A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

‘Something circumstantial, nothing probative. What we have is an unidentified male, age uncertain, at a guess early forties to mid-fifties, apparently seen in the vicinity of the fourth victim five years ago. This man was identified to me and Al Roth by Natasha Joyce as the same man who accompanied Catherine Sheridan on a number of visits to the Glenarden district projects back in September and October of 2001. They went there in an effort to contact Natasha Joyce’s boyfriend, Darryl King—’

  Same patrolman raised his hand again. ‘So there was a connection between the fourth and fifth victims.’

  ‘As I said, little more than circumstantial, but we now have a picture of this man, and he appears to have known both Joyce and Sheridan. We have made up a number of images to give an idea of how he might look now. These are approximations based on an estimate of his age.’

  Roth rose from his chair and started distributing the photo packs.

  ‘Take these out with you today,’ Miller said. ‘Take them out every day. Speak to people, show them around . . . see if anyone recognizes this man.’

  Lassiter stood up and walked to the front of the room. ‘This is a priority,’ he said. ‘In between assignments or call-outs I need you to walk these pictures around your areas. Speak to the people you know. Storeowners, people in the markets, go into the bars . . . you know the routine with this kind of thing. I need to know if anyone recognizes this man, and the moment you get anything, just anything at all, I want you to contact either Oliver, Metz, Feshbach or Riehl. They will be acting as a coordination point for Roth and Miller. Everything comes back through here. And I mean everything.’

  ‘And if he’s seen?’ one of the patrolmen asked.

  ‘If he’s seen . . .’ Lassiter thought for a moment. ‘If he’s seen I want him followed until he can be taken without force. He should be considered armed and dangerous. Raise no alarms, contact us immediately. Give as much detail as you can but ensure he is followed. If he runs you go after him. If he fires, fire back. If at all possible we need him alive and answering questions. Any calls coming in you prefix Code Nine, and the desk will be instructed to put you through to whichever of the assigned detectives is available. If there’s no questions, out you go.’

  The gathered officers and patrolmen began to leave. Lassiter stepped forward. ‘You four guys,’ he said, indicating Feshbach, Riehl, Metz and Oliver. ‘You guys are not relieved of any traffic that comes in as routine, but I need you to deal with the incoming calls on this guy. I’ve assigned two additional uniforms to handle any overload if you’re all out on business, but I would prefer you organize yourselves in such a way that at least one of you can be here all the time. I need someone reliable to coordinate with Despatch if squads need to go out to a possible sighting.’

  ‘Figure we’d do better to work out of the central office if we’re on this together,’ Metz said.

  Lassiter nodded. ‘You arrange it the way you figure is best. Anyone gives you any shit tell them I said it was okay. Set yourselves up. We’re gonna need all the organization and cooperation we can muster to deal with the traffic that’ll come in.’ He waved his hand and indicated the photographs on the desk beside him. ‘There’s gotta be a hundred thousand middle-aged guys in Washington alone who could pass for this character.’

  ‘Overtime?’ Riehl asked.

  ‘As and when,’ Lassiter replied. ‘If there’s overtime needed I’ll try and get it paid for. But be sensible, okay? If it’s late and you’re not getting calls I don’t need all four of you on double time.’

  Metz nodded. Riehl made some comment that Miller didn’t catch. The four of them filed out of the room, one after the other.

  Lassiter turned to Miller. ‘So what’s next for you pair?’

  ‘Find out who it was at the Fourth that Natasha Joyce spoke to, and then this Frances Gray at the administrations unit to help us with McCullough.’

  ‘Which precinct was he from?’

  ‘Seventh,’ Roth replied.

  ‘And he went out when?’

  ‘2003 . . . March I think.’

  Lassiter frowned. ‘2003 . . . 2003 . . . I think Bill Young was still down at the Seventh in 2003. You run into difficulty on that give me a call. Bill Young retired but I have a number somewhere. He’d remember any of the people down there.’

  ‘That’s good to know,’ Miller said. ‘We’ll go check these people out and come back.’

