Roses Are Red Page 3

  Sampson and I stopped for lunch at a Boston Market around one in the afternoon. It wasn’t our first, or even second choice, but it was handy and the Big Man was hungry, wouldn’t be denied. I could have continued on without eating.

  “You think the Parkers are off doing another job?” he asked me as we dug into orders of meat loaf, corn, and mashed potatoes.

  “If they’re the ones who did the bank in Maryland, they’re probably hiding out. They know the heat is on. Errol sneaks off to South Carolina sometimes. He’s a fisherman. Kyle already has FBI agents on the ground there.”

  “You ever spend time with Errol?” Sampson wanted to know.

  “Family get-togethers mostly, but he only came to a few that I can remember. I went fishing with him once. He was like a little kid as long as we were catching largemouth bass and two- or three-pound catfish. Maria always liked Errol.”

  Sampson kept eating his meat loaf and double order of mashed potatoes. “You think about Maria much?”

  I scrunched down into my seat. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about this now. “Different things remind me of her. Especially Sundays. We’d sleep until noon sometimes, treat ourselves to a nice brunch. Or visit the duck pond near the river. St. Tony’s. Long walks in Garfield Park. It’s a sad, confusing thing, John — that she died so young. It especially hurts that I could never solve her murder.”

  Sampson kept on hounding me with questions. He gets that way sometimes.

  “You and Christine are doing all right?”

  “No,” I finally admitted. But I couldn’t quite get out the whole truth. “She can’t get over what happened with Geoffrey Shafer. I’m not even sure that the Weasel is dead. We finished here?”

  Sampson grinned. “Food, or my cross-examination?”

  “Let’s go. Let’s find Errol and Brianne Parker. Solve the bank robbery. Take the rest of the day off.”

  Chapter 12

  AROUND SEVEN O’CLOCK Sampson and I decided to take a dinner break. We figured we’d be working late, probably past midnight. It was that kind of case. I went home for supper with the kids and Nana Mama.

  I ate, and complimented Nana on her cooking, but I didn’t taste much of anything. I was keeping the Christine thing bottled up inside me. Not too bright on my part.

  Sampson and I agreed to meet around ten to check out a few night crawlers who would be easier to find after darkness fell. At quarter past ten, we were trolling Southeast again in my car.

  Sampson spotted a small-time drug hustler and snitch we knew. Darryl Snow was hanging out with his boys in front of a bar and grill that kept changing its name and now was called Used-To-Be’s.

  Sampson and I hopped out of the Porsche and came up fast on Snow. He had nowhere to run. As always, Darryl was a drug-hustler fashion plate: crimson nylon shorts over blue nylon pants, Polo T-shirt, Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker, Oakley shades.

  “Hey there, Snowman,” Sampson said in his deep voice. “You’re melting away to nothing.”

  Even Snow’s hustler friends laughed. Darryl was around five-eleven, and I doubt he weighed a hundred and twenty pounds with his clothes on, designer labels and all.

  “Walk and talk with me, Darryl,” I told him. “This is not open to discussion.”

  His head shook like a dashboard doll’s, but he reluctantly went along. “I don’t wanna talk to you, Cross.”

  “Errol and Brianne Parker,” I said, once we were far enough away from the others.

  Darryl looked at me and frowned heavily as his head continued to bob. “You the one was married to his sister or whatever? Why you askin’ me? Why you always prosecutin’ me, man?”

  “Errol doesn’t spend a lot of time with the family anymore. He’s too busy robbing banks. Where is he, Darryl? Sampson and I don’t owe you any favors right now. That’s a dicey place to be.”

  “I can live with it,” Darryl said, and looked away into the streetlights.

  My hand shot out and grabbed some windbreaker and shirt. “No, you can not. You know better, Darryl.”

  Snow sniffled and cursed under his breath. “I hear Brianne be over the old First Avenue projects. Rat-shit buildings on First? I don’t know she still at that place, though. That’s all I got.” He held out his hands, palms up.

  Sampson came rolling up behind Snow. “Boo,” he said, and Darryl’s sneakered feet almost left the ground.

