THE CRIME SCENE was in the low 30s around E, on the edge of Fort Dupont
Park, in a neighborhood known as Greenway, in the 6th District section of
Southeast D.C. A girl of fourteen lay in the grass on the side of a community
vegetable garden that was blind to the residents whose yards backed up to the
nearby woods. There were colorful beads in her braided hair. She appeared to
have died from a single gunshot wound to the head. A middle-aged homicide
police was down on one knee beside her, staring at her as if he were waiting
for her to awake. His name was T. C. Cook. He was a sergeant with twenty-four
years on the force, and he was thinking.
His thoughts were not optimistic. There was no visible
blood on or around the girl, with the exception of the entrance
and exit wounds, now congealed. No blood at all on her shirt,
jeans, or sneakers, all of which looked to be brand-new. Cook
surmised that she had been undressed and re-dressed after
her murder, and her body had been moved and dumped here.
He had a sick feeling in his gut and also, he realized with some
degree of guilt, a quickening in his pulse that suggested, if not
excitement, then engagement. An ID on the body would confirm
it, but Cook suspected that this one was like the others.
She was one of them.
The Mobile Crime Lab had arrived. The techs were going
through the motions, but there was a kind of listlessness in
their movements and a general air of defeat. The transportation
of a body away from the murder site meant that there would be
few forensic clues. Also, it had rained. When this happened, it
was said by some techs that the killer was laughing.
On the edge of the crime scene were a meat wagon and
several patrol cars and uniformed officers who had responded
to the call for assistance. There were a couple dozen spectators
as well. Yellow tape had been strung, and the uniforms
were now charged with keeping the spectators and the media
back and away from the homicide cops and lab techs doing
their jobs. Superintendent of Detectives Michael Messina and
Homicide Captain Arnold Bellows had ducked the tape and
were talking to each other, leaving Sergeant Cook alone. The
public-relations officer, a moley Italian American who appeared
frequently on TV, fed the usual to a reporter from
Channel 4, a man with suspicious hair whose gimmick was a
clipped delivery and dramatic pauses between sentences.
Two of the uniformed officers stood by their cruiser.
Their names were Gus Ramone and Dan Holiday. Ramone
was of medium height and build. Holiday was taller and blade
thin. Both were college dropouts, single, in their early twenties,
and white. Both were in their second year on the force,
past their rookie status but not seasoned. They had already acquired
a distrust of officers above the rank of sergeant but
were not yet cynical about the job.
“Look at ’em,” said Holiday, nodding his sharp chin in
the direction of Superintendent Messina and Captain Bellows.
“They’re not even talking to T.C.”
“They’re just letting him do his thing,” said Ramone.
“The white shirts are afraid of him, is what it is.”
T. C. Cook was an average-sized black man in a tan raincoat
with a zip-in lining, worn over a houndstooth sport jacket.
His dress Stetson, light brown with a chocolate band holding a
small multicolored feather, was cocked just so, covering a bald
head sided by clown patches of black hair flecked with gray.
He had a bulbous nose and a thick brown mustache. His
mouth rarely turned up in a smile, but his eyes sometimes
shone brightly with amusement.
“The Mission Man,” said Holiday. “The brass don’t like
him, but they sure don’t fuck with him. Guy’s got a ninety percent
closure rate; he can do what he wants.”
That’s Holiday all over, thought Ramone. Get results, and
all will be forgiven. Produce, and do whatever the fuck you want.
Ramone had his own rules: follow the playbook, stay safe,
put in your twenty-five and move on. He was not enamored of
Cook or any of the other mavericks, cowboys, and assorted living
legends on the force. Romanticizing the work could not elevate
it to something it was not. This was a job, not a calling.
Holiday, on the other hand, was living a dream, had lead in his
pencil, and was jacked up big on the Twenty-third Psalm.
Holiday had started on foot patrol in the H Street corridor
of Northeast, a white man solo in a black section of town. He
had cut it fine and already had a rep. Holiday remembered the
names of folks he had met only one time, complimented the
young women and the grandmothers alike, could talk Interhigh
sports, the Redskins, and the Bullets with guys sitting on
their front porches and those hanging outside the liquor stores,
could even shoot the shit with the young ones he knew were
headed for the hard side. Citizens, criminal and straight,
sensed that Holiday was a joker and a fuckup, and still they
liked him. His enthusiasm and natural fit for the job would
probably get him further in the MPD than Ramone would go.