  ‘And go see what they have set up in the central office,’ Lassiter said. ‘Make sure these guys have whatever they need, enough phones and shit, you know what I mean. And keep me posted on anything that moves with this, okay? I’m getting three or four calls every fucking hour.’

  Lassiter left the room.

  Miller waited until he could no longer hear the man’s footsteps, and then he walked to one of the chairs and sat down heavily. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. ‘I stood over the body,’ he said quietly. ‘Natasha Joyce. Yesterday I stood in that room and looked down at that girl, and I couldn’t help but think of her kid.’ He looked up at Roth. ‘Nine-year-old kid. Born to a girl like that down in the projects, her father a doper, so deep in all manner of shit he winds up a CI, gets himself shot in a fucking raid . . . someplace he sure as hell shouldn’t have been as far as any protocol I’m aware of. So he dies, and this kid is raised by her mom, the whole single parent thing, and then mom gets herself carved up by this guy. Now she has a dead junkie father and a mother who’s the victim of a famous serial killer.’ Miller opened his eyes, leaned forward. ‘What the fuck is that, eh? I mean to say, what the fuck kind of life is that for anyone? Now she’s with Child Services. She’ll wind up a ward of the state, some juvenile facility, and then from one foster home to the next . . .’ He exhaled; it sounded like a sigh of defeat and exhaustion.

  Roth leaned forward and gripped Miller’s hand for a moment. A gesture of patience, of reassurance. ‘Tell you something—’ he began.

  ‘What? You gonna tell me I need to get laid more often, right?’

  Roth laughed. ‘No I’m not . . . well, actually not so far from that if you wanna know the truth. What I was gonna say was that you lack balance—’

  Miller frowned.

  ‘I deal with this shit all day, same as you right? I deal with the scumbags and the lowlifes. I see the whackos and the leapers and whatever the fuck else the world decides to throw at us on any given Monday morning, but there’s one fundamental difference between you and me.’

  ‘You have a wife and a family. Jesus, I know, man . . . how many times do I have to listen to this stuff?’

  Roth raised his hand. ‘Weekend before the Sheridan woman was killed, you remember?’

  ‘Sure I remember . . . what was that, the 4th and 5th.’

  ‘The 4th,’ Roth said. ‘Saturday the 4th.’

  ‘So? What about it?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Miller frowned, shook his head. ‘God, I don’t know. How the fuck am I supposed to remember what I did two weeks ago on a Saturday?’

  Roth smiled knowingly. ‘That’s my point right there.’

  ‘What? That I got a bad fucking memory?’

  ‘No, for God’s sake. That you didn’t do anything that was worth remembering.’

  ‘So now you’re telling me I don’t have a life?’

  ‘Sure I am . . . you know you don’t have a freakin’ life.’

  ‘Okay, okay, so now we’re getting somewhere,’ Miller said sarcastically. ‘So what the fuck did you do that was so memorable?’

  ‘Saturday morning we went to see Amanda’s folks outside of Alexandria Old Town. They’d set up this whole trip for the kids without telling us, a drive out to Shenandoah National Park, a hotel where we stayed overnight, and just the most amazing fucking scenery you ever saw. It was stunning, man, absolutely stunning. Middle of the afternoon we’re standing in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Amanda’s father has Abi on his shoulders, Amanda’s walking alongside Luke, Stacey’s back down a while w
ith Amanda’s mom, and I stop for a moment and look up towards Bearfence Mountain and the thing just takes my breath clean away. Tell you, man, you see something like that and it kind of kicks everything into perspective for a moment. See something like that and it makes what you’ve come away from and what you have to come back to a little less overwhelming. Hotel we stayed in was this renovated nineteenth-century—’

  Miller raised his hand. ‘Enough. We’re going to see Frances Gray at the Police Department Administrations Unit. That’s what we’re going to do.’

  ‘But I haven’t finished tell—’

  Miller smiled. ‘Sure you have, you just think you haven’t. Come on, get your coat.’ He buttoned his jacket, took his overcoat from where it lay across the corner of the table at the front of the room, and before Roth had even gathered his thoughts he was outside waiting in the corridor.

