Roses Are Red Read online

  “Tall, over six feet. White guy. Beard, maybe a fake one. Long hair. Pretty nondescript clothes: dark sport coat and slacks, blue shirt . . . He’s picking up the pace. He’s starting to jog now. He’s going off the main street, Jimmy. He’s headed back through a yard. He’s running! Son of a bitch is on the run! Here we go!”

  Vincent O’Malley jumped out of his car and followed the Mastermind. He ran close to the maple and oak trees that lined the street. He continued to report in to Crews. “He’s going into the woods off Shepherd Park. Motherhumper is trying to get away from us. Imagine that.”

  O’Malley followed the Mastermind as best he could, but he couldn’t keep up. The guy was a runner. He didn’t look like it, but he could move real well.

  Then O’Malley lost him! “He’s gone. Fuck me in the heinie. I lost him, Jimmy. I don’t see him anymore. This is not good.”

  Crews picked him up again. “I got him. I’m on foot, too. He’s still running like some pickpocket with my wallet.”

  “You keep up with him?”

  “Hope so. We’ll see. For fifteen million dollars I’ll keep up with him somehow.”

  The Mastermind finally came out of the woods and onto a side street filled with brick town houses. Crews was panting as he spoke into the mike on his headset. “Thank God I run every day. He runs, too. He’s out on Morningside Drive. . . . Awhh shit, he’s heading back into the goddamn woods. He’s picking up the pace again. The bastard must train on the Appalachian Trail.”

  It became an incredible game of cat and mouse. Even though they were good at it, O’Malley and Crews lost their prey twice more in the next twenty minutes. They were miles from the Holiday Inn, somewhere south of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

  Then Crews spotted him on a narrow side street called Powhatan Place. The Mastermind had turned into a back driveway or something. Crews followed. He saw a metal sign, and he almost couldn’t believe what it said.

  Crews reported back to O’Malley. Then he talked to Brian Macdougall, who’d joined the merry chase.

  Crews couldn’t keep the irony out of his voice. “I know where the hell he is, fellas. Get this — he’s inside a nuthouse. He’s on the grounds of a mental institution called Hazelwood. And now I’ve lost him again!”

  Chapter 53

  MONDAY MORNING, I got a call to meet Kyle Craig and Betsey Cavalierre at the Hoover Building on Tenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. They wanted me to be at the director’s office at eight o’clock. An “emergency” meeting had been called.

  The Hoover Building is sometimes called the “Puzzle Palace,” and for obvious reasons. Kyle and Betsey were waiting when I arrived in the FBI director’s conference room. Betsey looked tense for her. Her small hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles white.

  I pretended to be annoyed that Director Burns wasn’t there yet. “He’s late,” I muttered. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got better things to do.”

  Just then, one of two polished oak doors into the room opened. I knew both of the men who walked in. Neither of them looked very happy. One was FBI Director Ronald Burns, whom I’d met during the Casanova killings in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The second man was Secretary of Justice Richard Pollett. I had met him when I’d worked on a case involving the president.

  “We’re getting an awful lot of heat on these robbery-murders. The big banks, Wall Street,” Pollett said to Kyle. He nodded in my direction. “Hello, Detective.” Then he looked at Betsey. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met.”

  “I’m Senior Agent Cavalierre,” she said, and rose to shake the secretary’s hand. I’m the SAC.”

  “Ms. Cavalierre is the agent in charge of the investigation?” Pollett asked Director Burns.

  “Yes, she is,” Kyle answered the question. “This is her case.”

  Secretary Pollett turned his unwavering gaze on her. “All right, you’re the SAC. Where are some results, Ms. Cavalierre? I walked into this room ready to make heads roll. Tell me why I shouldn’t.” Richard Pollett had run a large and successful Wall Street investment house before he came to Washington. He knew nothing about law enforcement but believed he was smart enough to figure out anything once he had some facts.

  “Have you ever been part of a national manhunt?” Betsey stared right back into his eyes.

  “I don’t think that’s a relevant question,” he answered dryly. “I’ve run some very important investigations, and I’ve always gotten results.”

