The Night Gardener

CHAPTER 11

As day-shift workers arrived for their jobs at the animal shelter and the printing company, homicide police and technicians from the Mobile Crime Lab worked around the body of a young man lying in the community garden at Oglethorpe Street and Blair Road. Uniformed officers and yellow tape kept the workers, speculating among themselves and calling friends and loved ones from their cells, away from the scene.

Detective Bill 'Garloo' Wilkins, working the midnight-to-eight at the VCB, was on the tail end of it when the call came in from the dispatcher after the anonymous tip. He drove to the community garden with Detective George Loomis, a slope-shouldered man who had grown up in the Section Eights near the Frederick Douglass home in Southeast. Wilkins would be the primary on the case.

As Wilkins and Loomis worked the scene, Gus Ramone arrived at the VCB offices for the start of his eight-to-four. Rhonda Willis, who liked to come in early, have her coffee, and map out her day, was already at her desk. As usual, they discussed their plans for the shift, as well as any violent-crime activity that had occurred since they had last been on. The unidentified gunshot victim found off Blair Road was mentioned, along with the fact that Garloo Wilkins had caught the case. Ramone had the arraignment of William Tyree on his plate, and Rhonda was to testify in a drug burn case she had closed several months earlier. Ramone wanted to try and catch an interview with a potential witness to a homicide before she went off to her job at the McDonald's over by Howard U. Rhonda agreed to go with him, then ride together over to the Judiciary Center on 4th and E.

The potential wit, a youngish woman named Trashon Morris, turned out to be less than helpful. She had been seen in a club on the fringes of Shaw, hanging closely with a young man who was wanted in a killing later that same night. The young man, Dontay Walker, had been beefing at the club, witnesses said, with a guy who was later found shot to death inside his Nissan Altima on 6th, south of U. Walker was being sought in connection with the killing and so far was in the wind. But when Ramone questioned Trashon Morris, catching her on the way out the door of her apartment building, she could not remember any kind of argument in the club or anything else, seemingly, about that night.

'I don't recall it,' said Trashon Morris, never looking Ramone in the eye nor acknowledging the presence of Rhonda Willis. 'I don't know nothin about no beef.' Morris had extra-long, loudly painted fake nails, large hoop earrings, and big hair.

'Had you been drinking much that evening?' said Ramone, trying to determine her credibility in the unlikely event that she would regain her memory and be called to testify in court.

'Yeah, I'd been drinkin. I was in a club; what you think?'

'How much?' said Rhonda.

'Much as I wanted to,' said Morris. 'It was a weekend and I'm twenty-one.'

'People say you left the club with Dontay Walker.'

'Who?'

'Dontay Walker.'

'People gonna say what they want to.' Morris glanced at her watch. 'Look, I gotta get to work.'

'You got any idea where Dontay's been layin up since that night?' said Ramone.

'Who?'

Ramone gave her his card with his contact information. 'You see Dontay again, or you hear from him, or something comes to mind that you forgot to tell us, give me a call.'

'I gotta get to work,' said Morris, and walked the sidewalk toward the Metro station down the block.

'Cooperative type,' said Ramone as he and Rhonda went to an unmarked, maroon, MPD-issue Impala parked along the curb.

'One of those ghetto fabulous girls,' said Rhonda. 'My sons better not think about bringing home something looking like that, 'cause you know I'll hit the reject button.'

'She's just mad because her mother named her Trashon.'

'You name it, it's gonna become it,' said Rhonda. 'One of those self-fulfilling prophecies you hear about.'

At the Judiciary Center, Ramone and Rhonda Willis checked in on the first floor to fill out their court appearance worksheets, then went up to the ninth floor, which housed the Assistant U.S. Attorneys, the federal prosecutors who worked cases from arrest to trial and sometimes conviction. Many homicide police were standing in the halls and sitting in the offices of the prosecutors, a common scene. Some wore nice suits, some wore cheap ones, and others were dressed in sweats. They were there to testify, shoot the shit, report progress on cases, and make overtime. On certain days there were more homicide police in these offices than there were at the VCB or on the street.

Ramone found prosecutor Ira Littleton in his office. They discussed the Tyree case and the arraignment, a conversation that consisted of Littleton lecturing Ramone on courtroom procedure and etiquette. Ramone allowed the younger man to have his say. When he was done, Ramone went to the corner office of Margaret Healy, a hard-boiled, smart redhead in her midforties who headed the team of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Her desk was overflowing with paper, and paperwork littered the floor. He dropped into one of her big comfortable chairs.

