Blueblood (2 page)

I flipped the photo over, revealing another. A white guy in a tank top and shorts, young and in good shape. Red hair. Pale. Freckles. Or maybe it was blood. Superman tattoo on his left deltoid—a little ironic. Like the first body, he looked like he’d gone through a thresher, with arms out of joint and a lot of blood-letting. The photo had been taken from near his feet, so I couldn’t make out details, but two small, quarter-sized black dots in the side of his head testified to more gunshot wounds. His fingers were broken and mangled.

I turned that one over. Beneath, a third scene, a third body. Or fourth, counting Danny Garcia. Like the first, this was a black man, sprawled on a blacktop parking lot or road. There wasn’t much context, but comparing him to a nearby car door, he was enormous, maybe six and a half feet tall. Two-seventy, two-eighty? He was fully dressed, sporting jeans and a University of Maryland polo shirt. Blood was hard to discern against his ink-black skin and the asphalt. Unlike the others, he hadn’t been beaten. I couldn’t see evidence of a gunshot, but on a body that big, it could be anywhere.

“Bloch, I don’t want to look at this,” I said. But I cycled through the pictures again. I could feel Bloch’s eyes on me as I peered at the glossies, closer this time. Not surprisingly, I’d focused on details at first glance. Looking for setting, characteristics, gunshot wounds. I shuffled back and forth between the three photos several times, then added Danny’s, checked, and glanced up. “The beatings. They’re crazy. Vicious. Faces broken apart. Arms and hands and feet twisted, pulled.”

Bloch nodded.

“Except for that last one,” I said. “That one’s odd man out.”

“Maybe. But for the rest, they’re the same. It’s the beatings. They were all pre- and post-mortem, or so the coroners tell me.”

“Coroners? Plural?”

He reached over the table and flipped the stack over so that I was looking at the first body again. “Terrence Witherspoon. MPDC beat cop, First District.”

“PSA?”

“One-oh-six.”

I grimaced. One of the worst in Southeast DC. “Okay.”

He flipped to the next photo. “Brady Torres, Arlington PD.” Flip. “Isaac Okonjo. Montgomery County Sheriff’s department, Maryland.”

I felt a twist in my gut that had nothing to do with the coffee. “Danny Garcia. MPDC Major Narcotics Bureau.”

Bloch nodded, looking at me with eyes like twin lumps of coal. “You see it?”

“I see it,” I said, but not liking it. “Someone’s killing cops.”

We were both quiet for a minute, looking down at the photos. The noise swelled around us as a small group of businessmen and women swept in to get an afternoon latté, bringing a wash of spring air in with them that seemed out of synch with what Bloch and I were talking about. The scenes of death seemed more appropriate for the moldering back of the coffee shop than the scent of flowers from a late May morning. The group chatted and laughed about some dust-up at the office, then left in a swirl of coffee and perfume.

“You heard about these through HIDTA?” I asked, once the noise had subsided to a more comfortable murmur.

“More or less,” he said. “When Danny was killed, I couldn’t find what he was working on, like I told you. But his killing wasn’t random. No one does that kind of damage over a mugging. So I started to ask around through my connections with HIDTA. Anyone heard about random killings, especially with an M.O. like this?”

“And these came back?”

“Not at first,” Bloch said. “I wasn’t looking for cop killings, I was just working backwards from the M.O. The beating, the weapons, ballistics. But nothing came up. Eventually, these did, but I didn’t really look too close at first. No pattern. Only one cop was MPDC and none of them worked Vice. Only Torres was even close.”

“What was he?”

“Arlington gang detail. MLA, La Eme, Aryan Nation.”

“Then what?”

“I asked for the files on Witherspoon and Torres and that’s all I needed to see. Okonjo’s rolled in after that, but it was just icing on the cake. I already knew I was dealing with a multiple.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Besides the beatings, do you have any other connections? What did ballistics get you?”

“A .22 for Witherspoon and Torres. The slugs weren’t recoverable for Garcia or Okonjo, though they were small caliber.”

“Match on the .22?”

He nodded. “Same gun. Registration went nowhere.”

“What about the beatings?”

“Done with whatever was at hand. The rebar, a chair, a trophy. No other connections. None of these cops worked together or knew each other as far as I can tell.”

