Hakeem Rogers was up front, fussing with something, but he still found time to shoot me a scowl when he spied me standing along the side wall. I nodded at him, but I was mostly distracted by who was—or, in this case, was not—alongside Rogers.
Typically, these press conferences consisted of Rogers introducing the police director, who, as an appointee of the mayor, wanted to be putting in a good word with the voters of Newark. The director usually appeared in front of a wall of blue-clad men, officers who were somehow involved in the law enforcement triumph the director was there to announce. The officers didn’t say much—they were just there for decoration—but they sure gave the director a good background for the cameras.
This time the director was nowhere around. Nor was there a wall of blue. Indeed, there was only one officer alongside Rogers: Captain Denise Boswell. She was in full dress uniform, right up to her hat, which she was nervously fussing with as she waited for the show to begin.
The other oddity about this was that I didn’t know what she planned to say. Generally at these kinds of gatherings, you had some inkling of what would be announced—a break on a case, a big drug bust, a fugitive from justice apprehended.
This time it was a total mystery. And as Rogers approached the podium, I found myself leaning forward, just a little bit curious.
* * *
Rogers opened the proceedings by introducing himself, thanking everyone for coming, and taking an unveiled swipe at me.
“There has been a great deal of speculation about the death of Detective Sergeant Darius Kipps, specifically in print,” Rogers said. “While ordinarily we prefer to let our investigation run its course before we make any major public statements, the Newark Police Department has determined that, in light of the death of Detective Michael Fusco and some apparent connections between the two investigations, it was time to put an end to the speculation.”
He looked up and rewarded me with another scowl. “Toward that end, I would like to introduce Captain Denise Boswell. After a long and decorated career with the Newark Police Department, Captain Boswell was placed in command of the Fourth Precinct late last year, becoming the first female officer in Newark history to attain that level. Since she was the commanding officer to both Sergeant Kipps and Detective Fusco, we felt it was appropriate for her to make this difficult announcement. Captain Boswell?”
The room was quiet as Boswell approached the microphone. She had a sheet of white paper that had been folded into quarters, and the rustling as she unfolded it was amplified by the conference room’s sound system. Captain Boswell was not a tall woman, far shorter than the men who usually appeared at these things, and the variety of microphones that had been strapped to the podium—representing various local radio, television, and Internet outlets—had not been adjusted properly. She was practically lost behind them.
Her voice, however, was not. It was strong and confident as she began reading from her sheet of paper.
“This has been a tragic week in the City of Newark, with the loss of two of our finest officers, Darius Kipps and Michael Fusco. It has been particularly hard for those of us in the Fourth Precinct who had the privilege of working alongside these officers as they attended to their duties. And I would ask that we all keep the families of these officers in our prayers during this difficult time.”
She paused for a quick moment of solemnity, then pushed onward:
“As many of you are aware, the department announced a preliminary determination that Detective Sergeant Darius Kipps died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That will not be our final determination in this matter. And on behalf of the Newark Police Department, I would like to publicly apologize to the family of Darius Kipps for this error.”
My internal Surprise-o-meter was registering one of its highest possible readings. As a rule, police departments didn’t admit to botching
anything,
much less an investigation into the death of one of their own officers. Then Boswell pushed the Surpriseometer clear off the charts.
“Early this morning,” she said slowly, deliberately, “I received a call from Detective Fusco’s cell phone. During this call, he confessed to killing Detective Sergeant Kipps over a personal dispute and then to altering certain aspects of the crime scene to make it appear to be a suicide.”
She paused again, and some of the reporters actually squirmed in their seats. Professional decorum demanded that they not react in a demonstrable manner. But I knew that if this had been a movie they were watching at home, half of them would have been yelling at their television screens, “Whoa!”
Boswell continued her statement: “Detective Fusco informed me he could not live with himself as a result of this act but that he wanted to set the record straight. He then terminated the phone call. As we now know, it appears that placing that phone call was his last act before he turned his service weapon on himself and ended his own life.”
