Roses Are Red Page 6

  As I approached a room with COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY and MRI lettered on the door, a technician appeared from a doorway across the hall. He startled me — I was walking in a fog. Thinking, worrying about Jannie.

  “Can I help you? Are you supposed to be down here, sir?”

  “I’m Jannie Cross’s father. I’m Detective Cross. She’s having an MRI. She had a seizure tonight.”

  The man nodded. “She’s down here. I’ll show you the way. I believe she’s about halfway through the test. Our last patient for the night.”

  Chapter 30

  THE HOSPITAL TECH showed me into the MRI room, where Nana was sitting vigil. She was trying to keep up a calm exterior, trying to maintain her usual self-control. For once, it wasn’t working. I saw the fear lighting up her eyes, or maybe I was projecting my own feelings.

  I looked over at the MRI machine, and it was state-of-the-art. It was more open and less restraining than others I’d seen. I’d had two MRIs, so I knew the drill. Jannie would be lying flat inside. Her head would be immobilized on either side by “sandbags.” The image of Jannie alone inside the imposing machine was disturbing. But so was her third seizure in two days.

  “Can she hear us?” I asked.

  Nana cupped her hands to her ears. “She’s listening to music in there. But you can hold her hand, Alex. She knows your touch.”

  I reached out and took one of Jannie’s hands. I squeezed gently, and she squeezed back. She knew it was me.

  “What happened while I was gone?” I asked Nana.

  “We were lucky, so lucky,” she said. “Dr. Petito stopped by on his rounds. He was talking to Jannie when she had another grand mal. He ordered the MRI, and they had an opening for her. Actually, they stayed open for her.”

  I sat down because I needed to. It had been a long and stressful day and it wasn’t over yet. My heart was still racing; so was my head. The rest of my body was struggling to catch up.

  “Don’t start blaming yourself,” Nana told me. “Like I said, we’re very lucky. The best doctor in the hospital was right there in her room.”

  “I’m not blaming anybody,” I muttered, knowing it wasn’t true.

  Nana frowned. “If you had been there during the seizure, she’d still be here having the MRI. And in case you think it could have been the boxing, Dr. Petito said there’s almost no chance. The contact was too minimal. It’s something else, Alex.”

  That was exactly what I was afraid of. We waited for the test to be over, and it was a long, hard wait. Finally, Jannie slowly slid out of the machine. Her little face brightened when she saw me.

  “Fugees,” she said, then took off the earphones for me to hear. “Killing me softly with his song,” she sang along with the music. “Hello, Daddy. You said you’d come back. Kept your promise.”

  “I did.” I bent down to kiss her. “How are you, sweetie?” I asked. “You feeling okay now?”

  “They played some really nice music for me,” she said. “I’m hanging in there, hanging tough. I can’t wait to see the pictures of my brain, though.”

  Neither could I, neither could I. Dr. Petito had waited around for the pictures. He never seemed to leave the hospital. I met with him in his office at a little past eleven-thirty. I was beyond tired. We both were.

  “Long day for you,” I said. Every day seemed to be like that for Petito. The neurologist had office hours starting at seven-thirty in the morning, and he was still around the hospital at nine and ten o’clock at night, sometimes later. He actually encouraged patients to call him at home if they had a problem or just got scared at night.

  “This is my life.” He shrugged. “Helped get me divorced a few years back.” He yawned. “Keeping me single now. That and my fear of attachment. I love it, though.”

  I nodded and thought that I understood. Then I asked the question that was burning in my mind. “What did you find? Is she all right?”

  He shook his head slowly, then he spoke the words I hadn’t wanted to hear. “I’m afraid there’s a tumor. I’m pretty certain that it’s a pilocytic astrocytoma, a kind of tumor that strikes the very young. We’ll confirm that after the surgery. It’s located in her cerebellum. The tumor is large, and it’s life threatening. I’m sorry to have to give you that news.”

  I spent another night at the hospital with Jannie. She fell asleep holding my hand again.