'Heard you made quick work out of that stabbing,' said Healy.

'That was Bo Green,' said Ramone.

'It's a team sport,' said Healy, using one of her favorite expressions.

'Congratulations on the Salinas brothers,' said Ramone. The recent conviction of two sibling members of MS- 13, a drawn-out murder case, had made a splash in the press due to the growing Hispanic gang problem in and around D.C.

'It was a nice win. I was proud of Mary Yu on that one. She took it all the way.'

Ramone nodded and pointed his chin in the direction of a photo on the prosecutor's desk. 'How's the family?'

'I suspect they're good. Maybe I'll take some time off this year and find out.'

An administrative assistant knocked on Healy's open door and told Ramone that he had a call from his wife. Ramone figured she had been trying him on his cell, but the service was spotty in the building. And if she was being that persistent, it had to be some kind of emergency. Alana or Diego, he thought immediately, and he got up out of his chair.

'Excuse me, Margaret.'

He took the call in an unoccupied office. He listened to Regina's emotional but controlled voice. Out in the hall, he saw Rhonda Willis bullshitting with a couple of detectives. He told her about his call and where he was going.

'Want some company?' said Rhonda.

'Thought you had to testify.'

'I been informed that I'm not on today's menu. What about the arraignment?'

'I'll come back for it,' said Ramone. 'C'mon, I'll bend your ear on the way out.'

Marita Bryant saw the squad and plainclothes cars arrive at the Johnson family house across the street from the vantage point of her home in Manor Park. She watched as the large bald-headed detective entered the house, and she kept watching as Terrance Johnson pulled up in his Cadillac, parked it sloppily, and ran to his front door. An ambulance arrived shortly thereafter. Helena Johnson, Terrance's wife and the mother of their children, Asa, fourteen, and Deanna, eleven, was carried from the house on a stretcher and taken away. Terrance came out with her, visibly distraught, staggering as he walked across his lawn. He stopped and spoke to his next-door neighbor, a retiree named Colin Tohey, and was then pulled along by the detective, who helped him into the plainclothes car. The two of them drove off. Marita Bryant left her house for the Johnson yard, where Colin Tohey still stood, somewhat shaken. Tohey told Bryant that the dead body of Asa Johnson had been found in that big community garden off Blair Road. Helena had collapsed upon hearing the news, necessitating the ambulance. Bryant, who had a daughter the same age as Asa and was familiar with Asa's crowd, immediately called Regina Ramone. She knew that Diego was friends with Asa, and thought Regina would want to be informed. Also, she was curious, as Gus would surely have some further information regarding the death. Regina had not yet heard the news and said that she did not think Gus had, either, otherwise he would have phoned. She ended the call while Marita Bryant was still talking and immediately tried to locate Gus.

'Your son was tight with this boy?' said Rhonda Willis, riding shotgun in the stripped-down, four-banger Impala, the most basic model Chevrolet produced. She and Ramone were going up North Capitol Street.

'Diego has a lot of friends,' said Ramone. 'Asa wasn't his main boy, but he was someone Diego knew fairly well. They played football on the same team last year.'

'He gonna take it hard?'

'I don't know. When my father died, he felt it because he saw the grief hit me. But this kind of thing is wrong in a different way. It's just unnatural.'

'Who's going to tell him?'

'Regina will pick him up at school and give him the news. I'll call him later. Then I'll see him tonight.'

'Y'all talk about the Lord much in your house?' said Rhonda.

'Not too much,' said Ramone.

'This one of those times you should.'

Rhonda's adult life had been challenging, what with having to raise four boys on her own. The God thing definitely worked for her. It was her rock and it was her crutch, and she liked to talk about it. Ramone did not.

'What's in your gut?' said Rhonda, cutting the silence in the car.

'Nothing,' said Ramone.

'You knew this boy. You know his family.'

'His father and mother are straight. They kept a close watch on him.'

'Anything else?'

'His father's kind of an unyielding guy. Athletics, the classroom, everything… He rode his son pretty hard.'

'Hard enough to push the kid someplace bad?'

'I don't know.'

"Cause that can do as much damage as not bein there at all.'

'Right.'