As soon as I heard the term “service weapon,” I felt a prickle from the base of my spine all the way up to my neck. In my head, I could hear the voice of tough guy Mike Fusco telling me about how he had been placed on administrative leave and lamenting,
I even had to turn in my service weapon.
When had he told me that? Yesterday, when I came by with those photos of Kipps. Had he somehow gotten the gun back during the eighteen hours or so between when I last saw him and when he supposedly pulled its trigger? Did he have another department-issued gun that had simply been confused for his service weapon?
I didn’t know. But it was another inconsistency. That and the two shots that had been fired. I still didn’t know of any cop—or anyone who knew which end of a gun fired—who could miss his own head from six inches away.
Meanwhile, Captain Boswell was finishing up, “I’m sure many of you will have questions about how such a tragedy could have occurred and about whether it could have been prevented. We in the Newark Police Department are asking ourselves the same questions today. Unfortunately, we may not have many answers, as so much of this seemed to involve issues known only to these two officers.”
Boswell lifted her head for the first time, refolded her note, then stepped aside so Hakeem Rogers could take her place in front of the microphones.
“We will now take a limited number of questions,” he said. “Please wait for me to call on you.”
I immediately raised my hand in the air, but Rogers motioned to one of the television guys, who asked, “Captain Boswell, can you describe the nature of this personal dispute between these two officers?”
Boswell didn’t make a move toward the microphone. Instead, Rogers handled it: “That’s not something we’re going to be able to discuss. It was a personal dispute of a personal nature.”
A personal dispute of a personal nature. Well,
that
sure cleared things up. A reporter from one of the New York tabloids—who would probably be getting on the front page if he was able to discover this was the result of a sordid love triangle—got the next question. “Can you say how the crime scene was altered? Does this have something to do with the rope burns that were found on Officer Kipps?”
Good question from the Murdoch minion. I was expecting another dirty look from Rogers, but he was too busy conferring with Boswell. Eventually, he came back with “We don’t want to get into specifics. We’ll just say that as an officer who was well trained in our investigative techniques, he was able to use his insider knowledge to mislead us.”
There were several more queries from the press, none of which elicited anything in the way of new information. I had continued trying to get in my question about Fusco’s service weapon—as in, why did a suspended officer have one?—but Rogers had been ignoring me. I usually didn’t ask questions during these sorts of events. I tried to get the cops on the side, after the cameras stopped rolling, when they might be more likely to loosen up. But in this case I knew I wouldn’t get another chance. You only got that on-the-side time when the cops had something to brag about.
But even when there were no more hands being raised except mine, even when some of the other reporters were looking at me in the expectation I’d be called on, Rogers didn’t so much as glance in my direction. It was my punishment, obviously.
In some ways it was just as well. I doubted I was going to get a straight answer.
* * *
From the way everyone was packing up after the press conference—hastily, without much lingering or second thought—I could tell the assemblage of notebook holders and microphone monkeys were satisfied by what they had heard. Cop A personally kills Cop B over personal dispute of personal nature, becomes personally overwhelmed with guilt, turns gun on own person, end of personhood.
It was obvious the police director wanted this embarrassing story to become yesterday’s news as quickly as possible, so he offered up Captain Boswell, the most sympathetic emissary he could find, and had her tie up the whole sloppy mess with one neat little bow.
But I just wasn’t accepting the package. There were too many inconsistencies, too many things that didn’t fit into the narrative.
Did Fusco
really
call her moments before committing a two-bullet suicide? Maybe. Had Fusco somehow repossessed his own gun? Maybe. Had Fusco acted alone in killing Kipps and then been able to fool the entire Newark Police Department? Maybe.
There were just too many maybes. And, all the while, the roles of Mimi Kipps and Alvin LeRioux—who was up to his sanctimonious jowls in this somehow—were left undefined.