That is, if that little man with the pitchfork, sitting on Holiday’s
shoulder, didn’t ruin him first.
Ramone and Holiday had gone through the academy together,
but they weren’t friends. They weren’t even partners.
They were sharing a car because there had been a shortage of
cruisers in the lot behind the 6D station. Six hours into a four-to-midnight,
and Ramone was already tired of Holiday’s voice.
Some cops liked the company, and the backup, even if it was
less than stellar. Ramone preferred to ride alone.
“I tell you about this girl I been seein?” said Holiday.
“Yeah,” said Ramone. Not yeah with a question mark on
the end of it, but yeah with a period, as in, end of discussion.
“She’s a Redskinette,” said Holiday. “One of those cheerleaders
they got at RFK.”
“I know what they are.”
“I tell you about her?”
“I think you did.”
“You oughtta see her ass, Giuseppe.”
Ramone’s mother, when she was angry or sentimental, was
the only one who ever called him by his given name. That is,
until Holiday had seen Ramone’s driver’s license. Holiday also
occasionally called him “the Ramone,” after having had a look
at Ramone’s record collection on the single occasion Ramone
had let him into his apartment. That had been a mistake.
“Nice ones, too,” said Holiday, doing the arthritic thing
with his hands. “She got those big pink, whaddaya call ’em,
aureoles.”
Holiday turned, his face catching the strobe of the
cruiser light bars still activated at the scene. He was smiling
his large row of straight white teeth, his ice blue eyes catching
the flash. The ID bar on his chest read “D. Holiday,” so
naturally and instantly he had caught the nickname “Doc”
within the department. Coincidentally, he was as angular and
bone skinny as the tubercular gunman. Some of the older cops
claimed he looked like a young Dan Duryea.
“You told me,” said Ramone for the third time.
“Okay. But listen to this. Last week, I’m out with her in a
bar. The Constable, down on Eighth …”
“I know the place.” Ramone had gone to the Constable
many times, pre-cop, in that year when he thought of himself
as In Between. You could score coke from the bartender there,
watch the band, Tiny Desk Unit or the Insect Surfers or whoever,
in that back room, or sit under the stars on the patio they
had out back, drink beers and catch cigarettes behind the
shake, and talk to the girls, back when they were all wearing
the heavy mascara and the fishnets. This was after his fourth,
and last, semester at Maryland, when he’d taken that criminology
class and thought, I don’t need any more of this desk-and-blackboard
bullshit; I can do this thing right now. But
then just wandering for a while before he signed up, hitting
the bars, smoking weed, and doing a little blow, chasing those
girls with the fishnets. It had felt to him then like he was stumbling.
Tonight, wearing the blue, the badge and gun, standing
next to a guy he would have ridiculed a few years back,
now his contemporary, it felt like he had been free.
“… and she drops a bomb on me. Tells me she likes me
and all that bulljive, but she’s dating one of the Redskins, too.”
“Joe Jacoby?” said Ramone, side-glancing Holiday.
“Nah, not that beast.”
“So who?”
“A receiver. And not Donnie Warren, if you catch my
drift.”
“You’re saying she’s dating a black receiver.”
“One of ’em,” said Holiday. “And you know they like
white girls.”
“Who doesn’t,” said Ramone.
Over the crackle of the radios coming from the cars they
heard Cook telling one of the men in his squad to keep the
Channel 4 reporter, who was attempting to move under the
tape, away from the deceased. “Punk motherfucker,” said
Cook, saying it loud, making sure the reporter could hear.
“He’s the one got that witness killed down in Congress Park.
Goes on the air and talks about how a young lady’s about to
give testimony …”
“I had a problem with what she told me, I gotta be honest,”
said Holiday, watching Cook but going ahead with his
story.
“‘Cause he’s black.”
“I can’t lie. It was hard for me to forget him and her after
that. When I was in the rack with her, is what I’m talkin about.”
“You felt, what, inadequate or somethin?”
“Come on. Pro football player, a brother …” Holiday held
his palm out a foot from his groin. “Guy’s gotta be like this.”
“It’s an NFL requirement.”
“Huh?”
“They check their teeth, too.”
“I’m sayin, I’m just an average guy. Down there, I mean.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s Kielbasa Street when the blood gets
to it, but when it’s just layin there-”
“What’s your point?”
