A Good Month for Murder

by Del Quentin Wilber

  Brooks pounds on the door, and it’s opened by a tall man—not the guy they’re waiting for—whom the detective grabs by an arm and flings to one of the officers. Brooks and Delaney burst into a short hallway, sidestep a small kitchen, and race into the dining room, where a startled woman sits at a table. Towering over her, Brooks asks for permission to search the house.

  As soon as she mutters, “Okay,” Brooks thuds from the dining room to the living room and through to a bedroom, but he doesn’t find the TV. Finally he reaches what appears to be a guest bedroom. Scanning it quickly, he sees a bed with a gray comforter, a green recliner, men’s sneakers arranged in pairs along one wall, and, against the wall to his left, a wooden chest, on top of which is a flat-screen television.

  Brooks takes two long steps and bends close: the TV is the same brand and size as the one missing from McIntyre’s house. He dips his head behind the set; his eyes widen and he can feel his heart pounding. The back of the TV is coated with dirt. Brooks has always suspected that the killer lowered the set into the patch of bare earth below McIntyre’s window. Amazingly, neither the thief nor the new owner had bothered to clean off the dirt.

  Two young patrol officers enter the room. They spot the television, move closer, glimpse the smear of dirt, and break into a victory dance, slapping high fives and hooting.

  Brooks is so pumped he can’t think. He excuses himself and returns to the front porch, where he grips the railing and slows his breathing until his heart stops racing.

  “Better than sex,” he mutters to himself. “Better than fucking sex.”

  * * *

  NOT TEN MINUTES later, the man who bought the TV appears. Thirty-six and heavyset, he is dressed entirely in black, except for gold highlights on his high-tops and a New Orleans Saints baseball cap. He takes a seat across from Brooks at the dining room table.

  Brooks explains why he needs the television. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” he says, meaning either the man cooperates and permits the police to take the television or the investigators can confiscate the TV after obtaining a search warrant.

  “I understand,” the man says. “I’m happy to sign. I’m happy to help.”

  After he scrawls his name on a form, Brooks loads him into the front passenger seat of the van for the ride to homicide. Delaney takes a seat in the rear. Brooks doesn’t buckle his seat belt—he is too excited to bother—and as he drives the three miles back to the office, an alert ding-ding-dings the entire way.

  “Why’d it take you so long to find me?” asks the man.

  Brooks grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white. “Why didn’t you find us and tell us what you had?”

  “I didn’t know,” the man says, staring out the windshield.

  Bullshit, thinks Brooks. You live a few doors down from Geraldine McIntyre, and you knew exactly where that TV came from.

  “So how long have you had the TV?” asks Brooks.

  “Since the day of the situation,” the man says.

  Brooks shakes his head: The situation.

  “I didn’t realize it until a few days later, when I was speaking to a friend who said you guys hit that house and pulled out JuJu, and then my friend told me that you also were looking for stuff that someone stole from the old lady.”

  Except for the dinging seat-belt alarm, the van is quiet. It smells of gasoline and French fries and sweat; when the front window begins to fog, Brooks switches on the defroster. Disgusted, he stares stonily at the road ahead.

  “That’s when I put two and two together,” says the man, clearly uncomfortable in the silence. “I talked to my girl about it, and she was like, ‘Don’t call the police.’ And I didn’t want to get myself in trouble, know what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, we know,” says Delaney.

  “We know,” says Brooks. “We know.”

  “JuJu was just walking up the street that Saturday, and my girl was on the porch and she called me out and said this guy wanted to sell me something. So I spoke to him. And he has this big flat-screen, and I thought I could use it to play my Xbox on, so I asked JuJu how much he is selling it for, and he says, like, forty dollars. So I paid him forty dollars, and he left about his business.”

  Forty fucking dollars, thinks Brooks. A life for forty dollars.