  “The robberies have been coming fast,” I found myself saying to Pollett. “Obviously, we were starting from nowhere. Here’s what we know now. A single man planned the Citibank, First Union, First Virginia, and Chase robberies and murders. We know he’s selecting crew members that are willing to kill. He’s only interested in recruiting killers.

  “Our profile tells us he’s a white male between thirty-five and fifty. He’s probably well educated, with a thorough knowledge of banks and their security systems. He may have worked for a financial institution in the past, or even more than one, and might have a grudge against them. He robs banks for the money, but the murders are probably for revenge. That we’re not sure about yet.”

  I looked around the room. Everyone was listening instead of bickering. “A few days ago we located and questioned a man named Tony Brophy. He was recruited for one of the jobs but was turned down. He wasn’t cold-blooded enough. He wasn’t a killer.”

  Betsey spoke. “We have over two hundred agents in the field. We were only a couple of minutes behind them at the Chase robbery in D.C.,” she said. “We know that he calls himself the Mastermind. There’s been a lot of progress in a relatively short time.”

  Pollett turned to the FBI director and nodded curtly. “I’m not satisfied, but at least I finally got a few answers. It’s your job to get this Mastermind, Ron. Do it. What’s happening makes all our financial systems appear vulnerable. The polls say confidence in the banks is down. And that’s a disaster for this country. I assume your Mastermind has figured that out already.”

  Ten minutes later, Betsey Cavalierre and I rode the elevator down to the FBI’s underground garage together. Kyle had stayed behind with Director Burns.

  When we got to the basement floor, she finally spoke. “I owe you one for upstairs. You saved me. Big time. I was this close to unloading on that pompous Wall Street asshole.”

  I looked at her and a smile broke on my face. “You definitely have a temper. I hope you don’t have a grudge against Big Business or the banking system?”

  She finally grinned. “Of course I do. Who doesn’t?”

  Chapter 54

  I SPENT THE NEXT COUPLE OF HOURS at the hospital with Jannie. She told me again that she was going to be a doctor and she sounded ready to take her med boards. She took delight in using terms like pilocytic astrocytoma (her tumor), prothrombin (a plasma protein used in the clotting of blood), and contrast material (dye used in the CT scan she’d had just that morning).

  “I’m back,” Jannie finally announced, “and the new and improved model is better than ever.”

  “Maybe you better go into the public relations or the advertising field when you grow up,” I teased her. “Work for J. Walter Thompson or Young and Rubicam in New York.”

  She puckered her mouth and looked as if she’d just bitten into a lemon. “Dr. Janelle Cross. Remember where you heard it first.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told her, “I won’t forget any of this.”

  Around one o’clock I went over to the crisis center at the FBI field office on Fourth. After the meeting with Pollett and Burns, I knew we’d be working late. A conference room had been commandeered on the third floor. More than a hundred agents were working out of there. Also, about sixty detectives from D.C. and the surrounding areas.

  We had a few more suspects up on the walls now. They were all bank robbers with the skills and experience to pull off big jobs. I studied the list and made notes on a few of them.

  Mitchell Brand was a suspect
in several unsolved robberies in and around D.C. Stephen Schnurmacher was the person behind at least two successful bank heists in the Philadelphia area. Jimmy Doud was a bartender in Boston who’d never been caught but who had robbed dozens of banks up in New England. Victor Kenyon had been concentrating his efforts in central Florida. They all did banks, and they hadn’t been caught yet. They were smart, and good at what they did. But were they masterminds?

  Everything about the long session on Fourth Avenue was intense, and intensely frustrating. I made some calls about the suspects, particularly Mitchell Brand, since he worked out of D.C. It was nearly eleven-thirty when I looked at my watch for the first time all night.

  Betsey Cavalierre and I hadn’t gotten the chance to talk since I’d arrived that afternoon. I drifted her way to say good night before I left the building. She was still going at it. She was talking to a couple of agents but gestured for me to wait.

