The more the detective learned about the Fish Man, the more the old man seemed capable of a child’s murder. There was nothing definitive in his history, nothing you could point a finger to as evidence that the man was dangerous, if not psychotic. Instead, the old man’s past revealed a fairly ordinary pattern of failed relationships with women. Over weeks, the detective had located and interviewed relatives and old girlfriends and the Fish Man’s former wife-all of whom agreed that the man had problems relating with women. A few even suggested that he had a thing for younger girls, but the stories were short on specifics. Pellegrini also interviewed Latonya Wallace’s playmates again, as well as the children who had worked for the Fish Man or ventured into his shop after school. Sure enough, they had all talked about the Fish Man’s roving eye. He was fresh, they told the detective, you have to be careful around him.
The one woman whom Pellegrini had not been able to find was the alleged victim from the Fish Man’s old rape charge in the 1950s. Pellegrini had pulled those reports off the microfilm and digested every page, but the teenage girl who had supposedly been attacked had never testified in court, and the charges had apparently been dropped. Using everything from the telephone book to social service records, Pellegrini mounted a feverish search to locate the woman, who would now be in her late forties and, if she still lived in Baltimore, probably listed under something other than her maiden name. But his search went nowhere, and finally Pellegrini allowed himself to be interviewed on a local television show so that he could mention the woman’s name and last known address and ask anyone with information about her to come forward or call the homicide unit.
During the broadcast, Pellegrini was careful not to explain the woman’s relationship to the case, nor did he mention the Fish Man by name. But he did acknowledge to the host of the show that he had developed a suspect in the case. Pellegrini immediately realized his mistake when the host turned to the television camera and declared, “City homicide detectives believe they now know who killed little Latonya Wallace…” That brief sortie into the public eye kept Pellegrini writing explanatory memos for days, and the police department was forced to issue a one-paragraph press release noting that while Detective Pellegrini had identified one possible suspect in the murder, other investigators were working on other leads. Worst of all, the long-lost rape victim never did come forward.
Beyond everything else Pellegrini had learned about his best suspect, one item in particular stood out in his mind. It was a coincidence perhaps, but a chilling one, and he had stumbled across it while checking back through a decade of open missing persons reports for young girls. In February, the investigators compared the Latonya Wallace case to other open child murders, but only recently did it occur to Pellegrini that missing persons cases should probably be examined as well. Checking the reports from one 1979 case, he found that a nine-year-old girl had disappeared from her parents’ home on Montpelier Street, never to be seen alive again. And Montpelier Street rang a belclass="underline" Pellegrini had just been out to interview a man whose family had once been partners with the Fish Man in an earlier grocery store. The family had lived on Montpelier Street for the last twenty years; the Fish Man had visited them often.
The old missing persons file contained no photographs, but a couple of days later Pellegrini drove over to the Baltimore Sun building and asked permission to check the newspaper’s photo morgue. The paper still had two pictures of the missing child, both black-and-white copies of her grade school portraits. Standing in the newspaper’s library, Pellegrini looked down at the photographs and felt the strangest sensation. From every angle, the child was a dead ringer for Latonya Wallace.
Maybe that uncanny resemblance was coincidence; maybe each apparently insignificant detail stood alone, unrelated to anything else. But the prolonged research into the Fish Man’s background was enough to convince Pellegrini that he needed to challenge the man one last time. After all, the old man had been given every opportunity to make himself less of a suspect, yet he had failed to do so. Pellegrini reasoned that he owed himself one more crack at the guy. Even as Pellegrini prepared himself for that last interrogation, a tiny paint chip materialized on the dead girl’s stocking, taunting him with another suspect and another direction.
The taunt grows louder when Pellegrini returns from Reservoir Hill and visits the trace evidence lab with fresh samples from the rear door of 716 Newington. Sure enough, Van Gelder has no trouble matching them to the chip found inside the hose. Suddenly, Andrew elbows the Fish Man aside.
A short talk that same afternoon with Andrew’s former wife yields the information that his suspect is still working with the city’s Bureau of Highways, so Pellegrini visits the Fallsway garage, arriving just as the suspect’s shift is ending. Asked if he would mind coming down to the homicide office for further questioning, Andrew becomes visibly upset, almost hostile.
No, he tells Pellegrini. I want a lawyer.
Later that same week, the detective returns to Reservoir Hill with a lab technician for a three-hour search of 716 Newington, concentrating on the basement room where Andrew had his bar and his television and spent most of his free time. Nine months is a long time for evidence to stay put; in the end, Pellegrini leaves with nothing more than a carpet sample that may or may not have something resembling a bloodstain.
Still, Andrew has suddenly started behaving like a suspect with things to hide, and that paint chip seems to Pellegrini like a tiny shard of irrevocable truth: Somewhere along the line, Latonya Wallace got a little portion of Andrew’s back door wedged between her leg and her stocking.
For a brief time, it is hard not to be a little cheered by the developments. But less than a week later Pellegrini makes another trip to Newington Avenue and, as he once again walks that alley, he notices that there are red-orange paint chips from Andrew’s back door all over the adjacent yards. On the last visit, he had noticed right away that the paint on the door had been peeling badly, but now, looking carefully at the pavement behind 716 and 718 and 720 Newington, he sees red-orange chips scattered everywhere by the rain and wind, flashing up at him like fool’s gold. The chip from the tights must have already been on the ground when the little girl’s body was dumped behind 718 Newington. But Pellegrini isn’t quite ready to let go. How, he asks himself, did the chip get inside the stockings? How could it be between the leg and the hose unless it got there after the child had been undressed?
Van Gelder soon provides the answer. Checking the evidence yet again, the lab analyst notes that the stockings are now insideout, as they surely were during the recent examination by Landsman and Pellegrini. Chances are, the tights were rolled off the little girl’s body at the autopsy and had remained inside-out ever since. Though it seemed for a time otherwise, the paint chip had been on the outside of the hose all along.
Given Van Gelder’s explanation, Pellegrini immediately sees the rest of the story for what it is: Andrew became nervous, but who wouldn’t be nervous when questioned yet again by a homicide detective? As for the carpet sample, Pellegrini knows that it doesn’t have a prayer of a chance of coming back positive for human blood. To hell with Andrew, he thinks. He isn’t a suspect, he’s a wasted week.