Except to Sampson and me. We had seen Shanelle’s broken body and met her heartbroken parents. Now we talked to our street sources, but also to our neighbors. We continued to let people see us working, walking the streets.
“I sure do love a good homicide. Love walking the mean streets in the dead cold of winter,” Sampson opined as we went past a local dealer’s black-on-black Jeep. It was blaring rap, lots of bass. “Love the suffering, the stench, the funky sounds.” His face was flat. Beyond angry. Philosophical.
He was wearing a familiar sweatshirt under his open topcoat. The shirt had his message for the day:
I DON’T GIVE A SHIT
I DON’T TAKE ANY SHIT
I’M NOT IN THE SHIT BUSINESS.
Concise. Accurate. Very much like John Sampson.
Neither of us had felt much like talking for the past hour or so. It wasn’t going all that well. That was The Job, though. It was like this more often than it wasn’t.
Man Mountain and I arrived at the Capitol City Market about four in the afternoon. The Cap is a popular gyp joint on Eighth Street. It’s just about the dingiest, most depressing bargain-basement store in Washington, D.C.—and that takes some doing.
The featured products are usually written in pink chalk on a gray blue cinder block wall in front. That day the specials were cold beer and soda pop, plantains, pork rinds, Tampax, and Lotto—your basic complete-and-balanced breakfast.
A young brother with tight wraparound Wayfarer sunglasses, a shaved head, and small goatee caught our immediate attention in front of the minimart. He was standing next to another man who had a chocolate bar hanging from his mouth like a cigar. The shaved head motioned to me that he wanted to talk to us, but not right there.
“You trust that rowdyass?” Sampson asked as we followed at a safe distance. “Alvin Jackson.”
“I trust everybody.” I winked. No wink came back from Sampson.
“You are badly fucked-up, Sugar,” he said. His eyes were still seriously hooded.
“Just trying to do the right thing.”
“Ah, yeah, you’re trying too hard, then.”
“That’s why you love me.”
“Yes, it is,” Sampson said and finally grinned. “If lovin’ you is wrong, I don’t want to be right,” he talk-sang a familiar lyric.
We met Roadrunner Alvin Jackson around the corner. Sampson and I had occasionally used Alvin as a snitch. He wasn’t a bad man, really, but he was living a dangerous life that could suddenly get much, much worse for him. He had been a decent high school track star who used to practice in the streets. Now he was running a little base and selling smoke as well. In many ways, Alvin Jackson was still a man-child. That was important to understand about a lot of these kids, even the most dangerous and powerful-looking ones.
“Thalilshanelle,” Alvin said as if the three words were one, “you still lookin’ for information on who ice her and alladat?”
Alvin’s car coat was unbuttoned. He was sporting the current fashion look that’s called jailin’, or baggin’. His red-and-white pinstriped underwear was visible above the waistband. The look is inspired by the fact that a prisoner’s belt is taken away in jail, tending to make the trousers droop and the underwear be accentuated. Role models for our neighborhood.
“Yeah. What have you heard about her, Alvin, but no Chipmunks?” Sampson said.
“Man, I’m tryin’ to do you a solid,” Alvin Jackson protested in my direction. His shaved head never stopped bobbing. His hoop earring jangled. His long, powerful arms twitched. He kept picking his Nike-sneakered feet up and putting them back down.
“We appreciate it,” I told him. “Smoke?” I offered Alvin a Camel. Joe Cool, right?
He took it. I don’t smoke, but I always carry. Alvin had smoked like a chimney when he was a high school road-and-track man. Things you notice.
“Lil’ Shanelle, she live in my auntie’s building. Over in Northfield? I think I know ’bout somebody maybe ’sponsible. You unnerstand what I’m sayin’?”
“So far.” Sampson nodded. He was trying to be nice, actually. A head of lettuce could follow Alvin Jackson’s patter.
“You want to show us what you got?” I asked him. “Help us out here?”
“I’ll show you Chucky myself. Howzat?” He smiled and nodded at me. “But only cuz it’s you and Sampson. I tried to tell some a them other detectives, months back. They wouldn’t have none of it. Man, they wouldn’t listen to jack shit. Didn’t have the time of day for my airplay.”
