Homicide - David Simon

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for a blood trail or other trace evidence and found nothing. Edgerton and Ceruti had even climbed up to the single-story rear landings of nearby rowhouses to check old pieces of clothesline for comparison with the ligature marks on the child’s neck, but none of the men had given any systematic thought to the idea of rooftops. Only after a dozen visits to the scene did the idea begin to shape itself in Edgerton’s mind and on Sunday morning, three days after the discovery of the body, the detective began putting the theory to paper.

      Edgerton taped two sheets of letter paper together and divided the space into sixteen long rectangles, each representing one of the sixteen adjoining rowhouses on the north side of Newington Avenue. In the center of the diagram, behind the rectangle marked 718, Edgerton crudely drew a small stickman to mark the location of the body. Then he indicated the location of the fire stairs at 718, extending from the rear yard to a second-floor landing and then the roof, as well as other fire stairs and ladders on other properties.

      Ten of the sixteen rowhouses had direct access to the roof from inside. Latonya Wallace could have been lured into one of the homes on the north side of Newington, molested and murdered, then carried out one of the second-floor windows onto the flat, tar-covered landings above the rear additions. From there, using the fire stairs, the killer could have carried the body to the third-floor roofs, walked a short distance across the common roof and then descended the metal stair into the yard of 718 Newington. That theory alone could explain why the body was dumped near the back door in the fenced yard of 718 and why the killer did not take the lesser risk of leaving the body in the common alley, or a more accessible yard. From the ground, 718 Newington made no sense. But from the roof, 718 Newington was—by virtue of its secure, metal stair—one of the most accessible yards in the block.

      On that same Sunday, Edgerton, Pellegrini and Landsman explored the tops of the Newington rowhouses, looking for evidence and trying to determine which houses had direct access to the roofs. The detectives checked the roof caps of each house and found all to be either sealed with tar or otherwise secure. But from the rear second-floor rooms of ten homes, an occupant could have crawled from the window and taken a fire stair or ladder to the roof.

      Edgerton marked those homes—700, 702, 708, 710, 716, 720, 722, 724, 726 and 728—on a steno pad, noting as well that 710 and 722 were vacant buildings that had already been checked by detectives. He crossed those houses off, as well as 726 Newington, which had been renovated recently into one of those skylight-and-track-lighting yuppie wonders, the block’s sole concession to a decade-long campaign to attract homeowners and rebuild Reservoir Hill’s slum properties. That house was being prepared for sale and was unoccupied, leaving seven viable rowhouses with access to the roof.

      On Tuesday, the new theory was granted even more credibility when Rich Garvey, reviewing the color photos from the death scene, noticed the black smudges on the child’s yellow print pants.

      “Hey, Tom” he said, calling Pellegrini over to his desk. “Look at this black shit on her pants. Does that look like the usual kind of dirt to you?”

      Pellegrini shook his head.

      “Christ, whatever the hell that stuff is, the lab ought to be able to tell you something. It looks like it might be oil-based.”

      Roofing tar, thought Pellegrini. He walked the photograph down to the fifth-floor crime laboratory to check it against the child’s clothes, which were being examined for hairs, fibers and other trace evidence. A chemical breakdown of the jet black smudges could take weeks or even months and might only yield the class characteristics of the substance. Pellegrini asked whether it could be determined if the stuff was petroleum-based or if it was at least consistent with roofing tar. Yes, he was told after a preliminary examination by the chemists, probably so, although a full analysis would take time.

      Later that day, Edgerton and Pellegrini finished comparing the rooftop diagram with the results of the canvass of the 700 block of Newington, checking the seven likely rowhouses against the occupant lists and criminal histories. The detectives concentrated on those addresses where male occupants either lived alone or were not entirely accounted for on the days of the child’s disappearance, along with those houses occupied by males with criminal careers. Among confirmed alibis, female residents and otherwise law-abiding citizens, the process of elimination took them quickly to 702 Newington.

      Not only was it home to the block’s most prolific collection of derelicts, criminals and dopers, but a review of incident reports in the sex offense unit turned up an intriguing item from October 1986, when a six-year-old girl was removed from the house by social workers following indications of sexual abuse. No charges had resulted from the report, however. As for the house itself, 702 Newington had a second-floor tar landing with a wooden ladder that extended to the third-floor roof, and detectives noted during the Sunday search that the rear second-floor windows appeared to have been pushed open recently. A metal screen had been partially cut away from its frame, allowing access to the landing. Moreover, at the rear edge of the third-floor roof, Pellegrini found what seemed to be a fresh imprint in the tar from a dull object, perhaps one covered by a fabric.

      On the basis of their criminal histories, six older male occupants of 702 Newington and other residents of the block were brought to homicide on the day the body of the child was discovered—all part and parcel of the preliminary canvass. In those early interviews, the men offered nothing to arouse suspicion, but neither did they endear themselves to the homicide unit. Before being interviewed, the occupants of 702 Newington spent a full hour sitting in the fishbowl, laughing uproariously and challenging each other to perform feats of flatulence.

      That performance seems almost understated now, as the detectives work their way through the rubble of 702. Once a stately Victorian home, the structure is now nothing more than a gutted shell without electricity or running water. Plates of food, piles of abandoned clothing and diapers, plastic buckets and metal pots filled with urine clutter the corners of the house. The stench of the squalor becomes more oppressive with every room, until both uniforms and detectives are going downstairs at regular intervals for a cigarette and a breath of winter air on the front steps. In every room, the occupants accommodated for the absence of running water by urinating in a communal container. And in every room, paper and plastic plates laden with food have been deposited in layers, one on top of the other, until a week’s feedings can be traced in archaeologic sequence. Cockroaches and water beetles bolt in every direction when debris is moved, and despite the heat in the upper floors of the house, no detective is willing to shed an overcoat or sport jacket for fear that the garment will be overrun.

      “If this is where she was killed,” says Edgerton, moving through a room given over to discarded food and wet, mildewed rags, “imagine what her last hours were like.”

      Edgerton and Pellegrini, and then Landsman, arriving later from Whitelock Street, begin to search in the rear second-floor bedroom that belongs to the older man suspected in the earlier rape of the six-year-old. Brown, Ceruti and the others work their way through the third floor and front rooms. Behind them come the lab techs, taking photographs of each room and any items recovered, dusting for fingerprints on any surface suggested by a detective, and administering leuco malachite tests to any stain that vaguely resembles blood.

      It is slow going, made worse by the incredible amount of clutter and filth. The back bedrooms alone—those with direct access to the roof—take nearly two hours to cover, with the detectives moving each item individually until the rooms are slowly emptied and the furniture overturned. In addition to bloody clothes or bedsheets and a serrated knife, they are searching for the star-shaped gold earring, nothing less than the proverbial needle in the haystack. From the rear bedroom in which the window screen had been knocked out, they take two pairs of stained denim pants and a sweatshirt that shows positive on a leuco test, as well as a sheet with similar stains. These discoveries prod them to continue through the early morning hours, turning over rotting mattresses and moving battered dressers with broken drawers, in a methodical search for a buried crime scene.

      The search and seizure raid that began a little before midnight stretches to three, then four, then five o’clock, until only Pellegrini and Edgerton are left standing and even the lab techs are beginning to balk. Dozens of latent prints have already been lifted from doorways and walls, dresser tops

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