Jack & Jill

black kids don’t matter much, not in the greater scheme, not in the
big picture.”
    “Sampson and I have been working on the Truth School murders.” I picked up his thread, just lowered the volume a touch. “Strictly off the books. We have to do our own surveillance,” I added, so that everybody knew the deal. “We need some help now. This is a major homicide case. Unfortunately, there are
two
major cases in Washington at this tune.”
    “Only
one
case on my mind,” Rakeem Powell said. “One guess which case it is.”
    “You know you’ve got the Fatman on board.” Jerome Thurman raised his high-pitched voice and punched his stubby club of an arm into the air. “I’m in. I’m on your
nonpayroll
with all its nonbenefits and risks for forced early retirement. Sounds great”
    “My boy goes to the Sojourner Truth School, Alex,” Shawn Moore said. “I’ll make the time for this. Hope I can fit in Jack and Jill.”
    We laughed at the jokes. It was our hardass approach to the difficult problems at hand. The five of us were in. We just didn’t have any idea what we were in for.
    There were definitely two major murder cases in Washington—and now there were two task forces to try and solve them. One and a half task forces, anyway.
    “Cocktails, anyone?” Jerome Thurman asked in the softest, most cultivated voice. You’d have thought we were at the old Cotton Club in Harlem as he passed around his beat-up Washington Redskins game flask.
    We all took a hit; more like two or three.
    We were blood brothers.

CHAPTER
27

    I WORKED the Jack and Jill case from five in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. Me and about ten thousand other harried law officers around D.C. I was checking for a possible link between Senator Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan. We even looked at news photos taken of them in the past months. Maybe somebody interesting would show up in the background of a shot. Or even better, show up twice. I had a detective visiting all of the kinky sex shops around D.C. He called the assignment the ultimate Jack-off.
    I met Sampson at the Boston Market restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue at three-thirty. It was time for our second job. Our
other
homicide case, the “back burner” case. This arrangement was definitely much better—not great, but a significant improvement over the past few days of frustration and utter madness for me.
    “I think you might be right on the button about one thing, Alex,” Sampson told me over a lunch of double-glazed meat loaf and mashed potatoes made from scratch. “The Truth School killer
is
an amateur. He’s sloppy. Maybe a first-timer at this. He left prints all over the second crime scene, too. The techies got his prints, some hair, threads off his clothing. Based on the prints, the killer is a small man—or possibly a woman. If this squirrel isn’t careful, he or she is going to get their squirrel ass caught.”
    “Maybe the killer wants to,” I said between bites of a meat loaf sandwich spiced with decent tomato sauce. “Or maybe the killer just wants us to think he’s a first-timer. That could be the act. Soneji might play it like that.”
    Sampson grinned broadly. It was his best killer smile. “Do you have to double- and triple-think everything, Sugar?”
    “Of course I do. That’s my job description. That’s Alex’s cross,” I said and offered my own killer smile.
    “Oh, ho!” said Man Mountain and grinned again. Man, I loved being with him, loved to make him laugh.
    “Anything in from the rest of the team?” I asked him. “Jerome? Rakeem?”
    “They’re all working the case, but still no tangible results. Nothing yet from the go-team.”
    “We need surveillance at the boy’s funeral and at Shanelle’s gravesite. The killer might not be able to stay away. A lot of them can’t”
    Sampson rolled his eyes. “We’ll do what we can. Do our best. Surveillance at a child’s gravesite. Shee-it.”
    At quarter past four, the two of us split. I headed over to the Sojourner Truth School.
    The principal’s car was sitting in the small, fenced-in parking lot. I remembered that Mrs. Johnson sometimes worked late after classes. That was good for me. I wanted to talk to her about Shanelle Green and Vernon Wheatley. What connection was there between the Truth School and the killer? What could it be?
    I knew approximately where the principal’s office was located in the annexed building, so I walked directly there. It was a very