"Actually, I'm going out to put in a few hours on the Truth School murder case," I called back as I continued toward the front door, and blessed escape from the tirade. I couldn't see Nana Mama anymore, but I could hear her voice trailing behind me like a banshee cry, or maybe the caw of a field crow.
"Alex has finally found his senses!" she exclaimed in a loud, shrill voice. "There's hope after all. There's hope. Oh, thank you, Black Lord in Heaven."
The old goat can still get my goat, and I love her for it. I just don't want to listen to her annoying rap sometimes.
I beeped the car horn of my old Porsche on the way out of the driveway. It's our signal that everything is all right between us. From inside the house, I heard Nana call out: "Beep back at you!"
I WAS BACK on the mean streets of inner Washington, the underside of the capital. I was a homicide detective again. I loved it with a strange passion, but there were times when I hated it with all my heart.
We were doing all that could humanly be done on both cases.
I had set up surveillance on the Truth School during the day and also had day and night surveillance on Shanelie Green's gravesite.
Often psycho killers showed up at victims' graves. They were ghouls, after all.
The circus was definitely in town.
Two of them.
Two completely different kinds of murder pattern. I had never seen anything like it, nothing even close to this chaos.
I didn't need Nana Mama to remind me that I wanted to be out on the street right now. As she had said, Someone is killing our children.
I was certain that the unspeakable monster was going to kill again. In contrast to Jack and Jill, there was rage and passion in his work. There was a raw, scary craziness, the kind I could almost taste. The killer's probable amateur status wasn't reassuring, either.
Think like the killer. Walk in the killer's shoes, I reminded myself.
That's how it all starts, but it's a lot tougher than it sounds. I was gathering as much information and data as I possibly could.
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I spent part of the afternoon ambushing several of the local hangarounds who might have picked up something on the murders: convivial street people, swooning pipeheads, young runners for the rock and weed dealers, a few low-level rollers themselves, store owners, snitches, Muslims selling newspapers.
I gave some of them a tough time, but nobody had anything useful for me.
I kept at The Job anyway. That's the way it goes most days. You just keep at it, keep your head down and screwed on straight.
About quarter past five, I found myself talking to a seventeen-year-old homeless youth I knew from working the soup kitchen at St. Anthony's. His name was Loy McCoy, and he was a low-level crack runner now. He had helped me once or twice in the past.
Loy had stopped coming by for free food once he had started moving nickel and dime bags of crack and speed around the neighborhood. It's hard to blame kids like Loy, as much as I would like to some days.
Their lives are unbelievably brutal and hopeless.
Then one day someone comes along and offers them fifteen or twenty bucks an hour to do what's going to happen anyway The more powerful emotional hook is that their dope bosses believe in them, and in many cases nobody has believed in any of these lost kids before.
I called Loy over, away from the posse of fools he was hanging with on L Street. They all wore black, machine-knit wool caps pulled low over their eyes and ears. Gold toothcaps, hoop earrings, baggy trousers, the works. His gang was talking about the movie based on the old Flintstones cartoon, or maybe about the actual cartoons. Yabba dabbas was one of the catchphrases used to describe police patrolmen and detectives in the 'hood. Here comes the yabba dabba. Or, he's a yabba dabba doo motherf*cker. I had recently read a sad statistic that seventy percent of Americans got nearly one hundred percent of their information from television and the movies.
Loy smirked as he slow-shuffled up to me at the street corner.
He was maybe six one, but about only a hundred and forty pounds. He had on baggy, layered winter clothes, artfully torn, and he was "grittin" me today, trying to stare me down, put me down.
"Yo, you say c'mon over, I got to come?" Loy asked in a defiant tone that I found both irritating and monumentally sad.
"Whyzat? I pay my taxes," he rapped on. "I aren't holdin'. Ain't none of us holdin'."
"None of your bullshit attitude works on me," I told him.
"You better lose it right now." I knew that his mother was a heroin addict and that he had three little sisters. All of them lived at the Greater Southeast Community Hospital shelter, which was like having the tunnels under Union Station as your home address.
"Say your business, an' I get back to my business," Loy said, remaining defiant. "My time's money, unnerstand? Axt me what you got to axt."
