Homicide. David Simon
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is in the 700 block of Newington, a short run from where the body was dumped.
A bit thin, perhaps. But Landsman and Pellegrini both know that four days have passed since the discovery of the body and at this moment, there is nothing better on the horizon. The first and seemingly best suspect developed thus far—the Fish Man—was brought downtown for an interview two days ago, but that interrogation had led them nowhere.
The Fish Man showed little interest in talking about the death of a child who had once worked in his store. Nor did he seem at all interested in accurately establishing his own whereabouts on Tuesday and Wednesday. After overcoming a general loss of memory, he came up with an alibi for the Tuesday of Latonya Wallace’s disappearance—an errand across town that he had run with a friend. Checking on the alibi, Pellegrini and Edgerton found that the trip had in fact occurred on Wednesday, leaving them to wonder whether the man had lied intentionally or had simply confused the days. Moreover, in checking the alibi, the detectives learned that the Fish Man had invited two friends up to his apartment to eat chicken on Wednesday evening. That, of course, left an obvious problem: If, as the autopsy seemed to indicate, Latonya Wallace was abducted on Tuesday, killed on Wednesday night and then dumped in the early morning hours of Thursday, then what was the Fish Man doing running errands on Wednesday afternoon or cooking a chicken dinner on Wednesday night? A full statement was taken from the Fish Man at the Saturday interrogation and, given the number of unanswered questions, both Edgerton and Pellegrini considered him a suspect. Still, the problems with apparent time of death—based on the extra, partially digested meal and the lack of decomposition—had to be overcome.
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 gonna happen faster for her because she’s smaller …”
“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 scanned the page. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Twelve to eighteen. And if she’s dumped at three or four … that’s …”
“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 innocent. He wants to go home.
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 wanna break this case?”
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 beginning to molt.” Pellegrini laughs sheepishly; in truth, he is beginning to look a little played out. His features are almost classically Italian: dark eyes, sharp facial lines, stocky build, thick mustache, jet black hair cresting in a pompadour that on a good day seems an affront to gravity itself. But this is not a good day; his eyes are glazed, his hair a dark, unruly cascade over his pale forehead. His words come drag-ass out of his mouth in a mountain drawl slowed by lack of sleep.
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 Pennsylvania, but his father—himself the son of a miner—left the family when Pellegrini was a boy. After that, there was nothing to bind them. Once, as an adult, he had gone to see his father for a weekend, but the connections he had been looking for simply weren’t there. His father was uncomfortable, his father’s second wife unwelcoming, and Pellegrini left that Sunday knowing that the visit had been a mistake. His mother offered little solace. She had never expected much of him and from time to time she actually came right out and said so. For the most part, Pellegrini was raised by a grandmother and spent summers with an aunt, who took him down to Maryland to see his cousins.
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 connection to Baltimore and little in law enforcement when he joined the department in 1979. He arrived as something close to a blank tablet, as rootless and unclaimed as a man can be. In his past, Pellegrini could count a couple of frustrating years at Youngstown College in Ohio, where a few semesters were enough to convince him that he was not at all suited for academics. There was a failed marriage as well, along with six months in a Pennsylvania coal mine—enough for Pellegrini to know that the family tradition was something to walk away from. He signed on for a couple of years as the manager of a carnival, where he worked the towns and state fairs and kept the amusement rides running. Eventually, that job led to a more permanent position as manager of an amusement park on a lakeshore island between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, where he spent most of his time trying to keep the joyrides from rusting during the northern winters. When the amusement park owners refused to pay for better, safer maintenance, Pellegrini quit, convinced that he wanted to be nowhere near the place when the Tilt-A-Whirl altered its usual orbit.
The want ads led south—first to Baltimore, where he visited the aunt who had taken him in during those childhood summers. He stayed