I felt like his father or uncle or older brother. I felt responsible. I didn’t like it so much.
“Well, we’re listening,” I told him. “We’ve got the time for you.”
Sampson and I went with Alvin Jackson to the Northfield Village projects. Northfield is one of the most dangerous crime areas in D.C. Nobody seems to care, though. The 1st District police have given up. You visit Northfield once, it’s hard to blame them completely.
This didn’t seem like a very promising lead to me. But Alvin Jackson was a man on a mission. I wondered why that was. What was I missing here?
He pointed a long, accusatory finger at one of the yellow-brick buildings. It was in the same shabby state of disrepair as most of the others. An electric-blue metal sign was over the double front doors: BUILDING 3. The front stairs were cracked and looked as if they’d been hit by lightning or somebody’s sledgehammer.
“He lives in there. Ak-ak city. Leastways, he did. Name’s Emmanuel Perez. Sometimes he works as a porter at Famous. You know, Famous Pizza? He goes after the little kids, man. Real freakazoid. He’s a nasty fucker. Scary fucker, too. Don’t like it none when you call him Manny. He’s Ee-man-uel. Insists on it.”
“How do you know Emmanuel?” Sampson asked.
Alvin Jackson’s eyes suddenly clouded over and looked hard as rocks. He took a few seconds before he spoke. “I knew him. He was around when I was a little kid. Buggin’ back then, too. Emmanuel always been around, you unnerstand?”
I got it. I understood now. Chop-It-Off-Chucky wasn’t a chimera anymore.
There was an asphalt-topped playground across the quad. Young kids were playing hoops, but not very well. The basket had no net. The rim was bent this way and that. Nobody any good played on these particular courts. Suddenly, something in the playground caught Alvin Jackson’s eye.
“That’s him over there,” he said in a high-pitched whine. Fearful. “That’s him, man. That’s Emmanuel Perez doggin’ those kids.”
He had no sooner said the words when Perez spotted us. It was as weird as a bad dream. I saw that he had a longish red beard that stuck out stiffly from his chin. It was something distinctive about him physically. Something people would have remembered if he’d been seen in Garfield Park. He leveled Alvin Jackson with a dark, scary look. Then he took off in a dead run.
Emmanuel Perez was a very fast runner. But so were we; at least, we were the last time I checked.
CHAPTER
10
SAMPSON AND I raced behind Perez, closing a little ground on him. We shot down a littered, twisting concrete alley that ran between the tall, depressing buildings. We could both still move pretty well.
“Stop! Police detectives!” I yelled loudly at the sorry excuse for a man running ahead of us. Bogeyman? Chimera? Innocent restaurant porter?
Perez, the suspect child murderer and child molester, was definitely trying to escape. We didn’t know for sure if he was Chop-It-Off-Chucky, but he had some reason to run from Sampson and me, from the police.
Had we finally caught a break on the case? Something sure as hell was happening right now.
I had a very bad thought lodged in the front of my brain. If we’re this close to catching him, after two days on the streets why wasn’t he caught before?
I thought I knew the answer, and I didn’t like it much. Because nobody cares what happens in these wretched neighborhoods around the projects. Nobody cares.
“We’re back!” Sampson
suddenly shouted as we sprinted between the cavernous buildings, stirring up street garbage in our wake, rousting pigeons.
“Remains to be seen,” I yelled to him.
Nobody cares!
“Don’t doubt it for a minute, Sugar. Think only positive thoughts.”
“Emmanuel is fast, too. That’s positively the truth.”
Nobody cares!
“We’re faster, stronger, tougher than Manny ever dreamed of being.”
“Better trash talkers,” I huffed. Just one huff, but a huff all the same.
“That, too, Sugar. Goes without saying.”
We followed Perez/Chop-It-Off out onto Seventh Street, which is lined with four- and five-story row houses, bombed-out stores, a few tank bars.
Perez suddenly turned into a beaten-down Federal-style building near the middle of the block. The windows were mostly boarded with sheet metal, looking like silver teeth in a rotting mouth.
“He seems to know what the hell he’s doing,” Sampson yelled. “Knows where he’s going.”