  Brooks asks a few more questions, and the man’s answers make it clear that he bought the television from JuJu Ward soon after McIntyre was killed. Brooks goes silent again, and as he drives he experiences a wash of emotions: relief, joy, sorrow, anger. He thinks back to the murder scene and the cluttered house and the daughter’s bed in the living room and the bloody, dusty floor and wonders why a drug addict would kill an old lady for forty dollars.

  “So,” Brooks finally says, not even attempting to quell the fury in his voice. “He was just like any other motherfucking crackhead?”

  “Yeah,” the man replies a little sheepishly, “like any other.”

  10:00 a.m., Tuesday, February 26

  Sean Deere takes his place at the head of the long table as members of his squad file into the frigid conference room. To his right sit Joe Bergstrom and Allyson Hamlin; to his left, Mike Crowell and Joe Bunce. A minute later, Captain George Nichols enters the room, followed by Lieutenant Brian Reilly. Nichols grabs a chair between Crowell and Bunce, and Reilly sits next to Hamlin.

  The previous morning, Deere got the news he’d been expecting: Jeff Buck’s DNA test came back negative. Since then, Deere, Bergstrom, and the rest of the M-40 squad members have spoken at length about what they should do next. Despite the test results, the investigators are not ready to discard the theory that Buck or members of his gang played a role in the rape of Denise or the murder of Amber Stanley. But they know they’ll have to expand the scope of their hunt for the killer, and they’re well aware that their bosses are getting impatient. Yesterday, Bergstrom and Deere got word that the captain and the lieutenant wanted this briefing.

  The room grows quiet as Nichols shuffles some papers. When he asks for a progress report, Bergstrom launches into a description of how hard the squad has worked and the long hours they have logged.

  “We have been bringing in people, it seems, like every day and night,” Bergstrom says. “We’ve been working around the clock.”

  He tells Nichols and Reilly that since December he and his detectives have been focused on Jeff Buck, his gang, and his neighborhood because it’s the strongest lead they’ve got. He adds that the squad is convinced there’s a connection between the rape of Denise and Amber Stanley’s death. “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Bergstrom says.

  Nichols nods, jots down a note, and turns to Deere, who takes this as his cue to pick up where Bergstrom left off.

  “It seems like everyone we bring in talks about more people that we have to run down,” Deere says. “That guy might have raped Denise, this guy might have a gun. We pick up, we question, we pick up again.”

  Nichols and Reilly know this is true—they have watched the investigators at work and have approved their overtime slips. Nichols asks what Deere plans to do next, and the detective says the squad intends to keep rounding up people in Jeff Buck’s gang and neighborhood.

  Reilly asks for an update on the DNA results, and Deere shakes his head and mutters, “All negative, all negative.”

  “Even Jeff Buck?” asks Reilly.

  “Yes,” says Deere.

  Nichols and Reilly frown. This is not what they had expected, but they also know that the DNA tests do not necessarily mean that Jeff Buck and his crew had nothing to do with the murder.

  “We just need more time to work this angle,” says Deere.

  “Other avenues?” Nichols asks.

  Deere mentions that the squad has recently developed a new theory involving a man who had been treated for a wound a few days after Denise was raped. Bunce has done the most research into this theory, and at a signal from Deere he describes the gang of thieves who kick in doors and rob residents
at gunpoint. One of them may have raped Denise, had his hand cut during the assault, and then returned with his boys to punish her for the stabbing and for going to the police. The squad’s hope, Bunce tells the captain and the lieutenant, is that the man’s DNA will match the blood on Denise’s shirt.

  Nichols makes a note and asks Deere how he ultimately expects to link the murder to a suspect. Deere explains that thus far he has no physical evidence beyond the shell casings. “We can get to the rape through the blood,” Deere says. “But there isn’t really anything tying anyone to the murder, unless we get them with the gun.”

  “So it’s the rape,” says Nichols. “It comes down to the rape.”

  “It’s the rape,” confirms Bergstrom.

  Nichols asks if they are planning to revisit Denise and interview her again.

  “Absolutely,” Deere says, adding that they are currently making plans to travel to her mental-health facility.

