaaaaaa,” wails Landsman in his best approximation of a ghost. “Whhhhooooaa, mmuuurrder… MMMUUURRDER…”

“Aw Christ, Jay. Now you fuckin’ did it.”

Sure enough, Geraldine Parrish dives under the table on all fours and begins bleating like a crazed goat. Delighted with himself, Landsman keeps at it until Geraldine is prone on the floor, bellowing at the metal table legs.

“Whhhhhoooaaaaa,” moans Landsman.

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh,” screams Geraldine.

“Whhhhooooaaaaaa.”

Geraldine stays down on the floor, whimpering loudly, as Landsman strolls back into the main office like a conquering hero.

“So,” he says, smiling wickedly, “I guess we’re probably looking at an insanity defense.”

Probably so, although everyone watching Geraldine Parrish’s performance is now utterly convinced of her sanity. This writhing-on-the-floor nonsense is a calculated and naive version of the real thing, an altogether embarrassing performance, particularly when everything else about her suggests a woman vying for a special advantage, a manipulator measuring every angle. Her relatives have already told detectives how she would boast about being untouchable, about being able to kill with impunity because four doctors would testify toher insanity if need be. The musings of a sociopath? Perhaps. The mind of a child? Probably so. But a mind genuinely unhinged?

A week ago, before the search warrants were even typed, someone showed Waltemeyer an FBI psychological profile of the classic black widow serial killer. Prepared by the behavioral sciences unit at the Quantico Academy, the profile suggested that the woman would be thirty years or older, would not necessarily be attractive, yet at the same time would make great efforts to exaggerate her sexual prowess and manipulate her physical appearance. The woman would probably be a hypochondriac and would more likely than not enjoy portraying herself as a victim. She would expect special treatment, then pout if it was not forthcoming. She would greatly overestimate her ability to sway other people, men in particular. Measured against the profile, Geraldine Parrish seemed to be the product of Central Casting.

After the interrogation, Roger Nolan and Terry McLarney are both escorting Geraldine Parrish to the City Jail, following her down the sixth-floor hallway, with Nolan walking directly behind the woman.

“Just before the elevators, she stops suddenly and bends over,” Nolan later tells the other detectives, “as if she’s trying to make me run into her fat ass. I tell you, that’s what she’s really about… In her mind, she really believes that if I get a good feel of her ass, I’m gonna fall in love with her and shoot Terry McLarney with his own gun and ride off into the sunset in an unmarked Chevrolet.”

Nolan’s psychoanalysis may be sufficient to the occasion, but for Waltemeyer, the long journey into the mind and soul of Geraldine Parrish is just beginning. And while every other detective in the room is content to believe that they already know everything there is to know about this woman, it is now up to Waltemeyer to determine just how many people she killed, how she killed them and how many of those cases can be successfully prosecuted in court.

For Waltemeyer, it will be an investigation unlike any other, a career case that only a seasoned detective could contemplate. Bank statements, insurance records, grand jury proceedings, exhumations-these are things that no patrolman ever worries about. A street cop rarely takes the work beyond a single shift; one night’s calls have nothing to do with those of the next. And even in homicide, a detective never has to worry the cases beyond the point of arrest. But in this investigation, the arrest is just the beginning of a long, labored effort.

Two weeks from now, Donald Waltemeyer, Corey Belt and Marc Cohen, an assistant state’s attorney, will be in Plainfield, New Jersey, interviewing the friends and relatives of Albert Robinson, finding one of Geraldine’s surviving husbands and delivering subpoenas for bank and insurance records. Much of the evidence involves an interstate paper trail, the kind of detail work that usually inspires a street cop to nothing more than tedium. But the three men will return to Baltimore with the explanation for the migration of Albert Robinson to East Baltimore and his subsequent murder.

Brought once again to the interrogation room from her jail cell, Miss Geraldine will once again confront a detective who lays the insurance policies in front of her and once again explains the truth about criminal culpability.

“You not makin’ any sense,” Geraldine will tell Waltemeyer. “I didn’t shoot no one.”

“Fine with me, Geraldine,” the detective says. “It doesn’t matter to me whether you tell the truth or not. We just brought you here to charge you with another murder. Albert Robinson.”

“Who’s he?”

“He’s the man from New Jersey you had killed for ten thousand dollars of insurance money.”

“I didn’t murder no one.”

“Okay, Geraldine. Fine.”

Once again, Geraldine Parrish leaves the homicide unit in handcuffs and, once again, Waltemeyer goes back to working the case, expanding it further, searching this time for answers in the death of the Reverend Gilliard. It is a deliberate, often tedious process, this prolonged investigation of a woman who has already been arrested and charged with four murders. More than a string of fresh street shootings, it demands a professional investigator. A detective.

Months into the Parrish investigation, McLarney will walk by Waltemeyer’s desk and overhear a lecture that the detective is delivering with calm sincerity. The beneficiary of Waltemeyer’s newfound wisdom will be Corey Belt, the prodigy from the districts whose detail to homicide was extended for the Parrish investigation. At that moment, Belt wants very much to respond to a lying, recalcitrant witness in the Western District way.

“Back in the Western,” Belt tells Waltemeyer, “we’d just throw the asshole against a wall and put some sense into him.”

“No, listen to me. This isn’t patrol. That kind of stuff doesn’t work up here.”

“That stuff always works.”

“No, I’m telling you. Up here you got to be patient. You got to use your head.”

And McLarney will stand there, listen a little longer, and then move on, delighted and amused at the notion of Donald Waltemeyer telling another man to shake off the lessons of the street. If there was nothing else to her credit, the Black Widow had at least taken a patrolman and turned him into a detective.