“I want as large a street canvass as we can manage on this one,” I told Rakeem Powell. “Sampson and I will be part of the canvass ourselves.”
“I hear you. We’re on it in a big way. Sleep is overrated, anyway.”
“Let’s go, John. We’ve got to move on this now,” I finally said to Sampson.
He didn’t argue or object. A murder like this is usually solved in the first twenty-four hours, or it isn’t solved. We both knew that.
From 6:00 A.M. on, Sampson and I canvassed the neighborhood with the other detectives and patrolmen that cold, miserable morning. We had to do it our way, house by house, street by street, mostly on foot. We needed to be involved in this case, to do something, to solve the heinous murder quickly.
About ten in the morning, we heard about another shocking homicide in Washington. Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick had been murdered the night before. It had been a real bad night, hadn’t it?
“Not our job,” Sampson said with cold, flat eyes. “Not our problem. Somebody else’s.”
I didn’t disagree.
No one Sampson or I spoke to that morning had seen anything out of the ordinary around the Sojourner Truth School. We heard the usual complaints about the drug pushers, the zombielike crackheads, the prossies who work on Eighth Street, the growing number of gangbangers.
But nothing out of the usual.
“People loved that little sweetheart Shanelle,” the ageless Hispanic lady who seemed to have run the corner grocery near the school forever told Sampson and me. “She always buy her Gummi Bears. She have such a pretty smile, you know?”
No, I had never seen Shanelle Green smile, but I found that I could almost picture it. I also had a fixed image of the battered right side of the little girl’s face. I carried it around like a bizarre wallet photo inside my head.
Uncle Jimmie Kee, a successful and influential Korean American who owned several neighborhood businesses, was glad to talk with us. Jimmie is a good friend of ours. Occasionally, he comes along with us to a Redskins or Bullets game. He supplied a name that we already had on our short-list of suspects.
“What about this bad actor, Chop-It-Off-Chucky?” Uncle Jimmie volunteered as we spoke in the back of Ho-Woo-Jung, his popular restaurant on Eighth Street. I read the sign behind Jimmie: IMMIGRATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY.
“Nobody catch that motherfucker yet. He kill other children before. He the worst man in Washington, D.C. Next to the president,” Jimmie said and chuckled wickedly.
“No bodies, though. No proof of it,” Sampson said to Jimmie. “We don’t even know if there really is a Chucky.”
That was true enough. For years there had been rumors about a horrifying child molester who worked the Northfield Village neighborhood, but there was nothing concrete. Nothing had ever been proved.
“Chucky real,” Uncle Jimmie insisted. His dark eyes narrowed to even thinner slits. “Chucky real as the devil. I see Chop-It-Off-Chucky in my dreams sometimes, Alex. So do the children who live around here.”
“You ever hear anything more specific about Chucky? Where he’s been seen? Who saw him?” I asked. “Help us out if you can, Jimmie.”
“Oh, I gladly do that.” He nodded his head and bunched his thick brown lips, his triple chin, his bulging throat. Jimmie habitually wore a chocolate brown suit with a tan fedora that bobbed as he spoke. “You meditating yet, Alex, getting in touch with chi energy?” he asked me.
“I’m thinking about it, thinking about my chi, Jimmie. Maybe my chi is running a little low right now. Tell us about Chucky.”
“I know lots bad stories about Chop-It-Off-Chucky. Scare kids all the time. Even the gangbangers scared of him. Young mothers, grandmothers, put up handbills in playgrounds. In my stores, too. Sad stories of missing children. I always permit it, Detectives. Man who harms children is the worst. You agree, Alex? You see it differently?”
“No. I agree with you. That’s why Sampson and I are out here today.”
I knew a lot about the child molester who had been nicknamed Chop-It-Off-Chucky. The unsubstantiated rumor was that he sliced off the genitalia of young kids who lived in the projects. Little boys and girls. No gender preference. Whether or not it was true, it seemed undeniable that someone had molested several children from the Northfield and Southview Terrace projects, not far from here. Other children had simply disappeared.
