The Accidental Detective

water taxis zip back and forth across the Inner Harbor.
    “Everyone gets lucky, even you,” Tess said. “It’s all too credible that the warrant was lost all these years. What I don’t get is how it was found.”
    “Department got some grant for computer work. Isn’t that great? There’s not enough money to make sure DNA samples are stored safely, but some think tank gave us money so college students can spend all summer keystroking data. The guy moved about two weeks after the murder, before he was named in the warrant. Moved all of five miles, from West Baltimore to the county, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who left a forwarding address. Or the cop on the case was a bonehead. At any rate, he’s gone forty years, wanted for murder, and if he hadn’t been in that fight night before last, he might’ve gone another forty.”
    “Did he even know there was a warrant on him?”
    “Oh yeah. He knew exactly why he was there. Story came out of him as if he had been rehearsing it for years. Kept saying, Yep, I did it, no doubt about it. You do what you have to do, officer. So we charged him, the judge put a hundred thousand dollars’ bail on him, a bail bondsman put up ten thousand dollars, and he went home.”
    “I guess someone who’s lived at the same address for thirty-nine years isn’t considered a flight risk.”
    “Flight risk? I think if I had left this guy in the room with all our opened files, he would have confessed to every homicide in Baltimore. I have never seen someone so eager to confess to a crime. I almost think he wants to go to jail.”
    “Maybe he’s convinced that a city jury won’t lock him up, or that he can get a plea. How did the victim die?”
    “Blunt force trauma in a burglary. There’s no physical evidence and the warrant was sworn out on the basis of an eyewitness who’s been dead for ten years.”
    “So you probably couldn’t get a conviction at all if it went to trial.”
    “Nope. That’s what makes it so odd. Even if the witness were alive, she’d be almost ninety by now, pretty easy to break down on the stand.”
    “What’s the file say?”
    “Neighbor lady said she saw William Harrison leave the premises, acting strangely. She knew the guy because he did odd jobs in the neighborhood, even worked for her on occasion, but there was no reason for him to be at the victim’s house so late at night.”
    “Good luck recovering the evidence from Evidence Control.”
    “Would you believe they still had the weapon? The guy’s head was bashed in with an iron. But that’s all I got. If the guy hadn’t confessed, if he had stonewalled me or gotten with a lawyer, I wouldn’t have anything.”
    “So what do you want me to tell you? I never met this man before we became impromptu tag-team wrestlers. He seemed pretty meek to me, but who knows what he was like forty years ago? Maybe he’s just a guy with a conscience who’s been waiting all these years to see if someone’s going to catch up with him.”
    Tull shook his head. “One thing. He didn’t know what the murder weapon was. Said he forgot.”
    “Well, forty years. It’s possible.”
    “Maybe.” Tull, who had already finished his coffee, reached for Tess’s absentmindedly, grimacing when he realized it was a latte. Caffeine was his fuel, his vice of choice, and he didn’t like it diluted in any way.
    “Take the easy stat, Martin. Guy’s named in a warrant and he said he did it. He does have a temper, I saw that much. Last night it was a soda can. Forty years ago, it very well could have been an iron.”
    “I’ve got a conscience, too, you know.” Tull looked offended.
    Tess realized that it wasn’t something she knew that had prompted Tull to call her up, but something he wanted her to do. Yet Tull would not ask her directly because then he would be in her debt. He was a man, after all. But if she volunteered to do what he seemed to want, he would honor her next favor, and Tess was frequently in need of favors.
    “I’ll talk to him. See if he’ll open up to his tag-team partner.”
    Tull didn’t even so much as nod to acknowledge the offer. It was as if Tess’s acquiescence were a belch, or something else that wouldn’t be commented on in polite company.
    T HE SHOESHINE MAN —William Harrison, Tess reminded herself, she had a name for him now—lived in a neat bungalow just over the line in what was known as the Woodlawn section of Baltimore County. Forty years ago, Mr. Harrison would