by Brian Shea
After an unbearably long effort, he guided the card into the slot and entered his passcode. The camera had no audio, but they could see him reach down to retrieve the money before bringing it up to his face and fanning out the eight twenty-dollar bills.
As he turned to put the wallet in his back pocket, somebody came into view outside the backdrop, nothing more than a shadowy blur. Kelly cursed under his breath, fearful this would be the only image of their potential suspect.
But Palmer shifted, and there, staring back at them, was a man’s gaunt face and deep-set eyes. Even with the dark hooded sweatshirt, the light from inside the ATM station clearly illuminated his face.
Palmer was oblivious, staggering onto the sidewalk. The suspect already had the knife in his hand and was waving it around wildly.
Kelly watched and understood why the robbery turned to murder.
Palmer, in his intoxicated state, initiated a drunken haymaker on the skinnier knife-wielding man. A stupid move, and one that cost Palmer everything.
The perp ducked the wild blow and punched the blade into Palmer’s midsection. Palmer fell forward and out of view, but Kelly already knew the end.
Snow had already begun to fall, and the scene on screen transitioned from horror to tranquility in a matter of seconds.
The last image was a smudge of darkness, which, based on the pattern of blood droplets, was their perp's departure toward School Street.
"Well, it looks like we’ve just caught a murderer on tape. Not every day we get to see firsthand the evil our suspects do," Barnes said softly.
Seeing somebody killed in the real world had a far different effect on the psyche than watching an action film or crime drama. Real death was ugly, fast, and horrifying to watch. Seeing the aftermath was bad enough. Watching it happen somehow made it worse. But one thing was for sure, they had a clear visual of their suspect.
"We need to get this screen shot down to intel so they can send it to the rest of patrol, put a BOLO on this guy. Hopefully we can have him grabbed up by the end of the day," Mainelli said.
"I'm hoping we can get him in the next couple hours," Kelly added.
Kelly's phone rang, displaying the four-digit extension for Raymond Charles. He picked it up. "Hey, Ray, won't believe what we just watched."
"Oh yeah, what's that? Mainelli doing police work?" The crusty crime scene tech laughed at his own joke.
"No, nothing that shocking," Kelly retorted. "We just witnessed the murder of Jason Palmer."
"No kidding." Charles sounded genuinely interested. "Guess that ATM footage was good after all. Well then, you're going to love this."
"I can't wait," Kelly said.
"He wasn't wearing gloves."
"No kidding. I guess a little Irish luck is playing out on this one."
"Yeah, I got a full lift, thumbprint outside of the leather. It's a beautiful print. I've already run it through AFIS and got a hit."
"Shut up," Kelly said, shocked.
"You got an image and I got a name. Sounds like a match made in heaven."
Very rarely in police work did a case come together that cleanly and quickly, but when it did, the energy of it was unlike anything else in the investigative world. When a lead shifted into a full-speed manhunt, there was nothing like it. No amount of coffee or nicotine could equal the heart-thumping adrenaline rush of the chase.
"Send it my way."
"Already did. Check your email."
Kelly pulled up an expired driver's license photo and Department of Corrections mugshot for one Wendell Lumpkin. He hit print and a moment later had the two images in hand.
"Got something to add to that video still shot you've got," he said to Barnes excitedly. "Let's go find our guy. We got an old address here on the license. We can start there. I checked in-house already. Nothing within the last couple years."
"Sounds good," Mainelli said, hearing the news.
"Not so fast, sleepyhead." Kelly waved a finger. "Since you decided to sleep through our crime scene while we froze our asses off, I'm letting you type the arrest warrant."
"Come on. Really?" Mainelli offered resistance but knew he didn't have a leg to stand on.
Kelly knew it was fair punishment. The man hated paperwork more than he hated getting up in the morning. It was a soft win for Kelly. Plus, it gave him and Barnes a chance to go and do some digging. He felt the adrenaline coursing through his veins, equal to being inside the ring.
