The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

  “Ain’t but one,” said Henderson. “Wasn’t no girl back there, either. The window was up. If she was there, she gone now.”

  “Open that case,” said Benjamin, speaking to Brock. “Turn it so we can see, and open it up.”

  Henderson placed the suitcase at Brock’s feet and stepped back. Brock leaned forward and unzipped the lid. He opened the suitcase, and all of them looked at the women’s clothing that had been packed inside it. For a moment, no one said a thing.

  Mikey got the money, thought Benjamin. He got it and the girl and he’s waiting down by the cars. He wouldn’t think of robbing me. Not after what I did for Dink and their moms.

  “Chantel,” said Brock. He wasn’t saying her name in anger. He was proud of her for what she’d done. She had fire. And here he was acting the punk. He looked up at Benjamin, a hint of defiance in his eyes.

  “Yeah, Chantel,” said Benjamin. To Henderson he said, “Cover his dumb ass.”

  Benjamin pulled his cell from his pocket and hit and held the number three, which was the speed dial code for Michael Tate.

  He heard footsteps, thinking, Here comes Mikey now. But when he turned, there was a white man coming from the darkness of the porch and walking quickly through the front door. A gun was in his hand, and his gun arm was straight.

  “Police!” said Grady Dunne. He shouted the word again. His face was fierce and pink, and he moved the gun back and forth from Benjamin to Henderson. “I’m MPD! Drop your weapons to the deck, now!”

  Benjamin didn’t move. He didn’t drop his gun. He held it at his side and looked at the H&K in Dunne’s hand. It wasn’t a police gun.

  “I said drop those fuckin guns, now!”

  Ernest Henderson kept his Beretta on Brock. He turned his head to look at the man who said he was police. He was blond, and a vein was standing out on his neck. Henderson waited to hear something, anything, from Benjamin. But Ray Benjamin did not tell him what to do.

  “Drop your guns!”

  Brock looked at the back of Henderson’s neck. He studied the point where his neck met his shoulders. And he thought, That is where I will bury my pick. Directly into that boy’s spine. They’ll talk about me forever and say my name and what I did. How I went up against two guns with a tool made to cut ice. Me, Romeo Brock.

  Brock pulled the ice pick where it was taped at his calf. As he expected, the action pulled the cork off the tip as it came free. He stood with the ice pick in hand, raised it, and stepped toward Henderson.

  “Behind you, Nesto,” said Benjamin in an even way.

  Henderson turned and shot Romeo Brock in the center of his chest. The gun jumped in Henderson’s hand as he shot him again. Brock went back over the chair. His arms pinwheeled through crimson mist as he fell.

  Dunne squeezed off two rounds in the direction of Benjamin. The first slug went through Benjamin’s shoulder and blew a fist-sized hole out of his back. The second, high from the recoil, nicked his carotid artery as it tunneled through his neck.

  Benjamin fired his .44 through a cloud of smoke and arterial spray at the outline of the man who’d claimed he was police. He dropped, shooting again as he fell and hit the floor. He saw the man stumble against the wall as if thrown. Benjamin closed his eyes.

  Grady Dunne staggered toward the door. He looked back at the Number One Male with the baseball cap, standing in the center of the room, still armed. The young man was shaking his head as if he could shake away what had happened.

  Dunne tried to raise his weapon. His hand cramped open, and he dropped the .45. He said “God” and held his hand to his stomach, which was wet with blood now pulsing through his fingers. The pain was extreme, and he went through the door and tripped off the porch. There was air beneath him. He touched ground and spun as if he were dancing or drunk and lost his feet and landed on his back in the gravel road.

  He looked up at the branches of a tulip poplar and beyond them the stars. He said, “Officer down.” It was a whisper so faint that he could not hear the words himself. He tasted blood in his mouth. He swallowed the blood and breathed rapidly, and his eyes widened in fright. Into his field of vision came the Number One Male. He stood over Dunne and pointed his gun at his chest. There were tears streaming down the young man’s face.

  “Nine-one-one,” said Dunne. He felt hot blood spill out of his mouth and pour down his chin.

  The young man lowered his gun. He slipped it barrel-down behind the belt line of his jeans and pulled his shirt over the butt.

  Dunne heard the boy’s footsteps on the gravel. And then the sound of him running down the road.