  ‘Not a normal fucking person,’ Roth was murmuring. ‘Not anything even close to a normal fucking person.’

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ I said.

  Catherine shifted slightly to her right, eased her leg out from beneath her. She sat facing me, there on the sofa in her apartment; I was on the floor, cross-legged, back to the wall, head at an angle so I looked at the ceiling while I spoke.

  ‘What don’t you understand?’ she asked.

  I didn’t want to look at her.

  ‘What did he say, John?’

  ‘Dennis? He said that you and I should go out there. Said I should work with someone, get trained on the job.’ I shook my head. ‘How can he even say that about something like this?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On-the-job training, for God’s sake . . . when he’s talking about something that’s tantamount to assassination . . . tantamount to murder.’

  Catherine smiled, more something I perceived than saw directly. ‘It isn’t tantamount to assassination or murder. It is assassination and murder.’

  ‘And you think this is justified?’

  ‘Unquestionably.’ Her tone one of certainty. That was something that could always be said about Catherine - even through the worst of it, even at the very end: Catherine Sheridan was the epitome of certainty.

  ‘Unquestionably?’

  ‘Look at me a minute.’

  I lowered my gaze and looked at her.

  ‘Did he show you the films?’

  I shook my head. ‘Said he was going to show me some films this evening.’

  ‘Go see them. Go see what these people are doing. These people are . . .’ She shook her head, and for a moment she looked angry. ’Jesus, I don’t even know what to say. See the films, then make a decision about whether you think taking some kind of executive action is warranted.’

  ‘Executive action. Is that what it’s called these days?’

  ‘I think that’s what it’s always been called.’

  I didn’t speak for a while. Beyond the walls there were people who knew nothing of what was happening. Perhaps the vast majority of the population wanted to believe that such conversations never took place. People did not discuss political assassination and murder. They did not make decisions about other peoples’ lives - people they did not know, would never know, would see only once, and then only through the lens of a scope, through the crosshairs of a sight as a trigger was squeezed.

  ‘What?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Weighing up the ethical and moral position, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You understand the difference between ethics and morals?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Morals are the rules and regulations laid down by the society. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. That kind of thing, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah sure, I understand that.’

  ‘Well ethics is different. Ethics relates to the decisions someone makes when faced with a real life honest-to-God situation. Someone breaks into your house. They have a knife. They grab your child. You have a gun. There’s a clean shot, a moment when everything is right there in front of you, and you know with utter certainty that you can shoot the guy in the head and that will be the end of that. What do you do?’

  ‘You shoot him.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure . . . self-defense, right?’

  Catherine smiled, shook her head. ‘No, not self-defense - ethics. Morals say you can’t kill him. Ethics says you can. You made an agreement to abide by the morals of society, and the society says you don’t kill people. Well, hell, mister, you just went ahead and killed someone.’

  ‘That’s different—’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because the guy was ready to kill your kid. It was necessary to kill him to preserve the lives of people you cared for.’

  ‘And if they were strangers?’

  I laughed. ‘You’re good, you know?’ I said. ‘You sound so much like Matthews and Carvalho, like Dennis Powers. They really have—’

  ‘Opened my eyes, John. That’s what they’ve done. They’ve opened my eyes and given me a chance to see something that I haven’t seen before. I’ve seen shit that makes me ashamed to be a human being, for God’s sake. I look at this stuff and I feel so utterly fucking useless. Ineffective, so damned ineffective. I want to do something.’

  ‘And now you’ve seen the light, and Dennis Powers has shown you how you can redress the balance—’

  ‘Don’t be so sarcastic. Jesus, listen to yourself. You sound so damn naïve, John. In fact I don’t even wanna talk about it any more. You go do whatever you want to do. I’ve made my decisions. Fuck, they might not even be the right decisions or the best decisions, but at least I have enough of a viewpoint about this shit to make a decision in the first place.’

