> 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.
CHAPTER 6
THE PRIVATE-SCHOOL SURROUNDINGS were a little intimidating for Sampson and me. This was a long, long way from the schools and people of Southeast.
We were two of only a few blacks inside the Washington Day School lobby. I’d heard there were supposed to be African kids, the children of diplomats, at the private school, but I didn’t see any. Just clusters of shocked teachers, children, parents, police. People were crying openly on the front lawns and inside the school’s lobby.
Two little kids, two little babies had been kidnapped from one of Washington’s most prestigious private schools. I understood that it was a sad, tragic day for everybody involved. Leave it at that, I told myself. Just do your job.
We went about our police business. We tried to suppress the fury we were feeling, but it wasn’t easy. I kept seeing the sad eyes of little Mustaf Sanders. A uniform told us we were wanted in the headmaster’s office. Chief of Detectives Pittman was there waiting for us.
“Be cool,” Sampson advised. “Live to fight another day.”
George Pittman usually wears a gray or blue business suit on the job. He favors pin-striped dress shirts and striped silver-and-blue neckties. He’s a Johnson & Murphy shoe and belt man. His gray hair is always slicked back so it fits his bullet head like a tight helmet. He is known as The Jefe, the Boss of Bosses, Il Duce, Thee Pits, George Porgie…
I think I know when my trouble with Chief of Detectives Pittman began. It was after the Washington Post ran that story on me in the Sunday magazine section. The piece detailed how I was a psychologist, but working Homicide and Major Crimes in D.C. I had told the reporter why I continued to live in Southeast. “It makes me feel good to live where I live. Nobody’s going to drive me out of my own house.”
Actually, I think it was the title chosen for the article that pushed Chief Pittman (and some others in the department) over the edge. The young journalist had interviewed my grandmother while researching the piece. Nana had been an English teacher, and the impressionable writer ate that up. Nana had proceeded to fill his head with her notion that because black people are basically traditionalists, they would logically be the very last people in the South to give up religion, morals, and even formal manners. She said that I was a true Southern man, having been born in North Carolina. She also questioned why it was that we idolize near-psychotic detectives in films, TV, books, and newspaper articles.
The title of the piece, which ran over my brooding photograph, was, “The Last Southern Gentleman.” The story caused big problems inside our very uptight department. Chief Pittman especially took offense. I couldn’t prove it, but I believed the story had been placed by someone in the mayor’s office.