Homicide

by David Simon

  “Now,” said Landsman, leading the main assailant into the box, “while you’re in here I’m going to take your handcuffs off because, you know, I’m not a tough guy or anything, but I know you’re a chickenshit asshole so it’s not going to be a problem, right?”

  Landsman unlocked the cuffs and the suspect rubbed his wrists.

  “See, I knew you were chickenshit—”

  The guy came up out of the chair with a wild roundhouse that clipped the side of the sergeant’s head, after which Landsman stomped him so thoroughly that he would later keep a Polaroid of the bloodied suspect in his top desk drawer as a keepsake. Landsman walked out of the interrogation room just as the duty officer came down the hall.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Hey,” Landsman told the captain, shrugging, “the motherfucker swung on me.”

  James could say the same thing now: This bastard sodomized and murdered a two-year-old child, then he swung on me and I fucked him up good. End of report.

  “Go ahead,” says the uniform, thinking the same thought. “I’ll cover your back, man. I’d fucking love to see it.”

  James turns, looks at the uniform strangely, then lets go with an awkward, embarrassed smile. It would feel good to take the cuffs off this kid and make him feel some pain. Hell, with the cuffs off the guy would have a better opportunity than he gave that child. Simple justice would argue for something more than the life sentence awaiting Alvin Clement Richardson; simple justice argued for the bastard to be helpless, immobile, unable to ward off the blows.

  And then what? After one sadist had been reduced to a bloody pulp in one interrogation room, where would that leave Rick James? The kid was dead. Nothing was going to bring him back. The mother? Judging from her behavior in the early morning interviews, she could’ve cared less. It was a murder, they told her. He beat your baby so bad the doctors are saying he could’ve been hit by a car. He killed your child.

  “I don’t think he’d do that,” she replied. “He loves Michael.”

  James could beat him, but what the hell for? For peace of mind? For satisfaction? Alvin Richardson is just one sadistic bastard in a city full of sadistic bastards, and his crime is similarly common. Keller and Crutch-field had worked the suffocation of a two-year-old girl back in August; that same month, Shea and Hagin caught a one-year-old scalded to death by a babysitter. In September, Hollingsworth had a nine-month-old infant, strangled by her mother.

  No, thinks James. I could beat this prick half to death and then dump him in the city jail infirmary and it wouldn’t mean shit. Come Monday, I’ll be back at work, looking through the wire mesh window at some other sociopath. James smiles again at the uniform, shakes his head and walks back into the main office.

  “Eddie Brown,” he says, moving toward the coffee machine, “will you take this guy for a piss? If I do it I’m liable to fuck him up.”

  Brown nods, walks over to the mailboxes and pulls the interrogation room key off its nail.

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20

  Jay Landsman bounces back and forth across the homicide office, comparing three separate stories from three separate squirrels. He had hoped for a quiet night, maybe even a chance to hit a bar with Pellegrini after the shift change, but now he has a full house: one in the large interrogation box, one in the small box, one on the couch in the fishbowl waiting his turn. To Landsman’s eye, each looks more guilt-ridden and culpable than the last.

  Donald Kincaid steps out of the largest cubicle with a few pages of interview notes in his hand. He shuts the door before speaking to Landsman.

  “He seems like he’s being helpful,” says Kincaid.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah. So far.”

  “I think he’s being too helpful,” says Landsman. “I think this motherfucker’s pissing all over us and callin’ it rain.”

  Kincaid smiles. Good one, Jay.

  “Well, his pal over there on the couch is the one trying to put him in, right?” says Kincaid. “And he’s definitely the one that was interested in the girl, you know? I wonder if she just pissed him off.”

  Landsman nods.

  The girl isn’t saying. She’s all cut up inside a men’s room at the Lever Brothers detergent plant over on Broening Highway. Overkill on the wounds, too, which makes the murder look like something personal, like a domestic. But that would be too easy; besides, the victim’s husband is soon accounted for—he was waiting down in the parking lot, listening to the car radio, waiting for his wife to come off her shift. The plant guards had to go down there and get him after they found the body.