  Chapter 31

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING my beeper went off. I made a call and got bad news from Sandy Greenberg, a friend who worked at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France.

  A woman named Lucy Rhys-Cousins had been savagely murdered in a London supermarket. She was killed while her children looked on. Sandy told me the police in London suspected that the killer was her husband, Geoffrey Shafer, a man I knew as the Weasel.

  I couldn’t believe it. Not now. Not the Weasel. “Was it Shafer or not?” I asked Sandy. “Do you know for certain?”

  “It’s him, Alex, though we won’t confirm it for the press vermin. Scotland Yard is positive. The children recognized him. Their mad-hatter daddy! He killed their mother right before their eyes.”

  Geoffrey Shafer had been responsible for Christine’s kidnapping. He had also committed several grisly murders in the Southeast section of Washington. He’d preyed on the poor and defenseless. The news that he might be alive, and killing again, was like a swift, sudden punch below the belt. I knew it would be even worse for Christine to learn about Shafer.

  I called her at home from St. Anthony’s but got her answering machine. I talked calmly to the machine. “Christine, pick up if you’re there. It’s Alex. Please, pick up. It’s important that I talk to you.”

  Still, no one picked up at Christine’s. I knew that Shafer couldn’t be here in Washington — and yet I worried about the possibility that he could be. His pattern was to do the unexpected. The goddamn Weasel!

  I checked my watch. It was 7:00 A.M. Sometimes Christine went to the school on Saturday. I decided to head over to the Sojourner Truth School, anyway. It wasn’t far.

  Chapter 32

  AS I DROVE THERE, I was thinking, Don’t let this be happening. Not again! Please, God, don’t do this to her. You can’t do this. You wouldn’t.

  I parked near the school and dashed out of the car. Then I found myself running down the hall to Christine’s corner office. My heart pounded dully in my chest. My legs were unsure. I could hear the clicking of the word processor before I reached the door.

  I peered inside.

  I was relieved to see Christine there in her warm and fuzzy, thoroughly cluttered office. She was always intensely focused when she worked. Not wanting to startle her, I stood and watched for a moment. Then I knocked gently on the doorjamb.

  “It’s me,” I said in a soft voice.

  Christine stopped typing and turned. For just an instant, she looked at me like she used to. It melted me. She had on a pair of navy blue trousers and a tailored yellow silk blouse. She didn’t look as if she were going through a bad time, but I knew that she was.

  “What are you doing here?” she finally asked. “I already heard it on CNN this morning,” she continued. “I saw the glorious murder scene at the market in London.” She shook her head, closed her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  Christine snapped out an answer. “I’m not all right! I’m a million miles from all right. This news doesn’t help. I can’t sleep nights. I have nightmares all the time. I can’t concentrate during the day. I imagine terrible things happening to little Alex. To Damon and Jannie and Nana, and to you. I can’t make it stop!”

  Her words cut right through me. It was a terrible feeling not to be able to help. “I don’t think he’ll come back here,” I said.

  Anger flashed in Christine’s eyes. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Shafer considers himself beyond us. We aren’t that important in his fantasy world. His wife was. I’m surprised that he didn’t murder the kids, too.”

  �
�You see, you’re surprised. Nobody knows for sure what these insane, pathetic maniacs will do! And now you’re involved with more of them: depraved men who murder innocent hostages for no reason. Because they can.”

  I started to walk into the office — but she raised her hand. “Don’t. Please stay away from me.”

  Christine then rose from her chair and walked past me toward the teacher’s washroom. She disappeared inside without looking back.

  I knew she wouldn’t come out — not until she was sure I was gone. As I finally walked away, I was thinking that she hadn’t asked about Jannie.

  Chapter 33

  I STOPPED AT ST. ANTHONY’S HOSPITAL again before I went to work. Jannie was up and we had breakfast together. She told me that I was the best dad in the world, and I said she was the best daughter. Then I told her about the tumor and that she needed to have surgery. My little girl cried in my arms.

