Homicide - A Year On The Killing Streets Part 16

The paramedics p.r.o.nounced her at 4:40 P.M. P.M. and Garvey pulled up on Gilmor Street fifteen minutes later. The scene was secure, with the Western uniforms keeping everyone but the other residents outside the red brick building. The three-story rowhouse had been recently renovated into a cl.u.s.ter of small, one-bedroom apartments and, from all appearances, the contractor had done a respectable job. Nestled in one of the more ragged west side sections, the building in which Lena Lucas lived could only be called a credit to the neighborhood. Fully rehabbed, the apartments were each equipped with burglar alarms and dead-bolt locks as well as intercoms connected to the front door buzzer. and Garvey pulled up on Gilmor Street fifteen minutes later. The scene was secure, with the Western uniforms keeping everyone but the other residents outside the red brick building. The three-story rowhouse had been recently renovated into a cl.u.s.ter of small, one-bedroom apartments and, from all appearances, the contractor had done a respectable job. Nestled in one of the more ragged west side sections, the building in which Lena Lucas lived could only be called a credit to the neighborhood. Fully rehabbed, the apartments were each equipped with burglar alarms and dead-bolt locks as well as intercoms connected to the front door buzzer.

Making his way into the building and up to the second-floor landing, Garvey notes right away that there is no sign of forced entry, either at the front door or at the door of the victim's apartment. In both the living room and back bedroom, the windows are secure.

Lena Lucas is on her back, centered in a pool of coagulated blood that has stained the beige carpeting in a wide circle. Her eyes are closed, her mouth is parted slightly and, except for a pair of white panties, she is nude. The blood pool suggests that there are serious wounds to the back, but Garvey also notices matted blood around the left ear, a possible gunshot wound. The woman's neck and jaw are further marred by perhaps a dozen shallow cuts-some of them little more than scratches.

Head north, feet south, the body rests just beside a double bed in the cramped rear room. On the floor near the bedroom door are the rest of the victim's clothes; Garvey notes that they are nested in a small pile, as if she had undressed from a standing position, leaving the garments at her feet. Lena Lucas had no problem taking her clothes off in front of her killer, Garvey reasons. And if she had undressed prior to the murderer's arrival, she had apparently opened her apartment door without bothering to put anything on.

The bedroom itself, as well as the rest of the apartment, is largely intact. Only a metal dressing locker has been ransacked, its doors flung wide and a handful of garments and purses dumped on the floor. In one corner of the room, a bag of uncooked rice has been broken and strewn across the carpet; near the rice lies a small amount of white powder, probably cocaine, and about a hundred empty gelatin capsules. This makes sense to Garvey; rice retains moisture and is often packed with cocaine to prevent the powder from crystallizing.

Garvey examines the wooden headboard of the bed. Near the corner closest to the victim's head is a series of vertical, jagged scratches, fresh damage that is consistent with the downward thrusts of a sharp edge. There is also a small amount of blood spatter near that corner of the sheet, and on the floor near the bed is a kitchen knife with a broken blade.

Theory: The woman was lying on her back in bed, head north, when the knife attack began. The killer struck at her from directly above, his wayward thrusts damaging the headboard. Either from the force of the attack or from her own efforts to escape, the victim rolled off the side of the bed and onto the floor.

Near the dead woman's head are a pillow and pillowcase blackened with what looks like gunpowder residue. But it isn't until the ME's people arrive to roll the body that Garvey finds the small, irregular lump of dull gray metal, surrounded on the carpet by a small amount of blood spatter where the victim's head came to rest. The coup de grace was no doubt delivered with the victim p.r.o.ne on the bedroom floor and with the pillow wrapped around the gun to m.u.f.fle the shot.

The bullet itself is a strange piece of work. Garvey looks at it closely: medium-caliber, probably a .32 or .38, but it's some a.s.s-backwards type of semi-wadcutter design he hasn't seen before. The projectile is pretty much intact, with little evidence of splintering or mutilation, and therefore suitable for ballistics comparisons. Garvey drops the slug into a manila evidence envelope and hands it over to Wilson. In the kitchen, the utensil drawer containing the knives is pulled partly open. Otherwise, little outside the bedroom is disturbed. The living room and the bathroom appear untouched.

