“As usual,” he said. “Here’s what Alex hasn’t said so far. Just to get it out on the dance floor. The real reason one team of detectives is assigned to these murders goes something like this. One, it happened in the area of the projects, and we know all the shit flows downhill in D.C. and eventually ends up here. Two, Jack and Jill is sucking up everybody’s time in the department. Rich white people are being killed. They’re scared shitless up on Capitol Hill and such. So of course we drop everything else. Two little black kids don’t matter much, not in the greater scheme, not in the big picture.”
“Sampson and I have been working on the Truth School murders.” I picked up his thread, just lowered the volume a touch. “Strictly off the books. We have to do our own surveillance,” I added, so that everybody knew the deal. “We need some help now. This is a major homicide case. Unfortunately, there are two major cases in Washington at this time.”
“Only one case on my mind,” Rakeem Powell said. “One guess which case it is.”
“You know you’ve got the Fatman on board.” Jerome Thurman raised his high-pitched voice and punched his stubby club of an arm into the air. “I’m in. I’m on your nonpayroll with all its nonbenefits and risks for forced early retirement. Sounds great.”
“My boy goes to the Sojourner Truth School, Alex,” Shawn Moore said. “I’ll make the time for this. Hope I can fit in Jack and Jill.”
We laughed at the jokes. It was our hardass approach to the difficult problems at hand. The five of us were in. We just didn’t have any idea what we were in for.
There were definitely two major murder cases in Washington—and now there were two task forces to try and solve them. One and a half task forces, anyway.
“Cocktails, anyone?” Jerome Thurman asked in the softest, most cultivated voice. You’d have thought we were at the old Cotton Club in Harlem as he passed around his beat-up Washington Redskins game flask.
We all took a hit; more like two or three.
We were blood brothers.
CHAPTER
27
I WORKED the Jack and Jill case from five in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. Me and about ten thousand other harried law officers around D.C. I was checking for a possible link between Senator Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan. We even looked at news photos taken of them in the past months. Maybe somebody interesting would show up in the background of a shot. Or even better, show up twice. I had a detective visiting all of the kinky sex shops around D.C. He called the assignment the ultimate Jack-off.
I met Sampson at the Boston Market restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue at three-thirty. It was time for our second job. Our other homicide case, the “back burner” case. This arrangement was definitely much better—not great, but a significant improvement over the past few days of frustration and utter madness for me.
“I think you might be right on the button about one thing, Alex,” Sampson told me over a lunch of double-glazed meat loaf and mashed potatoes made from scratch. “The Truth School killer is an amateur. He’s sloppy. Maybe a first-timer at this. He left prints all over the second crime scene, too. The techies got his prints, some hair, threads off his clothing. Based on the prints, the killer is a small man—or possibly a woman. If this squirrel isn’t careful, he or she is going to get their squirrel ass caught.”
“Maybe the killer wants to,” I said between bites of a meat loaf sandwich spiced with decent tomato sauce. “Or maybe the killer just wants us to think he’s a first-timer. That could be the act. Soneji might play it like that.”
Sampson grinned broadly. It was his best killer smile. “Do you have to double- and triple-think everything, Sugar?”
“Of course I do. That’s my job description. That’s Alex’s cross,” I said and offered my own killer smile.
“Oh, ho!” said Man Mountain and grinned again. Man, I loved being with him, loved to make him laugh.
“Anything in from the rest of the team?” I asked him. “Jerome? Rakeem?”
“They’re all working the case, but still no tangible results. Nothing yet from the go-team.”
“We need surveillance at the boy’s funeral and at Shanelle’s gravesite. The killer might not be able to stay away. A lot of them can’t.”
Sampson rolled his eyes. “We’ll do what we can. Do our best. Surveillance at a child’s gravesite. Shee-it.”
At quarter past four, the two of us split. I headed over to the Sojourner Truth School.