He was close. He could feel it.
15
Wendell Lumpkin’s home address turned out to belong to his mother, who was nearing the ripe old age of eighty-three and in poor health. Wendell had burnt his last bridge with his mother after stealing a family heirloom and pawning it, a Rolex her husband had received as a parting gift after thirty years of service to his company. The heirloom fetched Wendell sixty dollars on the trade and had been the tipping point in her tolerance of her son’s addiction.
Kelly couldn't help thinking back to Brayden’s near-death experience when he heard the story. The turmoil leading up to hitting bottom had pushed the balance of tolerance. His brother's addiction with heroin had nearly severed their relationship.
Facing death breathed life into his brother. Close brushes with death had a tendency to give perspective. The opiate afflicted often were hospitalized three to four times before either kicking the habit or dying.
Upon hearing Wendell Lumpkin's story, Kelly was grateful to have his younger sibling back in the fold of their family. If the past couple months were any indication of the future, Brayden appeared to be winning the battle against his addiction.
Wendell Lumpkin, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. His mother had cast him out after the final straw broke. He turned to the streets, homeless and bouncing from shelter to shelter. Ann Marie Lumpkin said her last contact with her son was nearly a year and a half ago. She had assumed when Kelly and Barnes arrived at her doorstep, they were there to tell her he was dead.
Kelly knew Lumpkin’s life, or at least his meager existence, ended the moment he decided to plunge a knife three times into an unarmed man during a robbery. It was a different kind of death. The slow, meandering kind that happened to a person who was apprehended and ripped from society.
Massachusetts had done away with the death penalty in 1984, but cold-blooded murder committed during the commission of another crime carried with it a heavy penalty. Beyond the killing itself, the penalty would be made worse by the fact the attack was captured on video. The defense would be limited, if indeed there was any at all.
Mrs. Lumpkin said Wendell loved the downtown area. It was where she had last seen him when she cared enough to look. He frequented the shelters around Downtown Crossing.
Since Palmer had been murdered not too far from there, Kelly figured it was as good a lead as any.
After leaving Ann Marie’s small one-bedroom apartment in the North End, Kelly and Barnes headed downtown. Kelly had mapped the homeless shelters within a one-mile radius of where Jason Palmer's body was found. If nothing popped at their three potentials, they would extend their radial search in one-mile increments.
It was early and Kelly, having worked narcotics, knew the majority of shelters cleared their guests out during the day. Residents needed to sign back in each night.
Two of the shelters had no record of a Wendell Lumpkin in the past couple weeks. The third did, although he had last checked in three days ago. Yet still, it was promising.
Transient populations were difficult to track, but even homeless people had patterns to their behavior. You just needed to take the time to see them. Their unconventional lifestyle did not conform to that of the average citizen, but Kelly had learned the importance of understanding the habitual pattern in the eccentric nature of their existence. He'd spent many days among the homeless population, partly for his job, partly for his own curiosity to better understand them as a culture.
Mental illness permeated the group. Some of the behaviors were er
ratic, and the thought patterns guiding them were at times unpredictable. Kelly learned even the most socially deviant still maintained a need for basic necessities like food and shelter. The homeless who sought shelter didn't deviate as far from the norm as others who found refuge on the open streets, sleeping in subways tunnels or on the grates.
The good news was that in the winter months, the shelter accepted the wait list for beds earlier in the day, allowing the homeless to get off the street sooner than during the summer.
The attendant at the Hope's Chance Shelter, three blocks from the murder, had told them walk-ins for available beds had to sign in between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. After that, their doors were shut to new visitors. She said the beds usually filled up early in the winter.
It was nearing 5:00 p.m., so Kelly and Barnes pulled down the street and parked behind a large box truck, keeping the engine running. Too cold to sit for an extended period of time without the heater. No music. The only sound came from the occasional rattle of his unmarked’s engine. It had a tendency to rev sporadically while in idle.