“At least that makes one of us.”
Sampson and I entered the sagging, ramshackle building several strides behind Perez. The strong smell of urine and decay was everywhere. As we climbed the steep, reinforced concrete stairs, I could feel a fire spreading into my chest.
“Had his escape route all figured out!” I huffed. A definite huff. “He’s smart.”
“He’s trying to escape from us. That’s not too smart. Never happened… WE GOT YOU, MANNY!” Sampson yelled up the stairs. His voice echoed like thunder in the narrow quarters. “HEY, MANNY! MANNY, MANNY, MANNY!”
“Stop! Police! Manny Perez, stop!” Sampson shouted at the fleeing suspect. He had his gun out, a nasty 9mm Glock.
We could hear Perez still running above us, his sneakers slapping stairs. He didn’t yell back. Nobody else was on the stairs or in any of the stairwells. Nobody cared that there was a police chase going on inside the building.
“You think Perez really did it?” I yelled to Sampson.
“He did something. He’s running like his ass is on fire. Spreading right up his spinal cord.”
“Yeah. We lit the fuse.”
We burst out a gray metal door onto a broad, uneven expanse of tar roof. Overhead the sky was a cool, hard blue. There were shiny surfaces and maximum glare everywhere. There was nothing but bright blue sky above. I had the urge to take off—fly away from all of this. The urge, but not the means.
Where the hell had he gone? He was nowhere in sight. Where was Emmanuel Perez? Where was the Sojourner Truth School killer?
Chimera.
CHAPTER
11
“FUCK YOU, peachfuzz,” Perez suddenly yelled. “You hear me, peachfuzz?”
“Peachfuzz?” Sampson looked at me and made a face.
I saw a quick flash of Chop-It-Off-Chucky. He was off to our extreme right. He was sprinting across a connecting rooftop and was already about thirty yards away. I saw him grab a quick, worried look back over his shoulder.
His small eyes were hard black beads, evil-looking as they come. He had that weird red beard. Maybe he was a total psycho. Or maybe he really was just a pizza-store porter? Forget it, I told myself.
Four teenage boys and a girl were up there on the roof doing their sneaky business. Crack, probably. I hoped they weren’t snorting heroin. They idly watched the wild, wild world go by. The real city game was in progress here. Cops and robbers. Child molester-killers. It made no difference to these kids.
Sampson and I covered three more narrow rooftops in a powerful hurry. We were gaining on him a little, but only by a step or two. Sweat was running down my forehead and cheeks, burning my eyes.
“Stop! We’ll shoot!” I yelled. “Stop, Emmanuel Perez!”
Perez looked back again. He looked straight at me this time and grinned! Then he seemed to disappear over the far side of the brick-walled building.
“Fire escape!” Sampson yelled.
Seconds later, the two of us were rushing headlong down skinny, twisting, rusted metal stairs. Perez flew down the flimsy fire escape ahead of us. He was really moving. This was definitely his event, his home course.
Sampson and I were both too big for the tight-radius maneuvering. He gained a full flight on us, maybe a flight and a half.
Chucky definitely had an escape route figured out, I was thinking. He’d practiced this. I was almost sure of it. He’s a smart one. He’s guilty. Those vicious eyes! Mad-dog eyes. What had Alvin Jackson said—that Emmanuel Perez had always been around?
We saw him down on E Street. The red beard jutted out as if it were petrified wood. He was already a full block away. Lots of rush-hour traffic everywhere. He was getting into a gypsy cab, a dull red-and-orange hack that read, CAPPY’S. WE GO ANYWHERE.
“STOP, YOU FUCKING SQUIRREL!” Sampson screamed at the top of his voice. “GODDAMN YOU, MANNY!”
Perez gave us the finger in the crud-crusted rear window of the cab.
“PEACHFUZZ!” he leaned out and screamed back at us.
CHAPTER
12
SAMPSON AND I scrambled out onto E Street. Sweat was still streaming down my forehead and cheeks, my neck, back, legs. Sampson ran in front of a Yellow Cab and the driver screeched to a stop. Intelligent of the cabdriver to avoid hitting Man Mountain and totaling his car.
