Not that Pellegrini has any idea what the metal tubing has to do with his murder. Maybe it was dumped there with the body. Maybe it was used by the killer, perhaps to simulate sexual intercourse. That would explain the blood and hair, as well as the vaginal tearing discovered at autopsy. Or maybe the damn thing was lying in the yard earlier, jetsam from a broken television stand or curling iron that somehow got mixed up in his crime scene. Perhaps the blood and hair were swept into the tube when the old man came out to clean his yard after the body was removed. There was no way of knowing, but the fact that a piece of evidence had not been noticed for twenty-four hours was unnerving. What else had they missed?
Pellegrini reads further into the case file, reviewing some of the reports from the canvass of the 700 block. Some of the interviews seemed to have been carefully performed, with detectives or detail men asking follow-up questions or encouraging witnesses to elaborate on answers. Others, however, seem perfunctory and halfhearted, as if the officer involved had already convinced himself that the interview was a wasted effort.
Pellegrini reads the reports and thinks of questions that could have been asked, should have been asked, in those first days, when memories are fresh. A neighbor says she doesn’t know anything about the murder. Fine, but does she remember any noise in the alley that night? Voices? Cries? Automobile sounds? Car headlights? Nothing that night? What about in the past? Any problems with anyone in the neighborhood? You’ve got a couple of people living nearby that make you nervous, right? Why’s that? Did your children ever have any problems with these people? Who don’t you want them going near?
Pellegrini includes himself in this critical assessment. There are things he wished he had done in those early days. For example, the pickup truck that the Fish Man used the week of the murder to carry junk from his burned-out store-why hadn’t they taken a better look at that vehicle? Too quickly they had bought into the argument that the little girl had been carried into the alley, presumably by someone traveling no more than a block. But what if the Fish Man had done the murder up on Whitelock Street? That was too far away to carry the body, but it was the same week that he had access to a neighbor’s truck. And what might a careful search of the truck have yielded? Hairs? Fibers? The same tarlike substance that stained the little girl’s pants?
Landsman had left the investigation believing that the Fish Man was not the killer, that they would have broken the store owner in the long interrogation if he were indeed their man. Pellegrini still isn’t sure. For one thing, the Fish Man’s story has too many inconsistencies and not enough alibi-a combination sure to keep a man on any detective’s list. And then, five days ago, he had blown his polygraph.
They performed the lie detector test at the State Police barracks in Pikesville-their first opportunity to schedule it since the investigation had centered on the store owner. Incredibly, the Baltimore department did not have a qualified polygraph examiner of its own; although it handled close to half the homicide investigations in Maryland, the BPD had to rely on the State Police to accommodate its cases on an ad hoc basis. Once the test had been scheduled, they needed to find the Fish Man and convince him to take the examination voluntarily. In a manner as convenient as it was coercive, this was accomplished by locking the old man up on an outstanding marital support warrant-now several years old-that Pellegrini had discovered in the computer. The warrant had never been served and the legal issue was very likely moot; nonetheless, the Fish Man was soon in police custody. And once a man lands at City Jail, even a lie detector test begins to seem like a reasonable diversion.
At the State Police barracks, the Fish Man proceeded to blow the box, sending the polygraph needle soaring on every key question about the murder. The polygraph result was not, of course, admissible as evidence, nor did every homicide detective believe in lie detection as an exact science. Still, the result added to Pellegrini’s suspicions.
So, too, did the arrival of an unexpected, if not entirely credible, witness. The man was a smokehound all right, as unbelievable a character as a detective might find. Arrested for assault in the Western District six days ago, he tried to make friends by assuring the booking officer that he knew who killed Latonya Wallace.
“And how do you know that?”
“He told me he did it.”
When Pellegrini got to the Western District that day, he heard a story about two old acquaintances drinking at a west side bar, about one acquaintance saying that he had recently been picked up and questioned for the murder of a little girl, about the other acquaintance asking whether he had committed the crime.
“No,” the first man said.
But later in the conversation the liquor got good to that man, who turned to his companion and said he would tell the truth. He did kill the child.
In the course of several interviews, the new witness related the same story to the detectives. He had known the man with whom he had been drinking for years. The man ran a store up on Whitelock Street, a fish store.
And so a second polygraph was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Leaning back in his chair, Pellegrini reads the reports of the new witness’s interrogation with a mind balanced between serene hope and committed pessimism. In two days, he is sure, the man will also blow his box, failing the polygraph just as miserably as the Fish Man did. He will do this because his story is so perfect, so valuable, that it can’t possibly be true. A barroom confession, Pellegrini tells himself, is almost too easy for this case.
Pellegrini knows, too, that soon he will have a separate suspect file on the new witness as well. Not only because the willingness to implicate someone in a child killing is unusual behavior, but also because the new man himself knows the Reservoir Hill area and has a police record. For rape. With a knife. Nothing, Pellegrini tells himself again, is ever easy.
Closing the file with the office reports, Pellegrini reads through a draft report of his own, a four-page missive to the captain outlining the status of the case and arguing for a complete, prolonged review of the existing evidence. Without any primary crime scene or physical evidence, the report argued, there wasn’t much point in looking at any particular suspect and then attempting to connect him to the murder.
“This tactic might be successful in certain circumstances,” Pellegrini had written, “but not in a case where physical evidence is lacking.”
Instead, the memo urged a careful review of the entire file:
Since the collection of that data was accomplished by no less than twenty detail officers and detectives, it is reasonable to believe that a significant piece of information may exist, but has not yet been developed. It is the intent of your investigator to limit the number of investigators to the primary and secondary detectives.
In simple terms, Pellegrini wants more time to work the case and he wants to work it alone. His report to the captain is clear, yet bureaucratic; generally succinct, yet written in the departmental prose that makes anyone with a rank higher than lieutenant feel warm and fuzzy all over. Still, it could be better, and if he is going to get the time to review the case properly, the captain will have to be on board.
Pellegrini pulls the staple from the top page and spreads the draft on his desk, prepared to spend another hour or so at the typewriter. But Rick Requer has other ideas. On his way out of the annex office, he catches Pellegrini’s attention and cups his hand to his mouth in a repetitive, arclike motion-the international hand signal for uninhibited alcohol consumption.