  So, figures Landsman, cross off the husband and go a little lower on the list. Boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend? Wanted-to-be-a-boyfriend? She’s young enough and pretty enough, married a year or so, but that doesn’t mean much; she could still be getting some on the side down at the plant. Maybe it got out of hand.

  “I mean, what the fuck is she doing in the men’s room anyway?” says Kincaid. “You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah,” says Landsman. “That’s what I’m thinking too, Donald.”

  Landsman looks again into the large interrogation room to see Chris Graul sitting across the table from Squirrel No. 1, taking more notes, running through his weak shit one more time. Graul is new to Landsman’s squad from the check and fraud unit, a replacement for Fahlteich, who has been over in the sex offense unit for a few months now. After a couple of years following kited checks around town, Graul wanted to see about homicide work; after six years in Landsman’s squad, Dick Fahlteich had seen enough murders for one career. With its nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday routine, the rape unit was, for Fahlteich, a little like retirement with a paycheck.

  Landsman watches through the wire mesh window as his new detective works around the edges of the kid’s story. Graul for Fahlteich, Vernon Holley for Fred Ceruti—it had been a year of changes for his squad, but Landsman wasn’t complaining. With all that time in robbery to his credit, Holley hit the ground running and was now handling murders on his own. Graul was a good find, too, though Landsman understood that since Graul was tight with Lieutenant Stanton from their time together in narcotics, the new detective would probably jump to the other shift at the first opportunity. Still, if that happened after Graul had proved himself, Landsman would be able to ask Stanton for a good detective in trade.

  Suspects, victims, detectives—the players kept changing, yet the machine still managed to sputter and lurch forward. In fact, D’Addario’s troops had steadily improved their clearance rate and were now virtually even with the other shift. The unit as a whole was posting a rate of 72 percent, just above the national average for murder clearance. All the complaints about the rate earlier in the year, all that hysteria about the overtime cap and the Northwest murders and the Latonya Wallace case refusing to drop—all of it didn’t mean much at year’s end. Somehow, the numbers always manage to be there come December.

  And Landsman is a big part of the story: His squad’s rate is above 75 percent, the highest for D’Addario’s shift. Nolan’s squad and McLarney’s men had both gone through hot streaks earlier in the fall; now Landsman’s crew was finishing the year with one closed case after another.

  Indeed, for two months they could do no wrong. Dunnigan began it by putting down that drug ambush from Johnston Square, and Pellegrini followed with a manslaughter case from up on the Alameda, an accidental shooting in which some idiot killed a fourteen-year-old while doing tricks with his new semiautomatic. Then Holley, Requer and Dunnigan tag-teamed a pair of domestics and a week later, Requer followed with a hard-fought clearance on a drug murder in the Gold and Etting marketplace. Over the next month, everyone in the squad put down at least one more case, clearing each file within a day or two. With that much luck following the squad around, a little of the stuff even rubbed off on Pellegrini, who picked up the phone one winter evening and was treated to a second consecutive accidental shooting death. Fate itself seemed to feel obliged to offer
an apology.

  Tonight, if he has time, Landsman can saunter over to his section of the board and stare contentedly at a thick block of black ink. Twelve closed cases in a row, and this one—this bizarre stabbing inside a Broening Highway factory while three hundred employees worked the evening shift—well, he isn’t going to allow such a sillyass case to end his streak. A girl gets killed inside a factory during working hours and it comes up a whodunit? No fucking way, thinks Landsman. There’s a dunker in here somewhere; all I have to do is find it.

  Arriving at the Lever Brothers plant earlier that night, Graul and Kincaid were ushered to the second floor of the main building to find the body of Ernestine Haskins, the thirty-year-old cafeteria manager, lying dead in a nearby men’s room. A series of wounds riddled the torso, but the most lethal cut had slashed the jugular. The blouse and brassiere were pulled up, suggesting sex as a motive, just as blood spatter on a bathroom stall partition and defense wounds to the hands suggested a brief struggle. The weapon, probably a long kitchen blade, was missing.