“Metro police! Detective Alex Cross!” my voice boomed as we simultaneously swung open the cab’s back doors. “Follow that hack. Go! Go! Go! Dammit.”
“Don’t you lose him!” Sampson threatened the driver. “Don’t you even think about it.” The poor man was scared to death. He never even looked back. Never said a word. But he didn’t lose visual contact with CAPPY’S. WE GO ANYWHERE.
We hit a bad snarl of traffic at Ninth Street where it approaches Pennsylvania Avenue. Cars and trucks were backed up for at least three blocks. Angry horns were honking everywhere. One tractor-trailer had a foghorn like an oceangoing vessel’s.
“Maybe we better get out and run him down,” I said to Sampson.
“I was thinking the same thing. Let’s go for it.”
It was one of those fifty-fifty calls. Either way, we could lose Chucky right here. My heart was pounding hard in my chest. I could see the crushed-in skull of little Shanelle Green. Emmanuel had always been around! Those mad-dog eyes! I wanted Chop-It-Off-Chucky real bad.
Sampson already had the creaking door on his side of the cab open. I was half a step behind. Maybe less.
Chucky must have felt us breathing fire on the back of his neck. He jumped out of his cab and started to run.
We followed him between the tight rows of barely moving traffic. Blaring car horns provided chaotic background noise for the foot chase along Ninth Street.
Chop-It-Off-Chucky burst forward. He’d gotten his second wind.
Suddenly, he veered right and into a gleaming, glass-and-steel office building. The building looked silver blue.
Madness, pure and simple.
I had my detective’s shield already out as we entered the office building several strides behind Chucky. “Spanish guy, red beard. Which way?” I yelled at the dazed and confused-looking security guard standing around in the plush, paneled lobby.
He pointed to the middle car at a metal-on-metal elevator bank. The car had already left the ground floor. I watched the floor indicator: three—four—rising fast. Sampson and I jumped into the open door of the car nearest the front entrance.
I hit ROOFTOP with the palm of my hand. That was my best guess.
“Roadrunner said Perez was a porter at Famous Pizza,” I told Sampson. “There was a Famous on the ground floor here.”
“Think Chucky’s a creature of habit? Likes roofs? Has his favorites all picked out?”
“I think he had a couple of escape routes figured out, just in case. And, yeah, I think he’s a creature of habit.”
“He’s most definitely a creature.”
The elevator bell rang, and Sam
pson and I scrambled out, guns first. We could see the Capitol in the distance. Also the Statue of Freedom. Pretty sight under other circumstances. Weird, now. Kind of sad.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Shanelle Green. I kept seeing her brutalized face. What had he hit her with? How many times? Why? I wanted to catch this bastard so bad, it hurt. Hurt my body; hurt my head even worse.
We moved away from the building, and I finally spotted Chucky outlined against the skyline. My heart sank.
Chucky did have an escape route in mind. He had thought about this before. Somebody coming to get him. He sure was acting guilty. He had to be our killer.
“Fuck you, peachfuzz!” he screeched, taunting us again.
Then he took off on a long, running start. He had a powerful stride—a long stride.
“No,” I moaned. “No, no, no.”
I knew what he was going to do.
Perez was going to jump from building to building.
“Stop, you son of a bitch,” Sampson shouted, “or I will shoot!”
But he didn’t stop. We watched him take a flying leap.
We ran to the edge of the roof, both of us screaming at the top of our lungs. There was a second office building catty-corner to our roof. The top of that building was a floor below where Sampson and I now stood.
Chop-It-Off-Chucky was airborne between the buildings, the glass-and-steel caverns.
“Jesus!” I gasped as I peered straight down over the side. The gap between the buildings was at least twenty feet wide, maybe more.
“Fall, you bastard. Hit a wall,” Sampson yelled at the flying figure. “Go down, Chucky!”
He’s done this before. He’s practiced his escape, I thought as I watched. No wonder he’s never been caught. How many years on the loose? How many kids molested or murdered?
We had our guns out, but neither of us fired. We had no proof that he was the killer. He had only run from us, had never pointed a weapon. Now, this insane leap from one office building to another.
Chucky looked suspended in motion sixteen floors up. A long, long way down.
Something was wrong.