  Dunne listened to the crickets and stared up at the branches and the stars. I cannot die, he thought. But soon the sensations of sound and sight faded to nothing, and Grady Dunne joined Raymond Benjamin and Romeo Brock in death.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  DAN HOLIDAY DROVE back to the lot across from the gas market on Central Avenue, only to find that T. C. Cook had disappeared. He tried to reach Cook on the Motorola and then on his cell but could not get him either way. He noted that Reginald Wilson’s Buick was still parked beside the market. Holiday assumed that Cook had tired of the surveillance or was simply fatigued by the workday and had headed home. He thought he’d go to his house and check up on him, just to be safe.

  Cook’s Marquis was not in the driveway when Holiday arrived at his yellow-sided house on Dolphin Road. Holiday sat in his Town Car and dialed the home number for Cook but got the answering machine. A porch light was on, but Holiday guessed it had been activated by a timer or darkness. There were no lights on in the house.

  He dialed the number to Ramone’s cell.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Holiday.”

  “Hello, Doc.”

  “Where you at? It sounds like a party.”

  “Leo’s, having a beer. What do you want?”

  “Me and Sergeant Cook caught up with our police officer friend. Car four sixty-one? It turned out to be nothing.”

  “Big surprise.”

  “But I lost Cook somewhere. I had to leave him for a bit, and when I came back, he was gone. I tried his house, and he’s not there, either. I’m thinking he got confused or something. I don’t even know if he can read street signs.”

  “He had a stroke, not Alzheimer’s. He’ll turn up.”

  “I’m worried about him,” said Holiday. He waited for a response but heard only bar sounds on the other end of the line. “Gus?”

  “Keep me posted. I’ll be here for a while.”

  Holiday hit “end.” He sat in the Lincoln and thought about the old man and where he could have gone. There was only one place that came to mind.

  T. C. COOK SAT BEHIND the wheel of his Marquis, parked on a side street in Good Luck Estates, a community off Good Luck Road in New Carrollton. He was looking at the ranch-style home of Reginald Wilson. There were no lights on in the house and few lights in the neighboring homes. The street was quiet and dimly lit.

  Cook had been here for some time, thinking.

  When Reginald Wilson came out of prison, he had moved into this house, which had been the home of his parents, both deceased. He had to have had his pre-term possessions in storage, or his parents had simply stored them here in this house. Cook knew that Wilson would never have abandoned his beloved collection of electric jazz albums. Maybe there was a clue to be found in all that vinyl. In any case, Cook surmised that Wilson would have kept the hair samples, his trophies from the Palindrome Murders, consistent with the behavior of this type of killer. Cook had to believe that those bits of hair, cut from the heads of Otto Williams, Ava Simmons, and Eve Drake twenty years earlier, were somewhere in the house that he was looking at now. Cook had convinced himself that this was a good time to see if he was right.

  He knew that what he was about to do was a crime. But he felt that time was growing short. There was a good chance the hair samples were not in the house. But perhaps something was. Something that could link Reginald Wilson to
the deaths of those kids. Enough of a something to warrant the reopening of the case. He was looking for an undeniable piece of evidence that would influence Detective Ramone to go to a judge and initiate DNA testing on Wilson. Cook was certain, as certain as he had been in ’85, that Wilson was the one.

  He retrieved his mini-cassette recorder from out of the glove box. He pushed the red “record” button and spoke into the microphone.

  “This is Sergeant T. C. Cook. I am about to enter the home of Reginald Wilson in Good Luck Estates. I have reason to believe that there is evidence inside the house that will connect Mr. Wilson to the so-called Palindrome Murders, which occurred in Washington, D.C., in 1985. I’m looking for hair samples, specifically, that m-might have been taken off the decedents. I have no warrant. I am no longer an active-duty police officer. I’ve been working with a young man named Dan Holiday who is good police. But I want to state that he had nothing to do with this action I’m about to take. I am doing this of my own accord, hoping to bring some peace to the families. Also, to those beautiful children who were killed.”

  Cook recorded the time and date, and shut off the machine. He wanted all of this on record, in case he was mistaken for a burglar and shot while he was trying to enter the house. He didn’t want his legacy to be that of a crazy old man, burglarizing homes, like some fool who’d wandered off the streets in his bathrobe. He wanted people to know his intent.

