The Night Gardener

'So he left behind some jizz. Did he take anything?'

'You're pretty bright,' said Cook.

'I can be.'

'There were small cuts of hair missing from all three of the victims' heads. He kept souvenirs. That was a detail we never released to the press.'

'Did you ever get into his place?'

'Sure, I interviewed him at his crib. I remember noting that he had almost no furniture, but he did have a monster record collection. All jazz, he said. Electric jazz, whatever that means. Damn if I could ever get into that shit. I like instrumental stuff, but you better be able to dance to it.'

'So what happened?' said Holiday, losing patience.

'A month after the third murder, Reginald Wilson fondles a thirteen-year-old boy who's wandered onto his job site, a warehouse near an apartment building where the boy stayed, and gets charged. While he's in the D.C. Jail, waitin on his date, some dude calls him a faggot or somesuch thing, and Wilson takes him down forever. Beats him to death with his fists. Couldn't even plead self-defense, so now he draws real time. Inside the federal joint, he's marked as a short eyes and kills another inmate who came at him with a single-edge. Now he gets more years heaped on top of the original.'

'The murders stopped when he went away.'

'Right. For nineteen years and change. He ain't been out but a few months and now they started again.'

'It's possible he's the one,' said Holiday. 'But the only thing you've really got is that Wilson's prone to violence and is sexually attracted to kids. Pedophilia's a long way off from murder.'

'It's a kind of murder.'

'You won't get an argument from me there. But basically you've got nothing. We'd be hard-pressed to get a warrant to search his house. That is, if we were still police.'

'I know it.'

'Does he have a job?'

'Man's on paper, he got to. Takes cash at an all-night gas-and-convenience station down on Central Avenue. Works different shifts there, including the late. I know, 'cause I tailed him, more than once.'

'We could check with his PO, get his hours, talk to his employer. See if he was working the night Johnson was killed.'

'Uh-huh,' said Cook with no enthusiasm.

'That's no palace,' said Holiday, looking at the white rancher, 'but this is a pretty fair neighborhood for a guy like him to land in right out of prison.'

'It's his parents' house. They died while he was in the joint, and as he was their only child, it went to him. There's no nut on it; all he has to do is pay the taxes. The Buick's not his, either.'

'No shit. Got to be his father's. Only old men drive Buicks.' Holiday winced. 'I didn't mean-'

'There he is,' said Cook, who had not taken offense and had kept his eyes on the house.

Holiday saw the curtain on the bay window part and, behind it, the indistinguishable face of a middle-aged man. It looked like a shadow and disappeared as the curtain drifted back into place.

'He's seen you out here?' said Holiday.

'I don't know if he has or hasn't. And you know what? I just don't give a morning crap. 'Cause eventually he's gonna make a mistake.'

'We need more information about the Johnson death.'

'You saw the body.'

'I was at the crime scene, too, the next day.'

'Damn, boy, did you speak to anyone?'

'Not yet. I know the homicide detective who caught it. Guy named Gus Ramone.'

'Will he talk to you?'

'I don't know. Me and the Ramone have a history.'

'What'd you do, fuck his wife?'

'Worse,' said Holiday. 'Ramone was in charge of the IAD investigation that was trying to take me down. I didn't let him finish the job.'

'Beautiful,' said Cook.

'That guy's strictly by the book.'

'Be nice if you could talk to him, just the same.'

'He pulls that stick out of his ass,' said Holiday, 'maybe I will.'

CHAPTER 19

After a couple of bonefish sandwiches with hot sauce and tartar from an eat-shack on Benning Road, Ramone and Rhonda Willis drove to the Metropolitan Police Academy, set on Blue Plains Drive in a clear tract of acreage between the Anacostia Freeway and South Capitol Street, in Southwest. They passed the K-9 training unit, located on the grounds, and the barracks where both of them had once stayed, and parked in a lot nearly full of cars and buses.

The academy looked like any high school, with standard-sized classrooms on the upper floors and a gymnasium, swimming pool, and extensive workout facilities below. Veteran police, including Ramone, used the weight room and pool to stay in shape. Rhonda's vanity had shrunk with the birth of each successive child, and she had not exercised in many years. If she managed to put together a half hour of free time, Rhonda felt that a hot bath and a glass of wine were more valuable to her physical and mental health than a visit to the gym could ever be. Entering the building, they noticed that the trim and rails had been painted a bright, almost neon shade of purple.

'That's soothing,' said Rhonda. 'Wonder what committee of geniuses decided to use that color.'

'I guess Sherwin-Williams was all out of pink.'

They badged a police officer inside the entrance and proceeded up to the second floor. It was afternoon, and many cops were in shorts and sweats, using weight machines, treadmills, and free weights before reporting to their four-to-midnights. Ramone and Rhonda stood on a landing overlooking the gymnasium.

'There's the man I'm looking for,' said Ramone. 'He's showin them something he learned at Jhoon Rhee.'

In the painted lane extending out from under a basketball hoop, a uniformed officer was demonstrating to a large group of recruits the proper stance and motion of a punch. His left hand came up choplike to protect his face as he threw a right, turned his hip into it, and pivoted his rear foot. The group then attempted to copy his action.

'That was us, not too long ago,' said Rhonda.

'They got a higher class of po-lice comin in now. You need a two-year associate's degree to get accepted these days.'

'That would have prevented me from getting in. And you know, they'd have pushed away a good cop.'

'It does stop the retards from joining the force.'

'Gus, someday you gonna learn the correct terms for this new century we're in.'

'Okay. The mental defectives.'

'You see those Caucasian girls down there?' Rhonda nodded at the numerous white female recruits on the floor. 'They get out on the street, most of 'em gonna wash out or land behind a desk in about two weeks.'

'Now, why you gotta go there?'

'You know that blond lieutenant, the girl you always see on television, that spokeswoman? She never did walk hard pavement in any of the hot wards. Made her name protecting those pale gentrifiers from the negroes loitering on the sidewalks in Shaw. The MPD just keeps promoting her 'cause that porcelain skin and blond hair look good on camera.'

'Rhonda.'

'I'm just sayin.'

'My mother's white.'

'She's Italian. And you know what I'm sayin is true.'

'Let me catch this guy,' said Ramone, as the instructor disbanded the group of recruits.

'I'll meet you downstairs.'

Ramone took the stairwell, passing the doorway to the indoor swimming pool. As it always did when he descended these stairs, the movie in his head rewound to his first full year on the force. It was through the frame of that same open doorway that he had gotten his initial look at Regina, standing in her blue one-piece suit on the pool's edge, looking into the water, preparing to dive. The sight of her, muscular but all woman, with shapely buttocks and nice stand-up breasts, had literally stopped him in his tracks. He was not a guy who was particularly adept at talking to the opposite sex, nor did he have the striking good looks to compensate for his lack of game, but he was not afraid, and he walked right into the pool area, introduced himself, and shook her hand. Please let her be as nice as she is beautiful, he thought, as his hand gripped her smooth fingers and palm. Her big brown eyes drooped a bit with her smile, and, swear to God, he knew.