"Print guys got a lot of latents but could all be the doc's. No jewelry that we could find, and the guys wallet and wrist watch were missing."
"The outside doors are buzzed open after ten and the condo door wasn't jimmied or forced," Richards added. "Makes it look like he let the killer in, put up a fight, might have even broken the bottle of booze himself for protection but got it taken away and jammed in his own neck."
It was the first impression, but I wasn't going for it.
"Then the guy goes through the drawers, the files, the closets and runs out the door with what?" I said. "The wallet, okay. The jewelry, sure. But the hard drive?"
Diaz shook his head.
"How you gonna figure some psycho from the cuckoo's nest if he comes to pay back the doc for puttin' him up in Chattahoochee for a few good years of his sexual prime?" Diaz said and Richards rolled her eyes.
"And what, Vince? He goes through the files and takes the hard drive to get his name off the nut farm list?"
"Like I said," shrugged Diaz. "Cuckoo's nest."
A burglary gone bad, or a bad job of making it look like a burglary, I thought. There wasn't much to look at.
Richards put the crime scene tape back over the door when we left. In the elevators she said the M.E. was giving a preliminary time of death of 4:00 A.M., which matched up with the 911 call.
When we got outside, Hammonds was still talking with the crime scene supervisor, going over the Caprice. When Richards shook her head he never blinked, just went on.
"The trunk lid was popped with a ball peen hammer, just punched it through," Hammonds said to all three of us when we walked up. "But it looks like he missed the false bottom in the glove box."
He held up a plastic evidence bag that held a white, printed bank envelope.
"Six hundred-dollar bills. Still crispy," he said. "The techs are going to run the prints they found inside along with the ones upstairs, but a lot of them looked smeared. We'll try to match them to prisoner files on the forensics unit first. Maybe we get lucky."
No question had been posed, so I shut up. If Richards remembered the hundred-dollar bills, she didn't say anything. When Hammonds left, both detectives walked over to Diaz's SUV.
"Hey, amigo. Thanks for the help, eh?" Diaz said. "We gotta get back to the shop."
"Call me when you hear something?" Richards said, and the look was deeply uncertain.
26
I was still leaning against my truck, looking up at the high tower of Marshack's condo building when my cell rang.
"Freeman," I answered.
"Yo, G."
I told him I wasn't with the government.
"Yeah, you said. You know where D.C. Park at?" said the voice of the leader of the three-man off-limits crew.
"I'll find it."
"Meet us there, man, we got somethin' for you."
The crime scene techs were still working the Caprice. I asked one of them for directions to the park and left.
It took me thirty minutes to get back to the zone. I could feel a tingle of adrenaline in my blood. Maybe we get lucky, I thought. The park was a small square of green along Northwest Nineteenth Street. There were a few transplanted palms and willow trees, a multicolored plastic jungle gym and three worn picnic tables. When I pulled up the place was empty except for the table in the far shaded corner. This time there were four of them.
I kept my hands out of my pockets and crossed the open grass and when I got close enough I recognized the fourth as the Brown Man.
The crew leader nodded when I stepped up. His two friends stood and took a few steps back. The Brown Man kept his head down, only looking up with his eyes.
"So, Freeman," said the leader. He had absorbed my name, filed it. "We did some of our own investigatin' an' come up wit some information might be good." He put an emphasis on the word "might" and cut a look at the Brown Man when he said it.
"The Brown here works his gig down at the dope hole, but you already know that," he continued. The dealer hadn't moved. "He been there forever an' know everybody, hear everything, ah he say nobody been talkin' bout killin' no grands over in the off-limits."
The Brown Man shook his head and said, quietly, "Tha's right."
"But he say he got somethin' on your clean bills but he need to come over here ah see who his information goin' to an' not be seen talkin' to no G by any of his dogs, you know what I mean?"
I had an idea.
"I also need somethin' in return," the Brown Man said, finally looking up at me.
All I could do was nod.
"If you after this motherfucker ah get his ass, he don't come back on my ass, right?"
I nodded again, no vocal promises.
"Cause he one scary motherfucker ah I don't need his crazy-ass trouble, right? I'm losin' steady money on this, but I might be losin' a lot more business, or so say these homies," he said, looking around.
"You have a customer who uses new hundred-dollar bills?" I asked.
He waited. Looked around, avoiding eye contact with the others.
"Junk man," he said. "Big scary lookin' dude always be pushin' his cart round town. He been buyin' dope for a long time. Dimes an' eight-balls and shit. But last year he start buyin' bundles and payin' with new Franklins. First time he give me one I had my boys run the bill down at the store see if it any good. After that, they all be clean. Most of them new."
I didn't say anything, picturing the thick figure of the man, draped in his dark winter coat, looking up into my eyes when he'd bent to pick up a can on the street that day. And I remembered the hands, huge and swollen and powerful.
"Anybody know where this junk man lives?" I asked.
"Nobody pay no attention to him," said the crew leader. "Once we start talkin' about him, everybody seen him around, but nobody know him.
"Dog here say he thinks he live with his momma somewhere's over on Washington by the river," he said, tipping his head to one of his crew. "But he ain't sure where."
The table was silent for a full minute. Nothing more was coming.
"I appreciate the help," I finally said. "You've got my cell number. If you see this junk man, call me."
"No, no, no," said the Brown Man, turning bold. "I ain't callin' nobody down on my own corner. An' that means you too, truck man. Don't be parkin' cross the street messin' wit my business no more. That's part of the deal, too."
"I'll call you, G," said the crew leader, stepping between us. "But you better come quick we find out this junk man been doin' what you say."
I was driving around the zone, aimlessly. If the dark junk man didn't know anyone was after him, maybe he'd still be on the street, doing whatever he'd been doing during the daytime for who knows how long.
I was thinking about his eyes, the dark tunnels under the shadows of his brow when he looked up and caught my own. Were they eyes that could hold the kind of remorselessness it would take to steal innocent lives for a few hundred dollars? Eyes that could look away while he crushed an old man's throat? I'd seen the eyes of killers before.
"Taking the walk" they called it in Philly, when the arrested or convicted would be walked in their shackles and cuffs from a court hearing back to the jail. They would purposely be taken across an open-air corridor so the press cameras could all get a shot. Some group of cops would always be assigned to do crowd control, holding back the TV guys who wanted to stick a microphone in the guy's face and asked the inevitable stupid question, "Why'd you do it?"
I'd been on the detail when they walked Heidnik. When he looked up to see who'd asked the question, he caught my eyes as I held back the line. Just the quick contact made a shiver flutter at the hairline on the back of my neck. Maybe it was the knowledge that investigators had actually talked of Heidnik's possible cannibalism. Maybe it was just the possibility of pure evil that made you see what couldn't humanly be there. But neither television nor the movies ever got it right.