“Is that what happened?”
“That’s what Booker said. That’s all that mattered.”
“But didn’t you just say—”
“I don’t remember!” He slapped a hand against the chair arm. “The bullet. It made a hole in my brain.” His face was red and he had started to perspire.
“Okay, Vincent. It’s all right, I understand.” Vail stood up and pulled out a card from her pocket. “If Rosc—if Rocky calls you, I want you to let me know right away. I really don’t want to have to arrest you and put you in jail. And don’t mention we came to visit you because you’ll never hear from him again. Can you do that?”
“But that’d be like telling on him. And Rocky’s my friend.”
“Look. Vincent.” Vail gathered her thoughts. “Rocky did some bad things. He killed a lot of innocent people, men and women who were just living their lives. And he’s doing it again. I know he’s your friend, but he’s a dangerous guy. It’s our job to keep him from hurting more people. You can help us do that. That’d be best for everybody.”
“You help us out,” Curtis said as he came around to Vail’s side, “you’d be a hero.”
That’s not his motivator. “I can even see about getting you some reward money.” She pulled out her wallet, removed a twenty, and offered it to Stuckey.
He snatched it with the alacrity of a cheetah.
“Okay?”
Stuckey nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, okay.”
AS THEY PULLED AWAY FROM THE CURB, Curtis looked back at the apartment building. “You think he’ll call us?”
“More relevant question is whether Marcks will call him again.” She was silent a minute, then said, “Poor guy.”
“Drugs, guns, and stupidity are a bad mix.”
“We’ve gotta find that juvie case. It’s obviously sealed. There was nothing like that in Underwood’s file—or in yours.”
“Nope.” Curtis looked out at the passing snow-covered foliage. “Think it went down like Vincent said?”
“Knowing our buddy Marcks, no. He probably killed the kid. No struggle necessary. But who knows. Maybe it was just a dumb fight between two kids who were high.”
“Either way, probably doesn’t matter.”
Vail tilted her head. “Actually, it does. Because now we’ve got another friend of theirs to follow up on. This Lance joker.”
“Vincent said he never saw him again after that.”
“Vincent didn’t see him again. Doesn’t mean Marcks didn’t.”
20
Curtis hung up his phone. “That was the sergeant in charge of the records room. It’s a bit of a quagmire.”
“How so?” Vail negotiated a turn onto Chain Bridge Road, then slowed behind a line of cars. The temperature had dropped and snow had begun falling again.
“Fairfax County used to be on an old CAD—computer-aided dispatch system. Back in ’97 or ’98, we brought in Northrop Grumman and migrated over to new records management software. Idea was to go to a paperless reporting system. Problem was, the integration was a massive data dump. All sorts of shit happened, records got … well, not lost per se, but misplaced. Well, not really misplaced. They weren’t compatible with the new system so they didn’t transfer over.”
“So does this Marcks file still exist or are we wasting our time?”
“It won’t show up in the new CAD system, but the original paper reports were archived. Too expensive to digitize all the incompatible records because there are thousands of them. So generally speaking, when we access the database, it’s as if these files don’t exist.”
“So if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you have no idea they’re there.”
“Exactly.”
“But since we know that these records exist,” Vail said, “we know to request them.”
“And that’s what I just did. I asked for all PD-42 initial reports and PD-42s, the supplementals. Basically, all ROIs,” he said, using cop speak for reports of investigation.
“That explains why we didn’t know about this case when we were looking into Marcks for the Blood Lines killings. Kind of an important thing not to be aware of.”
“Shit happens in police work. Especially where records and technology are involved. You know that.”
“Had a thing like this in New York. So yeah, I know.”
They arrived at police headquarters, formally known as the Public Safety Center or the Massey Building, an aging 1960s-era structure with leaking pipes, malfunctioning air-conditioning, and its most endearing feature, asbestos.
They got out of the car and started trudging forward in the fresh layer of snow.
“The new HQ will be finished later this year,” Curtis said, gesturing to a partially constructed eight-story edifice. “We move in next year. Gonna miss that old building.”
“Really?”
“Nope.”