  “Is Darryl being helpful?” he asked me. “Seems a little jumpy.”

  “Are you being helpful?” I asked Snow.

  He whined pathetically. “I told you where Brianne Parker be seen, din’t I? Why don’ you just go over there? Check it out, man. Leave me the hell alone. You two like the Blair Witch Project or somethin’. Scary, man.”

  “Much scarier,” said Sampson, and he grinned. “Blair Witch is just a movie, Darryl. We’re for real.”

  Chapter 13

  “I HATE THIS nasty, eerie, middle-of-the-night shit,” Sampson said as we approached the First Avenue project on foot. What we saw up ahead were abandoned tenement buildings where junkies and homeless people lived, if you could call it living, in America’s capital city.

  “Night of the Living Dead all over again,” Sampson muttered. He was right; the hangarounds outside the buildings did look like zombies.

  “Errol Parker? Brianne Parker?” I said in a low voice as I walked past badly strung-out men with hollow, unshaven faces. Nobody answered. Most of them wouldn’t even look at me or Sampson. They knew we were police.

  “Errol? Brianne Parker?” I continued, but still no one answered.

  “Thanks for the help. God loves you,” Sampson said. He was mimicking the rap of the more irritating panhandlers around town.

  We began to walk through each of the buildings, floor by floor, basement to the roof. The final building we came to looked deserted and for a good reason: It was the most squalid and broken down.

  “After you, Alphonse,” Sampson growled. It was late and he was getting grumpy.

  I had the flashlight, so I led the way. As we’d done in the other buildings, we started in the cellar. The floor was potholed, heavily stained cement. Dusty cobwebs wove from one end of the basement to the other.

  I came to a closed wooden door and pushed it open with my foot. I could hear rodents of various sizes scurrying around inside the walls, scratching furiously as if they were trapped. I waved my flashlight around. Nothing but a couple of glaring rats.

  “Errol? Brianne?” Sampson called to them. They chittered back at us.

  He and I continued the floor-to-floor search. The building was damp and smelled of urine, feces, mildew. The stench was unbearable.

  “I’ve seen better Holiday Inns,” I said, and Sampson finally laughed.

  I shoved open another door, and knew by the putrescent odor that we’d found dead bodies. I waved the flashlight and saw Brianne and Errol. They no longer looked human. The building was warm and decomposition began fast. I calculated they’d been dead for at least a day, probably more.

  I shone the Maglite flashlight at Errol first, then at his wife. I sighed and felt a little sick inside. I thought of Maria and how she had liked something about Errol. When he was little, my son Damon had called him Uncle Errol.

  The corneas of Brianne’s eyes were cloudy, as if she had cataracts. Her mouth was wide open, the jaw slack. Errol looked pretty much the same. I thought of the family that had been executed in Silver Spring. What kind of killers were we dealing with? Why had they killed the Parkers?

  Brianne’s top had been removed, and I didn’t see it anywhere in the room. Her jeans were pulled down, exposing red panties and her thighs.

  I wondered what it meant. Had the killer taken Brianne’s top? Had someone else been in here since the murders? Had they played around with Brianne after she was dead? Was it the killer?

  Sampson looked troubled and puzzled. “Doesn’t look like an overdose,” he said. “Too violent. These two suffered.”

  “John,” I finally spoke in a
quiet voice, “I think they might have been poisoned. Maybe they were supposed to suffer.”

  I made a call to Kyle Craig and told him about the Parkers. Had we solved part of the Silver Spring robbery? Was at least one killer still out there?

  Chapter 14

  A RUSH-RUSH AUTOPSY confirmed my suspicion that Errol and Brianne Parker had been poisoned. The ingestion of a massive dose of Anectine had caused rapid muscle contractions and led to cardiac arrest. The poison had been mixed into a bottle of Chianti. Brianne Parker had been sexually violated after she was dead. What a mess.

  Sampson and I spent another couple of hours talking to the hangarounds, the homeless, the junkies living in the abandoned project buildings on First Avenue. No one admitted knowing Errol or Brianne; no one had seen any unusual visitors at the building where the couple had been hiding.

