At his office downtown, Larry Young welcomed both men and said again that he saw no reason for the police to waste their time investigating the incident. It was a personal matter, the senator explained, and he had every intention of investigating it privately.
Worden seemed to nod in agreement, then offered the senator a review of the investigation thus far. Detectives had failed to locate anyone on McCulloh Street who had seen the abduction, nor had they discovered any physical evidence at the Druid Hill Park site where the senator claimed he had been pushed from the van. The pants that the senator claimed to have worn that night didn’t have so much as a grass stain on them. Likewise, Worden explained, the interview with the senator’s aide and the aide’s parents had raised additional questions. The detective recounted the details of that interview, then gave the senator his out.
“It’s my impression that this is something private between the two of you,” said Worden, “something that you would like to deal with privately.”
“That’s correct,” Young told him.
“Well, if a crime has been committed, then we will investigate it fully,” Worden said. “But if no crime was committed, then that puts an end to it.”
The senator took the offer for what it was, but asked a few questions to be sure. If he told them that no crime had occurred, that would end the investigation, correct? And if he told them here and now that there was no crime, that admission would not be used against him, correct?
“Not by me,” Worden told him.
“Then,” the senator replied, “there was no abduction. I would prefer that the matter be dealt with privately.”
Worden told the senator that he could regard the police department’s investigation as a closed file. The original abduction report had been written up as a police-information-only report, as was the case with all threat cases involving public officials. And because there is no incident report, there should be nothing in the newspapers.
“Our part in this is over,” Worden said.
Worden and Nolan shook hands with the senator, concluding the bargain. There would be no grand jury probe, no red-ball moneymaker for which a squad of homicide detectives could clock overtime, no awkward questions about the senator’s private life, no public revelations about a politician’s bungled attempt to fabricate a counterweight to his own assault and battery. Instead, the homicide unit would go back to the more parochial task of working murders. Worden returned to headquarters and typed the requisite report of the meeting for the captain, believing he had done the right thing.
But on June 14, a week and a half after his journey to the senator’s office, Worden’s quiet solution to the whole sordid affair was shattered by a news leak of the incident to a television reporter for the local CBS affiliate. From the amount of information about the case in the reporter’s broadcast, Worden and James both suspected that the leak had come from within the department. That scenario made sense; not everyone in the chain of command could be considered the senator’s political ally and the bizarre abduction report made for a pretty embarrassing picture.
Of course, once the confidential information was revealed, police officials and prosecutors alike were suddenly tripping over one another in an attempt to avoid the appearance of covert deals and cover-ups. Confronted by the reporter, the mayor himself got into the act, ordering the department to make public its incident report for the original abduction complaint. With the press suddenly baying outside City Hall, the original priorities were all immediately inverted. A week earlier, the brass had been content to have Worden end the probe of a nonexistent crime with some discretion, allowing the homicide detectives to return to their primary responsibilities; now, these same bosses were being asked in public why an influential West Baltimore senator who had admitted to making a false report had not himself been charged. Was some sort of deal cut? Was the incident kept secret to protect the senator? What kind of influence was used on behalf of the senator?
A steady deluge of newspaper headlines and TV broadcasts prompted city officials to begin a full review by the state’s attorney’s office, followed by a grand jury investigation. For the next week, there were meetings between prosecutors and police officials, followed by more meetings between prosecutors and an influential trial attorney retained by the senator. One particular afternoon, when Worden and James were leaving a meeting between prosecutors and the senator’s attorney at a private law office, they walked out of the building only to be confronted by the same television reporter who had been leaked the story.
“I wonder who even told her there was a meeting,” said James, amazed. “She fucking knows what’s going to happen even before we do…”
Everything that Worden had tried to avoid instead came to pass. He had wanted to work murders; now murders were not the priority. He had wanted to avoid spending time and effort wandering around in a public man’s private life for no valuable reason; now he and three or four other detectives would waste even more time prying up large pieces of the man’s privacy. Worden, James, Nolan-they were all pawns in a ridiculous game of brinksmanship as the bureaucrats tossed Larry Young’s political future around like a hot potato. And to what end? On the day that he had convinced the senator to recant his story, Worden had two open murders and was still actively involved in the grand jury probe of the Monroe Street shooting. Now, none of that meant a damn thing. Now, the bosses wanted nothing more than a complete investigation of state Senator Larry Young and his recantation of an alleged abduction. The department would be sending some of its best investigators out on the street to prove a negative, to show that a state legislator had not been abducted by three men in a mystery van. Then the senator would be charged with filing a false report-a paltry misdemeanor-in preparation for a court trial that the prosecutor’s office and police department had no real interest in winning. By tacit agreement, the trial would be nothing more than a public display, a show to appease public opinion. And Worden’s word-given honestly in the solitude of a beleaguered man’s office-now meant nothing. To the department, it was an utterly expendable commodity.
In a brief conversation that occurred a few days after the Larry Young imbroglio broke in the press, the captain mentioned Worden’s plight to Gary D’Addario and Jay Landsman. “You know,” he remarked, “I’d hate to see a good detective like Worden get jammed up over this Larry Young thing…”
Hate to see it? You’d hate to see it? What the hell does that mean? D’Addario wondered. The captain had signed off on the back door approach to Larry Young; they all had. How could this thing fall on Worden? D’Addario wondered whether the captain was trying to send a message or merely talking off the top of his head. With Landsman listening, D’Addario spoke up cautiously, trying to give the captain the benefit of the doubt.
“Why would Worden get jammed, captain?” he asked pointedly. “He was only following orders.”
It would be unfair, the captain agreed. He didn’t want to see it happen. At that moment, D’Addario was unsure what to believe and he held his tongue behind his teeth. If the captain’s comment was a grant of immunity-a suggestion that they could both skate any controversy by sacrificing Worden-then D’Addario hoped that his own response was enough to sink the plan. If the captain was just spouting off and not thinking about the implications, better to just let it pass.
Landsman and D’Addario both left the captain’s office confused. Perhaps the idea of Worden as a scapegoat was coming from the captain, perhaps from someone higher up. Perhaps they were misreading the comment. There was no way for D’Addario to know, but he and Landsman agreed that if the idea of burning Worden ever took solid form, they would have to go to war with the captain and burn every last bridge. Even to someone as jaded by command staff ethics as D’Addario, the idea of Worden as a sacrificial lamb was unbelievable. Worden was one of the best men in the unit, yet in a crisis, he was being considered as fodder.