Excerpt

ONE

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 con- firm 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.

A CROSS 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.

The Night Gardener
by by George Pelecanos [5]

Genres: Fiction [10]
Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-10: 0446619213
ISBN-13: 9780446619219