Clement picked up his pants from the floor and dug out what he’d scored off the judge. The money, three hundred forty bucks, was clean, no problem with it. He’d left the checks in the wallet; he couldn’t see himself peddling a dead man’s checks. The little 2 by 3 spiral notebook-it was thin, like pages had been torn out-had names and phone numbers in it, also columns of figures and dates, impressive amounts up in the thousands with a lot of dollar signs, but meaningless to him… until he came to a right-hand page-the second to last one in the notebook-and a phone number jumped out at him.
W.S.F. 644-5905.
The initials and numbers gone over several times with a ballpoint and then underlined and enclosed within a heavily drawn square.
To make it special, Clement thought. He didn’t recognize the initials, but the number was sure familiar, one he had seen not too long ago. But where?
Two officers from the Major Crime Mobile Unit-in street clothes, in a black unmarked Ford sedan-were assigned the surveillance of the Buick Riviera, license number PYX-546, located in the lower-level parking area at 1300 Lafayette East. They were given mug-shot photos of Clement Mansell, 373-8411, full face and profile, the photos bearing a ’78 date. If he got in the car, Mansell was to be approached with caution and taken into custody for questioning. If he refused, resisted or tried to drive off, the officers were to arrest him, but under no circumstances search the car. If a woman got in the car they were to follow, keep her under close surveillance and call in.
Which is what the MCMU officers did when Sandy drove off in the Buick, took Jefferson to East Grand Boulevard, turned left-going away from the Belle Isle bridge-and proceeded to a bar named Sweety’s Lounge, located at 2921 Kercheval. The subject went inside, came out again in approximately ten minutes with a middle-aged black male and accompanied him next door, to 2925 Kercheval, where they entered the lower household of a two-family flat.
MCMU called Homicide, Squad Seven, and requested instructions.
TECHNICALLY, SQUAD SEVEN of the Detroit Police Homicide Section specialized in the investigation of “homicides committed during the commission of a felony,” most often an armed robbery, a rape, sometimes a breaking and entering, as opposed to barroom shootings and Saturday night mom and pop murders that were emotionally stimulated and not considered who-done-its.
The squad’s home was in Room 527 of Police Headquarters, a colorless, high-ceilinged office roughly twenty-four-by-twenty that contained an assortment of ageless metal desks and wooden tables butted together, file cabinets, seven telephones, a Norelco coffeemaker, a GE battery-charge box for PREP radios, a locked cabinet where squad members sometimes stored their handguns, two banks of flickering fluorescent lights, a wall display of 263 mug shots of accused murderers, a coatrack next to the door and a sign that read:
Do something-
either lead, follow
or get the hell
out of the way!
A very old poster, peeling from the column that stood in the middle of the squadroom and left over from another time, stated: I will give up my gun when they pry my cold fingers from around it.
It was 2:30 in the afternoon when Raymond Cruz returned to the squadroom. The investigations into the deaths of Alvin Guy and the young woman found in Palmer Park were less than thirteen hours old.
Raymond hung up the suitcoat he’d been wearing for the past twenty-four hours, crossed to the unofficial lieutenant’s desk in the corner-the desk facing out to the squadroom, beneath the room’s only window and the air-conditioning unit that didn’t work-and listened.
Norb Bryl’s desk faced the lieutenant’s. Bryl was on the phone-taking notes and saying, “… keyhole defectment, bullet found in anterior cranial fossa…”-talking to someone at the Wayne County morgue.
Hunter, also on the phone, had a young black guy sitting at his desk who was the suspect/witness in the Palmer Park murder. They sat almost knee to knee, the young black guy slouched low, wearing a white T-shirt and a plaid golf hat with a narrow brim that he fooled with as he waited for Hunter, who was waiting for someone to come back on the line. No one else was in the squadroom.
Still waiting, Hunter said to the young black guy, “Twenty-five years old and all you got are some traffic tickets? You must’ve been in the army a while.”
Raymond watched the young black guy give a slow shrug without saying anything.
Hunter said, “Let’s see your hair.”
The young black guy raised his hat above his head and held it there.
“We’ll call it nappy,” Hunter said and made a notation on the DPD Interrogation Record lying on his desk.
“It’s Afro,” the young black guy said.
Hunter said, “An Afro? It’s a shitty looking Afro. We’ll call it a nappy ‘fro.” He straightened then and said into the phone, “Yeah?… Darrold Woods?… Okay, give me what you got.” Hunter nodded and said yeah, uh-huh, as he made notes on a yellow legal pad. When he finished, Hunter picked up a Constitutional Rights Certificate of Notification form and said to the young black guy, “How come you signed this Donald Woods? You lied to me, Darrold”-sounding a little hurt-“try to tell me you’re cherry and they got a sheet on you, man. First thing, I’m gonna erase this zero cause it’s a bunch of shit.”
Darrold Woods was saying, “Two larceny from a person reduced from larceny not armed and a little bitty assault thing…”
And Hunter was saying, “Little bitty … little bitty fucking tire iron you used on the guy…”
Bryl put his hand over the phone and said to Raymond, “Cause of death multiple gunshots… two slugs, one with copper jacket recovered intact within the spinal canal, the other one in his head…”
Raymond said, “Judge Guy?”
Bryl nodded and said into the phone, “Okay, how many holes in the girl, Adele Simpson?… You sure?… Can’t find any more, uh?” He put his hand over the phone and said to Raymond, “It’s looking good. Maureen’s already taken the slugs over to the lab.”
Hunter was saying to the young black guy, “How well did you know Adele Simpson?”
“I never seen her before right then.”
“You took her purse-what else?”
“What purse you talking about?”
“Darrold, you had Adele Simpson’s credit cards on you.”
“I found ’em.”
Hunter said, “You gonna start shucking me again, Darrold? We’re talking about murder, man, not a little half-assed assault. You understand me, mandatory life…”
Raymond got up from his desk. He walked over to the young black guy in the plaid golf hat and touched him on the shoulder.
“Let me ask you something, okay?”
The young black guy didn’t answer, but looked up at the lieutenant.
“The woman’s lying there dead-is that right?”
“What I been trying to tell him.”
“What did you burn her with?”
The young black guy didn’t answer.
“Shit,” Hunter said, “let’s put him upstairs.”
“I just touch her a little,” the young black guy said then, “see if she’s alive.”
Hunter said, “What’d you touch her with, your dick?”
“No, man, nothing like that.”
“They’re doing an autopsy on her,” Hunter said. “Now they find any semen in her and it matches your blood type-then we got to ask you, Darrold, you rape her before or after you shot her?”
“I didn’t shoot her. You find a gun on me? Shit no.”
“Where’d you touch her?” Raymond asked.
After a moment the young black guy said, “Like around her legs.”
“Just touched her a little?”