A couple weeks had passed since Kelly had gone on a date with Barnes. The last planned outing had been canceled when Embry came down with a cold. Barnes understood, but it still didn’t make it any better. Their relationship had to take a backseat to the paperwork and follow-ups of their many cases. The quality of their alone time had been diminished to these moments. They were together, but their minds were focused elsewhere.
His right hand grazed hers, meeting on the center console. Kelly squeezed her hand gently and was about to speak when his phone rang.
"It's Mainelli," Kelly said, picking it up. "What do you got, Jimmy?" He fought to conceal his annoyance at the interruption.
"We're all set. Prosecutor and judge just signed off on the arrest warrant of one Wendell Lumpkin," Mainelli said proudly.
"We're outside the shelter. Fingers crossed he comes through tonight. It's going to be a cold one. I'm hoping he doesn't decide to stay on the street. They're calling for wind chill to bring it down close to zero." Mother Nature working in their favor tonight.
"You guys need me to come out there and assist?"
Kelly heard the man's question, appreciated the offer, but knew deep down Mainelli was hoping Kelly would allow him to stay in the warm confines of headquarters. Plus, by the time he got to their location and settled into a position, it'd be close to quitting time.
"No, Jimmy, why don't you just stay put? You can assist on processing if we pick this schlub up."
"Fair enough. But don’t say I didn’t offer. And just give me a call if you need anything else, but you're good to go on the warrant."
Kelly clicked off the phone, their moment of intimacy interrupted. He thought about trying to rekindle it but began to doubt himself. He wasn’t sure Barnes had even noticed.
"How do you want this to go?" she asked.
Kelly’s heart skipped a beat. Was she talking about the future of their relationship? Did she think it was faltering? His mind raced for an answer.
“I mean, this is your case, just want to see how you want to play it if we come across this skell,” Barnes said.
Kelly exhaled slowly. Of course, she was referring to the apprehension of Lumpkin. He kicked himself for blurring lines and losing focus. It was out of character for Kelly and he didn’t like it. If his relationship with Barnes had a negative, it was the unbalance it brought to his thought process.
"Let's go soft, try to talk our way in with him, walk him into the cuffs if we can."
“Fair enough,” Barnes said.
It was a misconception by the general public that every apprehension ended in an all-out foot chase, fight, or death match. Most were innocuous and benign, even when it came to the arrest of a murder subject. Kelly preferred the simple ones. They came with a lot less explaining and a lot less paperwork. He didn’t allow the job to become personal. Arresting this murderer came with no attachments, no personal connection to the victim. It was just the business end of somebody’s bad decision. Today it was Wendell Lumpkin. Tomorrow it would be somebody else. Had Palmer been someone he knew, then Kelly’s likelihood of maintaining a soft approach would have been more difficult. Under the circumstances, it was easy to psychologically distance himself from the death of the middle-aged businessman and his drugged-out murderer.
"Well, you take the lead," Barnes said. "I'll follow."
"All right, I have something in mind."
An hour passed, but the silence in the car made it seem much longer. Kelly looked at his watch. It was just past 6:15 p.m. They’d spent the better part of the last hour watching people trickling into the shelter. It was like watching some post-apocalyptic movie as the heavily bundled vagrants staggered along.
Forty-five minutes left until the shelter would close its vacancy list, and with it, their window of opportunity. Kelly didn't want to leave it for another night. Desperate people on the run did desperate things. He wouldn't forgive himself if the killer took another victim before he had a chance to make the arrest, but deep down Kelly didn't see that as Lumpkin’s MO. His act of violence was likely due to a drug-induced state, a robbery gone bad. Regardless, Kelly couldn't allow this man to roam free another night.
Just as he was about to speak, he caught sight of somebody sauntering along the sidewalk from the opposite direction. The light from the shelter cast the brightly colored lettering of Hope's Chance in a muted yellow. The street was still bright from the snow. What little snow that had melted during the day was frozen over. Temperatures had not risen above the freezing point, and they were now sitting at a balmy twenty-three degrees.