  The cafeteria had closed after serving dinner, although the area wasn’t locked and it was accessible to anyone in the building. Just before the discovery of the murder, Haskins and two male employees were cleaning up and preparing to leave; for that reason alone the cafeteria employees deserved some special attention. One had discovered the body, the other had been with Haskins in the kitchen only minutes earlier.

  Waiting for the factory shift to end, the two detectives processed the scene, walked the length of the cafeteria and checked the rest of the second floor, looking for a blood trail or anything else out of the ordinary. At the shift change shortly before midnight, Kincaid walked down to the plant’s outer gate to watch the entire workforce sign out at the security gate and parade past him. He looked every male employee directly in the face, then down at the worker’s shoes and pants cuffs, hoping for a few telltale specks of reddish brown.

  Meanwhile, Graul acted on a tip provided by one of the cafeteria employees in an initial interview at the scene. Asked if Ernestine Haskins had any boyfriends or suitors at the plant, the employee offered the name of one man who, sure enough, happened to be on shift at that moment. Summoned by security guards, the man appeared in the cafeteria and expressed no immediate surprise at being informed of the murder. That alone didn’t mean much: word of the killing had raced through the plant even before the detectives’ arrival. More intriguing, however, was his willingness to admit that he had been interested in Ernestine Haskins. He knew she was married; still, she had seemed a little more than friendly and he thought she might go for something.

  Kincaid and Graul gave the man’s clothes a close inspection but found no stains or tears. His hands were clean and uncut, his face unscratched. Even so, he would have had time to clean up before the body was found. A radio car was called; the suitor and both cafeteria employees were sent downtown.

  After more than two hours at the crime scene, the two detectives drove back to the office. Landsman had deposited the three arrivals in separate rooms, where in Landsman’s considered opinion they had all displayed rodent-like behavior.

  Squirrel No. 1, the cafeteria employee who had given Graul the tip about the woman’s suitor, remained solicitous of the investigators and continued to suggest all kinds of motives that could have inspired the man to murder. The second cafeteria worker, Squirrel No. 2, seemed to know damn little about the murder of his boss other than that it happened. And Squirrel No. 3, the plant employee who had lusted for Ernestine, was now strangely indifferent to her violent death, as if it were just something else that happened at work that day.

  Having spent an hour or so traveling between the offices and interrogation rooms, balancing one story against another, Landsman has already formed some opinions. Squirrel No. 2 in the large interrogation room? Brain-dead, thinks Landsman. Maybe brain-dead and guilty. Squirrel No. 1 in the small interrogation room? Too fucking helpful. Color him helpful and guilty. And Squirrel No. 3, waiting in the fishbowl, is an asshole, probably a guilty asshole at that.

  Now, three hours into the investigation, Landsman watches Kincaid return to the room where Graul is still listening patiently to lies. It’s into early morning now, and Landsman has so far been the very picture of earnest patience. No shouting. No wild rant. No twisted homicide humor amid the chaos of criminal investigation.

  Landsman’s restraint comes in small part because this is Graul’s second case and Landsman is trying hard not to crowd a new detective, and in larger part because Ernestine Haskins—like Latonya Wallace—appears to be a real victim. And whatever else two decades in the department have done to Landsman, they have at least taught him that difference between a killing and a murder. It’s one thing, after all, for a detective to cut up with the uniforms when they’re gathered around some dead yo; it’s another entirely to behave that way when the case involves a young wife with her blouse pulled up, her throat slit open and her husband waiting in the company lot. Even for Landsman, certain things remain decidedly unfunny. Likewise, despite his reputation, he does understand that there are moments when a rant does more harm than good. For hours, he lets Graul and Kincaid lead the charge, waiting until they’ve run out of fresh questions before beginning his own pursuit. Only in the earliest hours of the morning, when the cafeteria company officials call the homicide unit to reveal that the day’s receipts are missing from the kitchen strongbox—only then does Landsman revert to form.

  “What the fuck is this bullshit I’ve been listening to?” he mutters, storming back down the hall.

