I nodded.
‘The hell you do,’ he said.
We were in an annexe to one of the main compound buildings. Out through the window I could see people walking by.
‘You’re part of it, my friend,’ Dennis Powers said. ’Until you’ve
been out there and seen some of the things human beings are capable of doing to one another . . . hell, you haven’t even got a clue.’
I stayed silent.
‘I give you a gun,’ Dennis said. ‘I give you a gun and send you
all the way back to somewhere in the 1920s, right? You’re somewhere in Europe - Austria, Germany maybe - and I point you in the direction of a bar someplace. I tell you there’s a man sitting at the bar and you gotta walk right in and take your gun and shoot the motherfucker in the head right where he’s sitting drinking his
beer.’ Dennis paused and looked at me. ‘I tell you to do that and
you’re gonna go and do that for me, right?’
I laughed nervously. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not gonna do that.’
‘So I tell you the guy sitting in the bar is Adolf Hitler, and you
walk on in there and see him sitting there drinking his beer, and you have a .38 in your pocket . . . what the fuck you gonna do then?’
I smiled, nodded my head.
‘I’m
gonna walk right up to him and shoot him in the head.’
‘No question?’
I shook my head. ‘No question at all.’
‘Why?’
It was obvious. ‘Maybe twenty, thirty million people are not
gonna die if I kill Adolf Hitler,’ I replied.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
Powers nodded slowly. ‘Okay, okay, okay, so now we have a
benchmark for this kind of thing. Adolf Hitler, no question, okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘And Stalin, what about him?’
‘Same, no question.’
‘Genghis Khan, Caligula, Nero, Kaiser Wilhelm?’
‘God knows, yes . . . Jesus, all of them I suppose.’
‘And Churchill?’
‘Winston Churchill? No, of course not,’ I replied.
‘In 1914 he was known as “The Butcher of Belfast”,’ Powers said. ’He put the Third Battle Squadron on station off Ulster.
Churchill put warships in the harbor and he resorted to bombing the city . . .’
I shook my head. ‘You’re taking a number of negative incidents
over a considerably greater number of positive incidents.’
‘So you’re saying that one should view the actions of such people
in light of history, then you can evaluate whether they did more good than harm, and if they did more harm—’
I smiled. ‘Then it’s too late to do anything about it anyway.’
‘Right,’ Powers said. ‘Which raises a question of who makes the
decision about such things, and when do they make it.’
‘If
there are such decisions to be made at all,’ I replied.
Powers looked toward the window for a moment, and before he
turned back he spoke in a quiet voice. ‘There are such decisions,’
he said.
‘There
are indeed such decisions, and there are also the people that make them, and right now those kinds of decisions are being made about three hundred yards from where you’re sitting, and once they’re made people will be despatched to deal with the consequences of those decisions . . . and I’ll tell you something
now, John . . .’ Powers turned and looked at me directly. ‘Those
people are very interested in the part you might play in such consequences.’
‘The part I might play? What d’you mean?’
‘You’re not a fool,’ Powers said. ’You know what’s been happening
here over the past few weeks. People you came in with have disappeared, right? You see them one day, the next day they’re gone, they didn’t make it. But you’ve made it through this far, and right now you’re faced with me, and I’m gonna be asking you to make a decision, and the way this goes is gonna be the most important decision you ever made. You go one way, and your life is gonna be something worth remembering, and if you go the other way . . . well, if you go the other way your life is gonna be whatever you decide to make of it, but it sure as hell won’t be comparable to what it could have been.’
He paused, and then smiled understandingly. ‘That girl you
hang around with . . . what’s her name?’
I didn’t reply.
‘Oh come on, man,’ Powers said. ’You think there’s anything
that goes on around here that we don’t know about? Her name’s Catherine Sheridan.’
‘If you knew why’d you ask me?’
Powers laughed. ‘You’ve got to bring some of the walls down,
my friend. You’ve got to learn to trust someone. You trust Lawrence Matthews, right?’