'You ever have any kind of indication or feeling that the boy was into something wrong?'

'No. That doesn't mean he wasn't. But I got no reason to think he was.'

Rhonda looked across the bench. 'Did you like him?'

'He was a good kid. He was fine.'

'I'm sayin, how did you feel about him? You know, how a man looks at a boy and sizes him up?'

Ramone thought of the times he'd seen Asa on the football field, making half-assed tackles, sometimes moving away from the man running with the ball. He thought of Asa entering Ramone's house, not addressing him or Regina directly, not greeting them at all unless he had to. He knew exactly what Rhonda was going for. Sometimes you'd look at a boy and see him as a man, and you'd think, He's going to be a tough one, or a strong one, or he's going to be successful in anything he does. Sometimes you'd look at a young man and think, I'd be proud if he were my son. Asa Johnson was not one of those boys.

'He lacked heart,' said Ramone. 'That's about the only thing that comes to mind.'

There was something else Ramone had felt sometimes, catching a kind of weakness in Asa's eyes. Like he could be got or took.

'Least I got an honest opinion out of you.'

'Doesn't mean anything,' said Ramone, mildly ashamed.

'It's more than Garloo's gonna see. 'Cause you know he'll look at that boy and think what he's gonna think, automatic. And I'm not even sayin that Bill's like that. He's just… The man's got a dull mind. He likes to take those mental shortcuts.'

'I just need to get up there and get a look at things.'

'If we ever get there.'

'They give all the real vehicles to the regular police,' said Ramone.

'We do get the bitch cars,' said Rhonda.

Ramone punched the gas, but it only made the engine knock.

The crowd at the crime scene had thinned of spectators and grown with officials and one print reporter by the time Ramone and Rhonda Willis arrived. They found Wilkins and Loomis standing alongside a nondescript Chevy. Nearby, a white uniformed officer leaned against a squad car. Wilkins had a notebook in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other.

'The Ramone,' said Wilkins. 'Rhonda.'

'Bill,' said Ramone.

Ramone scanned the geography: the commercial structures, the railroad tracks, and the backs of the homes and the church on the residential street running east-west on a rise at the far edge of the garden.

'Got a call from the office that you were coming out,' said Wilkins. 'You knew the decedent?'

'Friend of my son's,' said Ramone.

'Asa Johnson?'

'If it's him.'

'He was wearing one of those middle school photo IDs on a chain around his neck. His father identified the body.'

'Is the father here?'

'Hospital. His wife lost it completely. The father's there with her now. He wasn't looking so good himself.'

'Anything yet?' said Ramone.

'Kid was shot in the temple, exit wound at the crown. We found the slug. Flattened, but we'll get a caliber on it.'

'No gun.'

'Uh-uh.'

'Casings?'

'No.'

'What're you feeling?'

'Nothin, yet.'

Ramone knew, as did Rhonda and Loomis, that Wilkins had already formed a likely scenario and eliminated some of the other possibilities. The first assumption that Wilkins had made, seeing a black teenager with a fatal gunshot wound, was 'drug thing.' A murder involving business, what some D.C. cops openly called 'society cleanses.' Darwinism put in motion by those in the life.

Wilkins's thoughts would then have gone to murder in the commission of an armed robbery. Except what would a kid this age have, in this middle-income part of town at best, that could be of any real value? The North Face coat, the one-hundred-dollar sneaks… but these were still on him. So this scenario was doubtful. He could have been robbed for a roll of money or his stash. But that would have brought it back to a drug thing.

Maybe, Wilkins imagined, the victim had been hitting some other yo's girlfriend. Or looked at her like he wanted to.

Or it could have been a suicide. But black kids didn't do themselves, thought Wilkins, so that was not likely. Plus, no gun. The kid couldn't have punched his own time card, then disposed of the gun after he was dead.

'What do you think, Gus?' said Wilkins. 'Was this kid in the life?'

'Not to my knowledge,' said Ramone.

Bill Wilkins had acquired the nickname 'Garloo' because of his massive size, pointed ears, and bald dome. Garloo was the name of a toy monster popular with boys in the early to mid-'60s, and Wilkins had received the tag from one of the few veterans old enough to recall the loin-clothed creature from his youth. It suited Wilkins. He breathed through his mouth. His posture was hulking, his walk heavy. He appeared to those who first met him to be half man and half beast. The FOP bar kept a construction paper medallion, strung with yarn, with the name 'Garloo' crudely crayoned across its face, which Wilkins wore around his neck when he was drunk. In the evenings, he could often be found at the FOP bar.

