Read the book: «Soul Murder»

Monday, October 4th. 8:12 a.m.

The police department offered Patrese two weeks’ compassionate leave.

He took two days, and even those didn’t really count, given that they were both at the weekend. So he was back at his desk first thing Monday morning, to the unsurprised but good-natured exasperation of his homicide partner, Mark Beradino.

‘Sheesh, Franco. You don’t want your fortnight, I’ll take it.’

Patrese laughed, thankful that Beradino knew better than to kill him with kindness.

Physically, Beradino was pretty nondescript. Five ten, 180 pounds, hair graying but still pretty much all there, and features which were bang-on regular. He was no Brad Pitt, but nor was he a Michael Moore. You could walk past him in the street without noticing; even if you did notice, you’d have forgotten him five steps later. He’d have made a great spy.

But he was a detective; a hell of a detective, in fact.

As far as Pittsburgh Homicide was concerned, he was practic ally an institution.

He’d been there since the early eighties – most of his clothes looked as though he’d bought them around that time – and he was known on both sides of the law as a good cop. A tough one, sure, one who thought cops should be cops rather than politicians or social workers, but an honest one too. He’d never taken a bribe, never faked evidence, never beaten a suspect up.

Not many cops could say the same.

He and Patrese had been partners for three years – itself a vote of confidence in Patrese’s ability – and in that time they’d become friends. Patrese was a regular guest at the condo in Punxsutawney which Beradino shared with his partner Jesslyn Gedge, a warder at the State Correctional Institute in Muncy. Both Beradino and Jesslyn had been among the mourners in Saint Paul’s.

‘But since you’re here,’ Beradino continued, ‘make yourself useful. We just got a case. Domestic dispute, shots fired, man dead. Zone Five.’

There are six police districts in Pittsburgh, numbered with the complete absence of discernible logic that’s the hallmark of the true bureaucrat. Zone Five covered the north-eastern corner of the city; East Liberty, East End and Homewood.

Nine times out of ten, an incident in Zone Five meant an incident in Homewood.

Homewood was Pittsburgh’s pits, no question. Homicides, aggravated assaults, weapons and narcotics offenses, prostitution arrests; you name it, there were twice as many in Homewood as in any other neighborhood. It was one of the most dangerous places to live in all of Pennsylvania, and that was saying something.

It was half an hour from police headquarters on the North Shore to Homewood. Patrese and Beradino drove there in an unmarked car; no need for lights or sirens, not when the victim was dead and the uniforms had the scene secured.

You could always tell when you were getting close. First came one splash of gang graffiti, then another, and within a couple of blocks these bright squiggles were everywhere: walls, houses, sidewalks, stop signs.

Our turf. Back off.

Then the pockets of young men on street corners, watching sullenly as the cop cruisers came past; then the rows of abandoned buildings, swallowing and regurgitating an endless stream of vagrants, junkies and whores; then the handful of businesses brave or desperate enough to stay: bars, barber shops, convenience stores, fast-food joints.

Wags from out of town liked to call Patrese’s city ‘Shitsburgh’. He usually jumped down their throat when they did – he loved this city – but when it came to Homewood, even Patrese was forced to admit that they had a point.

Tragedy was, it hadn’t always been like this.

A century and a half ago, Homewood had been the place to live. Tycoons like Westinghouse and Frick had kept estates here. Businesses boomed, a trolley system was built, and people couldn’t move in fast enough.

And so it stayed till after the Second World War, when the city planners decided to build the Civic Arena downtown. In doing so they had to displace thousands of people, mainly poor black families, who’d been living in the Lower Hill District nearby. Most of them moved to Homewood; and, sure as sunrise, most of Homewood’s whites upped sticks and left, fleeing to suburbs further out. The few middle-class blacks who could afford to follow them did.

Then came the riots, here as everywhere else during the civil rights era. With the riots came drugs and gangs with names that sounded almost comic: Tre-8s-Perry and Charles, Sugar Top Mob, Down Low Goonies, Reed Rude Boyz, Climax Street.

Nothing comic about what they did, though. Not then, not now. Drugs and guns, guns and drugs. It was a rare gangbanger who died of old age.