  For a moment I was the child, invited to sit with the grown-ups only to curse and embarrass everyone.

  ‘And yes, I have talked to Carvalho and Dennis Powers,’ Catherine went on. ’And yes, I have seen the films, and maybe they are propaganda and bullshit, but I didn’t think so when I saw them.’ She waved her hand in a dismissive manner. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Go think about whatever the hell you want to think about, and when you’ve made up your mind let me know, okay?’

  I stayed right where I was.

  Catherine moved, set her feet on the floor, and leaned forward. ‘This is my apartment, John. I’m asking you to leave. You understand that, or is there something you need me to clarify?’

  I was taken aback, evidently looked surprised, and she laughed.

  ‘Now you look about twelve,’ she said. ‘I’m asking you to go. Is there something you don’t understand about that?’

  I shook my head resignedly. ‘I’m sorry if I—’

  Catherine raised her hand, palm towards me: a stop sign. ‘Enough,’ she said authoritatively. ‘Go see the films. You have something different to say afterwards then you come back and talk to me.’ Her gaze was unflinching, her expression hard. ‘Truth? You wanna know the truth?’

  ‘Sure I wanna know the truth. What do you think I’m here for? You think I dropped out of school and came all the way down here for my fucking health?’

  ‘Truth is that this thing is bigger than both of us, bigger than everyone here. The old saw, right? The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. You ever read Truman Capote? Well, he wrote a book called Answered Prayers. Title came from an old saying, something about more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. You get that?’

  I smiled. ‘Sure I get that.’

  ‘Here’s another one. If God truly hates you he’ll grant your deepest wish.’

  ‘That’s very cynical.’

  ‘Cynical maybe, but nevertheless very true. Well, you know what? I’m here, John. I got my deepest wish granted. I looked around me and I saw a little of what was going on with the world, and I figured I was just me, just one person. I wanted to do something about it. I really did, you know, but I’m just one girl. Twenty-three years old, a hop, skip and a
jump away from small-town America, and someone comes and tells me that I might not be only one person. They tell me I can do something about it, and if there’s some questionable morals in the issue it doesn’t matter because we got the ethics bang on target. We’re not talking about one life out there, one person . . .’ She paused for a moment. There was color in her cheeks, her eyes bright as if lit from behind. ‘We’re talking about a fucking country, a whole nation . . . Jesus, don’t you see what’s happening here? We’re talking about being in a position where we can do something about the injustices that are going on over there—’

  ‘But what about injustices here, for God’s sake,’ I said. ’There has to be as many injustices here in the States than anywhere else in the goddamn world.’

  ‘Hell yes, America has its problems. We know that. But the problems that America has are far more sophisticated, far more complex. You’re talking about illegal immigrants, about corruption in the police department, in the mayor’s office, in government. You’re talking about miscarriage of justice, this kind of thing.’

  ‘Yes I am, and they’re just as important as whatever might be going on over there.’

  Catherine smiled. ‘You’re missing the point, John, missing it so wide it’s amazing. You have to have a justice system for there to be a miscarriage of justice. There has to be a police officer there before a police officer can be bribed. We’re talking about communism here . . . we’re talking about the infiltration of communism up through the South American corridor into Mexico. Say it goes that way, how long will it be before we have communist uprisings in Honduras? And then there’s El Salvador and Guatemala, and then it will head south into Costa Rica, and before you know it you have communist control of the Panama Canal . . .’

  ‘So what are you saying, Catherine? You’re saying that in order to prevent the communist takeover of the world you and I have to fly out there and learn how to use firearms, learn how to do whatever . . .’

  ‘Some people have to die, John. Tell it how it is, for God’s sake. Let’s face the truth here. Let’s open our eyes and see what’s right there in front of us. Some people are out there killing people, and they’re killing them wholesale, and they don’t give a fuck about human rights or ethics or anything even close to the moral issues we take for granted, and we’re in a position where we have the chance to do something about it, and I figured maybe you and I could go out there and make some slight difference—’