into the back of the shop. He had since worked extensively with police artists to come up with drawings that would closely resemble his brief recollection of the faces on the young men he had seen.
There were no other witnesses to the shooting, and none of the occupants of the nearby residences claimed to have seen a thing.
The white Plymouth was found the next morning on a rural stretch of road bordering a forest in Prince George’s County. The car had been doused in gasoline and burned. The smoke rising above the trees had been seen by a resident of a community situated on the other side of the woods, which had prompted him to call the police. The first letter of the license plate matched the letter recalled by Juarez. This was the shooters’ car. The arson job had been thorough, obliterating any evidence save for some clothing fibers; the automobile had been wiped clean of prints.
The Plymouth was registered to a Maurice Willis of the 4800 block of Kane Place in the Deanwood section of Northeast. Squad cars and homicide detectives were dispatched to his address, where Willis was taken in without resistance for questioning. The Plymouth belonged to Willis. It had been stolen from the Union Station parking lot while he was attending a movie at the AMC. He had not reported the theft, he explained candidly, because he had been driving the car without insurance. Based on his recollection of the movie he had seen and his certainty of its time, the detectives were able to pinpoint a two-hour window for the theft.
By the end of this next day, the surveillance tapes from the pay booth at the parking garage had produced a photographic record of the one who had stolen the Plymouth. The image was of a light-skinned young black man wearing a sheer black skullcap and shades. On top of these visual obstacles, the suspect had deliberately kept his face partially turned away from the camera while he paid the parking fee. The camera evidence wouldn’t find them the shooter, but it would be useful in court.
Detectives continued to canvass the neighborhood where the shooting had occurred. They posted sketches of the suspects and kept the sketches on hand when interviewing potential wits. They interviewed friends and relatives of Lorenze and Joe Wilder extensively, focusing on the acquaintances of the uncle. Most important, the police department had issued a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooters. This was the most important element and effort of the investigation. In the end, Strange knew, it would be a snitch who would give them the identity of the killers.
Strange pulled into the parking lot behind the Fourth District station, found a spot, and cut the engine on his car.
STRANGE went around to the front of the station house, named in honor of Charles T. Gibson, the uniformed officer slain outside the Ibex Club a few years earlier. He went directly to the front desk in the unadorned, flourescent-lit lobby. The police officer on desk duty, a woman he did not recognize, phoned Lieutenant Blue in his second-floor office while Strange signed two release forms for insurance purposes. These were required of all citizens requesting ride-alongs.
Blue appeared in uniform. He and Strange went back through the locker room and down a flight of stairs to the rear entrance. Blue told a sergeant, out in the lot catching a cigarette, that he was taking the Crown Victoria parked leftmost in a row of squad cars facing the building. He mentioned the car’s number, displayed on its side and rear, to the sergeant as well.
Blue got behind the wheel of the Crown Vic, and Strange sat beside him. They drove out onto Georgia at just past midnight and headed south.
The Fourth District, known as 4-D, ran north-south from the District line down to Harvard Street, and was bordered by Rock Creek on the west and North Capitol Street on the east. It included neighborhoods of the wealthy and those of the extreme lower class. With a high rate of sexual assault, auto theft, and homicide, 4-D had become one of the most troubled districts in the city. Chief Ramsey had been considering an eighth police district to break up the Fourth, probably in the form of a substation near 11th and Harvard. It had gotten that bad.
The crime rate in the city, despite the propaganda issued to the media about “New Day D.C.,” was rising once again. In the first six months of the new century, homicides were up 33 percent; rapes had increased by over 200 percent. In ’97, detectives had been transferred and reassigned citywide after an independent investigation had reported substandard performance. Anyone who knew anything about police work knew that results came from a network of informants and neighborhood contacts, and confidences, built up over time. The reassignment had destroyed that system. The result was that the current homicide closure rate was at an all-time low. Two out of three murders in the District of Columbia went unsolved — a closure rate of 31 percent.
The streets were fairly quiet. The temperature had dropped to sweater weather, and it was a work night, and kids had school the next day. But still, kids were out. They were out on the commercial strip and back on the corners of the residential streets, sitting on top of trash cans and mailboxes. A curfew law came and went in D.C., but even when it was in effect it was rarely enforced. No one was interested in locking up a minor who had stayed out too late. Police felt, rightly so, that it wasn’t their job to raise other people’s kids.
“Anything new since the funeral?” said Strange.
“Nothing on the forensic side,” said Blue. “The detectives are doing some serious recanvassing of the neighborhood over there around Rhode Island. And they’re heavily interrogating Lorenze Wilder’s associates and friends.”
“He have any?”
“He had a few. The plainclothes guys at Lorenze’s wake got some information until they got made. And they do have the sign-in book from the funeral home, has the names and addresses of those who bothered to use it.”
“Anything yet from those interrogations?”
“Lorenze was one of those fringe guys. Didn’t work for the most part, least not in payroll jobs. Even his friends admit he was no-account. But none of ’em say he was a target. He wasn’t mixed up in no big-time crews or anything like that. That’s what they’re telling our people, anyway.”
“I’d like to get a list of his friends,” said Strange.
“You know I can’t do that, Derek.”
“All right.”
Blue had said it. He had to say it, Strange knew. And Strange let it lie.
They drove back into the neighborhoods between Georgia and 16th. Blue stopped to check on a drunken Hispanic man who was standing in the middle of Kenyon Street, his face covered in alcohol sweat. He said he had “lost his house.” Blue talked to him carefully and helped him find it. At 15th and Columbia he slowed the patrol car