I closed the manila folder on the table and squared it with the edge of the table. “As far as you can tell? Isn’t MPDC or Arlington or someone all over this?”

Bloch’s shoulders slumped and I saw for the first time how tired he was. “Someone? Like who? Who looks into multi-jurisdictional cop killings?”

“The FBI, for one.”

“And big-foot each jurisdiction’s own Homicide department? Piss off half a dozen local chiefs? Not on your life.”

“I thought you said HIDTA meant everyone played nice-nice.”

“Sure, for drug busts. Multiple unrelated homicides that, if proven to
be
related, would indicate that no one’s been aware of a serial killer who’s been on the loose for a couple months? Not so much.”

“Really?”

He sighed. “I went there, Singer. Really, I did. I went down to the Bureau office, laid out the pictures just like I did for you.”

“And?”

“And they told me to get back to them when I had more evidence. Wasn’t a serial. Their profilers took a look and said these were vanilla, on-the-job ‘events.’”

“And the victims’ departments?”

He shrugged. “They’ll take the info I give them and they’ll cooperate if it’s in the best interests of
their
case, but no one wants to take on all of these murdered cops at once. They’ll spare no expense to track down the guy who killed their own. But work overtime for another department? Sure, if they get to it.”

“Are you telling me you’ve been doing this on your own?” I asked, incredulous.

“You got it,” Bloch said. “Funny, huh? You and I can see it, plain as day. And maybe they can, too. But no one else wants to touch it.”

“So, they’re all handling just their own department’s murder? But nothing else?”

“While there’s a guy out there, offing cops,” Bloch said, nodding. “And he’s got his pick of ten or twelve different districts to do it in. None of which will cooperate with each other.”

I blew out a breath. “I think I see where I come in.”

Bloch gave me a weary smile. “I figured you would. Once I caught on I was being stonewalled everywhere, I started asking around, seeing if anyone would take this up as a hobby, do the leg work for me. I can’t do this thing by myself.”

“Any takers?”

“What do you think? But I got a couple of nods about you from some guys I know in Homicide. Great track record, a good cop. They said you retired, but still had a hand in.”

“Ah,” I said. “That thing last year was kind of foisted on me, Bloch. I didn’t ask for it.”

“I get that. I didn’t ask for this, either, you know? But sometimes things come looking for you. What am I supposed to do with this—walk away, act like everyone else? What happens next week or next month or next year when I hear about another cop getting shot? Send a memo? I owe Danny more than that. I owe these other cops more than that.”

I looked at Bloch. I didn’t need the rah-rah, brothers-in-arms spiel. But he had a point. When you see something’s broken, you fix it. Just because it isn’t any of your business doesn’t mean it’s less wrong. Or any less your responsibility to do what you can to help. Even if I didn’t already have debts to pay in that regard, I knew about this now. And that meant I should do something about it.

I held out a hand. “Let’s see those files.”

Chapter Two

If the Charles E. Smith auditorium seemed like a university basketball arena converted into a semi-respectable graduation hall, it’s because that’s exactly what it was. The George Washington University staff had made a valiant effort to make the place exude the kind of storied tradition that universities are supposed to have on graduation day. They’d draped flowing royal-blue sashes over everything and portraits of the Father of Our Country gazing serenely down on us, but I was still sitting in a fold-down bleacher seat with my knees touching the back of the row in front of me and bumping elbows with my neighbors on either side. At six-three, I’m not exactly NBA material but I would’ve had to saw my legs off mid-calf to fit. I wondered for maybe the thousandth time why makers of auditoriums gave each seat just one armrest, as if every person in the place only wanted to be comfortable half the time.

“Which one is yours?” asked the woman to my left. Our elbows had been fencing over our shared armrest for the last twenty minutes. She was stout, about fifty years old, with short, burnt-orange hair the color of nothing found in nature. A chunky man I took to be her husband sat on her other side. He was scowling and his arms were crossed so tightly that his hands were jammed into his armpits. His suit strained over his chest and belly like he’d been blown up by a tire pump.

“Uh, mine is the black speck in the…seventh row. In section H,” I said, trying not to squint.

