Roses Are Red

little boy. What a bad, bad break,” Kyle whispered as he looked down at Alex. “He looks like you instead of Christine. How are you two doing, anyway?”
    “We’re settling back into things okay,” I said, which wasn’t the truth, unfortunately. Christine had been gone from Washington for a year, and since she’d been back, we hadn’t done as well as I would have hoped. I missed the intimacy more than I could say. It was killing me. But I wasn’t able to tell anyone about it, not even Sampson or Nana.
    “Please, Kyle. Just leave me alone for tonight.”
    “I wish this could wait, Alex. I’m afraid it can’t. I’m on my way back to Quantico now. Where can we talk?”
    I shook my head and felt anger building up inside. I led him to the sunporch, where I keep an old upright piano that still plays about as well as I do. I sat down on the creaky piano bench and tapped out a few notes of Gershwin’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”
    Kyle recognized the tune and he grinned. “I am sorry about this.”
    “Not sorry enough, obviously. Go ahead.”
    “You heard about the Citibank-branch robbery out in Silver Spring? The murders at the bank manager’s house?” he asked. “Manager’s husband, their nanny, three-year-old son?”
    “How could I
not
hear about it?” I said, and looked away from Kyle. The brutal, senseless murders had saddened me and knotted my stomach when I read about them. The story was all over the papers and TV. Even cops in D.C. were outraged.
    “I didn’t really understand what I heard so far. What the hell happened at the manager’s house? The perps had the money, right? Why did they have to kill the hostages if they had the money? That’s what you’re here to tell me, right?”
    Kyle nodded. “They were
late
getting out of the bank. The explicit order was that the crew member inside had to be out with the money by eight-ten exactly. Alex, the crew member at the bank was
less than a minute late.
Less than a minute! So they murdered the thirty-three-year-old father, the three-year-old boy, and the couple’s nanny. The nanny was twenty-five, and she was pregnant. They
executed
the father, the three-year-old, the nanny. You
see
the murder scene, Alex?”
    I rolled my shoulders, twisted my neck. I could feel the tension invading my body. I
saw
it, all right. How could they have murdered those people for no reason?
    I really wasn’t in the mood for police business, though, not even a bad case like this one. “Which brings you out to my house tonight? On my son’s christening day?”
    “Oh, hell.” Kyle suddenly smiled and lightened his tone. “I had to come over to see the promised child, anyway. Unfortunately, this case is really intense. There’s a possibility the crew is from D.C. Even if they’re not from Washington, there’s still a possibility somebody here might know them, Alex. I need you to look for the killers —
before they do it again.
We have the feeling this isn’t a one-shot. Alex, your baby is a beauty, though.”
    “Yeah, you’re a beauty, too,” I said to Kyle. “You are truly beyond compare.”
    “Three-year-old boy, the father, a nanny,” Kyle said one more time before he left the party. He was about to go through the door in the sunporch when he turned to me and said, “You’re the right person for this. They murdered a family, Alex.”
    As soon as Kyle was gone, I went looking for Christine. My heart sank. She had taken Alex and left without saying good-bye, without a single word.

Chapter 6
    RELUCTANTLY, the Mastermind parked on the street, then walked toward an abandoned project within a stone’s throw of the Anacostia River. A full moon cast a cold, hard, bone white light on half a dozen crumbling three-story row houses with open, screenless windows. He wondered if he had the stomach for this. “Into the valley of death,” he whispered.
    To his further dismay, he found the Parkers’ hideout was in the row house farthest from the street. They were ensconced on the third floor. Their lovely little lodging was furnished with a grimy, stained mattress and a rusted lawn chair. Greasy wrappings from KFC and Mickey D’s were scattered on the floor.
    As he entered their room, he held up a couple of oven-warm pizza boxes as well as a brown paper bag. “Chianti and pizza! This is a celebration, isn’t it?”
    Brianne and Errol were evidently hungry and dug into the pizza pies immediately. They barely greeted him, which he took as