The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

  “Hard habit to break when you been carrying one for so long.”

  “Where we going?” said Holiday.

  “Has to do with that green pin on the map.”

  On the way out the door, Cook grabbed a faded light brown Stetson with a chocolate band holding a multicolored feather, and put it on his head.

  “You can drive, Dan.”

  “Call me Doc,” said Holiday.

  EIGHTEEN

  RHONDA WILLIS PHONED the Twilight, a titty bar on New York Avenue, and asked to speak to the day bouncer working the door. Officially, the MPD no longer allowed its men and women to moonlight at such establishments, but many still did. The Twilight, with a history of shootings in its parking lot and cuttings inside the walls, used off-duty cops to pat down customers as they came through the entrance, as the sight of a badge on a chain was a deterrent to objection. A certain kind of police, the kind who liked action and fun, was naturally drawn to work that particular bar. The Twilight had the best dancers and music, and the most raucous crowd in town.

  “Hey, Randy,” said Rhonda, speaking on her cell. “It’s Rhonda Willis, VCB.”

  “Detective Willis.”

  “You still down there, huh.”

  Randolph Wallace was a twelve-year veteran, still in uniform, married with two children. Home life bored him, and he avoided it. Instead, when he wasn’t on the MPD clock, he worked a few shifts a week at the Twilight. He drank free and sometimes had relations with the club’s dancers.

  “Yeah, you know,” said Wallace.

  “I need an address on a dancer you got named Star. She stays with a girl name of Darcia. Cell number, too, if you can.”

  Wallace said nothing.

  “It’s in connection with a murder investigation,” said Rhonda.

  “This ain’t really right,” said Wallace. “I got to work with these people, Detective.”

  “What, you want me and my partner to come down there and get it?” said Rhonda with a small laugh, just to keep things friendly. “Wonder how much cocaine and smoke is trading hands in those bathrooms as we speak. All that sex for money, too. We could get the folks in Morals involved, that’s what you want.”

  “Detective —”

  “I’ll hold on while you get that for me.”

  A few minutes later, Rhonda had the address and cell number for Shaylene Vaughn, whose stage name was Star, and the full name of Darcia Johnson and the number of her cell.

  “Thank you, Randy. Be safe.” Rhonda ended the call.

  “Did you just threaten a fellow police officer?” said Ramone.

  “He doesn’t need me to hurt him,” said Rhonda. “He gonna fuck up his marriage and his career his own self, working in that place. I just don’t know what people are thinking sometimes.”

  They were parked near Barney Circle. Rhonda got onto the Sousa Bridge and drove over the Anacostia River into Far Southeast.

  The address provided by Randolph Wallace was on the 1600 block of W Street, near Galon Terrace. Ramone and Rhonda Willis parked and walked by neighborhood kids on their bikes and young women sitting on concrete steps, holding babies and talking. Some teenage males and men in their twenties slowly drifted as the two police officers got out of their car. Ramone walked by a young man wearing a black “Stop Snitchin” T-shirt who was holding the hand of a little boy. The shirts, popular in the D.C. area and in Baltimore, were an explicit warning to those citizens who were thinking of giving information to police.

  “Nice message to send the kid,” said Ramone.

  “Mm-huh,” said Rhonda.

  They entered a three-story apartment building of brick and glass and went up an open stairwell to the second floor. They stopped at a door marked 202.

  “My hand’s tender, Gus,” said Rhonda.

  “What’d you do, drop your wallet on it?”

  “Give it the cop knock, will you?”

  Ramone made a fist and pounded his right hand on the door. He did this several times, waited, and did it again.

  “What is it?” said an annoyed female on the other side of the door.

  “Police,” said Ramone.

  The door opened. A young woman wearing short shorts and a sleeveless pajama top stood before them. She was voluptuous and toned but had unhealthy skin and skin tone. She had a diamond stud in her nose and the remnants of glitter makeup on her face. Her eyes were swollen, and one cheek held the markings of a pillow’s edge.

