Roses Are Red

dived off the deck — which was five floors above the street. Bernard Francis went down headfirst. He’d break his neck for sure. There was no way he’d live.
    “I don’t believe it!” Betsey screeched as we got to the edge of the deck and looked down.
    I didn’t believe what I saw, either. Francis had made a dive five stories down to a shimmery blue swimming pool. He surfaced and began to stroke rapidly toward the pool’s far wall.
    I had no choice and I didn’t hesitate. I jumped off the high roof deck after Dr. Francis.
    Betsey was no more than half a step behind me.
    We both yelled as we cannonballed all the way down to the pool.
    I hit the surface of the water with my backside first, and I was punished severely. My body went
splat.
My insides felt as if they’d been hastily rearranged.
    I shot to the bottom,
hit
it pretty hard, but then I was paddling to the surface, swimming as fast as I could toward the far wall. I was trying to clear my head, to focus my eyes, to think clearly about stopping the Mastermind’s escape.
    I climbed out of the pool and saw Francis running onto the property of the bordering condominiums. He was throwing off water like a duck.
    Betsey and I started after him. Our shoes were squeaking and sloughing water. Nothing mattered except that we had to catch him.
    Francis was picking up speed, and I did the same. I guessed he must have had a car parked in one of the neighboring lots — or maybe even a boat in a nearby marina.
    I was gaining very little ground for all my efforts. Francis was running barefoot, but it didn’t seem to slow him down.
    He peered over his shoulder and saw us. Then he straightened his head and saw something that changed everything.
    Up ahead of Francis in the parking lot were three FBI agents. They had their guns drawn, aimed at him. They were yelling for him to stop.
    Francis came to a dead stop in the crowded lot. He looked back at us, then faced the three agents. He reached into his pants pocket.
    “Francis, don’t do it!” I yelled as I ran toward him.
    But he didn’t pull a gun. He had a clear bottle in his hand. He poured the contents into his mouth.
    Dr. Francis suddenly clawed at his throat. His eyes bulged to double their normal size. He fell to his knees, which cracked hard against the pavement.
    “He poisoned himself,” Betsey said in a hoarse voice.
“My God, Alex.”
    Francis rose from the ground with a burst of strength. We watched in horror as he thrashed wildly around the parking lot, flailing both arms, doing a strange, straight-backed dance. He was frothing from the mouth. Finally, he smashed his face into a silver Mercedes SUV Blood spattered onto the hood.
    He screamed, tried to tell us something, but it came out a tortured gargle. He had a severe nosebleed. He twitched and spasmed, and there was nothing any of us could do to help him.
    More agents were flooding into the parking area. So were condo residents and visitors. There was nothing any of us could do for Francis. He’d killed people, poisoned some. He had murdered two FBI agents. Now we were watching him die, and it was horrifying. It was taking a long time.
    He fell and thudded heavily to the ground again. His head cracked hard against the pavement. The spasms and twitching slowed noticeably. A terrible gargling sound escaped from his throat.
    I got down on my hands and knees beside him. “Where is Agent Doud? Where’s Michael Doud?” I pleaded. “For God’s sake, tell us.”
    Francis stared up at me, and he said the last words I wanted to hear.
“You’ve got the wrong man.”
    Then he died.

Epilogue
    THE RIGHT MAN

Chapter 123
    THREE WEEKS HAD PASSED, and my life was finally returning to something approaching normal. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about getting out of police work, though. I didn’t know if it had been the intensity of the Mastermind case, or an accumulation of cases, but I was experiencing all the basic symptoms of job burnout.
    Most of the fifteen million dollars from Francis’s share hadn’t been found, and that was driving everybody at the FBI a little crazy. Locating it was consuming all of Betsey’s time. She was working weekends again, and I hadn’t seen much of her. She had said it all in Florida, I suppose.
I’m going to miss you so much.
    Tonight was Nana Mama’s fault; at least I blamed her for it. Here we were — Sampson and I — trapped inside the ancient and venerable First Baptist Church on Fourth Street near