“Oh, she’s in Arts and Sciences?”

“They’re all in Arts and Sciences, Marie,” the man said without looking at her. “That’s what this is, the graduate school of Arts and Sciences.”

Marie smiled, undeterred by her husband’s scorn. “Our Kenny is graduating with a master’s degree in English.”

“That’s swell,” I said.

“He’ll be living at home until he’s forty,” the man groused.

“And yours? Is she getting her master’s degree, too?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “In Gender Studies.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Marie said. “What will she do with that?”

“Beg pardon?”

“What kind of job can she get with that? With a degree in Gender Studies?”

I considered. “She’s leaning towards counseling, law, social work, I think. The world is her oyster.”

The man snorted. “Kids pull their careers out of a hat, don’t even know what the hell they want to do.”

I gazed out over the mass of black gowns. “Her mother was murdered by a stalker when she was a little girl. She was sleeping next door at the time. The same guy kidnapped and almost killed her twelve years later. That’s probably what prompted her decision to help other women.”

The armrest was mine for the remainder of the afternoon.

. . .

I caught up with Amanda two hours later, after listening to the commencement speaker, the Big Cheese of some Big Corporation. He droned on about the Big Profits his company had earned and the Big Decisions he’d made before he remembered he was speaking at a commencement and should probably give the graduates some value. He wrapped up with ten tips for success. In my head, I named them the Ten Big Cheese Tips, which made me smile and got me through the rest of the ceremony with my sanity intact. We all clapped politely, suffered through five more speakers, and then the graduates crossed the stage. Some sleep-walked, others sprinted, but every one of their faces were split wide with smiles. We clapped some more and then all five thousand of us stood and tried to find each other on the basketball court at the same time.

I’m a trained investigator, so it only took me the better part of an hour to find the object of my search in a corner of the auditorium. Amanda was chatting with a half-dozen other student-types. Two, like her, wore graduation gowns. The others were dressed in street clothes. One, Jay, I’d met before and waved as I walked up. Amanda turned around.

“Marty!” she said and gave me a hug like she was trying to squeeze me in two. She was slim, but I’d seen her carry a backpack that would’ve bent me over double. In heels she could almost look me in the eye. I hugged back and smiled.

“Congrats, kid. You made it.”

Her face was radiant. “Thanks, Marty. Some days I didn’t think it was going to happen. And this is the easy one. Tack on five more years for a Ph.D.”

“Then you teach for a year and you’re old enough to retire?” I asked.

“Hey,” Jay said. “I’ll only be twenty-eight when I get my doctorate.”

“You say that now,” Amanda said. “Wait until it’s just you and your dissertation staring you in the face. You’ll find all kinds of reasons to put it off.”

“I’ll knock that sucka out in six months,” Jay said, doing a flabby one-two combination into the air. The group, almost as one, burst into laughter. He looked equal parts surprised and offended. “What?”

“Jay,” a short girl with a butch hair cut said. “You haven’t finished a paper on time since grade school. You’ll probably be ABD until you die.”

I quirked an eyebrow at Amanda. “ABD?”

“All But Dissertation,” she said. “Your required classes are done and only the writing is left, but fewer than half finish. It’s the most dreaded acronym in higher education.”

“Ah,” I said. “Kind of like DOA?”

“Yes,” she said, then tilted her head. “Exactly like that, actually.”

I nodded. “Say, I’ve been wondering. If a guy gets a Master of Arts degree does this make you a Mistress of Arts?”

“God,” one of the girls in a graduation gown said, rolling her eyes.

“It’s okay, Miranda,” Amanda said. “He’s just trying to get my goat. His macho male id reacts instinctively against the thought of someone getting an advanced degree in Gender Studies, so he pokes fun at it, trying to diminish the importance of the degree in order to bolster his own frail ego. Childish, really.”

“Marty sees button, Marty pushes button,” I said. “What are you crazy kids up to now?”

“There’s a lunch and reception, then a happy hour, then a party at the dean’s house.”

“Followed by parties at everyone else’s houses?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “Are you up for it?”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve got some work to do for a friend. But pick a night sometime this week. I want to take you out to dinner. Bring Jay or whoever, too. If they’re not DOA.”