Roses Are Red Read online

  “I know about the job at the Citibank in Silver Spring,” the manager said. His wide, square face was beet red. Perspiration dripped from his forehead in large drops. His blue eyes blinked repeatedly.

  “Watch your computer screen,” Mr. Blue said, and pointed with his gun. “Watch it.”

  A film sequence came up, and the manager saw his wife putting black tape on the mouths of his three children.

  “Oh, God! I know that the manager in Silver Spring was late. Let’s get going,” he said to the ski-masked man in his office. “My family is everything to me.”

  “We know,” Blue said. He turned to the assistant manager. He pointed the gun at her. “You’re not a hero, are you, Ms. Collins?”

  She shook her head of soft red curls. “No, sir, I’m not. The bank’s money is not my money. It isn’t worth dying for. It isn’t worth Mr. Bartlett’s children dying for.”

  Mr. Blue smiled under his mask. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  He turned back to the manager. “I have children, you have children. We don’t want them to be fatherless,” he said. It was the Mastermind’s line and an effective one, he thought. “Let’s get going.”

  They hurried to the main vault, which had a dual combination and needed both Bartlett and his assistant manager to open it. In less than sixty seconds, the vault was open.

  Mr. Blue then held up a silver metal device for all to see; it looked like a TV remote control. “This is a police scanner,” he said. “If the police or the FBI are alerted and come our way, I’ll know as soon as they do. And then you two, and also the two tellers, die. Are there any trip alarms inside the vault?”

  The manager shook his head. “No, sir. There are no secret alarms. You have my word.”

  Mr. Blue smiled again behind his mask. “Then let’s go get my money. Move it!”

  Blue had just about finished loading up the cash when his police scanner suddenly picked up an alert. “Robbery in progress at First Union Bank, downtown Falls Church.”

  He swiveled toward James Bartlett and shot the bank manager dead. Then he turned and shot Ms. Collins through the forehead.

  Just the way it had been planned.

  Chapter 17

  THE SIREN ON THE ROOF OF MY CAR was screaming.

  So was my body.

  And my brain.

  I arrived at the First Union Bank in Falls Church, Virginia, at almost the same time that Kyle Craig and his FBI team got there.

  A black helicopter was just settling into the mostly empty shopping-mall parking area directly behind the bank. Kyle and three other agents climbed out of the chopper and headed toward me at a fast trot. They were stooped over and looked like monks hurrying to chapel. All four wore blue FBI windbreakers, which meant the Bureau wanted the public to know the FBI was involved with the investigation. The murders so far were gross and chilling for everyone. People needed to be reassured, to have their hands held.

  “You been inside the bank already?” Kyle huffed as he came jogging up to me. He, too, looked as if he hadn’t slept.

  “I just got here myself. Saw the big bad Bell Jet sputtering in. Figured it had to be you, or Darth Vader. Let’s go in together.”

  “This is Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre,” Kyle said, indicating a smallish woman with lustrous black hair and eyes almost as dark. She wore her oversized FBI windbreaker over a white T-shirt, khaki trousers, running shoes. She was probably in her mid-thirties. Intense looking and also pretty, though certainly not glamorous.

  “This is the rest of the first team. Agents Michael Doud and James Walsh,” Kyle continued with the introductions. “This is Alex Cross. He’s the VICAP liaison with the D.C. police. Alex found the bodies of Errol and Brianne Parker.”

  There were quick, polite hellos and handshakes all around. Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre seemed to be sizing me up. Maybe it was because her boss and I were friends. Or maybe because I was VICAP, the official liaison between the FBI and the Metro police. Kyle took me by the elbow and steered me away from his agents.

  “If the original two bank robbers are dead, who the hell did this job?” Kyle asked as we walked past ribbons of yellow crime tape snapping loudly in a crisp breeze from the southeast. “This is as bad as it gets. You see why I brought you in?”

  “Because misery likes company,” I said.

  The FBI ADIC, or assistant director in charge, walked with me into the bank lobby. My stomach fell. Two female tellers were lying on the floor. They were dressed in dark blue business suits, now stained with their blood. Both were dead. Their head wounds indicated they had been shot at close range.