  I finally drifted home for a few hours’ sleep, but I was restless in my bedroom. I got up and hobbled downstairs around five. I was thinking about Christine and little Alex again.

  Nana’s latest refrigerator note was posted. It read: “Never once / did she wanna be white / to pass / dreamed only of being darker.” I opened the fridge and took out a Stewart’s root beer, then I wandered out of the kitchen. The poem from the refrigerator door drifted through my head.

  I flicked the television on, then off. I played the piano in the sunroom — “Crazy for You” and then some Debussy. I played “Moonglow,” which reminded me of the best times with Christine. I imagined ways that we might fix the relationship. I’d tried to be there for her every day since her return to Washington. She kept pushing me away. Tears finally welled in my eyes and I wiped them away. She’s gone. You have to start over again. But I wasn’t so sure that I could.

  The floorboards squeaked. “I heard you playing ‘Clair de Lune.’ Very nicely, I might add.” Nana was standing in the doorway with a tray in her hands. There were two steaming coffee mugs on it.

  She pushed one of them toward me and I took it. She then sat in the old wicker rocker near the piano, quietly sipping her brew.

  “This instant?” I kidded her.

  “You find any instant coffee in my kitchen, I’ll give you this house.”

  “I own the house,” I reminded her.

  “So you say, sonny boy. Sunrise concerto, Alex? What’s the occasion?”

  “Presunrise concerto. I couldn’t sleep. Bad night, bad dreams. Bad morning so far.” I sipped the delicious coffee, which was laced with chicory. “Good coffee, though.”

  Nana continued to sip hers. “Mmm-hmmm. Tell me something I don’t know. What else?”

  “You remember Maria’s stepbrother Errol? Sampson and I found his body in the First Avenue projects last night,” I told her.

  Nana made a low clucking sound, and she gently shook her head. “That’s so sad, such a shame, Alex. They’re a good family, nice people.”

  “I have to go and tell the family this morning. Maybe that’s why I’m up so early.”

  “What else?” Nana asked again. She knew me so well, and in a way that was comforting now. “Talk to me, Alex. Tell your Nana.”

  “It’s Christine,” I finally said. “I think it’s over between us. She doesn’t want to see me. She told me, made it official. I don’t know where that leaves little Alex. Nana, I have tried everything in my power. I swear I have.”

  She put down her coffee mug and slid one skinny arm around me. She still has a lot of strength in her body. She held me tight. “Well then, you’ve done what you can, haven’t you? What else can you do?”

  “She hasn’t gotten over what happened in Bermuda,” I whispered. “She doesn’t want to be with a homicide detective. She can’t do it. She doesn’t want to be with me.”

  Nana whispered back at me, “You’re taking too much on your shoulders. You’re taking on blame you shouldn’t. It’s bending you, Alex. You can break. You listen to Nana now.”

  “I’m listening. I always do.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do too.”

  “Do not, and I can keep this up longer than you,” she snapped. “Besides, it proves my point.”

  Nana always has the last word. She is the best psychologist in the house, or so she tells me constantly.

  Chapter 15

  THE SECOND BANK ROBBERY went off like a time bomb early that morning in the town of Falls Church, Virginia, about nine miles outside Washington.

  The bank manager’s house was a well-maintained colonial in a sweet neighborhood where the people seemed to genuinely like one another. There was evidence of well-loved children everywhere: Tyco toys, bikes, a basketball net, dueling swings, a makeshift lemonade stand. There was a beautiful garden filled with flowering shrubs. Birds perched on a whimsical weathervane — a witch on a broom — up on the garage roof. That morning you could almost hear the witch’s cackle.

  The Mastermind had told his new crew what they would find and how they should proceed. Every move was carefully planned and rehearsed.

  The new crew was superior to the Parkers. It had taken half of the money from the Citibank job to interest them, but it was worth it. They called one another Mr. Red, Mr. White, Mr. Blue, and Ms. Green. They had long hair and looked like a heavy metal rock band, but they were an efficient team, very high-tech.

