“Par for the course,” Gardiner Harris said as he took a seat next to Rossi.
Harris was a veteran homicide detective with a worn, haggard face and barrel chest that had tricked many a thug and gangbanger into thinking he was slow and soft. He’d grown up on the east side, beating the odds by going to Missouri State on a football scholarship, unlike his younger brother, who dropped out of high school, joined an offshoot of a local Crips gang, and was shot to death the night Harris graduated from college. He and Rossi had worked enough cases together to bond over dead bodies, good bourbon, and a shared opinion of Mitch Fowler.
“CSI says all the blood, hair, and tissue they recovered from the Henderson scene belongs to the victims,” Fowler continued. “They’ve got some fibers that didn’t come from the victims’ clothing, but we’re a long way from tying the fibers to a suspect.”
“You mean to Dwayne Reed,” Rossi said.
“Reed is a person of interest and that’s all he is until we’ve got something more than your hard-on for him that proves he did any of this,” Fowler said.
“Everybody knows Rossi’s dick is a fucking divining rod,” Harris said. “If Dwayne Reed gives him the wood, that’s proof enough for me.”
The room erupted in laughter until Fowler rapped his fist on a desk.
“Knock it off! Knock it off! Five people are dead. You want to joke about it, do it on your own time. We’ve blanketed the east side since Saturday, knocked on every door, and run down anyone who might have had a reason to kill Chapman or the Hendersons, including Dwayne Reed. All we’ve done is use up our allotment of overtime for the month. That means that everybody except for Rossi and Harris goes back to their other cases and back to their regular schedule. No more OT.”
“Where do we go?” Rossi asked.
“My office.”
Harris clapped Rossi on the back. “Hey, buddy. Sounds like Miller time.”
Once in his office, Fowler didn’t ask them to take a seat, pointing instead to four three-ring binders on his desk.
“Those are the Chapman and Henderson murder books. Go through them and figure out what we’re missing, and then go find it. And by it, I mean the killer or killers. The chief is on my ass. If it had only been Chapman that was murdered, he wouldn’t have picked up the phone. But those Henderson kids and the mother,” Fowler said, shaking his head, then looking squarely at them, “that’s a fucking nightmare.”
“For who?” Rossi asked. “You and the chief or the Hendersons?”
Fowler glared at him, bracing his hands on his desk. “Just find whoever did this. I don’t care if it was Dwayne fucking Reed or Santa Claus. Find him and try not to kill anyone while you’re at it.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rossi and Harris went down the hall to an interrogation room where they could spread out. A rectangular table and four black chairs were the only furnishings in the white-walled room lit by a pair of naked fluorescent tubes embedded in the ceiling. A raised steel bar to secure a suspect’s handcuffs was bolted to the top of the table. Interrogations could be observed through a two-way mirror set in one of the walls. The linoleum floor was scuffed from heels dug in against hard questions.
A dozen homicide detectives had worked both investigations, generating enough paper to fill two three-inch binders on each case. Before the investigations were over, there would be more paper and more binders.
For now there were reports by the responding officers listing the location of each crime and the names and ages of each victim and a summary of each officer’s observations upon arrival. A log had been kept recording the name of every person who was allowed inside the yellow tape at each scene. Every cop who’d worked the cases had filed reports documenting what he or she had done.
There were photographs of the victims, details on the positioning of their bodies and the condition of their clothing. Preliminary autopsy results described the external and internal condition of each body and recited the cause of death. Initial forensic reports summarized fingerprints and hair, blood, and fiber samples taken from each victim and each scene.
Every item of physical evidence had been identified, tagged, photographed, and inventoried. Both scenes had been documented with videotape, photographs, and surveys noting all relevant dimensions.
A list of people contacted through the neighborhood canvass had been neatly typed and was supplemented by statements from those few who had been willing to go on the record to say that they didn’t know a damn thing about anything.
Rossi leaned back in his chair, feet on the table and the Henderson murder books in his lap stacked one on top of the other. Harris scooted his chair in close, elbows planted on the table, shoulders hunched as he pored over the Chapman books. Neither man spoke, Harris scribbling notes in a pocket-sized spiral, Rossi thumbing pages back and forth, reading and rereading.
An hour later, Harris pushed his chair back, grunting as he stood, and left. He returned with two cups of coffee, handing one to Rossi.
“Chapman’s case is simpler,” Harris said, settling into his chair. “So I’ll go first.”
“After you,” Rossi said with a wave of his hand.
Harris used his shirt to rub smudges off his glasses, putting them on and sliding them halfway down his nose before consulting his notes.
“Kyrie Chapman, African American male, age twenty-three, died as the result of a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Judging from the entry angle of the wound and burn marks on the scalp, the shooter was aiming down with the muzzle a few inches from the victim’s head.”
“Execution style.”
“That or the shooter was standing on a ladder and capped Chapman when he walked under it.”
“Bad luck, walking under a ladder,” Rossi said.
“Getting popped with a.45 is even worse. Bullet bounces around inside your head like a fucking pinball.”
“So,” Rossi said, dropping his feet to the floor, “the way Chapman went down makes it look personal or like the shooter was sending a message.”
“Personal sounds like Dwayne Reed.”
“Anything about Chapman having a beef with somebody, maybe in his gang or another one?”
“Whole lot of nothing. Marco King in the gang unit is checking with his CIs.”
“Get back to Marco and light a fire under his ass. Some of those gangbangers will die for the cause before they’d snitch, but a few will drop a dime for the right price. Let’s find out who they’re willing to give up.”
“I thought you liked Dwayne Reed for all this. Sounds like you aren’t so sure.”
“I’d bet my left nut that Dwayne is good for all of it, but I don’t want some mealymouthed defense hack saying we made up our minds before we ran all the traps. What’s Chapman’s time of death?”
Harris flipped a page in his spiral pad. “Between eleven Friday night and one on Saturday morning.”
“Same window as the Hendersons. Where was Chapman’s body found?”
“In a Dumpster in an alley off of Independence Avenue half a block east of Brooklyn.”
“Close enough for Dwayne to have done Chapman and then made it to Henderson’s.”
“True enough,” Harris said, “unless Dwayne had nothing to do with it.”
“You got another theory?”
“Yeah. I had a case just like it last year; same area and same MO. Marco helped me out on it. He told me that stretch of Independence Avenue is Eastside Locos’ turf. They’re a Mexican gang tied into a cartel that ships dope from south of the border all the way up I-35, including a stop in Kansas City to supply the Locos, who sell the shit to the black gangs on the east side.”
“What happened in your case?” Rossi asked.
“Gangbanger name of De’Andre Waiters tried to rip off the Locos’ stash. The Locos caught him, and one by the name of Luis Flores got the honor of putting a bullet in the back of his head. They threw his body in a Dumpster like they were taking out the trash.”