  “Executed. Goddamnit. Goddamnit,” Agent Cavalierre said as we stopped at the bodies. An FBI crime scene unit immediately began videotaping the scene and taking still photographs. We headed toward the open bank vault.

  Chapter 18

  IT GOT WORSE IN A HURRY. Two more victims were inside the vault, a man and a woman. They had been shot several times. The business suits and bodies were riddled with bullets. Had they been punished, too? I wondered. What were their sins? Why the hell was this happening?

  “This makes no goddamn sense to me,” Kyle said, rubbing his face with both hands. It was a familiar tic of his and instantly reminded me of the many cases we had worked together on in the past. We complained about it sometimes, but we’d always been there for each other.

  “Bank robbers don’t usually kill anybody. Not pros,” Agent Cavalierre spoke. “So why do this sick stunt?”

  “Was the family of the manager held hostage as in the Silver Spring robbery?” I asked. I almost didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Kyle looked my way, nodded. “Mother and three kids. We just got word on them. Thank God, they were released. They weren’t harmed. So why were these four butchered and the family released? Where’s a pattern?”

  I didn’t know yet. Kyle was right: The robbery-murders didn’t make any sense. Or rather, we weren’t thinking like the killers. We didn’t get it, did we?

  “There might have been a screwup here at the branch. If this is connected to the bank in Silver Spring.”

  “We have to assume it is,” said Agent Cavalierre. “The father, the nanny, and child were killed in Silver Spring because the manager was warned that the crew had to be out of the bank at a certain time or the hostages died. According to the video monitor at the bank, they missed by seconds.”

  As usual, Kyle had information the rest of us didn’t. He shared it now. “An alarm went to the police here in Falls Church. I think that’s what prompted the four murders. We’re trying to run down where the warning call came from.”

  “How would the crew know the alarm went to the police?” I asked.

  “They probably had a police scanner,” Agent Cavalierre said.

  Kyle nodded. “Agent Cavalierre is very smart about bank robberies,” he said, “and just about everything else.”

  “I’m after Kyle’s job,” she said, and smiled thinly. I took Agent Cavalierre at her word.

  Chapter 19

  I ACCOMPANIED KYLE and his first-team entourage to FBI headquarters in downtown Washington. We were all feeling a little sick about the murder scene we’d witnessed. Agent Cavalierre did know a great deal about bank robberies, including several committed in the Midwest that resembled the Citibank and First Union jobs.

  At headquarters, she pulled up as much relevant information as she could get in a hurry. We read printouts about a pair of desperadoes named Joseph Dougherty and Terry Lee Connor. I wondered if their exploits might have served as some kind of model for the two recent robberies. Dougherty and Connor had hit several banks in the Midwest. They would usually kidnap the manager’s family first. Before one robbery, they held the manager and his family for three days over a holiday weekend, then robbed the bank on a Tuesday.

  “There’s a big difference, though. Dougherty and Connor never hurt a soul in any of the robberies,” Cavalierre said. “They weren’t killers like the scum we�
��re dealing with now. What the hell do they want?”

  I made myself go home around seven that night. I had a home-cooked dinner with Nana and the kids: shallow-fried chicken, cheese grits, and steamed broccoli. After we did the dishes, Damon, Jannie, and I trooped down to the basement for the kids’ weekly boxing lesson. The boxing lessons have been going on for a couple of years and aren’t really necessary for Damon and Jannie anymore. Damon is a clever ten, Jannie’s eight, and they can both defend themselves. But they like the exercise and the camaraderie, and so do I.

  What happened that night came out of the blue. It was unannounced and totally unexpected. Afterward, once I knew what had happened, I understood why.

  Jannie and Damon were fooling around, showing off a little, strutting their stuff. Jannie must have walked into a punch from Damon.

  The looping blow struck her squarely in the forehead, just above the left eye. That much I’m certain about. The rest was a blur to me. A complete shock. It was as if I were seeing life as a series of stop-motion photos.