The police in the area didn’t have the resources to create an effective crisis team to find Chucky, if Chucky existed. I had gone to the wall about it several times with the chief of detectives, but nothing had happened. Extra detectives never seemed available for duty in Southeast. The unfairness of the situation put me in a rage, made me as crazy as anything I can think of.
“Sounds like another Mission: Impossible,” Sampson said as we walked up G Street, in the general direction of the marine barracks. “We’re on our own. We’re supposed to catch a chimera.”
“Nice image,” I said, and had to smile at Man Mountain, his wild imagination, his mind.
“Thought you’d like it, man of culture and refinement that you are.”
We were sipping steaming herb tea from Jimmie’s restaurant. Patrolling the street. We looked like detectives, with our collars up and all. Big bad detectives. I wanted people to see us out working the neighborhood.
“No real leads, no clues, no support,” I said, agreeing with Sampson’s judgment of the current state of affairs. “We take the assignment, anyway?”
“We always do,” he said. His eyes were suddenly hard and dull and almost scary to me. “Watch out, Chucky, watch your back. We’re right on your sorry mythical ass.”
“Your chimera ass.”
“Exactly so, Sugar. Exactly so.”
CHAPTER
6
IT WAS REAL GOOD to be working the streets of Southeast with Sampson again. It always is, even on a horror-show murder case that can make my blood boil over. Our last big case had taken place in North Carolina and California, but Sampson had been around only for the beginning and end of it. The two of us have been fast friends since we were nine or ten, and growing up in this same neighborhood. We get closer every year it seems. No, we do get closer.
“What’s our primary goal here, Sugar?” Sampson asked as we walked along G Street. He had on the black leather car coat, nasty Wayfarer sunglasses, a slick black bandanna. It worked for him. “How do we know that we did good today?” he asked.
“We get the word out that we’re personally looking for the Truth School killer,” I said. “We show our pretty faces around. Make the families here feel as safe as we can.”
“Yeah, and then we catch Chop-It-Off-Chucky and chop his off,” Sampson said and grinned like the big bad wolf that he can be. “I’m not kidding.”
I didn’t doubt it for a minute.
When I finally got home that night, it was past ten. Nana Mama was waiting up for me. She had already put Damon and Jannie to bed. The concerned look on her face told me that she couldn’t get to sleep, which is unusual for her. Nana could sleep in the eye of a hurricane. Sometimes, she is the eye of a hurricane.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said to me. “Bad day for you? I can see that it was.” Sometimes she can be unbelievably sympathetic and kind and sweet, too. I like that she goes both ways equally well, and I can never predict which way is coming at me next.
As we sat together on the living room couch, my eighty-one-year-old grandmother held my hand in both of hers. I told her what I knew so far. She was shaking slightly and that wasn’t like her, either. She is not a weak person, not in any way. She rarely shows fear to anyone, even me. Nana Mama does not seem to be losing anything of herself; instead, she is becoming more luminous and concentrated.
“I feel so bad about this killing at the Sojourner Truth School,” Nana said, and her head lowered.
“I know. It’s all I’ve thought about today. I’m working every angle I can.”
“You know much about Sojourner Truth, Ale
x?”
“I know she was a powerful abolitionist, an ex-slave.”
“Sojourner Truth should be talked about when they mention Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alex. She couldn’t read, so she memorized most of the Bible for her teaching. She actually helped stop segregation of the transportation system here in Washington. And now we have this abomination at the school named in her honor.
“Catch him, Alex,” Nana suddenly whispered in a low, almost desperate, voice. “Please catch this terrible man. I can’t even say the name they call him—this Chucky. He’s real, Alex. He’s not a made-up bogeyman.”
I would definitely try my damnedest. I was on the murder case. I was chasing down the chimera as best I could.