  Nana arrived, and Jannie was taken away for more tests. There was nothing I could do at the hospital for several hours. I went off to meet with the FBI again. The job was always there. Christine had told me, Your work is chasing insane, pathetic maniacs. There didn’t seem to be any end in sight.

  Special Agent in Charge Cavalierre arrived precisely at eleven for her briefing of the team at the Bureau’s field office on Fourth Street in Northwest. It looked to me as if half the Bureau were there, and it was an impressive sight, somewhat reassuring.

  I was reminded that the bank-robbing crew demanded exactness. Maybe that was the reason Kyle Craig felt Agent Cavalierre was right for this case. He’d told me that she was exacting and precise, one of the most professional agents he’d seen in his years at the Bureau. My thoughts kept going back to the high-profile bank jobs and the murders. Why did they want publicity, even infamy? Were the robbers preconditioning other bank employees and corporations for future robberies? Scaring the shit out of everyone so there would be no resistance? Or did the murders have to do with revenge? It made sense that one or more of the killers might have worked at a bank. We were chasing that lead with everything we had.

  I peered around the overcrowded crisis room inside the FBI field office. Several partitions on one wall had been allotted to write-ups and photos of suspects and witnesses. Unfortunately, none of the suspects were particularly hot. Not even lukewarm. The partitions were titled “Fat Man,” “Manager’s Wife,” “Husband’s Girlfriend,” “Mustache.”

  Why didn’t we have a single good suspect? What should that be telling us? What were we all missing?

  “Hi and good morning. I want to thank everyone in advance for giving up your weekend,” Agent Cavalierre said with just the right amount of irony and humor. She was wearing khakis and a light purple T-shirt. There was a tiny purple barrette in her hair. She looked confident and surprisingly relaxed.

  “If you don’t come in on Saturday,” an agent with a droopy mustache spoke up from the back of the room, “don’t bother to come in on Sunday.”

  “You ever notice how the wiseasses always sit in the back?” Cavalierre cracked, and then smiled convincingly. She was as cool as they come.

  She held up a thick blue folder. “Everybody has a big bad file like this one, containing past cases that might relate. The Joseph Dougherty robberies through the Midwest in the eighties were similar in some ways. There’s also material on David Grandstaff, who masterminded the largest single bank robbery in American history. Of some interest, Grandstaff was caught by the Bureau. However, in our zealous efforts to take him down, questionable tactics were used. After a six-week trial, a jury deliberated for all of ten minutes, then let Grandstaff off. To this day, the three million from the Tucson First National Bank job hasn’t been recovered.”

  There was a hand wave and a question from the front of the room. “Where is Mr. Grandstaff now?”

  “Oh, he’s gone underground,” said Agent Cavalierre. “About six feet. He isn’t involved in these robberies, Agent Doud. But he may have helped inspire them. The same goes for Joseph Dougherty. Whoever did these jobs might be aware of their handiwork. As I’ve heard them say in the movies, ‘He’s a student of the game.’”

  About half an hour into the meeting, Agent Cavalierre introduced me to the other agents.

  “Some of you already know Alex Cross from the D.C. police. He’s Homicide, with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Cross is a forensic psychologist. He is a very good friend of Kyle Craig, by the way. The two of them are tight. So whatever you might think of the Metro police, or ADIC Craig, you’d better keep it to yourself.”

  She looked over at me. “Actually, Dr. Cross discovered the bodies of Brianne and Errol Parker in D.C. That’s as close as we have to a break in the case. Notice how I’m careful to kiss Dr. Cross’s butt.”

  I stood up and looked around the conference room as I spoke to the agents. “Well, I’m afraid the Parkers have gone underground, too,” I said, and got a few laughs. “Brianne and Errol were small-timers, but had served time for bank jobs. We’re checking on anyone they knew at Lorton Prison. So far, nothing has come of it. Nothing much has come of anything we’ve done, and that’s disturbing.