"Just one question for you, Loy. Then you can go back to your big money business dealings."
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He kept "grittin" me, which can get you shot in this neighborhood. "Why I have to answer any questions?
What's in it for me? What you have to deal?"
I finally smiled at Loy and he cracked a half-smile himself, showing off his shiny gold caps. "You give me something, maybe I'll remember. Then maybe I'll owe you one sometime," I said.
"Yo," he came right back at me. "Wanna know a big fat secret, Detective? I don't need your markers.
And I don't much care about these murdered kids' homo-cides you lookin' into." He shrugged as if it were no big deal on the street. I already knew that.
I waited for him to finish his little speech, and also to process my offer. The sad thing was that he was bright. Crazy smart. That was why the crack boss had hired him. Loy was smart enough, and he probably even had a decent work ethic.
"I can't talk to you! Don't have to, neither!" he finally did a little exasperated spin and threw up both his skinny arms. "You think I owe you 'cause once upon a time you fed us Manhandler soup-slop at the po'boy kitchen? Think I owe you? I don't owe you shit!"
Loy started to strut away. Then he looked back at me, as if he had just one more irritating wisecrack to hurl my way. His dark eyes narrowed, caught mine, and held on for a second. Contact.
Liftoff.
"Somebody saw an old man where that little girl got kilt," Loy blurted out. It'was the biggest news we had so far on the Truth School case. It was the only news, and it was what I had been looking for all these days working the street.
He had no idea how fast I was, or how strong. I reached out and pulled him close to me. I pulled Loy McCoy very close. So close I could smell the sweet peppermint on his breath, the scent of pomade in his hair, the mustiness of his badly wrinkled winter clothes.
I held him to my chest as if he were a son of mine, a prodigal son, a young fool who needed to understand that I wasn't going to allow him to be this way with me. I held him real tight and I wanted to save him somehow. I wanted to save all of them, but I couldn't, and it was one of the big hurts and frustrations of my life.
"I'm not fooling around here, now. Who told you that, Loy?
You talk to me. Don't f*ck with me on this. Talk to me, and talk to me now."
His face was inches from mine. My mouth was almost pressed against his cheek. All of his street swagger and the attitude had disappeared. I didn't like being a tough guy with him, but this was important as hell.
My hands are large and scarred, like a boxer's, and I let him see them. "I'm waiting for an answer," I whispered. "I will take you in. I will ruin your day and night."
"Don't know who," he said between wheezing breaths. "Some people in the shelter be sayin' it. I just heard it, you know.
Old homeless dude. Somebody saw'm hangin' in Garfield. White dude in the park."
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"A white man? On the southeast side of the park? You sure about that?"
"That's right. What I said. What I heard. Now, let me go.
C'mon, man, let go!"
I let him pull away from me, walk away a few steps.
Loy regained his composure and cool as soon as he realized that I wasn't going to hurt him,. or even take him in for questioning.
"That's the story. You oweme," he said. "I'm gonna collect, too."
I don't believe Loy saw the irony in what he was saying.
"I owe you," I said. "Thanks, Loy." I hope you don't ever have to collect.
He winked at me. "Be all you can be, all-riii!" he said and laughed and laughed as he walked back to the other crack runners.
AN OLD HOMELESS MAN near the muzzler scene. In Garfield Park. That was something solid to work with, finally. I had paid some dues and gotten a return on investment.
A white man. A white suspect.
That was even more promising. There weren't too many white males hanging out in the Garfield Park area. That was for sure.
I called Sampson and told him what I'd found out. He'd just come on duty for the night shift. I asked John how it was going on his end. He said that it wasn't going, but maybe now it would.
He would let the others in our group know.
At a little past five, I stopped by the Sojourner Truth School again. There were several forces strongly pulling me in the direction of the school. The new information about the homeles white man and the constant feeling that just maybe my nemesis Gary Soneji might be involved. That was part of it. Then there was Christine johnson. Mrs. Johnson.
Once again, nobody was sitting at the desk in the outer office.
The multiracial dolls on the desk looked abandoned. So did some "face doodles" and a couple of Goosebump books. The hea/ wooden door into the main office was shut tight.
