Cross

were up in the middle of the night,” I told my grandmother as I aimed a brimming spoon of gruel in the general direction of Damon’s twisting mouth.
    “Damon can do that himself,” Nana said, huffing as she put down her bundle on the kitchen counter.
    It looked as if she had brought hot biscuits and—could it possibly be?—homemade peach jam. Plus her usual assortment of books for the day.
Blueberries for Sal, The Gift of the Magi, Goodnight Moon.
    I said to Damon, “Nana says you can feed yourself, buddy. You holding out on me?”
    “Damon, take your spoon,” she said.
    And, of course, he did. Nobody goes up against Nana Mama.
    “Curse you,” I said to her, and took a biscuit. Praise the Lord, a hot biscuit! Then came a slow, delicious taste of heaven on this earth. “Bless you, old woman. Bless you.”
    Maria said, “Alex doesn’t listen too well these days, Nana. He’s too busy with his ongoing murder investigations. I told him that Damon is feeding himself. Most of the time anyway. When he’s not feeding the walls and ceiling.”
    Nana nodded. “Feeding himself all of the time. Unless the boy wants to go hungry. You want to go hungry, Damon? No, of course you don’t, baby.”
    Maria began to gather together her papers for the day. Last night she’d still been laboring in the kitchen after midnight. She was a social worker for the city, with a caseload from hell. She grabbed a violet scarf off the hook by the back door, along with her favorite hat, to go with the rest of her outfit, which was predominantly black and blue.
    “I love you, Damon Cross.” She flew over and kissed our boy. “I love
you,
Jannie Cross. Even after last night.” She kissed Jannie a couple of times on both cheeks.
    And then she grabbed hold of Nana and kissed her. “And I love you.”
    Nana beamed as if she’d just been introduced to Jesus himself, or maybe Mary. “I love you too, Maria. You’re a miracle.”
    “I’m not here,” I said from my listening post at the kitchen door.
    “Oh, we already know that,” said Nana.
    Before I could leave for work, I had to kiss and hug everybody too, and say “I love you’s.” Corny maybe, but good in its way, and a pox on anybody who thinks that busy, scarily harassed families can’t have fun and love. We certainly had plenty of that.
    “Bye, we love you, bye, we love you,” Maria and I chorused as we backed out the door together.

Chapter 8
    JUST AS I DID EVERY MORNING, I drove Maria to her job in the Potomac Gardens housing project. It was only about fifteen or twenty minutes from Fourth Street anyway, and it gave us some alone time.
    We rode in the black Porsche, the last evidence of some money I’d made during three years of private practice as a psychologist, before I switched full-time into the DC police department. Maria had a white Toyota Corolla, which I didn’t much like, but she did.
    It seemed as though she was someplace else as we rode along G Street that morning.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    She laughed and gave me that wink of hers.
    “Little tired. I’m feeling pretty good,
considering.
I was just thinking about a case I consulted on yesterday, favor to Maria Pugatch. It involves a college girl from GW University. She was raped in a men’s bathroom in a bar on M Street.”
    I frowned and shook my head. “Another college kid involved?”
    “She says no, but she won’t say much else.”
    My eyebrows arched. “So she probably knew the rapist? Maybe a professor?”
    “The girl definitely says no, Alex. She swears it’s no one she knows.”
    “You believe her?”
    “I think I do. Of course, I’m trusting and gullible anyway. She seems like such a sweet kid.”
    I didn’t want to stick my nose too far into Maria’s business. We didn’t do that to each other—at least we tried hard not to.
    “Anything you want me to do?” I asked.
    Maria shook her head. “You’re busy. I’m going to talk to the girl—Marianne—again today. Hopefully I can get her to open up a little.”
    A couple minutes later, I pulled up in front of the Potomac Gardens housing project on G, between Thirteenth and Penn. Maria had volunteered to come here, left a much cushier and secure job in Georgetown. I think she volunteered because she lived in the Gardens until she was eighteen, when she went off to Villanova.
    “Kiss,” Maria said. “I need a kiss. Good one. No pecks on the cheek.
On the lips.
”
    I leaned over and kissed her—and then I kissed her