‘Sure I do,’ I replied.
‘And Don?’
‘Don Carvalho . . . yes, I trust him. I don’t know that I agree
with everything he says but—’
‘Trust isn’t about agreement. This isn’t about all of us having
the same view about the world. Jesus, what the hell kind of shit would that be, everybody agreeing with everyone else? No, we’re not talking about having the same attitude about things, we’re talking about having enough of the same attitude to be able to make a decision about something, and then going and doing something about it.’
‘Such as?’
‘Okay, okay, now we’re gonna get somewhere. Such as South
America, that’s what.’
‘South America?’
‘Sure, why the fuck not? It’s a helluva place. Fucking war zone
at the moment, but nice countryside all the same.’
‘So what about it?’
‘That’s where your girlfriend is going in July.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘Okay, so that’s where Catherine Sheridan who you wish was
your fucking girlfriend is going in July.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we need her to go.’
‘For what?’
‘To set some things straight. To play her part in the game. To
make as much difference as she can. But the basic reason she’s going is because she really wants to.’
‘And you’re telling me this because?’
‘Because I think you should go with her.’
‘What the fuck would I want to go to South America for?’ I
asked, challenging him, simply because his tone inspired in me the desire to challenge.
‘What would you want to go to South America for?’ Dennis Powers smiled knowingly. ‘To kill Adolf fucking Hitler, that’s
what for.’
TWENTY-ONE
‘Yesterday afternoon,’ Miller said, ‘at approximately 4.45 in the afternoon, a young woman named Natasha Joyce was found murdered in her apartment in the projects between Landover Hills and Glenarden. She was twenty-nine years old, had a daughter of nine named Chloe. There was no husband, no known current boyfriend, and the father of her child, a heroin addict named Darryl King, was killed in October 2001.’
Miller looked at the men before him. Weatherworn veterans, without exception inured to such things. Nothing new here. Someone got killed. Black woman in the projects, single mother, dead father, no-one to look out for her, no-one to take care, and more than likely no-one but her daughter to attend the funeral.
Miller cleared his throat. ‘And this follows close on the heels of the murder of Catherine Sheridan four days ago. Found dead in her house on Columbia North West. As you already know the papers have given this guy a name, dubbed him the Ribbon Killer. He leaves a ribbon tied around the neck of each victim. He beats them savagely, strangles them, leaves the ribbon. With this last one there was no ribbon, but she was directly connected to the investigation. The fact that we were questioning her may have alerted the killer to her whereabouts.’
A patrolman raised his hand. ‘Any known connection between the victims?’
‘Something circumstantial, nothing probative. What we have is an unidentified male, age uncertain, at a guess early forties to mid-fifties, apparently seen in the vicinity of the fourth victim five years ago. This man was identified to me and Al Roth by Natasha Joyce as the same man who accompanied Catherine Sheridan on a number of visits to the Glenarden district projects back in September and October of 2001. They went there in an effort to contact Natasha Joyce’s boyfriend, Darryl King—’
Same patrolman raised his hand again. ‘So there was a connection between the fourth and fifth victims.’
‘As I said, little more than circumstantial, but we now have a picture of this man, and he appears to have known both Joyce and Sheridan. We have made up a number of images to give an idea of how he might look now. These are approximations based on an estimate of his age.’
Roth rose from his chair and started distributing the photo packs.
‘Take these out with you today,’ Miller said. ‘Take them out every day. Speak to people, show them around . . . see if anyone recognizes this man.’
Lassiter stood up and walked to the front of the room. ‘This is a priority,’ he said. ‘In between assignments or call-outs I need you to walk these pictures around your areas. Speak to the people you know. Storeowners, people in the markets, go into the bars . . . you know the routine with this kind of thing. I need to know if anyone recognizes this man, and the moment you get anything, just anything at all, I want you to contact either Oliver, Metz, Feshbach or Riehl. They will be acting as a coordination point for Roth and Miller. Everything comes back through here. And I mean everything.’