Wilkins had six years to go on his twenty-five and, having lost the desire or expectation for promotion, was left with only the diluted ambition to hold on to his rank and position at VCB. To do so, he would need to maintain a reasonable closure rate. To him, difficult cases were curses, not challenges.

Ramone liked Wilkins well enough. Other homicide police went to him frequently with questions regarding their PCs, as Wilkins had outstanding computer literacy, facility, and knowledge, and was always ready to help. He was honest and a fairly decent guy. A little cynical, but in that he was not alone. As far as his investigative skills went, he had, as Rhonda said, a dull mind.

'Any witnesses?' said Ramone.

'None yet,' said Wilkins.

'Who called it in?'

'Anonymous,' said Wilkins. 'There's a tape…'

Ramone looked over at the uniformed police officer leaning against his 4D squad car within earshot of their conversation. He was on the tall side, lean, and blond. On the front quarter panel of his Ford were the car numbers, which Ramone idly read, a habit from his own days on patrol.

'We're fixing to canvass,' said Wilkins, drawing Ramone's attention back to the scene.

'That's McDonald Place up there, isn't it?' said Ramone, nodding to the residential street on the edge of the garden.

'We'll be knocking on those doors first,' said Wilkins.

'And that church.'

'Saint Paul's Baptist,' said Rhonda.

'We'll get it,' said Loomis.

'They got night workers in the animal shelter, right?' said Ramone.

'We do have some ground to cover,' said Wilkins.

'We can help,' said Ramone, easing into it.

'Welcome to the party,' said Wilkins.

'I'm gonna get a look at the body,' said Ramone, 'you don't mind.'

Ramone and Rhonda Willis began to walk away. As they passed the nearby squad car, the uniformed officer pushed off it and spoke.

'Detectives?'

'What is it?' said Ramone, turning to the face the patrolman.

'I was just wondering if any witnesses have come forward.'

'None as of yet,' said Rhonda.

Ramone read the nameplate pinned on the uniformed officer's chest, then looked into his blue eyes. 'You got a function here?'

'I'm on the scene to assist.'

'Then do it. Keep the spectators and any media away from the body, hear?'

'Yessir.'

As they walked into the garden, Rhonda said, 'A little short and to the point, weren't you, Gus?'

'The details of this investigation are none of his business. When I was in uniform, I never would have thought to have been so bold like that. When you were around a superior, you kept your mouth shut, unless you got asked to speak.'

'Maybe he's just ambitious.'

'Another thing I never thought of. Ambition.'

'But they went ahead and promoted you anyway.'

The body was not far in, lying in a plot off a narrow path. They stopped well short of the corpse, mindful of altering the crime scene with their presence. A technician from the Mobile Crime Lab, Karen Krissoff, worked around Asa Johnson.

'Karen,' said Ramone.

'Gus.'

'Get your impressions yet?' said Ramone, meaning any footprints that could be found in the soft earth.

'You can come in,' said Krissoff.

Ramone came forward, got down on his haunches, and eyeballed the body. He was not sickened, looking at the corpse of his son's friend. He had seen too much death for physical remains to affect him that way, and had come to feel that a body was nothing but a shell. He was merely sad, and somewhat frustrated, knowing that this thing could not be undone.

When Ramone was finished looking at Asa and the immediate area around him, he got up on his feet and heard himself grunt.

'Powder burns prevalent,' said Rhonda, stating what she had observed from seven feet away. 'It got done close in.'

'Right,' said Ramone.

'Kinda warm out to be wearing that North Face, too,' said Rhonda.

Ramone heard her but did not comment. He was looking out to the road, past the spectators and the uniforms and the techs. A black Lincoln Town Car was parked on Oglethorpe, and a man in a black suit leaned against the passenger door of the car. The man was tall, blond, and thin. He locked eyes with Ramone for a moment, then pushed himself off the vehicle, walked around to the driver's side, and got under the wheel. He executed a three-point turn and drove away.

'Gus?' said Rhonda.

'Coat musta been fresh,' said Ramone. 'I'm assuming he got it recently and was showing it off. Couldn't wait to wear it.'

Rhonda Willis nodded. 'That's how kids do.'