  Jannie tilted to the left and she went down in a frightening collapse. She hit the floor hard. Her movements suddenly became jerky, and then her limbs went completely stiff. There was absolutely no warning.

  “Jannie!” Damon yelled, aware that he’d hit and hurt his sister, though it was an accident.

  I hurried to her side as Jannie’s body began to shake and spasm uncontrollably. Soft, gagging moans came from her throat. She obviously couldn’t speak. Then her eyes rolled way back until only the whites showed.

  Jannie began to choke horribly. I thought she was going to start swallowing her tongue. I yanked off my belt. I folded it and wedged it into Jannie’s mouth to keep her from swallowing her tongue or possibly lacerating it with a hard bite. My heart was pounding as I held the tightly folded belt in her mouth. I kept telling her, “It’s okay, it’s okay, Jannie. Everything is okay, baby.”

  I tried to be as soothing as I possibly could be. I tried not to let her see how scared I was. The violent spasms wouldn’t stop. I was pretty sure Jannie was having a seizure.

  Chapter 20

  EVERYTHING IS OKAY, baby. Everything is going to be fine.

  Two or three horrifying minutes passed like that. Everything wasn’t okay, though, not even close; everything was as terrible as it could be, as terrible as it had ever been.

  Jannie’s lips had turned bluish, and she was drooling. Then she lost control of her bladder and peed on the floor. She still couldn’t speak.

  I had sent Damon upstairs to call for help. An ambulance arrived less than ten minutes after Jannie’s seizure ended. So far, there hadn’t been another one. I prayed there wouldn’t be.

  Two EMS attendants hurried down to the basement, where I still knelt on the floor beside Jannie. I held one of her hands; Nana held the other. We had propped a pillow from the couch under her head and covered her with a blanket. This is crazy, I kept thinking. This can’t be happening.

  “You’re okay, sweetie,” Nana hummed softly.

  Jannie finally looked at her. “No, I’m not, Nana.”

  She was fully conscious now, scared and confused. She was also embarrassed because she’d wet herself. She knew something strange and terrible had happened to her. The EMTs were gentle and reassuring. They checked Jannie’s vital signs: temperature, pulse, and blood pressure. Then one of them inserted an IV in her arm while the other brought out an intubation box / breathing aid.

  My heart was still pounding, racing terribly. I felt as if I might stop breathing, too.

  I told the EMS workers what had happened. “She had violent spasms for about two minutes. Her limbs were stiff as boards. Her eyes rolled back.” I told them about the shadow-boxing and the punch that had landed above her left eye.

  “It does sound like a seizure,” the lead person said. Her green eyes were sympathetic, reassuring. “It could have been the blow she took, even if it was a light hit — the angle of attack. We should take her to St. Anthony’s.”

  I nodded agreement, then watched in horror as they strapped my little girl on a stretcher and carried her out to the waiting ambulance. My legs were still unsteady. My whole body was numb and my vision tunneled.

  “You have to use the siren,” Jannie whispered to the EMS techs as they lifted her into the back of the ambulance van. “Please?”

  And they did — all the way to St. Anthony’s Hospital. I know — I rode with Jannie.

  Longest ride of my life.

  Chapter 21

  AT THE HOSPITAL, Jannie had an EEG, then she underwent as thorough a neurological exam as they could give her at that time of the day. Her cranial nerves were tested. She was asked to walk a straight line, then to hop on one foot to determine the presence of any ataxia. She did as she was told, and seemed better now. Still, I watched her as if she might suddenly shatter.

  Just as she was finishing the exam, Jannie had a second seizure. It lasted longer and was more violent than the first one. It couldn’t have been any worse if it had happened to me. When the attack finally stopped, Jannie was given a Valium IV The hospital staff was right there for her, but their concern was also frightening. A nurse asked me if there had been any symptoms before the seizure, such as blurred vision, headaches, nausea, loss of coordination. I hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

  When she had finished her examination of Jannie, Dr. Bone from the emergency room took me aside. “We’ll keep her here overnight for observation, Detective Cross. We’d like to be extra careful.”

