Roses Are Red

satisfying crunch, and the kidnapper crumpled to the ground. He never made a sound.
It was too easy. What the hell was going on?
    Betsey was crouched low, coming up to me fast. She whispered, “What the hell kind of lookout was that? They’ve always been careful before.”
    A half dozen agents appeared out of the woods behind us. Betsey signaled for them to stop. There still were no lights in the farmhouse and no movement. The scene was eerie and unreal.
    Then Kyle gave the order to go, to move on the house. We were quiet as we ran forward. There didn’t seem to be any more sentries or guards. Was this some kind of trap? Were they expecting us to break inside? What about Mrs. Morris? Could she be part of this?
    I got to the farmhouse with the first wave of agents and I was filled with a sense of dread. I raised my Glock and kicked the front door open. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to stop myself from shouting out loud.
    The hostage group was there in the farmhouse living room. They were staring at me, clearly frightened, but no one was hurt. I did a quick count: sixteen women, two children, and the driver. All alive. No one punished because we’d broken the rules.
    “The kidnappers?” I asked in a low voice. “Are any of them still here?”
    A dark-haired woman stepped forward and spoke. “They left sentries around the house. There’s one man by the elm tree in front.”
    “Not anymore. We didn’t see any others,” Betsey told the group. “Everybody stay right here while we look around.”
    FBI agents were inside and spreading out all over the house. Some of the hostages began to cry when they realized they weren’t going to die, that they’d finally been rescued.
    “They said we’d be killed if we tried to leave the house before tomorrow morning. They told us about the Buccieri and Casselman families,” a tall, dark-haired woman said between sobs. Her name was Mary Jordan and she’d been in charge of the tour group.
    We did a careful search of the house — no one else was there. There wasn’t any obvious evidence, but the technicians would be here soon. The tour bus had already been found in a shed on the former army base.
    After half an hour or so, Mrs. Morris came waddling through the front door. A couple of agents were futilely trying to stop her. The local woman’s appearance was an almost comical punctuation to the stress of the last several hours. “Why did you hit old Bud O’Mara? He’s just a nice fella, works at the truck stop. Bud said he was paid to stand around and wait. Got all of a hundred bucks for the dent in his skull. He’s harmless, Bud is.”
    An odd and exhilarating thing happened as several rescue vehicles finally arrived. The hostages started to clap and to cheer. We’d come for them; we hadn’t let them die.
    But I knew otherwise: For some reason, the Mastermind hadn’t wanted them to die.

Part Four
    HIT AND RUN

Chapter 69
    OF COURSE, the case continued to be a full-blown knock-down-drag-out media event. The press had learned about the existence of a “Mastermind,” and it made for sensational headlines. A picture of the Buccieri boy, one of the first victims, was the featured art in story after story. I had begun seeing the little boy’s face in my dreams.
    I was working twelve- and sixteen-hour days. The Washington bank robber named Mitchell Brand was still high on the list of FBI suspects. He had been up on the wall of suspects for over a week. We hadn’t been able to locate Brand, but he fit the profile. Meanwhile, crime-scene investigators covered the money pickup site, combing it for evidence. FBI technicians went over every square inch of the Browne farmhouse. Traces of theatrical makeup were found in the sink of the farmhouse. I talked to several hostages, and they supported the idea that the kidnappers might have worn makeup, wigs, and possibly lifts in their shoes.
    Sampson and I worked in Washington the first two days. MetroHartford had offered a million-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the men involved in the crime. The reward was aimed at the general public, but also at anyone involved in the robbery whose take was less than the reward being offered.
    The search for the bank robber Mitchell Brand was also centered in Washington. Brand was a thirty-year-old black man who was suspected in half a dozen robberies, but who had never been officially charged and suddenly had gone underground. Once upon a time he had been an