Chapter 22
CHAPTER
The morning after my ill-fated meeting with Pittman, Kurtz, and Diehl, John Sampson and I were called to a homicide in Fort Circle Park in Southeast Washington, DC.
A jogger had come upon a dead male on one of the park’s interior paths.
We found the body beside the path, arms circling the trunk of an oak tree, wrists tied together with wire that had cut deeply into the skin.
It had rained overnight. The skies were still threatening. We stood back while patrol officers erected canopies over the scene, then moved closer.
“No prints in the mud except the runner’s,” Sampson said.
“Rained hard last night,” I said, moving around the tree so I could see the victim more clearly.
The left side of his face showed him to be young, in his mid-teens, and of mixed race. Hispanic and Black would be my guess.
I kept moving and saw that the right side of his face, against the tree trunk, was battered and grossly swollen. A rag had been stuffed in his mouth.
I took a few more steps and saw that his back had been struck repeatedly with something long and narrow and with such force that his bloody T-shirt had ripped, showing livid welts and torn flesh beneath.
“Jesus,” I said, turning away, nauseated.
“Take a few breaths,” Sampson said. “I’ll check his pockets.”
I walked several yards away and leaned against a tree, swallowing at the aluminum taste building at the back of my throat.
“Nothing,” Sampson said a minute later. “Looks like he was cleaned out.”
Emily Chin, the chief medical examiner, showed up shortly after I’d gotten my gut under control enough to return to the scene.
“You’re taking field calls now, Doc?” Sampson said.
“Two deputies are on vacation, and we’re understaffed, so here I am,” Chin said.
I said, “Looks like the right side of his head was beaten against the tree after his back was slashed by something.”
Chin took multiple photographs of the scene before the criminology team showed up. Then she moved to examine the body, Dictaphone in hand. She spoke into the recorder loud enough for us to hear.
“Victim is male, mixed race, appears to be fifteen or sixteen, with facial skin split raggedly in several places, probably from being hit against the tree trunk,” Chin said. She got out a flashlight and bent over to look at his back. “Posterior torso has been lashed in multiple places.”
I waited until Chin had clicked off her recorder. “Can you tell what was used?” I asked.
“Not leather,” she said. “More like a long thin rod or a dowel of some kind.”
Sampson said, “Like something you’d use to cane someone?”
Chin pocketed the flashlight. “I’ll have to look at the tissue under a magnifying glass, but yes, it looks like a caning to me.”
“He die from the head trauma?” I asked.
“We’ll know more after the autopsy, but I’d say he was rendered unconscious from the head blows. When he collapsed, his weight caused the wires to slice into his wrists. Rain washed the blood down the trunk and into the leaves.”
From his body temperature, she determined he’d died about five hours before the jogger found him, so around one in the morning.
At this point, a very attractive young Black woman in jeans, hiking boots, and a black windbreaker came trotting down the path toward us.
Sampson said, “Stop right there, ma’am.”
She stopped, breathing hard, and held up a badge. “I’m Officer Nancy Donovan, Metro PD. I work gangs undercover, and when I heard there was a kid found in the park, I—” Donovan saw the body hanging off the tree trunk. “Can I take a look at him?”
I said, “He’s pretty beat up, but have at it.”
Donovan gave me a wan smile, walked past us in an arc around the crime scene, and stopped to gaze at the good side of the victim’s face. She shook her head.
“I know him,” she said. “Shay Mansion. Lives in Grant Park. Dropped out of Woodson last year after two trips to juvie. I’ve seen him multiple times in the past six months with members of Los Lobos Rojos—the Red Wolves. He was a recruit.”