Up ahead, Patrese saw a crowd of people spilling from the sidewalk on to the street. A handful of cops held them back. Across the way, two more police cruisers were pulling up. The officers held themselves tense and watchful, as well they might. Cops here were the enemy, seen as agents of an alien and oppressive ruling class rather than impartial upholders of law and order.

Patrese and Beradino got out of the car. A few feet away, a young man in a bandana and baggy pants was talking urgently into his cell.

‘Yo, tell cuz it’s scorchin’ out here today. And this heat ain’t from the sun, you know wha’ I’m sayin’?’

He stared at Patrese as he ended the call, daring Patrese to challenge him. The police call it eye fucking, when an officer and a criminal stare each other down. As a cop, you can’t afford to back away first. You own the streets, not them.

Patrese and Beradino pushed their way through the crowd, flashed their badges at one of the uniforms, and ducked beneath the yellow-and-black stretched taut between two lampposts.

It was a three-story rowhouse, the kind you see all over Homewood, set slightly up from road level with a veranda out front. Every homicide cop with more than a few months’ experience had been inside enough of them to know the layout: kitchen and living room on the ground floor, couple of bedrooms and a bathroom on the floor above, and an attic room with dormer windows under the eaves.

A uniform showed Patrese and Beradino upstairs, briefing them as they climbed.

The deceased was J’Juan Weaver, and he’d been no stranger to the police, the courts, or the prison system. He’d lived in this house with Shaniqua Davenport, his girlfriend, and her (but not his) teenage son Trent.

Shaniqua and Weaver had been running for years, though with more ons and offs than the Staten Island ferry. Before Weaver had been a string of undesirables, who between them had fathered Shaniqua’s three sons. Trent was fifteen, the youngest of them. His two elder half-brothers were both already in jail.

You’d have been a brave man to bet against him following suit, Patrese thought.

The uniform showed them into one of the bedrooms.

It was twelve feet square, with a double bed in the far corner. Weaver was lying next to the bed, his body orientated as if he had been sleeping there, with his head up by the end where the pillows were.

The shot that killed him had entered at the back of his head. Patrese could see clips of white bone and gray brain matter amidst the red mess.

Weaver had been a big man; six two and 200 pounds, all of it muscle. There were a lot of sculpted bodies in Homewood, most all of them from pumping iron while inside. Free gym, three hots and a cot; some of them preferred to be inside than out.

‘Where are the others?’ Beradino asked.

The uniform showed them into the second bedroom.

Shaniqua and Trent, both cuffed, were sitting next to each other on the bed.

Shaniqua was in her late thirties, a good-looking woman with a touch of Angela Bassett about her and eyes which glittered with defiant intelligence.

Trent had a trainer fuzz mustache and a face rounded by puppy fat; too young to have had body and mind irrevocably hardened by life here, though for how long remained to be seen.

They both looked up at Patrese and Beradino.

Beradino introduced himself, and Patrese, then asked: ‘What happened?’

‘He was goin’ for Trent,’ Shaniqua said. ‘He was gonna kill him.’

That was a confession, right there.

‘Why was he going to kill him?’

Silence.

An ambulance pulled up outside, come to remove Weaver’s body. Beradino gestured for one of the uniforms to go and tell the paramedics to wait till they were finished up here.

Trent looked as though he was about to say something, then thought better of it.

‘We got reports of an argument, then shots were fired,’ Patrese said. ‘That right?’

‘That right.’

‘What was the argument about?’

‘Oh, you know.’

‘No, I don’t. What was the argument about?’

‘Same kinda shit couples always argue ’bout.’

‘Like what?’

‘Usual shit. Boring shit.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

Above their heads, the ceiling creaked.

The detectives might have thought nothing of it, had Trent’s eyes not darted heavenwards, involuntary and nervous.

Patrese felt a sudden churning in his gut.

‘Who’s up there?’

‘No one,’ Shaniqua said quickly. Too quickly. ‘Just us.’

One of the uniforms moved as if to investigate. Patrese raised a hand to stay him, and then slipped out of the room himself.

Up the stairs, quiet as he drew his gun; a Ruger Blackhawk, single action revolver, .357 Magnum caliber, four and five-eighths-inch barrel, black checkered grip.

Surprise was on his side. Use it.

He found her, alone, in the attic bedroom.