  Finally, she walked over. She still managed to look fresh and alert, and I wondered how she did it.

  “Metro has a couple of leads on Mitchell Brand,” I told her. “He’s violent enough to be involved in something like this.”

  Suddenly, she yawned. “Longest day of my life. Whew! How’s Jannie doing?” she asked. I was surprised and also pleased by the question.

  “Oh, she’s doing good; great, actually. Hopefully, she’ll come home soon. She wants to be a doctor now.”

  “Alex,” she said, “let’s go have a drink. This is a shot in the dark, but I get the feeling that you need to talk to somebody. Why won’t you talk to me?”

  I must admit, the offer caught me completely off guard. I stammered out a response. “I’d like to, but not tonight. I have to go home. Rain check?”

  “Sure, I understand. It’s okay. Rain check,” she said, but not before a look of hurt had passed over her face.

  I never expected that from Agent Betsey Cavalierre. She had shown concern about my family. And she was vulnerable.

  Chapter 55

  THIS WAS THE PLACE, the time, the opportunity.

  The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, on Connecticut Avenue near Seventeenth.

  It was as busy as ever that morning, busy and important looking. The Mayflower has been the site of every presidential inaugural ball since Calvin Coolidge. The hotel had been completely renovated in 1992, with architects and historians working together to restore it to its earlier grandeur. It was a popular place for corporate conferences and board of directors meetings. That was how the Mastermind knew about it.

  A blue-and-gold chartered tour bus had been waiting in front of the Mayflower since a little before nine. It was scheduled to leave at nine-thirty and would be making scheduled stops at the Kennedy Center, the White House, the Lincoln and Vietnam memorials, the Smithsonian Institution, and other favorite tourist spots around Washington. The bus company was called Washington on Wheels. The corporate group on board was from the MetroHartford Insurance Company.

  Sixteen women and two children were on the bus when the driver, Joseph Denyeau, finally shut the door at nine-forty. “All aboard for various museums, historic sites, and lunch,” he announced into his microphone.

  A corporate assistant named Mary Jordan stood up in front and addressed the group. Jordan was in her early thirties, attractive and likable, supremely efficient. She was courteous to the important women on the bus without fawning over them or sounding obsequious. Her nickname at MetroHartford was Merry Mary.

  “You all know the itinerary for this morning,” she said. Then she smiled brilliantly. “But maybe we should scrap the whole plan and go drinking. Just kidding,” she added quickly.

  “Boo,” said one woman. “That sounds like fun, Mary. Let’s go to a real drinking bar. Where does Teddy Kennedy go for his morning wake-up shot?” Up and down the aisle everyone laughed.

  The tour bus proceeded down the driveway of the hotel at a leisurely pace, then turned onto Connecticut Avenue. A few minutes later, the bus turned onto Oliver, which was a residential street. It was a shortcut drivers often took from the Mayflower.

  A dark blue Chevy van backed out of a driveway about halfway down the block. The van’s driver obviously didn’t see the bus, but the bus driver saw the Chevy. He braked smoothly and stopped in the middle of the street.

  The driver of the van wouldn’t move even after Joe Denyeau sounded his horn. Denyeau figured that the man must have been fed up with all the trucks and buses that used the side street as a shortcut. What other reason could there be for the guy to just sit there, staring angrily at him?

  Two masked men suddenly appeared from behind a high hedge. One of them stepped directly in front of the tour bus; the other thrust an automatic weapon inside the open side window, inches from the driver’s head.

  “Open the door or you’re dead, Joseph,” he shouted at the driver. “No one gets hurt if you obey. You have three seconds to follow directions. One —”

  “It’s open, it’s open,” Denyeau said in a high-pitched, very frightened voice. “Take it easy.”

  Several of the wives stopped in the middle of their conversations and peered up toward the front of the bus. Mary Jordan slid down in the bus seat behind the driver, where she was riding alone. She could see the man with the gun, and then he winked at her.

  “Do what he says, Joe,” Jordan whispered. “Don’t play the hero.”

  “Don’t worry. It didn’t even cross my mind.”