I couldn't hear anyone inside, but I knocked anyway I heard a drawer bang shut, then footsteps. The door opened. It wasn't locked.
Christine Johnson had on a cashmere jacket and long wool skirt. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a yellow bow.
She was wearing her glasses. Working barefoot. I thought of a line- from Dorothy Parker, I think- Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses.
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Seeing her lifted my spirits, brought me up immediately I didn't know exactly why, but it did.
It occurred to me that she worked late at the school a lot. That was her business, but I wondered why she spent so much time here.
"Yes, I'm working late again. You caught me in the act. Red-handed, guilty as charged. A friend of yours dropped by the school this morning," she said. "A detective John Sampson."
"He's in charge of the case," I said.
"He seems very dedicated and concerned. Surprising in a lot of ways. He's reading Camus," she said.
I wondered how he had worked that into their conversation.
Among other noble pursuits, Sampson is dedicated to meeting interesting and attractive women, like Christine Johnson. It wouldn't bother him that she was married, unless it bothered her.
Sampson can be chivalrous to a fault, but only if it's appreciated.
"Sampson reads a lot, always has since I've known him. My grandmother taught him in school, before I met him, actually He's the original Pagemaster."
Christine Johnson smiled, showed me all those beautiful teeth of hers. "You're familiar with the movie Pagemaster? I guess you must see them all."
"I do see them all. Anything the kids 'have to, have to see, Daddy!" We gave Pagemaster a six. But we're not as down on Master Macauley Culkin as some people seem to be."
She continued to smile and seemed to be an extremely nice person. Smart enough to do many things-patient and concerned enough to do this difficult job in the city. I envied her students.
I got right down to the business I had at the school. "The reason I stopped by is that there's a possible ID
on the killer -- a start, anyway. I heard about it this afternoon, not too long ago."
Christine Johnson listened closely to what I had to say. Her brow furrowed deeply Her brown eyes were intense. She was a good listener, which, if I remembered correctly, was unusual for a school principal.
"An older man, a white man, was seen in the vicinity of where Shanelle Green was originally abducted in Garfield Park. He was described as a street person. Possibly a homeless man. Not very big, with a full white beard, wearing a brown or black poncho."
"Should I tell that to the teachers? What about the children?" she asked as I finished the description.
"I'd like to have someone stop by here tomorrow morning to talk to the teachers again," I said. "We don't know if this lead is anything, but it could be important. It's the best thing we have so far."
"An ounce of prevention," she said, then smiled. Actually, she laughed at herself. "That's what is known, derogatively, as 'teacher talk." You can catch a dose of it if you hang around here too much. Too many clichs. You sometimes find yourself talking to other adults as if they were five or six years old. It drives my husband crazy."
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"Is your husband a teacher, too?" I asked. It just came out. Shit.
She shook her head and seemed amused for some reason.
"No, no. George is a lawyer. He'S a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, actually Fortunately, he's only trying to push the interests of energy businesses. Occidental Petroleum, Pepco Energy Company, the Edison Electric Institute. I can live with that." She laughed.
"Well, most of the time I can." Her look was innocent, but not naive. Maybe just a little conspiratorial.
"Well, I wanted to pass on the news about our suspect. Maybe we have a real suspect this time," I said.
"I've got to run."
"Don't," Christine Johnson said, and I stopped short, startled a little.
Then she smiled that knowing smile of hers. Quietly dazzling and appealing as could be.
"Absolutely no running in the halls," she winked at me.
"Gotcha!" Cute.
I laughed and was on my merry way, back to work after a brief moment of sweetness and light. I did like her quite a lot. Who wouldn't? Maybe we could be friends somehow, someway, but probably not.
Nothing was coming out right; nothing was working very well.
An old homeless white man was the best we could do. It wasn't bad police work, but it wasn't enough.
Not even close. Two impossible cases. Jesus!
I pulled my car way down the street and watched the Truth School for a couple of hours that night. My son's school. Maybe a homeless white man would come by -- but one didn't.
I left the stakeout about half an hour after Christine Johnson left hers.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK of our magic carpet ride so far? On a scale of one to eleven?" Jack asked Jill, Sam asked Sara. They were floating high over the Maryland countryside.
