LITMIR.BIZ

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And although half the shift is now snaking through the neighborhood in search of information, it will be Pellegrini alone who stands or falls with the case.

      Months later, the detective will remember that morning on Reservoir Hill with both regret and frustration. He will find himself wishing that for just a few minutes he could have cleared the yard behind 718 Newington of detectives and uniforms and lab techs and ME attendants. He will sit at his desk in the annex office and imagine a still, silent tableau, with himself at the edge of the rear yard, seated in a chair, perhaps on a stool, examining the body of Latonya Wallace and its surroundings with calm, rational precision. Pellegrini will remember, too, that in those early moments he had deferred to the veteran detectives, Landsman and Edgerton, abdicating his own authority in favor of men who had been there many times before. That was understandable, but much later Pellegrini will become frustrated at the thought that he was never really in control of his case.

      But in the crowded kitchen that morning, with Pervis leaning into the doorway, Pellegrini’s discomfort is nothing more than a vague feeling with neither voice nor reason behind it. Pellegrini has sketched the scene in his notebook and, along with Landsman and Edgerton, has walked every inch of that yard and much of the alley as well. Fasio has his photos and is already measuring the key distances. Moreover, it is now close to nine. The neighborhood is stirring, and in the bleak light of a February morning, the presence of a child’s body, eviscerated and splayed on wet pavement under a slow drizzle, seems more obscene with each passing moment. Even homicide detectives must live with the natural, unspoken impulse to bring Latonya Kim Wallace in from the rain.

      “Yeah, I think we’re ready,” says Landsman. “What do you think, Tom?”

      Pellegrini pauses.

      “Tom?”

      “No. We’re ready.”

      “Let’s do it.”

      Landsman and Pellegrini follow the morgue wagon back downtown to get a jump on the postmortem while Edgerton and Ceruti pilot separate cars to a drab pillbox of an apartment building on Druid Lake Drive, about three and a half blocks away. Both men drop cigarette butts outside the apartment door, then step quickly to the first-floor landing. Edgerton hesitates before knocking and looks at Ceruti.

      “Lemme take this one.”

      “Hey, it’s all yours, Harry.”

      “You’ll bring her down to the ME, okay?”

      Ceruti nods.

      Edgerton puts his hand to the door and knocks. He pulls out his shield and then inhales deeply at the sound of footsteps inside apartment 739A. The door opens slowly to reveal a man in his late twenties or early thirties, wearing denims and a T-shirt. He acknowledges and accepts the two detectives with a slight nod even before Edgerton can identify himself. The young man steps back and the detectives follow him across the threshold. In the dining room sits a small boy, eating cold cereal and turning the pages of a coloring book. From a back bedroom comes the sound of a door opening, then footsteps. Edgerton’s voice falls close to a whisper.

      “Is Latonya’s mother home?”

      There is no chance to answer. The woman stands in a bathrobe at the edge of the dining room, beside her a young girl, just into her teens perhaps, with the same flawless features as the girl on Newington Avenue. The woman’s eyes, terrified and sleepless, fix on Harry Edgerton’s face.

      “My daughter. You found her?”

      Edgerton looks at her, shakes his head sideways, but says nothing. The woman looks past Edgerton to Ceruti, then to the empty doorway.

      “Where is she? She … all right?”

      Edgerton shakes his head again.

      “Oh God.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      The young girl stifles a cry, then falls into her mother’s embrace. The woman takes the child in her arms and turns toward the dining room wall. Edgerton watches the woman fight a wave of emotion, her body tensing, her eyes closing tight for a long minute.

      The young man speaks. “How did …”

      “She was found this morning,” says Edgerton, his voice barely audible. “Stabbed, in an alley near here.”

      The mother turns back toward the detective and tries to speak, but the words are lost in a hard swallow. Edgerton watches her turn and walk toward the bedroom door, where another woman, the victim’s aunt and the mother of the boy eating cereal, holds out her arms. The detective then turns to the man who opened the door, who, though dazed, still seems to understand and accept the words thrown at him.

      “We’ll need her to go to the medical examiner’s office, for a positive identification. And then, if it’s at all possible, we’d like you all to come to headquarters, downtown. We’re going to need your help now.”

      The young man nods, then disappears into the bedroom. Edgerton and Ceruti stand alone in the dining room for several minutes, awkward and uncomfortable, until the silence is broken by an anguished wail from the back bedroom.

      “I hate this,” says Ceruti softly.

      Edgerton walks over to a set of dining room shelves and picks up a framed photograph of two young girls seated side by side in pink bows and lace, carefully posed before a blue backdrop. Toothy, say-cheeseburger smiles. Every braid and curl in place. Edgerton holds up the photograph for Ceruti, who has slumped into a dining room chair.

      “This,” says Edgerton, looking over the photo, “is what this motherfucker gets off on.”

      The teenage girl closes the bedroom door softly and walks toward the dining room. Replacing the picture frame, Edgerton suddenly recognizes her as the older girl in the photograph.

      “She’s getting dressed now,” the girl says.

      Edgerton nods. “What’s your name?”

      “Rayshawn.”

      “And you’re how old?”

      “Thirteen.”

      The detective looks again at the picture. The girl waits a few moments for another question; when none is forthcoming, she wanders back into the bedroom. Edgerton walks softly through the dining room and living room, then into the apartment’s tiny kitchen. The furnishings are spare, the furniture mismatched, and the living room sofa worn around the edges. But the place is well kept and clean—very clean, in fact. Edgerton notices that most of the shelf space is devoted to family photographs. In the kitchen, a child’s painting—big house, blue sky, smiling child, smiling dog—is taped to the refrigerator door. On the wall is a mimeographed list of school events and parent association meetings. Poverty, perhaps, but not desperation. Latonya Wallace lived in a home.

      The bedroom door opens and the mother, fully dressed and followed by her older daughter, steps into the hallway. She walks wearily through the dining room to the front closet.

      “Ready?” Edgerton asks.

      The woman nods, then pulls her coat from its hanger. Her boyfriend takes his own jacket. The thirteen-year-old hesitates at the closet door.

      “Where’s your coat?” her mother asks.

      “In my room, I think.”

      “Well, go find it,” she says softly. “It’s cold out.”

      Edgerton leads the procession from the apartment, then watches as the mother, boyfriend and sister squeeze into Ceruti’s Cavalier for the slow ride to Penn Street, where a silver gurney will be waiting in a tiled room.

      Meanwhile, on the southwestern edge of Reservoir Hill, Rich Garvey and Bob McAllister are tracing the last movements of Latonya Wallace. A report of the child’s disappearance had been filed by the family about 8:30 on the evening of February 2, two days earlier, but it read like dozens of other reports filed every month in Baltimore. The paperwork had not yet reached homicide, and any investigation had been

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