Chapter Twenty-eight
CHONG KO CALLED SANDRA during the weekend after Thanksgiving. Earlier that summer Chong had met a girl named Allison at a party. Allison told him about a friend of hers named Courtney who worked for a national weight-loss chain in Chicago. Courtney had been in Columbia on business the day Jon died. The way Chong told the story, Courtney jogged past the backstop at daybreak and saw two men arguing and a third leaning against the backstop. Later that day she saw Jon’s picture on television news and recognized him as the person she had seen leaning against the backstop. She called an attorney friend in Chicago, and the attorney told her not to get involved. He said Maryland was so far from Chicago that it could get messy for her, so she finished her business duties and took a plane back to Chicago. Before leaving, she told her friend Allison what she had seen.
Sandra asked Chong why he had waited so long to tell her, and he said the FBI had told him not to talk about it. He had decided to wait until Thanksgiving to give the FBI time to do something about Jon’s death. If they hadn’t taken care of it by then, he had made up his mind to tell Sandra.
Chong didn’t know Allison or how to locate her, but he remembered the directions to the apartment where she had lived until recently. The next day, Sandra and I followed Chong’s directions and found the apartment, and Sandra wrote the address on a scrap of paper.
“Now we give this to Jo to give to the FBI,” I said.
Sandra, though, wanted to find out more about Allison.
“What’s the point?” I said. “The FBI probably doesn’t even need this address. There can’t be that many people named Courtney who work for that chain of stores in Chicago. Let the FBI handle it.”
We drove away feeling optimistic. If it checked out, we had the promise of an eyewitness who could place Jon with other people at the backstop. The FBI could put two and two together and realize they weren’t dealing with a suicide.
Sandra said, “I have a feeling that eventually we’ll have to go to Chicago ourselves to find Courtney.”
“Why would we do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The thought just came into my head.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “You and me going to Chicago? That’s nuts.”
* * *
The police department charged Jeff Phipps with filing a false report for saying he had been strangled at the backstop. They said Jeff made up the story so he wouldn’t have to testify in Mickey’s trial, despite the fact that Jeff had showed up in court to testify that day after leaving the hospital. He had even been seen on the television news that night standing in front of the courthouse, waiting to testify.
Several months earlier Jeff’s mother, Sylvia, told me that Jeff had been subpoenaed to appear in court for filing a false report, but the charge had been dropped. She went to the courthouse and asked to see the book where such charges are listed, and the page for names that begin with the letter P had been torn out. Jeff’s attorney called a county attorney in the state’s attorney office and asked what was going on. The county attorney admitted during the call that the charge had been made and then dropped, and added, “But we’ll get him on something.”
As it turned out, that something was the same charge of filing a false report.
* * *
Chuck Ecker, the new county executive, fired Chief Chaney. Ecker said they had different managerial styles. Chaney said the firing was political.
Ecker appointed Alan Zendell to a committee that would screen applicants and recommend a new chief of police. Zendell had interviewed political candidates, passed out pamphlets, spoken effectively with reporters, and attended various hearings and other gatherings. Ecker appointed Reverend Rogers and me to a committee that would review the police department.
The committee selecting the new chief got under way first. They met once a week to examine applications and interview candidates, and Alan and I spoke regularly on the phone. One evening a fairly high-level official in the county government phoned me to say that a police major named Jim Robey had applied for the position but should not be considered. I asked for specifics and couldn’t extract any.
I passed this information on to Zendell, who agreed to ask Robey pointed questions so he could gauge the man’s suitability for the job. I reminded Zendell that when Richard Kinlein was running against Bill Hymes for the county state’s attorney, I had asked Kinlein if he knew at least one county police officer that we could trust unequivocally. Without hesitation, Kinlein had named Jim Robey. So, we were getting mixed messages.
After the committee interviewed Robey, Zendell called and said Robey had impressed him immensely. “He’s a tough and compassionate man,” Zendell said. “He almost had me in tears, and you know how likely that is for me. I asked him if there was anything about his police career that he would change. He told how he once shot and killed a man who had taken a hostage. He actually had tears in his eyes when he talked about it, and I almost did myself.”
The time came for the committee to make a recommendation, and Zendell called again.
“It looks like Robey’s got the inside track. I could derail it if I wanted. People on the committee are looking to me because of the Bowie thing. Call this person you told me about and see what you can learn.”
I called the person and said, “Give me some specifics. I can’t go after somebody without a reason.”
I hung up and continued sitting at the kitchen table, lost in thought. Jane came in the room, and I vented my frustrations. “Who the hell do people think I am that I should have some say in who becomes the chief of police? What do I know about what it takes to be a good chief of police? I just want to know what happened to Jon, and all this other stuff keeps coming up.” Jane kissed me on the forehead and went upstairs.
The person called back a half hour later and said, “That’s all you get. My sources won’t provide details. They just tell me not to trust Robey.”
I thanked him and hung up. Then I called Zendell back. “If you think Robey would make a good chief, then vote for him.”
Newspapers announced Robey’s appointment a few days later.
* * *
The committee charged with reviewing the police department met in a conference room in a county office building in Ellicott City. Twenty-six committee members sat in folding chairs crammed around several large folding tables pushed together. To start the meeting, we went around the table introducing ourselves. There were a half dozen present or retired law enforcement officers, a handful of attorneys in public and private practice, a few teachers, preachers and social workers, and a couple of high school students. One of the attorneys was the assistant state’s attorney who had questioned Mickey, Sandra, and others during the county grand jury investigation. It was well known behind the scenes that Jo Glasco would soon be filing a civil lawsuit on Mickey’s behalf against the county, and the attorney who would be defending the county in the civil suit was also a committee member.
Call me a pessimist.
The chairperson asked if anyone had anything to say, and a short bulldog of a man, a retired military police officer, leaned forward on his elbows and glared at me across the table. “If anyone on this committee tries to say anything bad about the police, he’ll have to answer to me.”
I silently vowed to attend all the meetings. My presence might help keep Jon’s death in the public eye while we waited to hear from the FBI, but I didn’t expect anything I cared about to come of the meetings. What was I going to suggest? That police officers shouldn’t hit people without cause, or refuse to investigate homicides? There were already policies in place for that. And I certainly wasn’t about to divulge information in the presence of a man who had helped steamroll the grand jury investigation, or the woman who would be defending the county against Mickey’s lawsuit.
The committee was called the Citizens Advisory Council for Public Safety, but given the makeup of the committee, I privately labeled it the whitewash committee.
We met every Wednesday and talked, wrote reports, and brought in speakers. Jim Robey, the new chief of police, attended most meetings in uniform to observe. He was a dark-haired, heavyset athletic man of medium height in his forties, with a firm and likable manner. Even members who didn’t work for him spoke carefully around him, apologizing for any upcoming remark that might be taken as even mildly critical.
As for the meetings, they brought to mind a fellow I once knew who could sleep sitting up with his eyes open. A reporter called me at home one night after a particularly mind-numbing meeting and asked for my opinion of the committee. I should have taken a beat before speaking, but I didn’t. I said, “The whole process could be shortened considerably if we would just get ourselves some little short skirts and pom poms, meet in the center of town, and lead the whole goddamned county in a cheer.” He more or less quoted me.