  Mr. Blue was at the First Union branch when it opened in downtown Falls Church. Ms. Green was there with him. They both had semiautomatic weapons in shoulder holsters underneath their windbreakers.

  Mr. Red and Mr. White went to the manager’s house. Katie Bartlett heard the door chimes and thought it was the baby-sitter. When she opened the front door, she turned pale and her legs buckled at the sight of an armed, masked man wearing a headset with a microphone jutting under his chin. Behind him was a second armed man.

  “Back inside! Move it!” Red screamed loudly through his mask. He held his gun inches from her face.

  Red and White herded the mother and her three small children into the family room on the main floor. The room featured a home entertainment center, and a Tae Bo video was playing. A picture window looked out on a small, still lake, but no one could see them unless they had a boat, and there were no boats on the lake that morning.

  “Now, we’re going to make a home movie,” Mr. Red explained to Mrs. Bartlett and the kids. He talked to them in a matter-of-fact, almost friendly way.

  “You don’t have to hurt anyone,” Katie Bartlett told him. “We’ll cooperate with you. Please put the guns away. I beg you.”

  “I hear you, Katie. But we have to show your husband that we’re serious and that I’m actually here in the house with you and the kids.”

  “They’re two, three, and four,” the mother said. She started to cry, but then she seemed to will herself to stop. “They’re just little babies. My babies.”

  Mr. Red slid his gun inside his holster. “There, there. I don’t want to hurt the kids. I promise I don’t.”

  He was pleased with the job so far. Katie seemed smart, and the kids were well behaved. They were a nice family, the Bartletts. Just as the Mastermind had said.

  “I want you to be the one to put this duct tape on the kids’ mouths,” Mr. Red told Katie Bartlett. He handed over a thick roll of tape.

  “They won’t make any noise. I promise,” she said. “They’re good kids.”

  Mr. Red felt sorry for her. She was pretty, and an okay lady. He thought of the couple and the kid in the movie Life Is Beautiful. Mr. Red spoke directly to the kids. “This is duct tape, and we’re going to play a game with it. It’ll be cool,” he said.

  Two of the kids glared at him, but the three-year-old grinned. “Duck tape?”

  “That’s right. Duck tape. Quack, quack, quack, quack. Now Mommy’s going to put the duck tape on everybody’s mouth. Then we make a home movie for Daddy to see how you look.”

  “Then what?” asked Dennis, the four-year-old, who now seemed interested in the game. “We quack up Daddy.”

  Mr. Red laughed. Even Mr. Wh
ite managed a smirk. The kids were cute. He hoped he wouldn’t have to kill them in a few minutes.

  Chapter 16

  SOMEBODY was going to be murdered in just a few minutes. It was 8:12. The Falls Church robbery was on the clock and it couldn’t be stopped.

  Ms. Green had a rapid-fire weapon aimed in the direction of two frightened women tellers; both of them were in their mid to late twenties.

  Mr. Blue was already in the manager’s office at the First Union branch. He was explaining the rules of the game of “truth or consequences” to James Bartlett and his assistant manager.

  “Nobody has any panic buttons on them?” Mr. Blue asked in a fast, high-pitched voice that was intended to communicate that he was tense and maybe close to losing it. “That would be a serious mistake, and there can be no mistakes.”

  “We don’t have panic buttons,” said the bank manager, who seemed smart enough and eager to please. “I would tell you if we did.”

  “You ever listen to the training tapes put out by the American Society for Industrial Security?” Blue asked.

  “N-no, I haven’t,” the bank manager answered with a nervous stutter. “I’m — I’m — s-sorry.”

  “Well, their number one recommendation during a robbery is cooperation so that no one gets hurt.”

  The manager nodded his head rapidly. “I agree with that. I hear you. I’m cooperating, sir.”

  “You’re a pretty smart guy for a bank manager. Everything I told you about your family being held as hostages is the absolute truth. I want you to always tell me the truth, too. Or there will be unfortunate consequences. That means no trip alarms, no bait money, no dye packs, no hidden cameras. If Sonitrol has a device in here that’s recording me now, tell me.”