Chapter 5
I GOT an “emergency” call at the Sanders house at about quarter to eleven. I didn’t want to talk to anybody with more emergencies.
I had just spent ten minutes with the news folks. At the time of the project murders, some of the newsies were my buddies. I was a press pet. I’d even been featured in the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine section. I talked about the murder rate among black people in D.C. once again. This past year there had been nearly five hundred killings in our capital. Only eighteen victims were white. A couple of reporters actually made a note of that. Progress.
I took the phone from a young, smart S.I.T. detective, Rakeem Powell. I was absently palming a biddy basketball that must have belonged to Mustaf. The ball gave me a funny feeling. Why murder a beautiful little boy like that? I couldn’t come up with an answer. Not so far, anyway.
“It’s The Jefe, the chief.” Rakeem frowned. “He’s concerned.”
“This is Cross,” I said into the Sanders telephone. My head was still spinning. I wanted to get this conversation over with real fast.
The mouthpiece smelled of cheap musk perfume. Poo’s or Suzette’s fragrance, maybe both of theirs. On a table near the phone were photos of Mustaf in a heart-shaped frame. Made me think of my own two kids.
“This is Chief of Detectives Pittman. What’s the situation over there?”
“I think we have a serial killer. Mother, daughter, a little boy. Second family in less than a week. Electricity was shut off in the house. He likes to work in the dark.” I ticked off a few gory details for Pittman. That was usually enough for him. The chief would leave me alone with this one. Homicides in Southeast don’t count for much in the greater scheme.
A beat or two of uneasy silence followed. I could see the Sanders family Christmas tree in the TV room. It had been decorated with obvious care: tinsel, shiny dime-store decorations, strings of cranberries and popcorn. There was a homemade tinfoil angel on top.
“I heard it was a dealer got hit. Dealer and two prostitutes,” The Jefe said.
“No, that’s not true,” I said to Pittman. “They’ve got a nice Christmas tree up.”
“Sure it is. Don’t bullshit me, Alex. Not today. Not right now.”
If he was trying to get a rise out of me, he got one. “One victim is a three-year-old little boy in his pajamas. He may have been dealing. I’ll check into it.”
I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t say a lot of things. Lately, I’d been feeling I was on the edge of exploding. Lately means for about three years or so.
“You and John Sampson hustle over to Washington Day,” Pittman said. “All hell has broken loose here. I’m serious.”
“I’m serious, too,” I said to the chief of detectives. I tried to keep my voice down. “I’m sure this is a signature killer. It’s bad here. People are crying in the streets. It’s almost Christmas.”
Chief Pittman ordered us to come to the school in Georgetown, anyway. All hell had broken loose, he kept repeating.
Before I left for Washington Day, I phoned the serial-killer unit inside our own department; then the “super unit” at the FBI’s Quantico base. The FBI has computer files of all known cases of serial killings, complete with psychiatric profiles matching M.O.’s up with a lot of unpublished serial-killing details. I was looking for a match on age, sex, type of disfigurement.
One of the techies handed me a report to sign as I left the Sanders house. I signed my usual way—with a ?.
Cross.
Tough guy from the tough part of town, right.