Garvey has the lab tech concentrate on lifting latent prints from the rear bedroom, as well as the apartment and bedroom doors. The tech also spreads the sooty print dust along the kitchen counters and the open utensil drawer, then across the sink tops in the kitchen and bathroom, on the chance that the killer touched something while trying to wash his hands. Whenever the black dust reveals the outline of a usable print, the tech presses an ordinary piece of transparent tape against the print and backs the tape against a white 3-by-5 card. The collection of lift cards begins to grow as the tech moves from the bedroom to the kitchen. After finis.h.i.+ng the counters, he gestures to the other end of the hallway.

"You want me to do anything with the front room?"

"I don't think so. It looks like he left that alone."

"I don't mind ..."

"Nah, f.u.c.k it," says Garvey. "If it's somebody who has access to the apartment, the prints aren't going to mean much to us anyway."

In his mind, the detective catalogues the evidence that needs to go downtown: The bullet. The knife. The nested pile of clothes. The dope. The gelatin capsules. A small purse, now marred by print dust, that probably held the cocaine, the rice and the capsules. The pillow and pillowcase, stained with gunpowder residue. The bedsheet, lifted carefully off the mattress and folded slowly so as to keep any loose hairs or fibers intact. And, of course, the photos of the apartment rooms, of the death scene, of the bed with the damage to the headboard, of each piece of evidence in its original location.

News travels fast in a city neighborhood and the dead woman's family-mother, brother, uncle, young daughters-shows up on Gilmor Street even before the ME's attendants load the body litter into the black van. Garvey sends the crowd down to homicide in radio cars; other detectives will compile the necessary background information.

Two hours later, some of Lena Lucas's family begin drifting back to the murder scene. Nearly finished there, Garvey walks downstairs to find the dead woman's younger daughter leaning against a radio car. She is a thin, wiry thing, not yet twenty-three, but level-headed and shrewd. Experience teaches a homicide detective that there is always one member of the victim's family who can be trusted to keep calm, to listen, to answer questions correctly, to deal with the raw details of a murder when everyone else is wailing with grief or arguing over who should get the victim's ten-speed blender. Garvey had talked with Jackie Lucas before sending the family downtown and that brief conversation marked the young woman as the detective's best and brightest family contact.

"Hey, Jackie," says Garvey, motioning for her to follow him down the sidewalk a respectable distance from the crowd outside the apartment house.

Jackie Lucas catches up to the detective, who then walks a few more yards down the pavement.

The conversation begins where such conversations always do, with the dead woman's boyfriend, habits and vices. Garvey has already learned some things about his victim and the people in her life from earlier conversations with family members; the details from the crime scene-the absence of forced entry, the pile of clothes, the rice and gelatin caps-add to the knowledge. As he begins asking questions, Garvey touches the young woman's elbow lightly, as if to emphasize that only the truth should pa.s.s between them.

"Your mother's boyfriend, this boy Frazier, he's selling drugs ..."

Jackie Lucas hesitates.

"Did your mom deal for Frazier?"

"I don't ..."

"Listen, n.o.body cares about that now. I just need to know this if I'm going to find out who killed her."

"She just held the drugs for him," she says. "She didn't sell none, not that I know about anyway."

"Did she use?"

"Marijuana. Now and then."

"Cocaine?"

"Not really. Not that I know of."

"Does Frazier use?"

"Yeah, he do."

"You think Frazier could have killed your mother?"

Jackie Lucas pauses, focusing the image in her mind. Slowly, she shakes her head sideways.

"I don't think he did it," she says. "He always treated her nice, you know, never beat her or anything."

"Jackie, I have to ask this..."

The daughter says nothing.

"Was your mother, you know, kind of loose about men?"

"No, she wasn't."

"I mean, did she have a lot of boyfriends?"

"Jus' Frazier."

"Just Frazier?"