The man walking toward the shelter wore a heavy coat and hooded sweatshirt, his face tucked down, his hands pressed deep into his pockets. He moved like a tightly wound spring, his steps short and choppy.
"Got something ahead. You see him?"
"I’ve got him," Barnes said. "Looks to be about the right size from the video. What do you think?"
"He does."
"A little far to tell for sure, but it could be our guy."
The man paused across the street from the shelter and looked around skittishly, then pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. When someone committed a major crime like a murder, they had a halo over them. Investigators called it the spotlight effect. The perps felt that anybody coming close or looking at them knew what they had done, and they reacted accordingly. As he watched the hooded man’s body language, Kelly’s confidence this was their guy increased tenfold.
They were about a football field away from the man. Kelly cut the engine. In the few seconds after he shut off the motor, the cold began to penetrate the windshield.
"I've got a ruse I hope will work. Just follow my lead on this."
"Like I said, I'll read off your play."
Kelly got out, closing the door quietly. Barnes did the same, and they began their soft-footed approach to the man who was still looking away.
When they got closer, he turned and saw them moving along the snow-covered sidewalk. The crunch of their feet was loud in the early evening quiet.
"Are you okay, buddy?" Kelly hollered, now only thirty feet from the man whose eyes widened.
He held his cigarette near his lips, frozen in place. "You talking to me?" The guy spoke quickly. His head jerked from side to side, looking around to see if someone else was nearby. He was a squirrel on a fence post, frantic and unhinged.
"That's our guy," Kelly whispered under his breath.
“You move, I move,” Barnes responded, matching his hushed tone.
"I said, are you all right?" Kelly repeated, loud enough for the man to hear.
"What are you talking about?" Lumpkin asked.
Kelly noted Lumpkin turned his right foot out, away from their approach. He was preparing to run. Body language was the first indicator in a person's thought process. Watch the body, read the mind.
"Somebody said a guy matching your description got hit with a bottle,
some type of street fight. Did you get jumped? We're Boston PD."
"You're in no sort of trouble," Barnes offered, playing the supporting role.
His foot turned out further as he lowered the cigarette hand. He was definitely preparing to run.
"We got medics around the corner. We've been looking for you. Trying to find you to see if you're okay. The witnesses said it was really bad." Kelly continued to play the concerned detective card.
"What are you guys talking about? Nobody hit me with a bottle."
With each passing second, Kelly and Barnes were able to close their distance. They were now within ten feet of the man.
"So, you weren't just jumped over there by the park?"
Now the man's eyes contorted with a complex twist of his brow. He was thoroughly confused. The drugs he'd purchased with the money he'd stolen from Palmer were in his system, working against his ability to rationalize and process what was happening. He was being approached by two cops, and he knew that he had murdered a man earlier in the morning. Everything in his body and his mind had to be telling him to run, but Kelly’s questions froze him in place. Kelly did this by design so he could close the gap.
"Maybe we have the wrong guy. Jeez, I don't know. We’re just going off what one of the witnesses said over there. Said it was a pretty nasty fight, guy matching your description." Kelly looked at the man's coat, the same one he'd seen in the ATM video. "Yeah, you match the description, dark coat, hooded sweatshirt underneath."
Five feet and closing.
"There's got to be a million people in this city look like me. It’s like freezin’ out, ya know!"
"Hey, pal, guess you're right. I just had to check. We had to make sure you're not bleeding out. You mind pulling the hood down so I can see your skull?"
"What?" Lumpkin said.
"Listen, man, to be honest, I don't give two craps about you, but I got to be able to tell my sergeant that I did my best, that I at least investigated this bum fight and talked to somebody. He’ll be up my ass if I don't. So, how ’bout you cut me a freakin’ break?"