  “Extra careful is good,” I said. I was still shaking a little. I could see it in my hands.

  “She might be here longer than that,” Dr. Bone then added. “We need to do more tests on Jannie. I don’t like the fact that there was a second seizure.”

  “All right. Of course, Doctor. I don’t like that there was a second seizure either.”

  There was a bed available on the fourth floor, and I went up there with Jannie. Hospital policy required that she be taken up on a gurney, but I got to push it. She was groggy and unusually quiet in the elevator going up; she didn’t ask me any questions until we were alone behind a curtain in the hospital room.

  “Okay,” she said then. “Tell me the truth, Daddy. You have to tell me everything. The truth.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, you probably had what’s called a grand mal seizure. Two of them. Sometimes they just happen, sweetheart. Out of the blue, like tonight. Damon’s punch might have had something to do with it.”

  She frowned. “He barely touched me.” Jannie stared into my eyes, trying to read me. “Okay,” she said. “That’s not so bad, is it? At least I’m still here on planet Earth for now.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I told her. “It isn’t funny.”

  “Okay. I won’t scare you,” she whispered.

  Jannie reached out and took my hand and we held on tight. In a few minutes she was fast asleep, still holding on to my hand.

  Part Two

  HATE MAIL

  Chapter 22

  NO ONE COULD FIGURE OUT what was happening, or why.

  He just loved that. The feeling of superiority it bred. They were all such dithering fools.

  On a numerical scale of 9.9999 out of 10, things were going very well. The Mastermind was certain that he hadn’t made a meaningful mistake. He took particular satisfaction in the Falls Church robbery and especially the four puzzling murders.

  He relived every moment of the bloody crime as if he had been there instead of lucky Messrs. Red, White, and Blue, and Ms. Green. He visualized the scene at the manager’s house, and then the murders at the bank, with intense pleasure and satisfaction. The Mastermind re-created it in his mind again and again and never tired of the scenario, especially the killings. The artistry and symbolism of them infused him with confidence in the cleverness of his thinking — the rightness of it.

  He found himself smiling at the thought of the phone call to the police: the tip that a robbery was in progress. He’d
made the call. He wanted the First Union employees killed. That was the whole goddamn point. Didn’t anybody see that yet?

  He had another team to recruit now, the most important one, and the hardest to find. The final crew had to be extremely capable and self-sufficient, and, because of that self-sufficiency, they would pose a danger to him. He understood very well that clever people often had large and uncontrollable egos. He certainly did.

  He brought up the names of potential candidates on his computer screen. He read lengthy profiles and even criminal records, which he thought of as their résumés. Then suddenly that dreary, rainy afternoon, he came across a crew that was as different from the others as he was from the rest of humanity.

  The proof? They had no criminal record. They had never been caught, never even been suspected. It was why they’d been so hard for him to find. They seemed perfect — for his perfect job — for his masterpiece.

  No one could figure out what was going to happen.

  Chapter 23

  AT 9:00 A.M., I met with a neurologist named Thomas Petito, who patiently explained the tests Jannie would go through that same morning. He wanted first to eliminate some possible causes of the seizures. He told me that worrying would do no good, that Jannie was in excellent hands — his — and that for the moment the best thing I could do was to go to work. “I don’t want you worrying needlessly,” Petito said. “And I don’t want you in my way.”

  I drove I-95 South to Quantico that afternoon after I had lunch with Jannie. I needed to visit with the FBI’s best technicians and profilers, and they were at Quantico. I didn’t like leaving Jannie at St. Anthony’s but Nana was with her now, and there weren’t any major tests scheduled until the following morning.

  Kyle Craig had called me at the hospital and asked about Jannie. He was genuinely concerned. Kyle then told me that the Justice Department, the banking industry, and the media were all over him like a cheap suit. The FBI dragnet now covered most of the East Coast, but it wasn’t delivering results. He’d even flown in one of the agents from the team that had tracked down master bank robber Joseph Dougherty in the mid-eighties.