“Knowin this girl was hanging off the end of this guy’s
dick, it just ruined her for me, I guess.”
“So you what, let her go?”
“Not with that ass of hers, I wasn’t gonna let her go. No, sir.”
A woman had wandered under the tape while they were
talking, and as she approached the body of the girl and got a
look at it, she vomited voluminously into the grass. Sergeant
Cook removed his hat, ran a finger along the brim, and breathed
deeply. He replaced the Stetson on his head, adjusted it, and
allowed his eyes to search the perimeter of the scene. He
turned to the man beside him, a white detective named Chip
Rogers, and pointed to Ramone and Holiday.
“Tell those white boys to do their jobs,” said Cook.
“People regurgitatin, fucking up my crime scene … If they
can’t keep these folks back, find some men who will. I’m not
playin.”
Ramone and Holiday immediately went to the yellow tape,
turned their backs to it, and affected a pose of authority. Holiday
spread his feet and looped his fingers through his utility belt, unfazed
by Cook’s words. Ramone’s jaw tightened as he felt a
twinge of anger at being called a white boy by the homicide cop.
He had heard it occasionally growing up outside D.C. and many
times while playing baseball and basketball in the city proper.
He didn’t like it. He knew it was meant to cut him and he was
expected to take it, and that made it burn even more.
“How about you?” said Holiday.
“How ’bout me what?” said Ramone.
“You been gettin any hay for your donkey?”
Ramone did not answer. He had his eye on one woman in
particular, a cop, God help him. But he had learned not to let
Holiday into his personal world.
“C’mon, brother,” said Holiday. “I showed you mine,
now you show me yours. You got someone in your gun sights?”
“Your baby sister,” said Ramone.
Holiday’s mouth fell open and his eyes flared. “My sister
died of leukemia when she was eleven years old, you piece a
shit.”
Ramone looked away. For a while there was only the
squawk and hiss of the police radios and the low conversations
of the spectators in the crowd. Then Holiday cackled and
slapped Ramone on the back.
“I’m kiddin you, Giuseppe. Oh, Christ, but I had your ass.”
The description of the victim had been matched to a list
of missing teenagers in the area. A half hour later, a man was
brought to the scene to identify her. As he looked at the body,
a father’s anguished howl filled the night.
The victim’s name was Eve Drake. In the past year, two
other black teenagers, both living in the poorer sections of
town, had been murdered and dumped in similar fashion in
community gardens, both discovered shortly after sunrise.
Shot in the head, both had traces of semen in their rectums.
Their names were Otto Williams and Ava Simmons. Like Otto
and Ava, Drake’s first name, Eve, was spelled the same way
backward as it was forward. The press had made the connection
and dubbed the events the Palindrome Murders. Within
the department, some police had begun to refer to the perpetrator
as the Night Gardener.
ACROSS TOWN, AT THE same time the father cried out over his
daughter’s body, young Washingtonians were in their homes,
tuning in to Miami Vice, doing lines of coke as they watched the
exploits of two hip undercover cops and their quest to take
down the kingpins of the drug trade. Others read bestselling
novels by Tom Clancy, John Jakes, Stephen King, and Peter
Straub, or sat in bars and talked about the fading play-off
prospects of the Jay Schroeder-led Washington Redskins. Others
watched rented VCR tapes of Beverly Hills Cop and Code of
Silence, the top picks that week at Erol’s Video Club, or barely
sweated to Jane Fonda’s Workout, or went out and caught the
new Michael J. Fox at the Circle Avalon or Caligula at the
Georgetown. Mr. Mister and Midge Ure were in town, playing
the clubs.
As these movers of the Reagan generation entertained
themselves west of Rock Creek Park and in the suburbs, detectives
and techs worked at a crime scene at 33rd and E, in the
neighborhood of Greenway, in Southeast D.C. They could not
know that this would be the last victim of the Palindrome
Killer. For now, there was only a dead teenager, one of three unsolved,
and someone out there, somewhere, doing the murders.
On a cool rainy night in December 1985, two young uniformed
police and a middle-aged homicide detective were on
the scene.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Night Gardener
by George Pelecanos
Copyright © 2006 by George P. Pelecanos.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
LITTLE, BROWN
Copyright © 2006
George P. Pelecanos
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-316-15650-7
