Homicide. David Simon
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Even if the union lawyers are the reporter’s primary source, they’re still getting inside information on the status of the investigation.
For Worden, the newspaper article is part and parcel of the larger problem with the Monroe Street probe: the investigation is taking place in a fishbowl. And no wonder. When cops investigate other cops, it’s usually the work of an internal investigations unit, a squad of detectives committed to prosecuting fellow officers. An IID detective is trained for the adversarial role. He works out of a separate office on a separate floor of the building, reporting to separate supervisors who are being paid to make cases against sworn members of the department. An IID detective is unaffected by station house loyalty, by the brotherhood itself; his allegiance is with the system, the department. He is, in patrolman’s parlance, a cheese-eating rat.
Because the uniforms who chased John Scott were all potential suspects, the Monroe Street probe was, for all practical purposes, an internal investigation. And yet because John Scott was murdered, the investigation could not go to IID. It was a criminal case and therefore the responsibility of the homicide unit.
Worden had to contend with his own divided loyalties as well. A quarter century was no small thing in any profession, but for Worden, the years in uniform meant everything. He carried a little bit of Norman Buckman with him, a little bit of Scotty McCown, too. Yet he was committed to the Monroe Street investigation because it was his letter up on the board, written in red next to the name of John Scott. It was a murder—his murder. And if some cop out there didn’t have brains and balls enough to turn in that body, then Worden was willing to write him off.
It somehow made it easier on Worden that many of the officers involved had behaved like witnesses in any other murder. Some had willfully lied to him, some had been purposely ambiguous; all were reluctant. For Worden and James both, it hurt to sit there in an interrogation room and have men wearing the uniform piss up your leg, then tell you it’s raining. Nor was there any outside cooperation coming in from the districts. The phone wasn’t ringing off the hook from uniforms who feared being jammed up in another cop’s shooting, who might be trying to keep out of a jackpot or cut deals for themselves. Clearly, Worden realized, the word on the street was that homicide didn’t have enough to charge anyone. If a cop was responsible for this murder, no one would come forward as long as it was believed that the probe had bottomed out.
That, too, was a result of too much talk, too many connections between the homicide unit and the rest of the department. For two months, Worden and James had conducted a criminal investigation in full view of the potential suspects and witnesses, their every move telegraphed through the department grapevine. Today’s newspaper account was only the most graphic example.
What the hell, thinks Worden, walking toward the men’s room with a cigar clenched between his teeth. At least the bosses can’t ignore the problem. When half your fucking case file is floating around in newsprint, it’s time to change tactics. Already that morning, Tim Doory has called twice from the state’s attorney’s office to set up a morning meeting with Worden and James at the Violent Crimes Unit offices.
Still pushing pieces around in his mind, Worden walks out of the bathroom just as Dick Lanham, the colonel in command of CID, rounds the corner on his way back to his office. Lanham, too, is in high dudgeon, a copy of the newspaper rolled up tight in one fist.
“I’m sorry, Donald,” says the colonel, shaking his head. “You’ve got your work cut out for you now.”
Worden shrugs. “Just one more thing to deal with.”
“Well, I’m sorry you have to deal with it,” says Lanham. “I tried like hell to get Twigg to hold off on this thing and I thought he was gonna do that.”
Worden listens passively as the colonel launches into an extended account of his efforts to delay the news article—an account punctuated by his assertion that Roger Twigg is the most stubborn, arrogant, pain-in-the-ass reporter he has ever known.
“I told him what it would do to us if he put that stuff in the paper,” the colonel says. “I asked him to wait on it for a couple weeks, and what does he do?”
As a major, Lanham himself ran the IID and in that post had dealt with Twigg on a series of sensitive stories. So it is no surprise to Worden that the colonel and the reporter had a long conversation before the article was published. But would the colonel purposely leak this investigation? Probably not, Worden reasons. As the CID commander, Lanham doesn’t want an unsolved police shooting on the books, and as a former IID man, he certainly doesn’t have any problem with investigating other cops. No, Worden thinks, not the colonel. If Lanham was talking to Twigg, it was only to try to stall the story.
“Well,” Worden says, “I’d sure like to know who his source is.”
“Oh yeah,” says Lanham, turning toward his office, “I’d like to know that myself. Whoever it is knows what he’s talking about.”
Three hours after digesting the newspaper article, Worden and James walk the three blocks from headquarters to the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse on Calvert Street, where they badge their way past sheriff’s deputies and take the elevator to the third floor of the city’s judicial palace.
There, they walk through a cramped labyrinth of offices which houses the Violent Crimes Unit and settle in the largest cubicle, the office of Timothy J. Doory, assistant state’s attorney and the head of the VCU. On Doory’s desk is, of course, a copy of the Sun’s metro section, folded to Roger Twigg’s exclusive.
The meeting is a long one, and when the two detectives return to the homicide unit, they are carrying a list of a dozen witnesses, civilians and officers who are to be issued witness summonses.
Fine with me, thinks Worden, walking back toward headquarters. I’ve been lied to on this case, I’ve been stonewalled, I’ve seen my best evidence spread across a newspaper page. So what the hell, if they’re gonna lie about this shooting, they may as well do it under oath. And if they’re gonna be leaking the case file to reporters, they’re gonna have to get their information out of the courthouse.
“Fuck it, Donald,” James tells his partner, hanging his coat in the main office. “If you ask me, Doory should’ve done this weeks ago.”
Before the Monroe Street probe is further compromised—by Twigg or anyone else—it will be brought out of the homicide unit. It will go to a grand jury.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10
The Fish Man comes to the door, fork in hand, wearing a worn flannel shirt and corduroy pants. His unshaven face is impassive.
“Step back,” says Tom Pellegrini. “We’re coming in.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No. We got a warrant for your place, though.”
The Fish Man grunts, then walks back into the kitchen. Landsman, Pellegrini and Edgerton lead a half-dozen others into the three-room, second-floor apartment. The place is dirty, but not unbearably so, and sparsely furnished. Even the closets are almost empty.
As each of the detectives takes a room and begins searching, the Fish Man returns to his barbecued chicken, greens and Colt 45. He uses his fork to tear the meat from a thigh, then picks up a chicken leg with his fingers.
“Can I see it?” he asks.
“See what?” says Landsman.
“Your warrant. Can I see it?”
Landsman walks back into the kitchen and drops the target copy on the table. “You can keep that one.”
The Fish Man eats his chicken and reads slowly through Landsman’s affidavit. The warrant offers a mechanical summary of reasons for the raid: Known to victim. Employed victim at store. Misled investigators about alibi. Unaccounted for on day of disappearance. The Fish Man reads without any suggestion of emotion. His fingers leave grease marks on a corner of each page.
Edgerton and Pellegrini meet Landsman in the back bedroom as other detectives and detail officers poke through the