"Jus' him," she says, insistent. "She was seeing another man a while back, but only Frazier for a long time since."

Garvey nods, lost for a moment in thought.

Jackie breaks the silence. "The policeman downtown say we shouldn't say nothing to Frazier,' cause if we do he might run."

Garvey smiles. "If he runs, then at least I know who did it, right?"

The young woman takes in the logic.

"I don't think he's your man," she says finally.

Garvey tries a different tack. "Did your mom let anyone else up into her apartment? If she was alone, would she let anyone besides Frazier come up?"

"Only this boy named Vincent," she says. "He works for Frazier, and he been up there before for the drugs."

Garvey lowers his voice. "You think she would fool around with this Vincent?"

"No, she wouldn't. I don't think Vincent ever been up there without Frazier being there, too. I don't think she would let him in," she adds, changing her mind.

"You know Vincent's name?"

"Booker, I think."

"Jackie," says Garvey, turning to one last detail. "You told me before about Frazier keeping a gun in the bedroom."

The daughter nods. "She has a twenty-five, and sometimes Frazier keeps a thirty-eight there."

"We can't find them."

"She keeps them in that cabinet," the daughter says. "Up on the back of the shelf."

"Listen," says Garvey, "if I let you go up there and look for the guns, do you think you'll be able to find them?"

Jackie nods, then falls in behind him.

"Is it bad?" she asks on the way upstairs.

"Is what bad?"

"The room ..."

"Oh," says Garvey. "Well, she's gone ... but there's some blood."

The detective leads the young woman into the rear bedroom. Jackie looks briefly at the red stain, then walks to the metal dressing cabinet and pulls the .25 from the rear of the top shelf.

"The other one ain't here."

From a shelf in the closet directly behind the bed, she also produces a case containing a little more than $1,200 in cash, money that her mother had collected from a recent insurance settlement.

"Did Frazier know she had that money?"

"Yeah he did."

"Did he know where it was?"

"Yeah."

Garvey nods, giving this fact a moment of thought. Then a Western uniform bounds up the stairwell and into the hall of the apartment, looking for the detective.

"What's up?" asks Garvey.

"The rest of the family wants to come up."

Garvey looks at the lab tech. "You have everything you need?"

"Yeah, I'm just packing my stuff."

"Yeah, go 'head," says Garvey to the uniform, who goes downstairs to open the front door of the building. Seconds later, half a dozen relatives, including the victim's mother and older daughter, move quickly into the apartment, creating instant pandemonium.

The older family members busy themselves with taking stock of the kitchen appliances, the color television, the stereo system. For places like Gilmor Street, the reclamation of a victim's valuables is a postmortem imperative, less from greed than from the certain knowledge that as soon as word of the murder hits the street, any number of break-in artists will plan to acquire the worldly wealth of the newly departed, providing they can get into the place after the police leave and before the family has a chance to think. Grief may come later, but tonight the victim's mother has no intention of leaving to the wolves that multichannel home entertainment center.

The rest of the family is curious in a morbid way. A cousin points to the coagulated red pool on the bedroom carpet. "That Lena's blood?"

A Western uniform nods, and the cousin turns to the victim's older daughter.

"Lena's blood," he says again. Bad thought. Because now Jackie's older sister is wailing for all she's worth, making a bee-line for the red stain, her arms extended, palms open wide.

"MOMMY, MOMMY, I SEE MOMMY." The kid is rubbing her hands through the pool, gathering up as much of the wetness as she can. "MOMMY. I SEE MOMMY ..."

Garvey watches as the cousin and another relative grab the older daughter and lift her away from the blood.

"... MOMMY, DON'T GO, MOMMY ..."

The girl comes up screaming with her forearms extended, both palms covered with blood. Sensing an ugly dry cleaning bill, Garvey steps back, then moves toward the door.

"All right, Jackie," he says. "Thank you, honey. You've got my phone number, right?"

Jackie Lucas nods, then turns away to comfort her sister. As the screaming reaches a still higher pitch, Garvey makes his escape, following the lab tech down the steps and crawling into the cold interior of the Cavalier. He has spent a little less than four hours working the scene.

