Yeah, he had a gun. A.38 revolver, but it wasn’t even loaded. He kept it at his other girlfriend’s house on Amity Street. She held it for him, and that’s where it was now.

Yeah, he had heard about Vincent Booker’s father, too. Didn’t know Purnell Booker, but he had heard on the street that the same gun had been used in both murders. True, the boy Vincent had worked for him for a while, selling dope on consignment. But the boy often fucked up the money, and he had a bad habit of snorting up profit, so Frazier had found it necessary to let him go.

Yeah, Vincent had access to Lena’s place. In fact, Frazier would often send him there for dope, or bags, or cut. Lena would let him in because she knew he worked for Frazier.

Garvey moves to the meat of the interview: “Frazier, tell me what you can about that night.”

Here, too, Frazier is more than helpful, and why shouldn’t he be? After all, he last saw Lena alive on Saturday, the evening before the night of the murder, when he stayed with her on Gilmor Street. On Sunday, he spent the entire evening ten blocks away in the projects on Amity Street, where his new girlfriend threw a dinner party for several friends. Lobster, crabs, corn on the cob. He was there all night, from seven or eight o’clock on. Slept in the back bedroom, didn’t leave until morning. He went by Lena’s on the way to work that day and saw that the front door of the rowhouse was open, but he was late, and when Lena didn’t answer the buzzer, he didn’t go in. That afternoon, he tried calling Lena’s house a couple of times but got no answer, and by early evening, the police were already over there about the murder.

Who, Garvey asks, can confirm your whereabouts on Sunday night?

Nee-Cee-Denise, that is, his new girl. She was on Amity Street with him all night. And of course, the people at the dinner party saw him there. Pam, Annette, a couple others.

Here, Frazier puts in another good word for young Vincent Booker, who, he says, showed up on Amity Street at the height of the party, knocking on the door just after ten o’clock and asking to speak with Frazier. The two men talked on the stoop for a few minutes, Frazier says, long enough for him to see that the boy was all nervous and wild-eyed. Frazier asked what was the matter, but Vincent ignored the question, asking instead for some cocaine. Frazier asked him if he had any money; the boy said no.

Frazier then told him that there would be no more drugs, not when he kept fucking up the money. At which point, according to Frazier, young Vincent got mad and stormed off into the night.

As the interview winds to a close, Frazier offers one last observation about Booker: “I don’t know how things were between him and his father, but since they found the old man dead, Vincent hasn’t been real upset about it.”

Was Vincent sleeping with Lena?

Frazier looks surprised at the question. No, he answers, not that he knew about.

Did Vincent know where Lena kept the dope?

“Yeah,” says Frazier, “he knew.”

“Would you be willing to take a lie detector test, a polygraph?”

“I guess. If you want.”

Garvey doesn’t know what to think. Unless Vincent is fooling around with Lena Lucas, there is nothing to explain her nudity or the nested clothes at the bottom of the bed. On the other hand, there isn’t any obvious connection between Frazier and old man Booker, though it’s certain that both murders were committed by the same hand, wielding the same gun.

The detective asks a few more questions, but there isn’t much you can do when a man answers everything put to him. As a measure of good faith, Garvey asks Frazier to bring in his.38 handgun.

“Carry it down here?” Frazier asks.

“Yeah. Just bring it in.”

“I’ll get a charge.”

“We won’t charge you with that. You got my word on it. Just make sure the gun’s unloaded and bring it down here so we can get a look at it.”

Reluctantly, Frazier agrees.

At the end of the interview, Garvey gathers up his notepaper and follows Frazier out into the hall. “All right, Frazier, thanks for coming down.”

The man nods, then holds the yellow visitor pass issued to him by building security. “What…”

“You just give that to the man at the booth on your way out of the garage.”

Garvey begins walking his witness toward the elevator, then stops near the water cooler. Almost as an afterthought, he leaves Frazier with something that is part warning and part threat.

“I’ll tell you, Frazier, if anything you’re saying isn’t right, now’s the time for you to deal with that,” Garvey says, looking impassively at the man. “Because if this is bullshit, it’s going to come back on you in a bad way.”

Frazier takes this in, then shakes his head. “Told you what I know.”

“All right, then,” says Garvey. “See you ’round.”

The man catches the detective’s eyes briefly, then turns down the corridor. His first few steps are short, uncertain movements, but those that follow gather speed and rhythm until he’s moving hip to shoulder, shoulder to hip, sailing forward in a full roll. By the time he clears the headquarters garage, Robert Frazier is once again ready for the street.

D’Addario turns page after page on a cluttered clipboard, his voice locked in the monotone of another morning’s roll call:

“… is wanted in connection with a homicide in Fairfax, Virginia. Anyone with information about the suspects or the vehicle should call the Fairfax department. Number is on the teletype.

“What’s next here?” says the lieutenant, scanning a fresh printout. “Oh yeah, we got another teletype from Florida… No… um, check that. It’s three weeks old.

“Okay, one last item here… As a result of the ISD inspection, I’m informed that you need to write down the number of the gas cards on your run sheets, even if the cards aren’t used.”

“What for?” asks Kincaid.

“They need the number of the gas card.”

“Why?”

“It’s policy.”

“Jesus, come on twenty-year pension,” cracks Kincaid, disgusted.

D’Addario breaks up the laughter. “Okay, the colonel would like to say a couple words to you all.”

Well, thinks every cop in the room, the shit must have really caught the fan. As CID commander, Dick Lanham rarely has call to address any particular unit on any particular case; God made captains and lieutenants and sergeants for that exact purpose. But a homicide clearance rate that is reaching new depths with every passing day is apparently enough to make even full colonels wince.

“I just wanted to say a few words to you all,” Lanham begins, looking around the room, “to let you know that I’ve got absolute confidence in this unit… I know that this has been a rough time for you people. In fact, the whole year has been rough, but that’s nothing new for this unit, and I don’t have any doubt that it will bounce back.”

As the detectives rustle uncomfortably and stare at their shoes, Lanham presses on with his pep talk, carefully straddling the fence between high praise and open acknowledgment of an ugly truth understood by everyone in the room: The Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit is getting thumped.

Never mind the Latonya Wallace probe or, for that matter, the Monroe Street investigation, both of which are still as open as the days are long. At least in those cases, the department could say that it reacted properly, pouring men and overtime into the search for suspects, and Lanham, looking for silver linings, can’t help but bring that up.

“Anyone who knows anything about those investigations knows how hard they’ve been worked,” he tells the gathering.

And never mind the newspaper articles this morning, in which the NAACP, in a letter to the mayor’s office, has roundly criticized the Baltimore department for failing to curb racial abuses and-a charge unsupported by the evidence-for being slow to solve crimes involving black victims.