My mind was working overtime already. A child molester? Boys and girls. Now a child killer? Chop-It-Off-Chucky? Was he real, or had he been made up by frightened children? Was he a chimera? Had he murdered Shanelle Green?
I needed to pound the piano on our porch for a little while after Nana went up to bed. I played “Jazz Baby” and “The Man I Love,” but the piano wasn’t the ticket that night.
Just before I fell off to sleep, I remembered something. Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick had been murdered in Georgetown. What a day it had been. What a nightmare.
Two of them.
CHAPTER
7
JACK AND JILL.
Sam and Sara.
Whoever they really were, the two of them lay on their stomachs on a tasteful, knock-off Persian rug in the small living room of her Washington pied-à-terre. It was a kind of safe house. A fire blazed and crackled; fragrant apple logs were being crisped. They were playing a board game on a rug, which covered a hatched parquet floor. It was a special game. Unique in every way. The game of life and death, they called it.
“I feel like a damn Washington, D.C., Georgetown University white liberal yuppie,” Sam Harrison said and smiled at the unlikely image created in his mind.
“Hey, I resemble that remark.” Sara Rosen made a pouting face. She was kidding. She and Sam weren’t yuppies. Sam certainly wasn’t.
And yet a guinea hen was roasting in the kitchen, the aroma sweetening the air. They were playing a parlor game on the living room rug.
The game wasn’t anything like Monopoly or Risk, though.
Actually, they were playing a game to choose their next murder target. In turn, they calmly rolled the dice, then moved a marker around a rectangle of photos. The photos were of very famous people.
The board game was important to Jack and Jill. It was a game of chance. It made it impossible for the police or FBI to predict their movements or their motive.
If there was a motive. But of course there was a motive.
Sam rolled the dice again. Then he moved the marker. Sara watched him in the warm, flickering glow of the fire. Her eyes glazed over slightly. She was remembering their very first meeting, the initial contact between them. The beginning of everything that was happening now.
This was how the complex and beautiful and very mysterious game had begun. They had agreed to meet at a coffee shop inside a bookstore in downtown D.C. Sara had arrived first, her heart trapped in her throat. Everything about the meeting was insane, maybe dangerously insane, and insanely irresistible to her. She couldn’t pass up this chance, this opportunity, or especially this cause. The cause was everything to her.
At the time of their first meeting, she had no idea what Sam Harrison would look like, and she was surprised and delighted when he sat at her table. He excited her.
She had seen him enter the coffeehouse area, watched him order espresso and a scone. She hadn’t imagined that the dreamy-looking man at the counter would turn out to be Harrison, though.
So this was The Soldier. This was her potential partner. He kind of fit in at the bookstore. He would fit in anywhere. He didn’t look like a killer, but then again, neither did she. He looks a little like an airline pilot, Sara thought as she sized him up. A successful Washington lawyer? He was over six feet tall, trim and fit. He had a strong, confident face. And he also had the brightest, clearest blue eyes. He had a sensitive, gentle look about him. Not at all what she had expected. She liked him immediately. She knew that they agreed on the important things in life, that they shared a vision.
“You’re looking at me as if I’m supposed to be a bad person, and you’re surprised that I’m not,” he’d said as he sat across from her at the café. “I’m not a bad person, Sara. You can call me Sam, by the way. I’m a pretty good guy, actually.”
No, Sam was much better than that. He was amazing—extremely smart, strong, and yet always considerate of her feelings, and committed to their cause. Sara Rosen had fallen in love with him within a week of their meeting. She knew that she shouldn’t, but she had; and now here they were. Living this secret life.
Playing the game of life and death as a guinea hen slowly spun on the spit. Sitting before a cozy fire. Thinking about making love—at least, she was. She thought about being with Sam, with Jack, all the time. She loved it when he was inside her.
“This roll should do it,” Sam said, and he handed her the dice. “Your turn. Six rolls for each of us. You do the honors, Sara.”
“Here we go, huh?”
“Yes, here we go again.”
