.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was for the investigators to be sure of nothing, to feel compelled to question everything. The time-of-death estimate, the stomach contents—what else was waiting in that file to turn on them?

      At least, in this instance, the changing scenario allowed them to keep one of their best suspects. While it was true that the Fish Man’s apartment and store were a long block and a half from Newington Avenue—contradicting Landsman’s theories about the proximity of the crime scene—it was also true that the store owner had access to at least one vehicle, a pickup truck that he routinely borrowed from another Whitelock Street merchant. In checking his Wednesday alibi, the detectives learned that he was in possession of the truck on the night the body had been dumped behind Newington Avenue. So far, the working theory had been that if the killer had the body in a vehicle, he’d drive to an isolated spot rather than a nearby alley. But what if he was scared? And what if the body was covered in the back of a pickup truck, relatively exposed?

      And why the hell didn’t the Fish Man make any attempt in that first interrogation to account for his whereabouts on Tuesday and early Wednesday? Was he merely a marginally employed merchant unable to distinguish one day from the next? Or was he making a conscious effort to avoid a false alibi that detectives would be able to knock down? In the first interrogation, the Fish Man had mentioned the errands he ran with a friend on Wednesday as an alibi. Was that a simple failure of memory or a conscious effort to mislead investigators?

      In the weeks since the murder, the rumors of the Fish Man’s interest in young girls had pervaded Reservoir Hill to the point where the detectives were regularly receiving fresh allegations of past molestation attempts. The allegations were largely unsubstantiated. But when the detectives ran the store owner’s name through the National Crime Index Computer they did come up with a relevant charge that predated his record in the Baltimore computer: a statutory rape charge from 1957, when the Fish Man was in his early twenties. The charge involved a fourteen-year-old girl.

      Pellegrini pulled the microfilm of the police reports from storage, and the records showed a conviction and a sentence of nothing more than a year. The ancient history offered little more detail, but it gave the detectives some hope that they were dealing with a sex offender. More than that, it gave Landsman a little more meat to hang on the dry bones of his search warrants.

      That afternoon, Landsman had shown his affidavits to Howard Gersh, a veteran prosecutor who had wandered into the homicide unit earlier that day. “Hey, Howard, take a look at this.”

      Gersh scanned the probable cause in less than a minute.

      “It’ll fly,” he said, “but aren’t you giving up a hell of a lot?”

      The question was one of tactics. When the warrant was served, the Fish Man would see the affidavit and would learn what detectives believed linked him to the crime. He could also learn where his alibi was weakest. Landsman pointed out that at least the affidavit withheld the identity of those who were contradicting the suspect’s initial story.

      “We’re not giving up any witnesses.”

      Gersh shrugged and handed the document back. “Good hunting.”

      “Thanks, Howard.”

      At ten that evening, Landsman had hurried the warrants to the home of the duty judge, and the detectives and detail officers gathered in the parking lot of the Park Avenue library, where Latonya Wallace had last been seen alive. The plan was to hit the Fish Man’s apartment and store first, but now, after finding so little on Whitelock Street, Pellegrini and Edgerton are suddenly impatient to pursue the new theory. They leave Landsman and a detail officer to finish the search of the Fish Man’s gutted store while they lead a second group a block and a half east to Newington Avenue.

      Two Cavaliers and two radio cars pull in front of a three-story stone rowhouse on the north side of the street, where police tumble out and take the house in rough approximation of a Green Bay Packer sweep. Eddie Brown is through the door first with the lead block, followed by two of the Central District uniforms. Then Pellegrini and Edgerton, then Fred Ceruti and more uniforms.

      A seventeen-year-old who meandered down the front hallway to answer the loud banging on the door frame is now pressed against the flaking plaster, a uniform shouting at him to shut the fuck up and keep still for the body search. A second kid in a gray sweatsuit steps through the doorway of the first floor’s middle room, assesses the interlopers for what they are, then races back across the threshold.

      “Poh-leece,” he shouts. “Yo, man, yo, po-leeces comin’…”

      Eddie Brown yanks Paul Revere out of the doorway and pushes him against an inside wall as Ceruti and more uniforms shove their way down the dark hall toward the light of the center room.

      There are four of them in there, crowded around an aerosol cleaning product and a small box of plastic sandwich bags. Only one of them bothers to look up at the intruders and for that kid, there is a moment or two of nonrecognition before the gray ether parts and he begins shouting wildly, running for the rear door. One of the detail officers from the Southern catches him by the shirt in the kitchen, then bends him over the sink. The other three are lost to the world and make no effort to move. The oldest expresses his indifference by pressing the plastic bag to his face and sucking down a final blast. The chemical stench is overpowering.

      “I’m gonna get sick breathing this shit,” says Ceruti, shoving one kid over a bureau.

      “What do you think?” asks a uniform, pushing another captive into a chair. “Is Momma gonna be upset to find you been huffing on a school night?”

      From the second-floor bedrooms comes the cacophony of cursing officers and screaming women, followed by more distant shouting from the third-floor rooms. In twos and threes, the occupants are roused from nearly a dozen bedrooms and marched down the wide, rotting stairwell in the center of the house—teenagers, small children, middle-aged women, grown men—until a full cast of twenty-three is assembled in the middle room.

      The crowded room is strangely silent. It is almost midnight and a dozen police are parading through the rowhouse, but the beleaguered population of 702 Newington asks no questions about the raid, as if they have reached that point when police raids no longer require reasons. Slowly, the group settles in sedimentary layers throughout the room: younger children lying in the center of the floor, teenagers standing or sitting on the periphery with their backs against the walls, older men and women on the sofa, chairs and around the battered dining room table. A full five minutes pass before an older, heavyset man, wearing blue boxer shorts and bathroom slippers, asks the obvious question: “What the hell you doing in my house?”

      Eddie Brown moves into the doorway, and the heavyset man gives him an appraising look. “You the man in charge?”

      “I’m one of them,” says Brown.

      “You got no right to come into my house.”

      “I got every right. I got a warrant.”

      “What warrant? What for?”

      “It’s a warrant signed by a judge.”

      “There ain’t no judge signing a warrant on me. I’ll go get a judge myself about you breakin’ into my home.”

      Brown smiles, indifferent.

      “Lemme see your warrant.”

      The detective waves him off. “When we’re done we’ll leave a copy.”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