Before returning to the homicide office, Garvey makes a point of driving another twelve blocks north to see if an extra hand is needed on a suspicious death call that came in three hours after the call for Gilmor. Earlier, Garvey telephoned the office and heard from Dave Brown that the second call might also be a murder and might in some way be related to Gilmor Street. Garvey arrives on the second floor of a Lafayette Avenue rowhouse to find Rick James and Dave Brown working the murder of a fifty-year-old man.

Like Lena Lucas, the Lafayette Avenue victim has been shot in the head and stabbed repeatedly, this time in the chest. And like Lena Lucas, there is a pillow near the victim's head, marred by a large amount of gunshot residue. Moreover, the face of this victim is also covered by the same series of shallow cuts-more than twenty this time. Obviously dead for some time, the victim was found by several family members who had become concerned and entered through an unlocked rear door. Here, too, there was no sign of forced entry, but this time the room where the victim was found had been ransacked.

The two cases become unequivocally joined when Garvey learns that the dead man is Purnell Hampton Booker, the father of one Vincent Booker, who is the same entrepreneurial lad who works for Robert Frazier, who sells dope and sleeps with Lena Lucas. Standing in the dead man's bedroom, Garvey knows that the same hand almost certainly took both lives.

Leaving Brown and James to work their scene, Garvey returns to the homicide office and buries himself in paperwork at a back desk. He's still there when the detectives return from Lafayette Avenue.

As if the immediate similarities between both crime scenes aren't enough to link the killings, the spent bullet pulled from Purnell Booker's brain at the next morning's autopsy is a .38 a.s.s-backward wadcutter. Later that evening, Dave Brown, the primary on Lafayette Avenue, saunters over to Garvey's desk with an ident photo of young Vincent Booker.

"Yo bunk, looks like we be working together."

"Looks like."

As it happens, already that afternoon Garvey has heard from an anonymous tipster, a woman who called the homicide office to say she heard talk at a West Pratt Street bar. One man was telling another that the same gun was used to kill Lena Lucas and the old man on Lafayette.

Interesting rumor. A day later, ballistics says the same thing.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29.

A week has pa.s.sed since Lena Lucas and Purnell Booker were found dead on the same night, yet the two cases are still moving slowly, inexorably, forward. Fresh reports clutter both files, and in the Baltimore homicide unit, where one day's violence is overwhelmed by that of the next, a thick file is regarded as a healthy sign. Time itself mocks the most careful investigations, and a detective-conscious of that fact-spends his precious hours working the best angles, bringing the likely witnesses and suspects downtown, hoping that something will fall. For he knows that well before he has a chance to play long shots or, better still, to embark on a prolonged, detailed investigation, another case folder will arrive on his desk. But somehow, in some special way, the law of diminis.h.i.+ng returns has never applied to Rich Garvey.

"He's like a dog with a bone," Roger Nolan once told another sergeant with pride. "If he gets a case and there's anything there at all, he won't let go of it."

Of course, Nolan only says that to other sergeants; to Garvey he says nothing of the sort, cleaving instead to the fiction that it's normal for a detective to drop a case only when there's nothing left to give up on. It is, in truth, anything but normal. Because after fifty or sixty or seventy homicides, the reality is that the dead-yo-in-the-alley scenario begins to wear thin. And nothing deflates a detective more than going back to the office, punching a victim's name into the admin office terminal and pulling out five or six computer pages of misbehavior, a criminal history that reaches from eye level to the office floor. Burnout is more than an occupational hazard in the homicide unit, it is a psychological certainty. A contagion that spreads from one detective to his partner to a whole squad, the who-really-gives-a-s.h.i.+t att.i.tude threatens not those investigations involving genuine victims-such cases are, more often than not, the cure for burnout-but rather those murders in which the dead man is indistinguishable from his killer. An American detective's philosophical cul-de-sac: If a drug dealer falls in West Baltimore and no one is there to hear him, does he make a sound?