  “That is important,” says Nichols, jotting down a final note and looking around the room. He thanks the detectives for their efforts and says he believes he has enough information to persuade the chief and the assistant chief to give them more time to continue investigating Jeff Buck’s crew and to pursue their new theory about the gang of robbers and the man with the cut on his hand.

  “They don’t know all the work you’ve done and all the stuff you’ve dug up,” Nichols says. “This will buy you some time.” But then the captain mentions the news—announced the previous day by the chief—that the police have charged a twenty-year-old in the murder of Marckel Ross, one of the six PG high school students slain since August. Calling this development “both a blessing and a curse,” Nichols says that the high-profile arrest will remove some of the immediate pressure to solve Amber Stanley’s case. But with the Ross murder solved, the focus is now squarely on them.

  The meeting ends, and Nichols and Reilly get up to leave. After they’re gone, Bergstrom and his squad remain at the table and talk for a couple of minutes about Hamlin’s murder from the early hours on Friday and how quickly they wrapped it up over the course of the day. They laugh about how drunk some of them got that Friday night over a sushi dinner. Finally, their focus returns to the case at hand. Bergstrom asks Deere to compose a memo about the Amber Stanley case that lists the suspects and witnesses whose DNA has been tested and the results.

  Deere screws up his face and laughs. “I can do that now,” he says, jotting something on his pad. He holds up his note: “All negative.”

  “All right, all right,” says Bergstrom.

  Bunce excuses himself, saying he wants to run some background checks on the gang of robbers. Bergstrom leaves next, then Crowell.

  Deere is slow to rise, and Hamlin can sense the doubt in his stooped shoulders.

  “We’ll solve this,” she tells him. “You know, it’s probably something we haven’t even thought of yet.”

  11:05 a.m., Wednesday, February 27

  Four of M-40’s five detectives are slumped in the fifth row of folding chairs in the department’s auditorium, waiting for what promises to be a sleep-inducing lecture on the prevention of domestic violence. It’s not that the issue is unimportant or that the detectives don’t care about domestic violence; it’s just that the PG police department has the ability to transform almost any topic into a mind-numbing slumberfest.

  The auditorium buzzes with gossip and griping in the minutes before the lecture begins. As a major takes the podium, Crowell feels his smartphone vibrate, pulls it out, and sees that he’s received a text from Sean Deere: “Mike, sign me in and meet me in SAU. We have news.” Crowell studies the phone’s screen, blinks, scratches his chin. He knows this must be a big deal if Deere is summoning him out of a mandatory training session.

  Crowell turns and whispers the news to Bunce, who elbows Hamlin, who smacks Jamie Boulden’s left thigh. They huddle in the row and whisper about the meaning of Deere’s message. It must have something to do with Amber Stanley, says Crowell; the others agree. They stand, and Hamlin waves good-bye to the major, who says, “There must be something big in CID.”

  A minute later, the detectives enter the Sexual Assault Unit, where they find Deere chatting with two other investigators. Deere calmly delivers the good news: the department got a DNA hit linking the blood on Denise’s shirt to a rape suspect in the PG jail. The hit was generated by a state database that compares DNA evidence from crime scenes to the DNA of offenders. Their new suspect, Deere says, is David Upshaw,1 a twenty-year-old who has been charged in two sexual assaults and an armed robbery, all of which recently occurred in PG County. Upshaw’s name means nothing to the squad’s detectives; until today, they’ve never heard of him.

  Deere has reviewed an SAU report claiming that Upshaw kicked down a door and raped a girl he had befriended online; another document alleges that Upshaw sexually assaulted a prostitute. A third incident was more ambiguous. About six months ago, a fifteen-year-old girl reported to police that she had been raped by Upshaw behind a library. The teen later recanted the accusations, however, and no charges were filed. After reading the report and speaking to the investigators, Deere strongly suspects that the rape actually occurred.

  The detective has also seen paperwork from the Robbery Unit that describes an incident in which Upshaw and another suspect, armed with a gun, robbed a man in the basement of an apartment building.

