Homicide. David Simon
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the jetsam from the morning autopsy: shoes, bloodied clothes, scrapings from the victim’s fingernails for possible DNA or blood typing, samples of victim’s blood and hair for possible future comparisons, and a series of hairs, both negroid and caucasoid, which were discovered on the victim and might or might not have anything to do with the crime.
The presence of foreign hairs is carefully noted, but in Baltimore at least, homicide detectives have come to regard that kind of trace evidence as the least valuable. For one thing, the crime lab can only on rare occasions—usually those involving distinctly colored caucasoid hairs—match beyond any reasonable doubt a recovered strand with a suspect. Particularly with negroid and darker caucasoid hairs, the best that forensic science can do is declare that the same class characteristics exist between a suspect’s hair and the recovered strand. DNA-genetic coding, which can unambiguously link trace evidence to a single suspect by matching gene characteristics, is now becoming more widely available to law enforcement, but the process works best with blood and tissue samples. To match the DNA coding of human hair to a suspect, at least one entire hair, with its root intact, is needed. Moreover, Landsman and many other detectives have strong doubts about the integrity of trace evidence at the medical examiner’s office, where the number of autopsies performed daily in cramped conditions can produce a less than pristine environment. Hairs recovered from Latonya Wallace could just as easily have come from the plastic wrap on the body litter or a towel used to clean the victim prior to the internal examination. They may be hairs from the ME’s attendants and investigators, or the paramedics who pronounced the victim, or from the last body carted away on the body litter or laid out on the examination gurneys.
Edgerton begins filling in the blanks on the first of a series of lab forms: One red raincoat, bloodstained. One red waist jacket, bloodstained. One pair blue rain shoes. Request blood and trace evidence analysis. Special latent print analysis.
Other detectives collate and catalogue witness statements for the case file or work the typewriters in the admin office, pounding out one report after another on the day’s activity. Still other detectives are clustered around the computer terminal in the admin office, punching up criminal records for nearly every name obtained in a preliminary canvass of the north side of Newington’s 700 block—a stretch of sixteen rowhouses that back up against the alley where the body was found.
The result of the computer check is itself an education in city living, and Pellegrini, after digesting the witness statements, begins reading each printout. He soon grows weary at the repetition. More than half of the four dozen names typed into the computer generate a couple of pages of prior arrests. Armed robbery, assault with intent, rape, theft, deadly weapon—in terms of criminal endeavor, there seem to be few virgins left in Reservoir Hill. Of particular interest to Pellegrini are the half dozen males who show priors for at least one sex offense.
Also punched through the computer is one name that the victim’s family gave to the police, the name of the proprietor of a fish store on Whitelock Street. Latonya Wallace occasionally worked at the store for pocket change until her mother’s boyfriend—the quiet young man who opened the apartment door for Edgerton that morning—became suspicious. The Fish Man, as he has long been known in the neighborhood, is a fifty-one-year-old living alone in a second-floor apartment across the street from his store. A one-story, single-room affair near the elbow bend of Whitelock Street, Reservoir Hill’s short commercial stretch, the store itself is about two blocks west of the alley where the body was dumped. The Fish Man, a grizzled, timeworn piece of work, was quite friendly with Latonya—a little too friendly, as far as the child’s family was concerned. There had been some talk among the schoolchildren and their parents, and Latonya was told explicitly to avoid the Whitelock Street store.
Pellegrini finds that the Fish Man also has some history in the computer, which can scan city arrests going back to 1973. But the old man’s sheet shows nothing exceptional, mostly a few arrests for assault, disorderly conduct, and the like. Pellegrini reads the sheet carefully, but he pays at least as much attention to the brief, insubstantial record for the boyfriend of the victim’s mother. Homicide work offers no respite from cynical thoughts, and only with reluctance does a detective delete the nearest and dearest from his list of suspects.
The clerical work continues through the four o’clock shift change and into early evening. Six of D’Addario’s detectives are working overtime for no other reason than the case itself, giving little thought to their pay stubs. The case is a classic red ball, and as such it has the attention of the entire department: Youth division has assigned two detectives to assist homicide; the tactical section has put another eight plainclothes officers into the detail; special investigations across the hall sends two men from the career criminals unit; the Central and Southern districts each add two men from their operations units. The office is crowded with the growing herd of warm bodies—some involved in specific aspects of the investigation, some drinking coffee in the annex office, all dependent on Jay Landsman, the squad sergeant and case supervisor, for guidance and purpose. The nightshift detectives offer assistance, then take stock of the growing crowd and gradually retreat to the shelter of the coffee room.
“You can tell a little girl got killed today,” says Mark Tomlin, an early arrival from Stanton’s shift, “because it’s eight P.M. and the entire police department doesn’t want to go home.”
Nor do they want to stay in the office. As the core group of Pellegrini, Landsman and Edgerton continue to sort through the day’s accumulated information and plan the next day’s effort, other detectives and officers newly detailed to the case gradually drift toward Reservoir Hill until radio cars and unmarked Cavaliers are crisscrossing every alley and street between North Avenue and Druid Park Lake.
Tactical plainclothes officers spend much of the late evening jacking up street dealers at Whitelock and Brookfield, driving away, and then returning an hour later to jack them up again. Central District radio cars roll through every back alley, demanding identification from anyone who strays close to Newington Avenue. Foot patrolmen clear the Whitelock corners from Eutaw to Callow, questioning anybody who looks even a little out of place.
It is an impressive parade, a reassuring performance to those in the neighborhood who crave reassurance. And yet this is not a crime of cocaine dealers or heroin users or stickup artists or streetwalkers. This is an act undertaken by one man, alone, in the dark. Even as they are tossed off their corners, the Whitelock Street homeboys are willing to say as much:
“I hope you catch the cocksucker, man.”
“Go get his ass.”
“Lock that motherfucker up.”
For one February evening the code of the street is abandoned and the dealers and dopers readily offer up to the police whatever information they have, most of it useless, some of it incoherent. In truth, the cavalry maneuvers in Reservoir Hill speak not to the investigation itself but to a territorial imperative, a showing of the colors. It announces to the inhabitants of one battered, beleaguered rowhouse slum that the death of Latonya Wallace has been marked from its earliest hours, elevated above the routine catalogue of sin and vice. The Baltimore Police Department, its homicide unit included, is going to make a stand on Newington Avenue.
And yet for all the swagger and bravado tendered on that first night after Latonya Wallace is found, there is an equal and opposing spirit in the streets and alleys of Reservoir Hill, something alien and unnatural.
Ceruti feels it first, when he walks two steps from a Cavalier on Whitelock and some fool tries to peddle him heroin. Then it touches Eddie Brown, who walks into the Korean carryout on Brookfield for cigarettes only to be confronted by a wild-eyed smokehound, half in the bag, who tries to shove the detective back out the door.
“Get the hell away from me,” growls Brown, hurling the drunk onto the sidewalk. “Are you out of your damn mind?”
And a half hour later, the spirits reveal themselves again to a whole carload of detectives, who roll through the rear of Newington Avenue for one last look at the death scene. As the car creeps down the garbage-strewn alley, its headlights fix upon a rat the size of a small dog.
“Jesus,” says Eddie Brown, getting out of the car. “Lookit the size of that