‘And if he’s seen?’ one of the patrolmen asked.
‘If he’s seen . . .’ Lassiter thought for a moment. ‘If he’s seen I want him followed until he can be taken without force. He should be considered armed and dangerous. Raise no alarms, contact us immediately. Give as much detail as you can but ensure he is followed. If he runs you go after him. If he fires, fire back. If at all possible we need him alive and answering questions. Any calls coming in you prefix Code Nine, and the desk will be instructed to put you through to whichever of the assigned detectives is available. If there’s no questions, out you go.’
The gathered officers and patrolmen began to leave. Lassiter stepped forward. ‘You four guys,’ he said, indicating Feshbach, Riehl, Metz and Oliver. ‘You guys are not relieved of any traffic that comes in as routine, but I need you to deal with the incoming calls on this guy. I’ve assigned two additional uniforms to handle any overload if you’re all out on business, but I would prefer you organize yourselves in such a way that at least one of you can be here all the time. I need someone reliable to coordinate with Despatch if squads need to go out to a possible sighting.’
‘Figure we’d do better to work out of the central office if we’re on this together,’ Metz said.
Lassiter nodded. ‘You arrange it the way you figure is best. Anyone gives you any shit tell them I said it was okay. Set yourselves up. We’re gonna need all the organization and cooperation we can muster to deal with the traffic that’ll come in.’ He waved his hand and indicated the photographs on the desk beside him. ‘There’s gotta be a hundred thousand middle-aged guys in Washington alone who could pass for this character.’
‘Overtime?’ Riehl asked.
‘As and when,’ Lassiter replied. ‘If there’s overtime needed I’ll try and get it paid for. But be sensible, okay? If it’s late and you’re not getting calls I don’t need all four of you on double time.’
Metz nodded. Riehl made some comment that Miller didn’t catch. The four of them filed out of the room, one after the other.
Lassiter turned to Miller. ‘So what’s next for you pair?’
‘Find out who it was at the Fourth that Natasha Joyce spoke to, and then this Frances Gray at the administrations unit to help us with McCullough.’
‘Which precinct was he from?’
‘Seventh,’ Roth replied.
‘And he went out when?’
‘2003 . . . March I think.’
Lassiter frowned. ‘2003 . . . 2003 . . . I think Bill Young was still down at the Seventh in 2003. You run into difficulty on that give me a call. Bill Young retired but I have a number somewhere. He’d remember any of the people down there.’
‘That’s good to know,’ Miller said. ‘We’ll go check these people out and come back.’
‘And go see what they have set up in the central office,’ Lassiter said. ‘Make sure these guys have whatever they need, enough phones and shit, you know what I mean. And keep me posted on anything that moves with this, okay? I’m getting three or four calls every fucking hour.’
Lassiter left the room.
Miller waited until he could no longer hear the man’s footsteps, and then he walked to one of the chairs and sat down heavily. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. ‘I stood over the body,’ he said quietly. ‘Natasha Joyce. Yesterday I stood in that room and looked down at that girl, and I couldn’t help but think of her kid.’ He looked up at Roth. ‘Nine-year-old kid. Born to a girl like that down in the projects, her father a doper, so deep in all manner of shit he winds up a CI, gets himself shot in a fucking raid . . . someplace he sure as hell shouldn’t have been as far as any protocol I’m aware of. So he dies, and this kid is raised by her mom, the whole single parent thing, and then mom gets herself carved up by this guy. Now she has a dead junkie father and a mother who’s the victim of a famous serial killer.’ Miller opened his eyes, leaned forward. ‘What the fuck is that, eh? I mean to say, what the fuck kind of life is that for anyone? Now she’s with Child Services. She’ll wind up a ward of the state, some juvenile facility, and then from one foster home to the next . . .’ He exhaled; it sounded like a sigh of defeat and exhaustion.