  “Shaylene Vaughn?” said Rhonda.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re with the Violent Crime Branch of MPD. This is my partner, Sergeant Ramone.”

  “May we come in?” said Ramone. He had been holding his badge out for her to see. Shaylene nodded, and they went inside. The living room was empty except for a full ashtray on the carpet and a single plastic chair.

  “Is Darcia Johnson in?” said Rhonda.

  “She somewhere, but she’s not here.”

  “Where?”

  “She been stayin with her boyfriend.”

  “Who is that and where does he live?”

  “I don’t know, really.”

  “You don’t know his name?”

  “Not really.”

  “Mind if we have a look around?” said Ramone.

  “Why?”

  “Looks like you just woke up,” said Rhonda. “Could be she slipped in while you were sleeping. Maybe she’s in the back or somethin and you aren’t aware of it.”

  The girl lost her innocent face, and for a moment hate flashed in her eyes. Then she lost that, too, as quickly as it had come, as if it were mandatory that she use every item in her emotional toolbox. She swung her head sloppily toward the back of the apartment. “She ain’t here. Go ahead and see, you want to.”

  Ramone went to the galley-sized kitchen, and Rhonda went back to one of the bedrooms. Both stepped warily, but not from fear. The apartment stank of various kinds of smoke and spoiled food.

  In the kitchen Ramone saw open boxes of sugar-rich cereal but no other edible goods. He opened the refrigerator, which held no milk or water and only one can of orange soda. Roaches stood in the sink, their antennae wiggling, and on the electric stove top, where a dirty sauce pot sat. Half-eaten fast food had been dumped in a trash can filled to the rim.

  Ramone joined Rhonda in a bedroom. On the floor was a mattress topped with distressed sheets and a couple of pillows. A large-screen television sat on a stand, pornographic DVDs scattered around it. CDs were stacked near a portable stereo on the carpet. Also on the carpet were thongs, sheer tops, and other articles of cheap-looking lingerie.

  Rhonda made eye contact with Ramone. They moved into the second bedroom, a mirror image of the first.

  Back out in the living room, Shaylene Vaughn stood sullenly. Rhonda took out her pad and pen.

  “Who pays the rent here?” said Rhonda.

  “Huh?”

  “Whose name is on the lease of this apartment?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can find out by calling the rental company.”

  Shaylene tapped her hand against her thigh. “Dominique Lyons. He pays for it.”

  “I thought you didn’t know his name,” said Rhonda.

  “I just now remembered.”

  “You have a job. Can’t you afford to pay it?”

  “Me and Darcia give him the money we make from the club. He holds on to it for us.”

  “Is he Darcia’s boyfriend?” said Rhonda. “Is he yours?”

  Shaylene stared at Rhonda.

  “Does Dominique have a street name, anything like that?” said Ramone.

  “Not that I know.”

  “Where’s he stay at?”

  “Huh?”

  “Does he have an address?”

  “Said I didn’t know.”

  “Where were you late last night… say, after midnight?”

  “Dancing at the Twilight till, like, one thirty. And then I came home.”

  “Alone?”

 
Shaylene did not answer.

  “What about Darcia?” said Rhonda.

  “She was working there, too.”

  “Was Dominique at the Twilight as well?”

  “Maybe he was. He could have been.”

  “Do you know a Jamal White?” said Rhonda.

  Shaylene looked down at her bare feet and shook her head.

  “What’s that?” said Rhonda.

  “I know some Jamals. I ain’t know their last names.”

  Rhonda breathed out slowly and handed Shaylene her card. “My number’s on there. You can leave a message, day or night. I’m looking to speak to Darcia and Dominique. You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks for your time. We’ll be seeing you again.”

  “Take care,” said Ramone.

  They left the apartment, glad to breathe fresh air, and got back into the Ford.

  “Trick pad,” said Rhonda, settling under the wheel. “That’s all that is.”

  “And you think Dominique Lyons is their pimp.”