She was flat on her back; half on the floor, half on a mattress which looked as though it could break new grounds in biological warfare. She was wearing a bra and cut-off denim shorts. The rest of her clothes lay in a pile on top of her right hand, which was hidden from view. Track marks marched like centipedes down the inside of her arms. No wonder Shaniqua and Trent hadn’t wanted the cops to find her.

And she was white.

Homewood wasn’t a place for white folks.

A few of the more enterprising suburban kids might cruise the avenues in late afternoon and buy a few ounces on a street corner before skedaddling back home and selling it on to their friends at a tidy profit – half the amount for twice the price was the usual – but they stayed in their cars the whole time they were in Homewood, if they had any sense. They didn’t walk the streets, and they damn sure didn’t go into the crack dens.

So this one must have been desperate. And Patrese knew what all cops knew; desperate people are often the most dangerous.

‘Hands where I can see ’em,’ he said.

Her body jerked slightly, and instinctively he jumped, his finger tightening on the trigger to within a fraction of the pressure needed for discharge.

Close, he thought, close.

His heart hammered against the inside of his chest.

He was scared. Fear was good; scared cops tended to be live cops.

She opened her eyes and regarded him fuzzily.

Perhaps too fuzzily, he thought.

Was she shamming?

Cops had been killed in these situations before. Places like this, you were on your guard, always. It wasn’t just the guys with tattoos and biceps who knew how to shoot.

‘Lemme see your hands,’ he said again.

She stayed perfectly still, looking at him with an incurious blankness.

This wasn’t the way people tended to react, not when faced with an armed and armored cop. Sure, there were those who were too scared to move, but they tended to be wide-eyed and gabbling.

Not this one.

Patrese felt a drop of sweat slide lazily down his spine.

Why won’t she co-operate?

Two possibilities, he thought.

One, she was so bombed that she didn’t know who she was, who he was, where they were or what he was saying.

Two, she wanted him to think all the above, but she was in fact perfectly lucid, and trying to lull him into a false sense of security.

The pile of clothes next to her moved slightly.

She was rummaging around in it.

‘Hands. Now!’ he shouted, taking a quick step towards her.

A flash of black as she pulled something from the pile, bringing her arm up and across her chest.

Patrese fired, twice, very fast.

She was already prostrate, so she didn’t fall. The only part of her that moved was her arm, flopping back down by her side as her hand spilled what she’d been holding.

A shirt. Black, and cotton, and nothing but a shirt.

Everyone seemed to be shouting: uniforms barking into their radios, paramedics demanding access, Shaniqua bawling out Trent, Trent yelling back at her.

To Patrese, it was all static, white noise. He felt numb, disconnected.

Should have taken the fortnight’s leave, Patrese thought. Should have taken it.

Whether he’d followed procedure, or whether he could have done something different, he didn’t know. There’d be an inquiry, of course; there always was when a police officer shot someone in the line of duty.

But that was for later. Getting down to the station was their immediate priority, both for questioning Shaniqua and for tipping Patrese the hell out of Homewood.

Beradino took charge, quick and efficient as usual. He told the uniforms to stay in the rowhouse with Trent until backup arrived to deal with the girl in the attic. Then he and Patrese took Shaniqua down the stairs and out through the front door.

‘Don’t tell ’em shit, Mama,’ Trent shouted as they left the bedroom.

She looked back at him with an infinite mix of love and pain.

The crowd outside was even bigger than before, and more volatile to boot. They’d heard Patrese’s shots, though they didn’t yet know who’d fired or what he’d hit. When they saw Shaniqua being led away, they began to jeer.

‘I ain’t talkin’ to no white man, you hear?’ Shaniqua yelled. ‘I was born in Trinidad, you know? Black folks don’t kiss honky ass in Trinidad, that’s for damn sure.’ She turned to one of the uniforms on crowd control. ‘And I ain’t talkin’ to no Uncle Tom neither.’

‘Then you ain’t talkin’ to no one, girl,’ someone shouted from the crowd, to a smattering of laughter.

Trent was standing at the window, one of the uniforms next to him. For a moment, he looked not like a gangbanger-in-waiting, but like what he was; a frightened and confused teenager.

‘I’ll be back, my darlin’,’ Shaniqua shouted. ‘I love you for both. Just do good.’