  The armed, masked man suddenly boarded the bus. He held a Walther double automatic pointed at them. Some of the passengers began to scream.

  The masked man shouted out, “This is a hijacking! We’re only interested in getting money from MetroHartford. I promise you, no one will be hurt. I have children, you have children. Let’s make sure all of our children get to see us tomorrow morning.”

  Chapter 56

  THE TOUR BUS became strangely silent. Even the small children were quiet.

  Brian Macdougall had the floor and he immensely enjoyed being the center of attention. “There are a few rules of order. One, no more screams. Two, nobody cries, not even the kids. Three, nobody yells for help. Okay so far? Understood?”

  The passengers stared openmouthed at the man with the gun. Another man had climbed onto the bus roof and was changing the alphanumeric indicator, which was the easiest way police aircraft could spot it on the road.

  “I said — okay so far?” Brian Macdougall yelled.

  The woman and children nodded and answered him in muffled voices.

  “Next piece of business. Everyone with a cell phone pass it forward — right now. As we all know, the police can track cell phones. Not easily, but it can be done. Anyone still holding a phone when we do body searches will be killed. Even if it’s a kid. Simple as that. Understood? Okay so far? We still crystal clear on everything?”

  The cell phones were hurriedly passed to the front. There were nine of them. The gunman threw them outside the bus, into the hedges. He then used a small hammer and smashed the bus’s two-way radio beyond repair.

  “Now, everybody, put your heads way down below the level of the windows. Everybody stay very quiet down there. That includes the kids. Put your heads down now and don’t look up again until you’re told. Do it.”

  The women and the children on the bus obeyed.

  “Big Joe,” the gunman turned and addressed the bus driver, “you have only one instruction — follow the blue van. Do not fuck around in any way or you will die instantly. You are worth nothing to us, alive or dead. Now, Joe, what do you do?”

  “Follow the black van.”

  “Very good, Joe. Excellent. Except the van is blue, Joe. See the blue van? Now follow it, and drive carefully. We don’t want any vehicular violations on our trip.”

  Chapter 57

  THERE WERE THREE EXECUTIVE ASSISTANTS busily answering phones and collecting mail and faxes for the thirty-six MetroHartford directors working in the famed Chinese Room at the Mayflower Hotel. The assistants loved being out of the off
ice, especially since the home offices were in Hartford, Connecticut.

  Sara Wilson, the youngest assistant, saw the fax from the kidnappers first. She quickly read it, then passed it on to the two more-senior assistants. Her face was beet red and her hands were trembling badly.

  “Is this some kind of a sick joke?” Betsy Becton asked when she saw the fax. “This is crazy. What is this?”

  Nancy Hall was the executive assistant to the group CEO, John Dooner. She barged into the board meeting without knocking and called clear across the room. Actually, she needn’t have raised her voice. The Chinese Room at the Mayflower has an acoustic problem. The ceiling is a sweeping dome. Even a whisper on one side of the large room can be heard on the other.

  “Mr. Dooner, I have to see you right now,” she said. She was more agitated and upset than her boss had ever seen her.

  The departure of the CEO brought a general lightening of the mood around the room, but the small talk and smiles were short-lived. He was back in less than five minutes. His face was pale as he hurriedly walked to the podium.

  “Time is of the essence,” said Dooner in a trembling voice that shocked the other board members. “Please listen carefully. The chartered tour bus carrying my wife and many of your wives has been hijacked. The men responsible claim to be the same sick bastards who’ve been robbing banks and taking hostages in Maryland and Virginia during the past few weeks. They claim that the robberies and murders were committed as ‘object lessons’ for the people in this room. They want us to know they are deadly serious about their demands being met — and met on time. To the second.”

  The CEO continued, his face dramatically lit by the podium lamp. “Their demands are simple and clear. They want thirty million dollars to be delivered to them in exactly five hours, or all the hostages will be murdered. We don’t know how the tour bus was taken. Steve Bolding from our Control Risks Group is on his way over here. He’s deciding which police agency to involve. It will probably be the FBI.”