  “Maybe. I got to run him through the system first, see what he’s about.”

  “Jamal White falls in love with a dancer-slash-ho, her pimp doesn’t like him cutting into his girl’s action, and boom.”

  “I like it so far.” Rhonda stared out the windshield. “At one time that girl in there was a baby that someone held and sang to at night.”

  “If you say so.”

  “And look where she is now. Not that I blame her for giving her love to a man. You know, devoting all my time to my sons and this job, it’s easy for people to forget that I’m still a woman. Even a Christian woman like me, well, every once in a while I have the need for some penis.”

  “For real?”

  “This Dominique Lyons fella, though, he must have one special penis. I’m talkin about the kind of penis that could make a girl dance naked in a bar and give up her hard-earned money to him at the end of the night. The kind of penis that could make her prostitute herself in a roach-infested crib with no furniture or food or drink, and make her feel like she’s a loyal queen. I’m sayin, that must be some extraordinary penis.”

  “Okay.”

  “Gus?” Rhonda Willis turned the key on the Ford. “I do not need that kind of penis.”

  HOLIDAY AND COOK WERE parked in the Town Car three houses down from a white-sided ranch-style home in Good Luck Estates, a clean middle-class community off Good Luck Road in the New Carrollton area of Prince George’s County. A late-model Buick sat in the driveway. The curtains of the house were charcoal gray and drawn closed.

  “He doesn’t live but ten minutes from my own house,” said Cook. “Makes it real convenient for me to drop over here and watch him.”

  “Tell me about him,” said Holiday.

  “Reginald Wilson. He’d be close to fifty now.”

  “You say he was a security guard?”

  “At the time of the killings, yes. We were interested in men who could be mistaken for cops because of their uniforms.”

  “Why him?”

  “After the third murder, we questioned all the security guards who worked in the area, and then, on the second round, went back to those who lived in close proximity to the victims. Wilson was a guy I personally interviewed. There was something missing in his eyes, and I backgrounded him. He had done some brig time in the army for two incidents of violence, both against fellow soldiers. He managed to come out with an honorable discharge, which allowed him to apply to the MPD and the P.G. County force. Neither would take him. His intelligence wasn’t the issue. In fact, he scored highly there. He had flunked the psychiatric.”

  “I’m with you so far. Good IQ, bad head. So now he’s gonna show the police force they made a big mistake by, what, killing kids?”

  “I know,” said Cook. “It’s a stretch. I had no evidence of anything, to tell you the truth. Not even a pedophilic history at that time. Just a hunch that this guy was wrong. I felt like I had seen him before, maybe at one of the crime scenes. But my memory wasn’t helping me out. Neither did the killer. Remember, there were no fibers found on the bodies, not even human hair follicles or fibers from the carpets of homes or cars. No foreign blood cells. No tissue under the fingernails. The bodies were clean. The only thing left behind was semen in their rectums. And there wasn’t a way to match that ’cause there was no DNA testing in eighty-five.”

  “So he left behind some jizz. Did he take anything?”

  “You’re pretty bright,” said Cook.

  “I can be.”

  “There were small cuts of hair missing from all three of the victims’ heads. He kept souvenirs. That was a detail we never released to the press.”

  “Did you ever get into his place?”

  “Sure, I interviewed him at his crib. I remember noting that he had almost no furniture, but he did have a monster record collection. All jazz, he said. Electric jazz, whatever that means. Damn if I could ever get into that shit. I like instrumental stuff, but you better be able to dance to it.”

  “So what happened?” said Holiday, losing patience.

  “A month after the third murder, Reginald Wilson fondles a thirteen-year-old boy who’s wandered onto his job site, a warehouse near an apartment building where the boy stayed, and gets charged. While he’s in the D.C. Jail, waitin on his date, some dude calls him a faggot or somesuch thing, and Wilson takes him down forever. Beats him to death with his fists. Couldn’t even plead self-defense, so now he draws real time. Inside the federal joint, he’s marked as a short eyes and kills another inmate who came at him with a single-edge. Now he gets more years heaped on top of the original.”

