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Chapter 30
I made sureto say good-bye to Detective Holly at the front door of the police department. I wasn’t about to risk her seeing my rented purple Prius. I thanked her and made sure she had my contact information.
Sitting in the Prius, I flipped through the file Detective Holly had given me. It was very thorough. Using the victim’s cell phone, they’d made lists of everyone Michelle Luna had talked to in the previous month. Just scanning the list, I happened to notice one of the numbers belonged to Justice Steinberg’s wife, Rhea Wellmy-Steinberg. That was going to take some following up. And it gave me some ammo for when I actually spoke to the justice.
I drove south, crossing the Patapsco River, then along Chesapeake Avenue, not far from Interstate 895, into what many people considered the toughest neighborhood in Baltimore: Fairfield. I looked at a hand-drawn map I’d taken from the police file and tried to figure out where her Audi would’ve been parked.
I triangulated my position based on an out-of-business pawnshop opposite a methadone clinic. There were few pedestrians, few parked cars, and a single bus carrying only two passengers rumbled away from me. I pulled the Prius into the spot where Michelle Luna’s was found almost two years ago. I looked up and down the street and saw nothing that was wildly out of place.
The place reminded me of parts of New York in the nineties. Desolate, hopeless, and not interesting enough for investors. But the story of New York was informative. It taught me not to give up on neighborhoods. People were able to turn around New York. I had hope that could happen here as well.
The homicide case file for Michelle Luna was fairly standard. Detective Stephanie Holly had done a good job coordinating forensics and canvassing the neighborhood. No investigative information jumped off the page as pointing to the murderer. But I was confident the clues were in there somewhere.
As I got lost in the case file, I didn’t pay careful attention to what was going on around me. In fact, I did exactly what I tell my kids not to do: I was not aware of my surroundings.
The loud rap on my driver’s side window startled me. I looked up and to my left to see two young black men staring at me. One of them motioned for me to roll down the window.
They were two strangers approaching me in a strange city. I wrestled with the age-old question that went back and forth in training classes: Do you interact with potentially hostile strangers from the protection of a car or outside where you can move? Exiting the car went against common sense, but I knew I would learn nothing by sitting inside.
I decided to greet my visitors in person. I struggled out of the Prius with as much dignity as I could muster. By the time I was standing up straight, the two men had stepped to either side of me. Was that on purpose? From a tactical standpoint, if they were going to attack me, doing it from two directions was their best bet.
I turned to put my back to the little car. Before I could say or do anything, the man to my right spoke.
“Are you sure you’re in the right place?” His Baltimore accent had a touch of Brooklyn. He was a little heavy and wore a light Ravens jacket over a fluorescent Nike T-shirt.
I said, “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I’m in the right place.”
The heavier of the two young men said, “We always try to help lost tourists so if something bad happens they can’t blame our neighborhood. It’s all about optics.”
The thin man on the other side of me, who was maybe twenty-five, said, “What are you looking for?”
I said, “The usual: love, security, and a long-term investment plan.”
That earned an odd look from the thin man. The chunky fella on my right laughed out loud.
The chunky young man said to his friend, “This guy has seen some shit if he’ll joke with two strangers in the hood.” Then he looked at me and said, “What are you really doing here?”
“No bullshit. I’m interested in the murder of a woman who was found in her car just about in this spot almost two years ago.”
The thin man said, “The white woman in the Audi?”
“That’s exactly it.”
“You probably heard it was gang violence.”
“I know that’s what was on the news. I’m not sure I see it that way.”
“That makes you smarter than the average reporter. No one has any idea why someone killed that lady. Technically, we’re a gang according to the city. We call ourselves the Fairfield Crusaders.”
“You’re not acting much like gang members.”
“How are gang members supposed to act? Maybe we should sell drugs or rob people. Don’t watch so much damn TV. There’s all kinds of gangs.”
I nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Now the chunky guy said, “Know what our toughest achievement is?”
I shook my head.
“We built a playground in the next block that gives kids under six a place to play safely. When we were done with that, we made sure Meals on Wheels came in to help serve the elderly people. They refused to come out here until we started taking over the routes. Never listen to the news, mister. Reporters don’t know shit.”
The thin man said, “You want to find out more about the woman in the Audi?”
I nodded.
“Come with us.”