The principal’s car was sitting in the small, fenced-in parking lot. I remembered that Mrs. Johnson sometimes worked late after classes. That was good for me. I wanted to talk to her about Shanelle Green and Vernon Wheatley. What connection was there between the Truth School and the killer? What could it be?
I knew approximately where the principal’s office was located in the annexed building, so I walked directly there. It was a very nice school, for just about any area of the city. Outside, near the street, a chain-link fence with razor wire ran the perimeter of the schoolyard, but the inside was festive, very bright, imaginatively decorated.
I read several hand-lettered posters and banners as I walked.
CHILDREN FIRST. GROW WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED. SUCCESS COMES IN CANS, NOT CANNOTS. Cornball, but nice. Inspiring for the children, and for me as well.
That particular week the hallway display cases were filled with “animal shelters,” which were dioramas made by the kids, each one illustrating an animal and its habitat. It struck me that the Sojourner Truth School was a terrific habitat itself. Under normal circumstances, it was a sweet place for Damon to grow and learn.
Unfortunately, two little babies from this school had been murdered in the last week.
That made me furiously angry, and it also frightened me more than I wanted to admit. When I was growing up, tough as it was supposed to have been in D.C., kids seldom if ever died at our school. Now, for a lot of reasons, it happened all the time in schools. Not only in Washington but in L.A.’s schools. New York’s. Chicago’s. Maybe even Sioux City’s.
What the hell was going on from sea to shining sea?
The heavy wooden door to the inner administrative office was open, but the assistant appeared to have left. On her desk was a collection of Caucasian, African-American, and Asian play dolls. A sign read: Barbara Breckenridge, I can really tap-dance.
I felt like a housebreaker, a neighborhood break-and-enter artist, a bad character of some sort or other. Suddenly, I was concerned about the principal working late by herself in the school.
Anyone could walk in here, just as I had done. The Sojourner Truth School killer could walk in here some night. It would be so easy. This easy.
I turned the corner into the main office and was about to announce my presence when I saw Mrs. Johnson. I thought of my made-up name for her—Christine.
She was busy at work at an old-fashioned rolltop desk that looked at least a hundred years old. She was lost in the work, actually.
I watched her for a couple of seconds. She wore gold-wire glasses to do her paperwork. She was humming the “Shoop Shoop” song from Waiting to Exhale. Sounded nice.
There was something enormously right, even touching, about the scene—the dedicated teacher, the educator, at work. A smile passed across my lips. She’s even tougher than you are, Daddy.
I still wondered about that. She didn’t look tough at the moment. She looked serene, happy in her work. She looked at peace, and I envied her that.
I finally felt a little awkward standing in the doorway unannounced. “Hi there. It’s Detective Alex Cross,” I said. “Hello. Mrs. Johnson?”
She stopped humming and looked up. There was the slightest glint of fear in her eyes. Then she smiled. Her smile was warm and welcoming. Very nice to be on the receiving end of one of her easy smiles.
“Ahh, it is Detective Cross,” she said. “And what brings you to the principal’s office?” she said in a put-on voice of authority.
“I guess I need some help fro
m the principal. Extra help with my homework.” That was true enough, I suppose. “I need to talk with you a little about Vernon Wheatley, if that’s possible. I also wanted to get your okay to speak with some of the teachers again, to see if any of them heard anything from the kids after Vernon’s murder. Somebody might have seen something that would help us, even if they don’t think they did. Maybe something the kids heard their parents say.”
“Yes, I figured the same thing,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Somebody here at the school could have a clue, something useful, and might not know it.”
I liked everything I saw about Mrs. Johnson, but as soon as I saw it, I pushed it out of my mind. Wrong time, wrong place, and wrong woman. I’d done some questionable things in my life, and I’m no angel, but trying to fool with a married woman wasn’t going to be one of them.
“There’s not too much new to report, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’ve been working a little overtime on your account. I grilled the teachers at lunch today. Interrogated them, actually. I told them that they should tell me if they heard or saw anything suspicious. They talk to me about most things. We have a pretty close-knit group here.”