Sara Rosen’s heart began to thunder. She could feel it thump, thump under her blouse. She had the paralyzing thought that this single roll of the dice was like the murder itself. It was almost as if she were pulling the trigger right now.
Who was going to die next? It was all in her hand, wasn’t it? Who would it be?
She squeezed the three dice incredibly tight. Then she shook them and let the dice go, watched them wobble and roll forward and then stop abruptly, as if someone had pulled an invisible string. She quickly added up the number of the roll—nine.
Sam picked up the marker and counted off nine places, nine photographs.
She stared down at the face of the next target, the next celebrity to die. It was a woman!
It’s for the cause, she told herself, but Sara Rosen’s heart continued to beat loudly all the same.
The next victim was a very famous woman.
Washington, the whole world, would be shocked and outraged for a second time.
CHAPTER
8
SAMPSON AND I walked into the fog-shrouded heart of Garfield Park, which borders the Anacostia River and the Eisenhower Freeway and isn’t far from the Sojourner Truth School. The color of truth is gray, I was thinking as we entered the ground smog. Always gray. We weren’t out for an early-morning run—we were hurrying to the place where Shanelle Green had actually been murdered, her skull crushed by some fiend.
Several uniforms, a captain, and another detective were already at the homicide scene. A dozen or so casual onlookers were on hand—looky-loos. Search dogs originally brought in from Georgia had led a search party to the murder site. I could see Sixth Street from the thicket of evergreens where the killer had brutally savaged the little girl. I could almost see the Sojourner Truth School.
“Think he carried the body out of here to the schoolyard?” Sampson asked. His tone of voice indicated he didn’t believe it. Neither did I. So how did the little girl’s body get to the schoolyard?
A bright red balloon floated a couple of feet above the overgrown bushes where the terrible murder had occurred.
“O marks the spot?” Sampson asked. “That balloon the marker?”
“I don’t know… I wonder,” I muttered as I pushed aside the thick evergreen branches and made my way into the hideaway. The smell of pine was heavy, even in the cold air. Reminded me that the Christmas season was here.
I could feel the presence of the killer inside the tree branches, challenging me. I sensed Shanelle’s presence as well, as if she were trying to tell me something. I wanted to be alone in here for a moment or two.
It was a small clearing where the murder had actually taken place. Dried blood was on the ground and ha
d even splashed across some of the branches. He lured her in here. How did he do that? She’d be suspicious, or scared, unless she knew him from the neighborhood. It suddenly struck me. The balloon! It was just a guess, but it seemed right to me. The red balloon could have been the lure, the killer’s bait for the little girl.
I crouched down and was very still inside the tent of trees.
The killer liked it in here, hiding in the darkness. He doesn’t like himself much, though. Prefers the dark. He likes his mind, his thoughts, but not what he looks like. There’s probably something distinctive about him physically.
I didn’t know any of that for sure, but it seemed right; it felt right as I crouched at the murder site.
He was hiding in here, probably because there’s something about him people might remember. If so, it was a good clue.
I could see Shanelle Green’s battered face again. Then an image of my dead wife, Maria, came to me. I could feel the rage climbing from my gut to my throat, blowing and billowing inside me. I thought of Jannie and Damon.
I had one more thought about the child killer: anger usually implies an awareness of self-worth. Strange, but true. The killer was angry because he believed in himself much more than the world did.
Finally, I rose up and pushed my way back out of the hideaway. I’d had enough.
“Haul down that balloon,” I called to a patrolman. “Get that damn balloon out of the tree now. It’s evidence.”
CHAPTER
9
THERE WAS SOMETHING distinctive about him physically. I was almost certain of it. It was a place to start.
That afternoon Sampson and I were out on the street again, working near the Northfield Village projects. The Washington newspapers and TV hadn’t bothered much about the murder of a little girl in Southeast. Instead, they were filled with stories about the killing of Senator Fitzpatrick by the so-called Jack and Jill stalkers. Shanelle Green didn’t seem to matter very much.