Roses Are Red

street corner we were approaching. “He knows everything happening around here.”
    “He spotted us,” Sampson said. “Shit, there he goes!”

Chapter 8
    I SPUN THE STEERING WHEEL hard to my left. The Porsche skidded toward a stop, then hopped the curb with a jolting
thud.
Sampson and I jumped out and started to run after Cedric Montgomery.
    “Stop! Police!” I yelled at him.
    We shot down a narrow, twisted alley behind the small-time enforcer and all-around tough guy. Montgomery was a source of information, but he wasn’t a snitch. He just knew things. He was in his early twenties; Sampson and I were both a whisker past forty.
We worked out and we were still fast —
at least in our minds.
    Montgomery could really move, though. He was a blur up ahead of us.
    “He’s just a sprinter, sugar,” Sampson huffed. He was at my side, matching me stride for stride. “We’re good for the long haul.”
    “Police!” I yelled again. “Why are you running, Montgomery?”
    Sweat was already forming on my neck and back. The perspiration was dripping down from my hair. My eyes were burning.
But I could still run. Couldn’t I?
    “We can take him,” I said. I accelerated, turned up my jets. It was a dare — a challenge to Sampson, a game we’d been playing for years.
Who can? We can.
    We were actually gaining some on Montgomery. He looked back — and couldn’t believe we were right behind him. Two freight trains on his tail, and there was no way for him to get off the track.
    “Put it in full gear, sugar!” Sampson said. “Prepare for impact.”
    I gave it everything. Sampson and I were still matching steps. We were having our own private footrace, and Montgomery was the finish line.
    We both hit him at the same time. He went down like a shocked wide receiver crushed between two very fast linebackers. I was afraid he would never get up again. But Montgomery rolled a few times, moaned, and then looked at us in total amazement.
    “Goddamn!” he whispered. That was all he said. Sampson and I took the compliment, then we cuffed him.
    Two hours later Montgomery was talking to us at the station house on Third Street. He admitted that he had heard something about the robbery and murders over in Silver Spring. He was willing to trade information if we would look past half a dozen dime bags he had in his possession when we gang-tackled him on the street.
    “I know who you lookin’ for,” Montgomery said, and he seemed sure of himself. “But you ain’t gonna like hearin’ who it is.”
    He was right — I didn’t like what he told me. Not at all.

Chapter 9
    I WASN’T SURE whether I could trust Cedric Montgomery’s information, but he’d given me a good hard lead that I had to follow. He was right about one thing: His tip was disturbing to me. One of the people he’d implicated in the robbery was the stepbrother of my late wife, Maria. He’d heard that Errol Parker might have done the bank in Silver Spring.
    Sampson and I spent the next day trying to locate Errol, but he wasn’t at home or at any of his usual haunts around Southeast. His wife, Brianne, wasn’t around, either. No one had seen the Parkers for at least a week.
    Around five-thirty I stopped by the Sojourner Truth School to see if Christine was still there. I’d been thinking about her all day. She hadn’t answered my calls or returned any messages.
    I had met Christine Johnson two years before, and we’d almost gotten married. Then a sad and tragic thing had happened, and I still blamed myself: She was kidnapped by a monster who had committed several murders in Southeast. She had been held as a hostage for nearly a year.
Christine was kidnapped because she was seeing me.
She was missing for a year and believed to be dead. When Christine was found, there was another surprise. She had a baby, our son, Alex. But the abduction had changed her, wounded her in ways she didn’t understand, and she couldn’t cope with that. I’d tried to help in any way I could. It had been months since we’d been intimate. She kept pushing me farther and farther away. Now Kyle Craig had made it even worse.
    Nana usually watched over the baby while Christine was working at the Sojourner Truth School. Then Christine and little Alex went to her apartment in Mitchellville. It was the way she needed it to be.
    I entered the school through a metal side door near the gym and heard the familiar sound of basketballs pounding against hardwood and the laughter and