"It's absolutely beautiful. It's as thrilling as can be. Unbelievable.
The simple joy of flying like a bird."
"Hard to imagine that this is work. But it is, Monkey Face.
This could be important for us, for everything we're doing, for the game."
"I know that, Sam. I'm paying attention."
"I know you are. Always so diligent."
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flown the sailplane out of Frederick Municipal Airport in Maryland, about an hour from downtown Washington. It was the perfect treat for herl Sara couldn't help thinking. The perfect metaphor. The gimp was flying. Unbelievable. Her entire life was that way now.
Down below, she could see Frederick, with its many examples of German Colonial architecture. She could actually make out several of the cutesy-pie shops on Antique Walk in town. The sky was filled with cumulus, like cotton balls moving lightly over a calm sea. Sara had told Sam that she'd gone up in a sail-plane once, and it was "just about the best thing I've ever done."
He'd said, "We'll go tomorrow afternoon. I know just the place, Monkey Face. Perfect! I want to fly over Camp David, where the President goes to stay I want to look down on President Byrnes's retreat. I want to drop an imaginary bomb on his ass."
Sam Harrison already knew a great deal about Camp David, but the view from the air could be useful anyhow. An attack on the presidential retreat was a very real possibility in the future -- especially if the Secret Service continued to keep President Byrnes tightly under wraps, as they had for the past few days.
Everything about Jack and Jill was so much harder now, but he had expected that. It was why they had several plans, not just one. The President of the United States was going to die -- it was just a matter of when and where. The how had already been decided. Soon the when and where would be taken care of as well.
"Isn't this risky, flying so close to Camp David?" Sara asked.
He smiled at the question. He knew that she had been biting her tongue as they floated north from Frederick, inching closer and closer to the presidential outpost, closer and closer to danger, maybe even disaster.
"So far, it's not too risky. Sailplanes and hot-air balloons do it all the time. Catch a distant peek at where the President stays.
He's not here right now, so they're not as paranoid on the ground.
We can't get too close, though. Ever since that plane landed at the White House, this airspace is protected with missiles. I doubt they'd shoot down a sailplane, but who knows?"
They could see the buildings at Fort David below, just a little to the northeast in Catoctin Mountain Park.
There were three Army Jeeps left in the open. No one seemed to be out on the well-wooded grounds today, though. Camp David itself looked rather odd: a strange cross between Army barracks and a rustic vacation place. Not too formidable. Nothing they couldn't work with, if need be, if the final plan demanded it.
"Camp David. Named after Eisenhower's grandson,"Jack said.
"Pretty good president, Ike. Generals usually are."
Jack touched the holstered Beretta on his ankle. The gun was reassuring. But nothing was going to happen to the President right now, or to Jack and Jill. No, the game was about to go off in another direction. That was the beauty of it -- no one could predict where it would go. It was a game, designed as one, played as one.
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He felt Sara's hand lightly touch his cheek. "How much longer do we have?" she asked. He suspected that she didn't want the sailplane ride to end.
"They'll never catch us," he said and smiled.
"No, the ride, silly," she laughed and patted his arm. "How much longer do we have up here?"
"You're not bored already? We're nowhere near the world's altitude record -- about forty-nine thousand feet, if I recall. Need a hell of a wave lift for that." Suddenly, he seemed concerned that she might not be having a good time. That was just like Sam.
"No, no," she laughed and put her arm around his neck. Sara held him tightly "I love it up here, love flying, love being with you. Thank you -- for everything."
"You're welcome, Monkey Face," he whispered against her cheek.
Two incredible killers.
Jack and Jill.
Flying over the President's famous retreat at Camp David.
See you soon, Mr. President. There nothing you can do to stop this from happening. Nowhere you can hide from us. Trust us on that.
Haven't we kept all of our promises so far?
ON THE HOUR-LONG DRIVE back to Washington, Sam seemed distracted and distant. Sara cautiously watched him out of the corner of her eye. It was as if he were still up in the sail-plane.
His brow was furrowed, his deep-blue eyes set on the road ahead.
He could get like this sometimes; but then again, so could she.
Sara the worrier. Sara the drudge.