Crime Beat

system for assigning cases to lead detectives. This time partners Russo and Allen are “up.” They will be responsible for the case from start to finish. If it is not solved by the group effort in the next few hours, it will be theirs to work alone.
    “I haven’t had a smoking gun yet this year,” Russo says as she starts compiling information in a notebook. “For once, I’d like a gimme—to come in and there would be a victim and over there would be the suspect.”
    But it hasn’t been that way for Russo or the rest of the squad for most of this year.
    W HILE THE HOMICIDE detectives corral and question the tenants and the owner of the apartment building, three forensic investigators are inside the apartment looking for fingerprints, photographing and gathering evidence. Dr. Felipe Dominguez, assistant medical examiner, is in the bedroom with the body.
    Moody lies faceup on his bed and almost looks as if he is asleep. Almost but not quite. There is a stab wound on his forearm, other cuts, but it is obvious that none were fatal. And there is blood on the sheets and pillow, but the odor of death is not noticeable to anyone without Hurt’s nose for it. The killer had left on the air conditioner, slowing decomposition.
    The phone in the apartment rings but the detectives don’t answer it because there is blood on it and possible fingerprints. After several rings, a tape recording of Walter’s voice comes on asking the caller to leave a message. He’ll get back to them. The caller is Walter’s mother. She is hysterical and wondering what is going on.
    “Please, will someone call us as soon as you know what is happening,” she pleads after the beep. A detective borrows a phone in another apartment to call.
    The detectives interviewing the tenants have come up with three potential avenues of investigation: Walter evicted people from the apartment. Walter was set to be a witness in an upcoming robbery trial. And Walter frequently allowed young men to stay in his apartment in exchange for work around the building.
    Working from experience, the detectives pick the third version as the best place to start. And the tenants have provided a description of a young man named Troy who was seen around the apartment as late as Friday afternoon. Let’s try to find this Troy, the detectives decide.
    Dr. Dominguez is leaving the apartment now and tells Hurt the body is ready to be moved to the medical examiner’s office for autopsy. Hurt wants to know the cause of death.
    “Knife wound in the back, between the shoulder blades,” Dominguez says.
    “Big knife? Little knife?”
    “Big knife,” Dominguez says. “Kitchen knife.”
    T HREE MEN PULL UP to the apartment building in a white van and unload a stretcher. They are the body movers, from a company called Professional. All three are wearing suits and ties, the top buttons on their shirts fastened. They are easily the best-dressed people on the scene. They move in a solemn single file into Walter Moody’s apartment to take him on his last trip out.
    As they do this, the crime scene begins breaking up. The detectives are heading off in different directions; Melwid to a fast-food restaurant to follow a lead on Troy, Ciani and Walley back to the bureau with three tenants who will help make a composite drawing of the suspect. Van Zandt also heads back. Hurt, Russo and Allen are tying up the last details at the scene before leaving. And inside the apartment, the crime scene technicians are going to take a dinner break. They will have to come back to the apartment later to begin a meticulous and long search into the night for evidence and clues.
    When Walter Moody comes out of his apartment for the last time, one tenant is still standing under a shade tree, watching and sipping a beer. Moody is beneath a white sheet. Two of the Professionals—one now has blood on the sleeve and pants of his light blue suit—are straining under the weight of the stretcher, their heels shuffling on the concrete. Once down the stairs, the body is gently placed on a wheeled stretcher and covered with a green velvet blanket. It is then wheeled to the white van. One of the body movers has blue tears tattooed at the corners of his eyes. Somehow it seems appropriate. The people here can’t let true sympathy get too much in the way of the work.
    At 7 p.m. the yellow plastic barricade tape police had strung across the entrance of the apartment building is taken down. The white van pulls away.