  “So he kicks down doors, rapes women—including prostitutes—and carries a gun?” says Crowell, his voice rising in excitement. “Wow. I really like this guy.”

  Bunce, Hamlin, and Boulden nod in agreement—everything seems to fit. But Deere is cautious. After spending the better part of three months building a case against Jeff Buck, he has just abandoned the idea that Buck is his prime suspect. Now he’s suddenly changing directions and pursuing someone who wasn’t even on his radar until a couple of hours ago. And although he is pleased to have physical evidence that seems to tie his new suspect to Denise’s rape, he’s anxious about whether he’ll be able to prove the connection to the murder.

  Still, he has long believed that the rapist—angered at being cut and worried that Denise would report the crime to the police—went to her home five days later and killed Amber Stanley by mistake. In just a few hours, this theory will finally be put to the test.

  * * *

  FOUR HOURS LATER, Deere and Crowell enter the office of Major Michael Straughan, who has heard about the DNA hit and requested an update on the investigation. The higher-ups are understandably worried that the news about this development in the Amber Stanley case might leak to the media. The detectives, aware of their bosses’ concern, feel a not-so-subtle pressure to pick up Upshaw right away.

  Since learning about his new suspect, Deere has been busy compiling a dossier on him. From sex-offense and robbery detectives, he has learned that Upshaw is cagey and smart, an alleged sexual predator who has admitted nothing. That means he is not likely to break easily, and Deere would prefer to spend the next day or so preparing for the biggest interrogation of his life. Since that probably won’t be an option, Crowell has completed the necessary paperwork and visited a judge to get permission to “writ” Upshaw out of the PG jail. But before they can grab Upshaw, they’re obligated to provide their no-nonsense major with a briefing.

  Joining the detectives are their supervisors: Nichols, Reilly, and Bergstrom, the same trio who sat through the strategy meeting a day earlier. Deere, his face stern, drops into a comfortable chair next to Nichols; Crowell, smiling and fidgeting, takes the couch between Reilly and Bergstrom.

  Major Straughan—a sinewy man with a crew cut that makes his bony face look even more severe—leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head. He gazes across his big desk at Deere and then Crowell, then back at Deere, his eyes blank, betraying no hint of enthusiasm or concern. He has been investigating murders or supervising homicide detectives for nearly twenty years, and to him this is just another case. Nothing would surprise him. />
  “So,” he says, his eyes locked on Deere, “what do you have?”

  Deere explains the DNA hit, the blood’s link to Amber Stanley’s foster sister, and their plans to pick up Upshaw this evening and question him aggressively.

  “This is it,” Deere says. “It comes down to this.”

  “When the judge asked what case it was,” Crowell adds, “I told him, ‘Amber Stanley.’ And he just immediately signed that paper and looked at me and winked and said, ‘Good luck.’”

  Crowell then tells the group that Upshaw is represented by the same defense lawyer who handled his prior cases. Crowell also reports that the judge told him that since this is a fresh offense, they are free to interrogate Upshaw about it, but they cannot question him about his earlier crimes without his attorney present.

  “Those rules tie our hands somewhat,” says Bergstrom.

  “Fucking Constitution,” quips Deere.

  Straughan nods for Deere to continue. The detective delves into Upshaw’s history, Denise’s background, and his theory that the rape is tied to the murder.

  As the major mulls this summary, his eyes drift to the ceiling. Finally he looks back at Deere and says, “He sounds good.”

  Deere begins to say something, but Straughan holds up a hand, cutting him off.

  “Why did he rape her if she was selling it?” the major asks.

  “We don’t know,” Crowell says, jumping in. “Maybe he didn’t want to pay, and that’s when he just took it. Maybe he didn’t pay, and she kirked out.”

  “Possible,” says Straughan, turning back to Deere and asking if he’s confident there really was a rape. The major is well aware that prostitutes sometimes seek charges of sexual assault when their clients refuse to pay.