  Squirrel No. 1 looks up in dismay as Landsman bursts into the small interrogation room.

  “Hey, what the hell are you telling us?”

  “What?”

  “This is a robbery.”

  “What is?”

  “This fucking murder. The cashbox is missing.”

  The employee shakes his head. Not me, he assures Landsman, though you might want to talk to that other boy who works in the kitchen. He was always talking about stealing that money. He tried to talk me into it.

  Landsman takes that in, pivots, then charges past the large interrogation room, where the dead girl’s suitor—now suddenly forgotten—is banging on the door, asking to go to the bathroom.

  “Hey officer …”

  “One minute,” yells Landsman, turning the corner into the fishbowl, where the second cafeteria employee has been sitting between interviews.

  “You,” he tells Squirrel No. 2. “Get up.”

  The man follows Landsman back down the corridor and into the small interrogation room, now vacant because Graul has returned the first employee to the fishbowl through the main office. Musical witnesses.

  “What happened to the money?” says Landsman, full of menace.

  “What money?”

  Wrong question. Landsman jumps in the face of Squirrel No. 2, railing on about how much they know about the robbery, about how serious a crime this is, about how they’ve already heard about how he wanted to steal that strongbox, about how Ernestine Haskins discovered the theft and confronted the thief in the men’s room and was killed for the trouble.

  “I didn’t take the money.”

  “That’s not what your friend says.”

  The man looks around the room for comfort. Kincaid and Graul stare back, impassive.

  “What are you, stupid?” asks Landsman. “He put you in.”

  “What?”

  “He’s telling us you killed her.”

  “I … what?”

  What the fuck, thinks Landsman. Do we need some kind of visual aid in here? Slowly, painfully, Squirrel No. 2 catches on.

  “He’s telling you that?”

  “Sure is,” says Kincaid.

  “He’s the one did it,” says the man angrily. “He’s the one.”

  Fine, thinks Landsman, storming back down the hall. I can live with this. After all, a stone whodunit has just been reduced to a simple either-or proposition. Now there’s no
thing better for a detective to do than put Squirrels No. 1 and 2 into the same cage.

  But turning the corner into the aquarium, Landsman comes up too quickly on the Number One Squirrel, arriving just as the man is stuffing wad after wad of greenbacks inside the lining of his fellow employee’s winter jacket.

  “WHAT … WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”

  The young man freezes, his hand caught very deep inside one very big cookie jar.

  “WHAT THE FUCK … GIMME THAT!” sputters Landsman, grabbing the guy by the arm and tossing him out into the corridor.

  The jacket lining is fat with fives and tens and twenties; the rest of the money is still in the man’s own jacket pockets. He looks at Landsman sheepishly as Graul and Kincaid come running, having heard the commotion.

  Landsman shakes his head, amazed. “While we’re in there talking to one guy, this goofy motherfucker is sitting here on the couch stuffing the money into the other guy’s coat. I just walked in, and he’s shoving the fucking money into the lining like this …”

  “Just now?” says Kincaid.

  “Yeah, I walk up and he’s shoving bills into the lining.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Yeah,” says Landsman, laughing for the first time all night. “Can you believe it?”

  Hours later, after the guilty man has confessed to murder in his fashion (“I had the knife to her throat, but I didn’t cut her. She must have moved or something”), Landsman sits in the main office and dissects the case as Graul types his warrant.

  “All that bullshit he was telling us about this guy and that guy,” Landsman tells Kincaid. “I should have jumped on that earlier.”

  Maybe so, and maybe there’s a lesson in that. When you’re working murders, preparation and patience and subtlety take you only so far; sometimes anything more than the usual amount of conscientious precision becomes its own crippling burden. Witness Tom Pellegrini, who spends the night of Ernestine Haskins’s murder as he has spent so many others in the last two months—searching for a rational approach to that which is unapproachable, for scientific exactitude in places where nothing is ever exact. The method to Landsman’s madness is a hard, tight logic formed in a crucible of impulse and sudden anger. Pellegrini’s madness, on the other hand, takes the form of an obsessively rational pursuit of the Answer.