Kiss the Girls

from Duke and the nearby University of North Carolina could agree on. The “scandal” of Duke’s football captain dating Carolina’s Azalea Queen made the romance even spicier.
    They fumbled with uncooperative buttons and zippers as they slowly drifted on the lake. Roe wound up wearing only her earrings and the borrowed dress pearls. Tom had on his white shirt, but it was open all the way, making a kind of tent as he went inside Roe. Under the moon’s watchful eye, they began to make love.
    Their bodies moved smoothly as the boat rocked gently and playfully. Roe made tiny moaning sounds, which intermingled with a chorus of cicadas playing shrilly in the distance.
    The Gentleman felt a column of rage welling up inside him. His dark side was bursting through: the brutal, repressed animal, the modern-day werewolf.
    Suddenly, Tom Hutchinson flopped out of a Roe Tierney with a tiny
thup.
Something powerful was pulling him out of the boat. Before he hit the water, Roe heard him yell. It was a strange noise that sounded like
yaaagghh.
    Tom swallowed lake water and gagged violently. There was a terrible pain and stinging in his throat, localized pain, but very intense and frightening.
    Then, whatever powerful force had pulled him backwards into the lake suddenly released him. The choking pressure left him. Just like that. He was being set free.
    His large strong hands, quarterback hands, went up to his throat and touched something warm. Blood was gushing out of his throat and spreading through the lake water. A terrible fear, a feeling close to panic, gripped him.
    Horrified, he felt his throat again and found the knife embedded there.
Oh, Jesus God,
he thought,
I’ve been stabbed. I’m going to die at the bottom of this lake, and I don’t even know why.
    In the rocking, drifting rowboat, meanwhile, Roe Tierney was too confused and shocked even to scream.
    Her heart was pounding so rapidly and fiercely, she could hardly breathe. She stood up in the boat frantically searching for some sign of Tom.
    This must be a sick joke,
she thought.
I will never go out with Tom Hutchinson again. Never marry him. Never in a million years. This is not funny.
She was freezing, and she began to grope for her clothes in the bottom of the boat.
    Swiftly, close to the boat, someone or something burst out of the black-looking water. It felt like an explosion under the lake.
    Roe saw a head bobbing above the surface. Definitely a man’s head… but it wasn’t Tom Hutchinson.
    “I didn’t mean to scare you.” The Gentleman spoke softly, almost conversationally. “Don’t be alarmed,” he whispered as he reached for the gunwale of the rocking boat. “We’re old friends. To be perfectly honest, I’ve watched you for over two years.”
    Suddenly Roe started to scream as if there were no tomorrow.
    For Roe Tierney, there wasn’t.

Part One

    Scootchie Cross

Chapter 1

    Washington, D.C., April 1994

    I WAS on the sun porch of our house on Fifth Street when it all began. It was “pouring down rain” as my little girl Janelle likes to say, and the porch was a fine place to be. My grandmother had once taught me a prayer that I never forgot:
“Thank you for everything just the way it is.”
It seemed right that day—almost.
    Stuck up on the porch wall was a Gary Larson
Far Side
cartoon. It showed the “Butlers of the World” annual banquet. One of the butlers had been murdered. A knife was in his chest right up to the hilt. A detective on the scene said, “God, Collings, I hate to start a Monday with a case like this.” The cartoon was there to remind me there was more to life than my job as a homicide detective in D. C. A two-year-old drawing of Damon’s tacked up next to the cartoon was inscribed:
“For the best Daddy ever.”
That was another reminder.
    I played Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith tunes on our aging piano. The blues was having its sneaky-sad way with me lately. I’d been thinking about Jezzie Flanagan. I could see her beautiful, haunting face sometimes, when I stared off into the distance. I tried not to stare off into the distance too much.
    My two kids, Damon and Janelle, were sitting on the trusty, if slightly rickety, piano bench beside me. Janelle had her small arm wrapped across my back as far as it would stretch, which was about one-third of the way.
    She had a bag of Gummi Bears in her free hand. As always, she shared with her friends. I was slow-sucking a red Gummi.
    She and Damon were