David Simon - Homicide - A Year On The Killing Streets

As Edgerton begins to tire, Pellegrini picks up what few threads remain untouched. He asks the old man open-ended questions, hoping to arouse something other than monosyllabic answers. He tries to probe the old man’s feelings for the dead girl. But they are random questions, a few shots in the dark delivered independent of any plan or science. Pellegrini watches the old man’s unchanging face and curses himself. He is locked in this room with his best, most enduring suspect, and yet he has no trump card, no tool with which to pry into the man’s soul.

Once again, Pellegrini feels that insistent regret, that same unnerving notion that his case is running away from him. When it came to this, the investigation’s most critical confrontation thus far, he had given the helm to Edgerton. But Edgerton had no plan; hell, none of them did.

Everything had rested on the forlorn hope that the Fish Man would fear their expertise, their knowledge and their authority-fear all of it enough to give up his darkest secrets. Pellegrini wonders whether their suspect even understands enough to feel that kind of fear. The walk by the lab didn’t even faze him; neither had the morgue photos. The Fish Man was either a true innocent or a true sociopath.

After eight hours, they call for a Central District radio car as first Pellegrini, then Edgerton, surrenders to both frustration and exhaustion. The store owner waits quietly on the green vinyl sofa in the aquarium until a uniform arrives to shuttle him back to Whitelock Street. Then the Fish Man collects himself slowly and shuffles down the sixth-floor corridor, once again a free man.

Two nights later, Pellegrini shows up for a midnight shift, checks the roll book, and learns he’s the only detective on active duty. Fahlteich’s on vacation, Dunnigan and Ceruti are off, and Rick Requer, just off medical from a broken arm, is still working light duty.

“You all can head out,” he tells Kincaid and the others on the four-to-twelve crew after getting a cup of coffee.

“Where’s the rest of the relief?” asks Kincaid.

“I’m it.”

“Just you?”

“Hey,” says Pellegrini. “One city, one detective.”

“Shit, Tom,” says Kincaid. “I sure hope that fuckin’ phone don’t ring.”

But ring it does. And at 5:00 A.M., Pellegrini finds himself standing in the piss stench of a small, dark passageway between two downtown buildings on Clay Street, looking at the earthly remains of a street person, a homeless derelict with his head crushed and his pants pulled below his knees. He wanted nothing more than a warm place to defecate and got beaten to death for that simple ambition. A more meaningless murder cannot be committed.

Later that morning, the admin lieutenant makes it clear to Pellegrini that he’s the primary investigator on Latonya Wallace and orders him to dump 88033, the murder of Barney Erely, age forty-five, of no fixed address, on Roger Nolan’s squad. This decision somehow fails to make Nolan the most contented sergeant in homicide.

Transferring the case solves nothing. This is a world with more murders than detectives, a city in which time will not stand still, not even for Latonya Wallace. One week later, Pellegrini and Gary Dunnigan are alone in the office on a midnight shift when the phone rings with a fatal stabbing from the Southeast.

And Pellegrini goes back in the rotation.

No witnesses, no motive, and a forty-year-old woman stabbed, stabbed some more, and then, it would seem, shot once in the head at close range. At least, Rich Garvey tells himself, she’s dead in a house.

Wilson, the lab tech, stops flashing pictures long enough to reload his camera and Garvey uses the respite to walk through the bedroom one more time, running through mental lists. You can almost hear file cards turning inside his head.

“Hey, where’s your buddy?” Wilson asks.

The detective looks up, distracted. “Who’s my buddy?”

“You know, your partner, McAllister.”

“He’s off tonight.”

“Left you all alone, huh?”

“That’s right, stick ol’ Garvo with the tough ones… You got a shot of the clothes, right here by the door?”

“I took a few.”

Garvey nods.

Charlene Lucas was found by a neighbor, a middle-aged man who lives in the upstairs apartment. On leaving for work at 5:00 A.M., he noticed that the door to her apartment was ajar, and when he came back from work, just after 4:00 P.M., the door to the second-floor apartment was still open. Calling his neighbor’s name, he wandered far enough into the back bedroom to see the woman’s legs stretched across the floor.

The paramedics pronounced her at 4:40 P.M. and Garvey pulled up on Gilmor Street fifteen minutes later. The scene was secure, with the Western uniforms keeping everyone but the other residents outside the red brick building. The three-story rowhouse had been recently renovated into a cluster of small, one-bedroom apartments and, from all appearances, the contractor had done a respectable job. Nestled in one of the more ragged west side sections, the building in which Lena Lucas lived could only be called a credit to the neighborhood. Fully rehabbed, the apartments were each equipped with burglar alarms and dead-bolt locks as well as intercoms connected to the front door buzzer.

Making his way into the building and up to the second-floor landing, Garvey notes right away that there is no sign of forced entry, either at the front door or at the door of the victim’s apartment. In both the living room and back bedroom, the windows are secure.

Lena Lucas is on her back, centered in a pool of coagulated blood that has stained the beige carpeting in a wide circle. Her eyes are closed, her mouth is parted slightly and, except for a pair of white panties, she is nude. The blood pool suggests that there are serious wounds to the back, but Garvey also notices matted blood around the left ear, a possible gunshot wound. The woman’s neck and jaw are further marred by perhaps a dozen shallow cuts-some of them little more than scratches.

Head north, feet south, the body rests just beside a double bed in the cramped rear room. On the floor near the bedroom door are the rest of the victim’s clothes; Garvey notes that they are nested in a small pile, as if she had undressed from a standing position, leaving the garments at her feet. Lena Lucas had no problem taking her clothes off in front of her killer, Garvey reasons. And if she had undressed prior to the murderer’s arrival, she had apparently opened her apartment door without bothering to put anything on.

The bedroom itself, as well as the rest of the apartment, is largely intact. Only a metal dressing locker has been ransacked, its doors flung wide and a handful of garments and purses dumped on the floor. In one corner of the room, a bag of uncooked rice has been broken and strewn across the carpet; near the rice lies a small amount of white powder, probably cocaine, and about a hundred empty gelatin capsules. This makes sense to Garvey; rice retains moisture and is often packed with cocaine to prevent the powder from crystallizing.

Garvey examines the wooden headboard of the bed. Near the corner closest to the victim’s head is a series of vertical, jagged scratches, fresh damage that is consistent with the downward thrusts of a sharp edge. There is also a small amount of blood spatter near that corner of the sheet, and on the floor near the bed is a kitchen knife with a broken blade.

Theory: The woman was lying on her back in bed, head north, when the knife attack began. The killer struck at her from directly above, his wayward thrusts damaging the headboard. Either from the force of the attack or from her own efforts to escape, the victim rolled off the side of the bed and onto the floor.