Страница 30 из 38
But as with everything else in this case, even the time of death remained a moving target. Earlier in the evening before the raid on the old man’s rowhouse, Edgerton had argued briefly against the prevailing opinion: “What if she was killed on Tuesday night? Could she have been killed late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning?”
“Can’t be,” said Landsman. “She’s just starting to come out of rigor. And the eyes are still moist.”
“She could be coming out of rigor after twenty-four hours.”
“No fucking way, Harry.”
“Yeah she could.”
“No fucking way. It’s go
“But it’s also cold out.”
“But we know the guy has her inside somewhere until he can dump her that morning.”
“Yeah, but…”
“No, Harry, you’re fucked up on this,” said Landsman, producing the office medical text on death investigation and turning to the section on rigor mortis. “Eyes not dry, no decomp. Twelve to eighteen hours, Harry.”
Edgerton sca
“Middle of the day on Wednesday.”
Edgerton nodded. If she was killed on Wednesday, then the Fish Man was out and there was every reason to move Landsman’s candidate, the old drunk from across the street, to the top of the list.
“Hey, fuck it,” said Landsman finally. “We got no reason not to pick this guy up.”
No reason save that their suspect can barely hang on to his bottle, much less lure a young girl off the street and hold her captive for a day and a half. The interrogation lasts only long enough to establish that the old drunk had only heard of the murder on that Thursday morning from a neighbor who had heard it from the woman who lived at 718 Newington. He doesn’t know about the murder. He doesn’t know the little girl. He can’t remember much about his old charges except that whatever they were, he was i
A lab tech takes Edgerton’s samples to a detective’s desk and subjects each to a leuco malachite test, a chemical examination in which items are daubed with a cotton-tipped applicator that will turn blue if blood-animal or human-is present. Edgerton watches as each applicator turns a dull gray, an indication of dirt and nothing more.
A few hours before dawn, as the old man is returned to anonymity in a Central District radio car and the detectives collate and copy another day’s reports, Pellegrini dryly offers a fresh alternative.
“Ed, you wa
Brown and Ceruti both look up in surprise. Other detectives glance over as well, their curiosity piqued.
“Then I’ll tell you what you do.”
“What’s that?”
“Ed, you go prepare a statement of charges.”
“Yeah?”
“And Fred, you read me my rights…”
The room breaks up.
“Hey,” says Landsman, laughing. “What do you guys think? Is this case getting to Tom? I mean, he kinda looks like he’s begi
Every man in the room has been there before, working 120-hour weeks as the primary investigator on a case that simply doesn’t add up, a set of facts that won’t solidify into a suspect no matter how long you stare at them. An open red ball is a torture tour, a ball-busting, blood-draining ordeal that always seems to shape and mark a detective more than the ones that go down. And for Pellegrini, still new to Landsman’s squad, the Latonya Wallace murder is proving to be the hardest rite of passage.
Tom Pellegrini had nine years on the force when his transfer to homicide was finally approved, nine years of wondering whether police work was truly a calling or merely the latest meandering in what had become a lifetime of detours.
He was born to a coal miner in the mountains of western Pe
His first choices in life seemed-like his childhood-uncertain, perhaps even random. Unlike most of the men in the homicide unit, Pellegrini had no prior co
The want ads led south-first to Baltimore, where he visited the aunt who had taken him in during those childhood summers. He stayed in Maryland for a week, long enough to answer a newspaper ad encouraging applications to the Baltimore Police Department. He had once worked for a brief time at a private security firm, and though the job offered nothing even remotely resembling police work, it left him with the vague feeling that he might enjoy being a cop. In the late 1970s, however, the prospects for a law enforcement career were uncertain; most every city department was dealing with budgetary retrenchment and hiring freezes. Still, Pellegrini was intrigued enough to attend the interview for the Baltimore department. But rather than wait for a reply, he pushed on to Atlanta, where he had been led to believe that the Sun Belt’s economic boom was a better guarantee of employment. He stayed overnight in Atlanta, reading the classifieds at a depressing diner in a ragged section of the city, then returning to the motel to hear from his aunt, who called to say he had been accepted by the Baltimore academy.
What the hell, he told himself. He didn’t know much about Baltimore, but what he’d seen of Atlanta couldn’t exactly be described as paradise. What the hell.
After graduation, he was assigned to Sector 4 of the Southern, a white enclave almost evenly divided between affluent urban homesteaders and an ethnic working class. It was hardly the most crime-ridden section of the city, and Pellegrini understood that if he stayed there ten years, he would never learn what he needed to know to rise in the department. If he was going to be any good at this, he told himself, he had to get to one of the rough-and-tumble districts like the Western or, better still, to a citywide unit. After less than two years in a radio car, his ticket out of the hinterlands came in the form of an approved transfer to the Quick Response Team, the heavily armed tactical unit responsible for handling hostage situations and barricades. Working out of headquarters, QRT was considered something of an elite unit, and the officers were divided into four-man teams that trained constantly. Day after day, Pellegrini and the rest of his squad would practice kicking in doors, fa