  “The Parkers were competent thieves, but not as organized as whoever brought them in — and then decided to kill them. The Parkers were poisoned, by the way. I think the killer watched them die, and the deaths were gruesome. The killer may have had sex with Brianne Parker after she was dead. This is just a guess right now, but I don’t think this mess is just about bank robberies.”

  Chapter 34

  THE MASTERMIND COULDN’T SLEEP! Too many unwelcome thoughts were buzzing around like a swarm of angry wasps invading his already overwrought brain. He had been severely victimized, driven to this intolerable state. He needed revenge. He’d dedicated his life to it — every waking moment of the past four years.

  The Mastermind finally rose up from bed. He sat slumped over his desk, waiting for the waves of nausea to pass, waiting for his goddamn hands to stop trembling. This is my pitiful life, he thought. I despise it. I despise everything about it, every breath I take.

  Finally, he began to write the hate mail that had been on his mind as he lay in bed.

  Attention of the Chairman, Citibank

  This is a wake-up call, and it’s serious. The consequences to Citibank are dire.

  You think that you’re safe from the little people, but you’re not safe.

  My hand is shaking as I write this. My whole body trembles with outrage.

  My banker is asleep at the switch. For a “personal banker” she is about as impersonal as one of the gray partitions in her cubicle office. I had always thought bankers were smart, and buttoned-up. How is it possible, then, that on numerous occasions I have had annoying, insane, egregious errors made on my account?

  I requested a simple transfer of money between Funds: IMMA to checking. It didn’t get done in a timely manner.

  When I recently moved, my change of address was not handled properly. Three months have passed, and I still haven’t received any of my statements. It turns out the address was never changed and my statements are going to the wrong address.

  After all of these insults, after all of these mistakes by your busy-doing-nothing employees, your bank has the nerve, the gall, to deny me a personal loan. The most intolerable part is to have to sit there and listen to little Miss Princeton Priss turning me down with insincerity and condescension dripping in her voice.

  I judge service organizations on a ten scale. I expect 9.9999 out of 10. Your bank fails miserably.

  The little people will have their day.

  He reread the letter and thought it wasn’t too bad — not for two-something in the morning. No, actually the letter was good.

  He would do an edit, then sign, and finally deposit it in his file cabinet — as he did with all the other letters. They were far too dangerous and incriminating to actually send through the federal mail system.

  Goddamnit, he hated the banks with a passion! Insurance companies! Self-import
ant investment houses! Cheeky Internet firms! The government! The big boys and girls had to go down. And they would. The little people would finally have their day.

  Chapter 35

  I HAD PROMISED JANNIE something when I left her that morning. My most solemn oath was that I would stop at Big Mike Giordano’s for pizza takeout.

  I was juggling a hot box in my hands when I entered her room at the hospital. She wouldn’t be able to eat much, but Dr. Petito said a slice would be fine.

  “Delivery,” I said as I waltzed into the room.

  “Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray!” she cheered from her bed. “You saved me from this awful, dreadful hospital food. Thank you, Daddy. You are the greatest.”

  Jannie didn’t look sick; she didn’t look as if she needed to be at St. Anthony’s. I wished that were so. I already had the essential information on her operation. The total time for prep and the surgery would be between eight and ten hours. The surgeon would dissect the tumor and a piece would be used for a biopsy. Until the surgery, her condition was stabilized with Dilantin. The operation was set for 8:00 A.M. tomorrow.

  “You wanted olives and anchovies, right?” I teased her as I opened the pizza box.

  “You got that wrong, Mr. Delivery Man. Better take that nasty pie right back to the store if it has those slimy little anchovies on it,” she said, giving me the evil eye she must have learned from her great-grandmother.

  “He’s just teasing you,” Nana said, and gave me a softer version of the squinty-eyed look.

  Jannie shrugged. “I know it, Nana. I’m teasing him back. It’s our thing, doo, doo. Do what you wanna do,” she sang the old pop tune and smiled.

  “I like anchovies,” Damon said, just to be controversial. “They’re real salty.”

  “You would.” She frowned at her brother. “I think you might have been an anchovy in another life.”