Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [90]
Rollins opened the French doors and stepped into the main house, followed by Ziegler. A young man escorted them to the waiting Town Car. The detectives fell in behind, and the trip back into the District was quick and without incident—silence.
TWENTY-NINE
The cleaning crew at Tommy G’s had awakened Hatcher at five Sunday morning, and he’d struggled home, explaining to Mae that he’d pulled an all-night shift because of the Rollins kidnapping. She didn’t press, although from the look of him, that all-nighter had included a night of serious drinking at one of his downtown watering holes. He slept most of the morning, and spent the afternoon watching the Nationals–Cubs game on TV. She knew to give him a wide berth on days like this, and busied herself buying plants at a local nursery and arranging them in the small flower garden out back, in which she took considerable pride.
He went to bed early Sunday night and was up Monday at six. He considered calling in sick. With his regular squad assigned elsewhere, he was certain he’d have to spend the day back at Missing Persons, trying to find a link between some long-ago abduction and the Rollins case. But he wasn’t comfortable being away from Metro, the center of information about what was going down in the case. Having Jackson and Hall so close to Rollins made his usual sour stomach even worse. Better to be there and stay in the loop, keep tabs on things.
He’d no sooner walked in when Wally, another veteran homicide detective, grabbed him. “Hey, Hatch, where the hell you been?”
Hatcher looked up at a cracked wall clock that kept pretty good time. “Hell, I’m only twenty minutes late.”
“Yeah, well, we’re pairing up today. We’ve got a homicide just called in, a drive-by.”
“Where?”
“First Street, Southeast.”
“Daylight drive-by?”
“Twenty minutes ago. Come on. I’ve got the car.”
They drove to the scene, a rough-and-tumble street beneath the shadow and noise of I-295. After passing a series of taxi companies, auto repair shops, and what seemed an endless succession of battered chain-link fences behind which abandoned vehicles, discarded kitchen appliances, and other trash was heaped, they pulled up in front of a first-floor X-rated video store nestled next to a topless club. Uniformed officers who’d already responded were busy stringing yellow crime scene tape to cordon off the sidewalk directly in front of the shop. A dozen bystanders ringed the action. The marked police cars, lights flashing, had blocked off the street. As Hatcher and Wally approached, they saw the victim sprawled on the sidewalk, facedown, arms akimbo, large rings of blood from multiple wounds where it had seeped into the porous, chipped concrete.
“You ID him?” Hatcher asked one of the uniforms.
“No. We just got here.”
“Anybody see it happen?”
“Or admit they did?” Wally added.
The cop pointed to a man standing in the doorway of the porn shop. “You see what went down?” Hatcher asked him.
“He walks outside, a car comes past, slow, very slow, two guys in it, young maybe, I don’t know, but two of ’em, and one sticks his hand out and boom, boom, boom, like that, one, two, three, maybe four, and he goes down. Jesus.”
“What kind of car?”
A shrug. “Sedan, four doors, I think. Maybe brown, or black. Happened fast.”
“You know him?”
“Who?”
“Who the hell do you think I’m talking about? The guy who was in here and who’s laying dead on your sidewalk.”
“Yeah, I knew him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Billy.”
“Billy? Billy what?”
“McMahon.”
“Ooh,” Hatcher said, the name immediately registering. “He runs some sort of escort service, right?”
“Yeah. That’s what he does.”
“He’s a friend of yours?”
“Sort of. Not close like, you know?”
“What was he doin’ in here this morning?”
“He bought a DVD.”
“Porn.”
“Adult.”
“And he walks