Only once, on the day after the body’s discovery, is there any hint of the communal effort that normally accompanies a red-ball case, and it is prompted by Nolan, who for the sake of appearances asks McAllister, Kincaid and Bowman to give them a day’s help to expand the canvass.
Looking through the case file that day, the other detectives in the squad wonder aloud why Edgerton hadn’t immediately followed up on the anonymous call. At the very least, they argue, he should go out and grab the woman whom the male caller allegedly saw running from the alley.
“That’s the last thing I want to do,” says Edgerton, explaining his strategy to Nolan. “If I get her down here, what am I going to do? I have one question to ask her, and after that I’ve got nothing.”
To Edgerton’s way of thinking, it is another mistake that too many detectives make too often-the same mistake that they had made with the Fish Man in the Latonya Wallace case. You bring someone down and go at them in the interrogation room with no real ammunition. They walk out an hour later, more confident than before, and if you ever do get any leverage on them, you’ve only made it harder to come back and break them the second time.
“I ask her why she was running out of the alley, and she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about,” Edgerton explains to Nolan. “And she’s right. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
He still doesn’t believe that the woman named by the caller actually ran from the alley after the murder. But even if he did believe it, he would not risk an interrogation until it had at least a chance of success.
“If all else fails, then I bring her down here and ask my one question,” the detective says, “and not before.”
Nolan agrees. “It’s your case,” he tells Edgerton. “Do it your way.”
Beyond his squad’s limited help with the expanded canvass, Edgerton’s isolation on the case is complete. Even D’Addario keeps his distance: He asks Nolan for regular progress reports and offers help if help is needed, but otherwise he is content to let Edgerton and his sergeant set their own pace.
The contrast with D’Addario’s response to the Latonya Wallace investigation is striking. Edgerton hopes that the lieutenant’s hands-off approach is, at least in part, a display of confidence in his investigator. More likely, the detective reasons, D’Addario has himself soured on the full-blown red-ball treatment. Throwing troops and money at a case had accomplished so little in Reservoir Hill that maybe the lieutenant is reluctant to travel the same road a second time. Or maybe, like everyone else on the shift, LTD is just too damn tired for another all-out campaign.
But Edgerton also knows that nothing happens in a vacuum. He is being left alone to work his case largely because D’Addario can afford to leave him alone. On the day that Andrea Perry was discovered, the clearance rate stood at a fat 74 percent, with five outstanding murder warrants still on the street-a rate that compares favorably to both the previous year’s totals and the national average. As a result, D’Addario can once again make decisions without worrying about public consumption or the perceptions of the command staff. From talking with Pellegrini, Edgerton knows that the lieutenant has already expressed some dissatisfaction with the tidal wave of investigation that followed Latonya Wallace’s death. At various stages in that probe, D’Addario had listened to Landsman and Pellegrini both argue that less could be more, and the lieutenant seemed to agree. If the clearance rate had been higher, if the department hadn’t also been publicly sweating the murders of all those women in the Northwest, then the case might have gone differently. Now, with the board showing more black than red, the homicide unit’s political equilibrium has been fully restored. Thanks to some hard work, some skillful maneuvering and not a little luck, D’Addario’s reign has survived the threat and been returned to its rightful glory. And if the rise in the clearance rate and D’Addario’s true feelings about the red-ball treatment aren’t reasons enough for Edgerton to be granted his distance, then Edgerton also understands that he is alone on this case simply because the murder has fallen to Nolan’s squad.
Not only does Nolan have absolute confidence in Edgerton’s methods, but he is the sergeant least likely to ask for help from the rest of the shift and from D’Addario in particular. Of the three sergeants, only McLarney and Landsman are now counted among LTD’s true disciples; Nolan had stayed on the fence during D’Addario’s year-long conflict with the captain. Lately, the lieutenant has taken some pleasure in bringing that out.
Two nights ago, all three squad sergeants were in the coffee room as D’Addario prepared to leave at the end of a four-to-twelve shift.
“I note by my watch that it’s nigh on twelve o’clock,” he declared dramatically. “And I know that before the cock crows thrice, one of you shall betray me…”
The sergeants laughed nervously.
“… but it’s okay, Roger, I understand. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
As Nolan’s man, Edgerton couldn’t really be sure exactly why he was being isolated on the Andrea Perry case. It may well be Dee’s faith in him, or it may be the lieutenant’s new philosophy about leaving red balls to the primary investigator. Then again, it may just be that Roger Nolan is the one sergeant who is not about to ask his lieutenant for anything. Maybe, Edgerton thinks, it’s a little of all three. For an outsider like himself, it’s always harder to get a handle on the office politics.
But whatever the reasons for D’Addario’s distance from the investigation, Edgerton understands that the effect is the same: He is on the longest possible leash. As a result, Andrea Perry will not become Latonya Wallace, just as Edgerton will not become another Pellegrini. Good-bye to the detail officers, to the FBI psych profiles, to the aerial photographs of the crime scene, to a hundred endless debates among a full squad of homicide detectives. Instead, this child’s murder will be one man out in the street, with time enough and room enough to solve his murder. Or, perhaps, hang himself.
Whichever comes first.
It is a beautiful courthouse, truly impressive in its classical form. The bronze doors, the varied Italian marbles, the deep redwoods and gilded ceilings-the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse on North Calvert Street is a work of great architecture, as fine and glorious as any structure ever built in the city of Baltimore.
If justice itself were measured by the grandeur of its house, then a Baltimore detective would have little to fear. If well-cut stone and hand-carved woods could guarantee a righteous vengeance, then the Mitchell Courthouse and its companion across the street-the old post office building now known as Courthouse East-might be places of sanctuary for a Baltimore law officer.
The city fathers spared little when they created these two exquisite buildings in the heart of downtown, and in the last several years their descendants have been equally generous in their ongoing effort to renovate and preserve the beauty of both structures. From the arraignment courts to the jury rooms, from front lobbies to back corridors, the courthouse complex exists so that generations of law officers and lawyers could walk the halls of justice and feel their spirits soar. Stepping lightly down the restored portico of the post office building, or walking into the elegance of Judge Hammerman’s paneled palace, a detective has every reason to hold his head high in the knowledge that he has arrived at a place where society can exact its price. Justice will be done here; all the hard, dirty work performed in the city’s rotten core will no doubt be gracefully shaped into a clean and solemn judgment of guilty. A jury of twelve respectable, thoughtful men and women will rise as one to render that verdict, imposing the law of a good and valiant people on an evil man.