“Are any of the teachers still here? I could talk to them now if they are. I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect the killer might have watched the school at some point,” I said to her. I didn’t want to frighten Mrs. Johnson or the other teachers, but I did want them on the alert and cautious. I believed that the killer probably had scouted the school.
She shook her head slowly back and forth. Then she cocked it softly to the left. She seemed to be looking at me in a new way. “Almost all of them are long gone by four. They like to leave together, if possible. Safety in numbers.”
“That makes a lot of sense to me. It isn’t a great neighborhood. Well, it is and it isn’t.”
“And being here at five or so, with a lot of unlocked doors, doesn’t make any kind of sense,” she said. It was what I had been thinking ever since I arrived at her office door.
I didn’t say anything, didn’t comment on the unlocked doors. Mrs. Johnson was certainly free to live her life in whatever way she chose. “Thanks for checking with the teachers for us,” I said to her. “Thanks for the overtime work.”
“No, thank you for coming by,” she said. “I’m sure this must be very hard for you and for Damon. For your whole family. It certainly is for all of us at the school.”
She finally took off the wire-rim glasses and slid them into the pocket of her work smock. She looked good with or without glasses.
Intelligent, nice, pretty.
Off-limits, out-of-bounds, off your radar charts, I reminded myself. I could almost feel a ruler rap across my knuckles.
Faster than I would have thought possible, she slid a snubnose .38 Special out of an open drawer on the right side of the desk. She didn’t point it in my direction, but she easily could have. Easily.
“I lived in this neighborhood for a lot of years,” she explained. Then she smiled and put the gun away. “I try to be prepared for whatever might happen,” she said calmly. “And shit does happen around here. I knew you were there in the doorway, Detective. The kids claim I have eyes in the back of my head. Actually, I do.”
She laughed again. I did like her laugh. Anyone with a pulse would. Say goodnight, Alex.
I had mixed feelings about civilians owning guns, but I was sure hers was registered and legal. “You learn to use that revolver in the neighborhood?” I asked.
“No, actually, I learned at the Remington Guns Club out in Fairfax. My husband was, is, worried about my coming to work here, too. You men seem to think alike. Sorry, sorry,” she said and smiled again. “I try to catch myself when even I say outrageous sexist things like that. I don’t like that. No how, no way. Sorry.”
She stood up and flicked off the Mac laptop on her desk. “I’ll walk you to the front door,” she said. “Make sure you get out safely, since it’s well after four.”
“That’s a good idea.” I went along with her little joke. She had me smiling some, anyway. That was pretty good, under the circumstances of the past few days. “Are you always this funny? This loose?”
She tilted her head again. It was something she did often. Then she nodded confidently. “Always. At least this funny. Those were my two vocational choices: comedienne or educator. Obviously, I chose comedienne. More laughs here. Honest laughs. Most days, anyway.”
The two of us walked down the deserted halls of the school together. Our footfalls made clapping sounds that echoed loudly. The “Shoop Shoop” song played inside my head, the tune she’d been humming in her office. There were lots more questions I wanted to ask her, but I knew I shouldn’t be asking some of them. They had nothing to do with the murder case.
When we got to the school’s front door, a husky, middle-aged security guard was there to let me out. He surprised me. I hadn’t seen him on my way in.
He had a thick wooden nightstick and a walkie-talkie. It was the look and feel of D.C. schools that I knew all too well. Guards, metal detectors, steel-mesh screens covering every window. No wonder the people of the neighborhood hate and fear all established institutions, even their own schools.
“Goodnight, sir,” the school guard said with a most congenial smile. “You be leaving soon, Mrs. Johnson?”
“Pretty soon,” she said. “You can go home if you want to, Lionel. I have my Uzi inside.”
Lionel laughed at her joke. She had very good delivery, good timing. I’ll bet she could have done some stand-up work if she’d wanted.
“Goodnight, Mrs. Johnson,” I said. I couldn’t help adding, “Please be careful until this case is over.”