It was all still out there for me to discover, but in the meantime, I had a story to write. Regardless of whether I fully believed what the Newark Police were saying, I still had a duty to report it. And, at the very least, I could lend some understanding to the dispute between the officers. How I would word it might be a bit thorny. The truth—“A reporter spied Detective Fusco and Mrs. Kipps in the smoldering beginnings of what was undoubtedly going to become scorching, unbridled, hot-hearted passion”—would probably make it past the editors on the All-Slop, who didn’t bother to read stuff before posting it online, judging from the typos they let through. It might even get me a contract to write romance novels. But I would still probably need to find a better way to word it.
After making the short drive back to the office, I had barely settled into my desk when I was accosted by Ruthie Ginsburg, the twenty-two-going-on-thirteen intern. He was looking typically chipper and fresh-faced, and for a moment I wanted to turn him over to some of the more curmudgeonly members of the copy desk for a wedgie and a chocolate swirly, just to put him in his place a little. I’m not exactly sure when, during the decade or so I had been hanging around this place, I had switched over to the side of the grizzled veterans. But with my unshaven jaw and bloodshot eyes, I certainly fit the part.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for you! I got some great stuff, it’s really going to blow your mind,” he chirped.
“Sounds swell, Jimmy. We’ll be sure to get it in tomorrow’s
Daily Planet
.”
“Huh?” he said, adding a head tilt. The Superman reference was lost on him. I was beginning to realize why these interns made me feel so old.
“Never mind. Why don’t you step into my office?”
He looked around, confused.
“It’s an expression,” I said and pointed to an empty chair across from my desk. “Take a seat.”
Jimmy—uh, sorry, Ruthie … uh, I mean, Geoff—gleefully took his place and opened up his notebook.
“Okay, first, let’s just get something out of the way,” he said. “Pregnancy tests don’t come back positive in toilet water. I spent two hours last night on Google researching it. I even tested my own toilet. It came back negative.”
He looked at me earnestly and I thought about trying to convince him it was just
Newark
toilet water—you know, something in the aquifer that supplied the city’s drinking water. But it was time to let him off the hook.
“Yeah, you got me,” I said.
“Why would you do that to me?”
“Look, Ruthie … first of all, you know everyone is calling you Ruthie, right?” I asked.
He gave me a dejected look and said, “Yeah.”
“Don’t worry about it. Around here, nicknaming is a form of flattery. Anyhow, I know I might have misled you a little bit, and I’m sorry. But I’m also not sorry. You were obviously spying for Tina, and I didn’t want her to know what I was up to.”
“It was kind of a douche move.”
“You’re right. And, okay, really I am sorry. But … look, I don’t want to sound like I’m lecturing, especially when I’m the one in the wrong, but you’ve got to understand that editors are … well, they have their usefulness at times. Then there are times when it’s best they not know everything. So I might have just needed you to spin your wheels for a little while.”
“And the Good Neighbors piece? Was that more wheel-spinning?”
“No, that was actually a big favor. And I appreciate it.”
“Okay, so maybe now you owe
me
a favor?” he asked.
He said it tentatively, like a good little intern should. But he had played me rather nicely. I was beginning to appreciate that Ruthie Ginsburg just might have the chops to make it in this business.
“Maybe I do,” I said. “What did you have in mind?”
“It’s what I was trying to tell you about before. It came from an interview I did with these kids who were hanging out on the corner by the town houses. Have you ever heard of red dot guns?”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, from what these corner boys were telling me, they’re all the rage in the hood. All the skels are using them.”
I laughed—albeit internally—at Ruthie using the word “skels.” He had been watching too many cop shows.
“So, what, Red Dot Guns is the hot new gun manufacturer? Like Magnum or Colt or something?” I asked.
“No, it’s an actual red dot that’s been branded into the butt of the gun handle. One of the kids showed it to me and that’s all it is, just a red dot. But they say everyone wants their gun to have one.”