  “The murders stopped when he went away.”

  “Right. For nineteen years and change. He ain’t been out but a few months and now they started again.”

  “It’s possible he’s the one,” said Holiday. “But the only thing you’ve really got is that Wilson’s prone to violence and is sexually attracted to kids. Pedophilia’s a long way off from murder.”

  “It’s a kind of murder.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me there. But basically you’ve got nothing. We’d be hard-pressed to get a warrant to search his house. That is, if we were still police.”

  “I know it.”

  “Does he have a job?”

  “Man’s on paper, he got to. Takes cash at an all-night gas-and-convenience station down on Central Avenue. Works different shifts there, including the late. I know, ’cause I tailed him, more than once.”

  “We could check with his PO, get his hours, talk to his employer. See if he was working the night Johnson was killed.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Cook with no enthusiasm.

  “That’s no palace,” said Holiday, looking at the white rancher, “but this is a pretty fair neighborhood for a guy like him to land in right out of prison.”

  “It’s his parents’ house. They died while he was in the joint, and as he was their only child, it went to him. There’s no nut on it; all he has to do is pay the taxes. The Buick’s not his, either.”

  “No shit. Got to be his father’s. Only old men drive Buicks.” Holiday winced. “I didn’t mean —”

  “There he is,” said Cook, who had not taken offense and had kept his eyes on the house.

  Holiday saw the curtain on the bay window part and, behind it, the indistinguishable face of a middle-aged man. It looked like a shadow and disappeared as the curtain drifted back into place.

  “He’s seen you out here?” said Holiday.

  “I don’t know if he has or hasn’t. And you know what? I just don’t give a morning crap. ’Cause eventually he’s gonna make a mistake.”

  “We need more information about the Johnson death.”

  “You saw the body.”

  “I was at the crime scene, too, the next day.”

  “Damn, boy, did you speak to anyone?”

  “Not yet. I know the homicide detective who caught it. Guy named Gus R
amone.”

  “Will he talk to you?”

  “I don’t know. Me and the Ramone have a history.”

  “What’d you do, fuck his wife?”

  “Worse,” said Holiday. “Ramone was in charge of the IAD investigation that was trying to take me down. I didn’t let him finish the job.”

  “Beautiful,” said Cook.

  “That guy’s strictly by the book.”

  “Be nice if you could talk to him, just the same.”

  “He pulls that stick out of his ass,” said Holiday, “maybe I will.”

  NINETEEN

  AFTER A COUPLE of bonefish sandwiches with hot sauce and tartar from an eat-shack on Benning Road, Ramone and Rhonda Willis drove to the Metropolitan Police Academy, set on Blue Plains Drive in a clear tract of acreage between the Anacostia Freeway and South Capitol Street, in Southwest. They passed the K-9 training unit, located on the grounds, and the barracks where both of them had once stayed, and parked in a lot nearly full of cars and buses.

  The academy looked like any high school, with standard-sized classrooms on the upper floors and a gymnasium, swimming pool, and extensive workout facilities below. Veteran police, including Ramone, used the weight room and pool to stay in shape. Rhonda’s vanity had shrunk with the birth of each successive child, and she had not exercised in many years. If she managed to put together a half hour of free time, Rhonda felt that a hot bath and a glass of wine were more valuable to her physical and mental health than a visit to the gym could ever be.

  Entering the building, they noticed that the trim and rails had been painted a bright, almost neon shade of purple.

  “That’s soothing,” said Rhonda. “Wonder what committee of geniuses decided to use that color.”

  “I guess Sherwin-Williams was all out of pink.”

  They badged a police officer inside the entrance and proceeded up to the second floor. It was afternoon, and many cops were in shorts and sweats, using weight machines, treadmills, and free weights before reporting to their four-to-midnights. Ramone and Rhonda stood on a landing overlooking the gymnasium.