She stood just inside the heavy wooden door. She looked so wise, and she was attractive, in my way of viewing the world. “It’s ‘Christine,’” she said, “and I will be careful. I promise. Thank you for stopping by.”
Christine! Jesus! It was the same name I’d made up for her. Probably I’d heard it somewhere before, from Damon or Nana, but it seemed so strange. Kind of magical, actually. Would have made James Redfield happy as hell.
I went home that evening thinking about the two child murders, and Jack and Jill, but also about the principal of the Sojourner Truth School. She was wise, funny, and pretty, too. She could take care of herself—even handle a gun.
Mrs. Johnson.
Christine.
Shoop. Shoop. Shoop. Shoop.
CHAPTER
28
IN THIS DANGEROUS AGE, everybody needs to think, It won’t happen to me. Not to me. What are the odds of it actually happening to me?
The motion picture actor Michael Robinson thought it was absurd and more than a little self-absorbed for him to be concerned or afraid of the maniac killers on the loose in Washington. What did the malicious Jack and Jill threats have to do with him, anyway? The answer, it seemed clear to him, was nothing at all.
Still, he was a trifle skittish and jumpy, so he tried to enjoy the adrenaline rush, to go with the nasty flow of the moment, of the times we live in.
A little before midnight, the Hollywood star finally got up his nerve and called for a date from the VIP escort service. A “snack” before bedtime. He had used the service many times before while visiting D.C. The Discreet, toney, very expensive sex-for-hire service had his requirements down pat. M.R. was in its file, compliments of the star’s full-service business agent in Los Angeles.
After he made the phone call, the forty-nine-year-old actor tried to read an expensive adventure-romance script he’d commissioned, but then got up and walked to the window of his penthouse suite at the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. He knew his fans would find it scandalous that he was paying for a lover, but that was their hang-up, not his.
The truth was, he found it far less complicated, and far easier on the psyche, to pay a thousand or fifteen hundred than to get involved in wooing, and then painfully separating from, lovers while on the road.
Actually, he was in a g
ood mood tonight, feeling very level and grounded, he thought as he stared out on the street. He just needed some company, a little TLC, and some uncomplicated sex. All three of his requirements would be met shortly, he hoped.
In a way, he was still time-warped back in his hometown of Wichita, circa 1963, when he was a high school senior. The fantasies and desires he’d had then were still unresolved and operating full-tilt boogie inside him. There was one difference: he knew what he wanted tonight and he would get it without much trouble, guilt, or the gnashing of teeth.
He glanced around the hotel suite and decided to tidy it up before the escort arrived. The neurotic tidying-up made him smile. How incredibly bourgeois he still was. You can take the boy out of Kansas, Michael Robinson thought.
He heard two quick raps on the door, and the noise caught him by surprise. The service had said the escort would be there within the hour, which usually meant at least that long, sometimes longer.
“Just a minute,” he called out. “Be right there. One minute.”
Michael Robinson glanced at his watch. The “date” had arrived in about thirty minutes. Well, fine. He was ready for some quick nookie and then a night of blessed sleep. He was having breakfast with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee early the next morning. He’d been asked to do a fund-raiser for the Democrats. The chairman was a starfucker of another variety. They all were, really. Everybody wanted what he thought he couldn’t have, and everybody couldn’t have Michael Robinson. Well, almost everybody.
He peeked through the hotel-door spyhole. Well, well, well. He definitely liked what he saw in the hallway; even through a fish-eye lens, the escort looked good. He felt a spike of adrenaline kick in. He opened the door and his fifteen-million-dollar-per-picture smile was automatically engaged.
“Hi, I’m Jasper,” the handsome escort said. “It’s very nice to meet you, sir.”
Michael Robinson doubted that the escort was “Jasper.” He thought that a name like Jake or Cliff would fit the escort better. He was a tad older than Robinson had expected, possibly in his mid-thirties, but he was more than acceptable. He was near perfect, actually. Michael Robinson was already hard, and he was lubricated. Armed and dangerous, he called the ready state.