  The night was cool, but Cook was sweating right through his jacket. He took it off, folded it, and laid it on the passenger floor. He removed his Stetson as well and looked at the perspiration marks on the inner band. He placed the faded hat on the seat beside him, next to the recorder. He flexed and unflexed his left hand and stared at it because it felt stiff and odd.

  Cook opened the trunk, using a switch mounted low on the dash, and got out of the car. He stumbled a little, walking to the back of the Marquis. Once there, he unscrewed the lightbulb under the trunk’s lid. He didn’t want to attract attention and he didn’t need the illumination. He knew where everything was.

  Cook put on a pair of latex gloves. He found his Stinger flashlight and his jimmy bar and put one in each hand. He found it difficult to hold the flashlight because that arm was numb. He heard his own heavy breathing and waited for his heart to slow down. He felt sweat trickle down his back. He closed the lid of the trunk and walked toward the house.

  Cook began to go around the side of the house. His plan was to use the jimmy bar on a rear door and, once inside, negotiate his way using the flashlight. But he was feeling poorly and he stopped walking.

  He had become very dizzy and he felt the need to lie down. He went back to the car.

  The backseat was inviting. He slid into it, dropped the jimmy bar and the flashlight on the floor, and closed the door behind him. He lay on his side, with his right cheek on the cool vinyl covering. His left arm ached terribly, and now the ache had traveled up into his neck and caused an awful pressure in his head.

  This will pass, thought Cook.

  He closed his eyes. Drool dripped from his open mouth onto the vinyl seat.

  When T. C. Cook opened his eyes, it was daylight. He had slept the night away in the car. He felt better than he had before.

  Cook sat up. He was back on Dolphin Road, parked in front of his house. The yellow siding was as clean as the day he had installed it many years ago. In the bay window that fronted the house he could see a woman looking through parted curtains. She looked like his wife. A boy and a girl were on the sidewalk, swinging ropes for double Dutch, and another girl was between them, jumping.

  Cook picked up his Stetson, which looked brand-new. He fitted it on his head and got out of the car.

  The sunlight was pleasant on his face, and he could smell lilacs in the air. His wife tended carefully to the tree that blossomed in the front yard. It must be April, thought Cook, as he walked toward the house. ’Cause that’s when those lilacs bloom.

  He approached the kids playing on the sidewalk. The boy holding the ropes on one side was fresh in his teens, with thick eyeglasses and a gangly build. The girl holding the other side was also young but had the lush curves of a woman. She had a hint of mischief in her eyes.

  The girl in the middle, who was double-Dutching with ease, had beautiful dark brown skin and eyes. The sunlight winked off the colored beads in her braided hair. She jumped out of the ropes fluidly and stopped to stare at Cook, standing by the curb. She smiled at him, and he returned her smile.

  “Hello, young lady,” said Cook.

  “Sergeant Cook?”

  “It’s me.”

  “We thought you forgot us.”

  “No, darling,” said Cook. “I never did.”

  “You wanna play with us?”

  “I’m too old. You don’t mind, I’ll just watch.”

  Eve Drake made a come-on gesture with her hand, and the kids resumed their game. T. C. Cook stepped toward them in the bright and warming light.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  HOLIDAY PUT HIS fingers to the neck of T. C. Cook and found no pulse. The man’s face was waxy under the Mercury’s dome light. He had seen enough corpses to know that Cook was dead.

  Holiday closed the door and went back to his Lincoln. He phoned Gus Ramone and told him what had happened and where he was. Ramone said he’d be there shortly.

  Holiday returned to the Marquis, opened the back door, and stared at Cook.

  I killed him, thought Holiday. He wasn’t strong enough to work.

  The latex gloves on Cook’s hands and the jimmy bar and flashlight on the floor told Holiday that Cook had been planning a break-in at the home of Reginald Wilson.

  In the front seat he found the mini-cassette tape recorder beside Cook’s Stetson. He rewound the tape, pushed the “play” button, and listened to the recording. His emotions welled up as he heard the old cop speak his name and praise him. He pulled the tape from the recorder and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He took the gloves off Cook’s hands and stuffed them in the same pocket. Then he took the recorder, the jimmy bar, and the flashlight and placed them in the trunk of his Town Car. While the lid was open, he transferred some items from Cook’s trunk into his own, including some cop tools and a shop rag. He would use that later to wipe his prints from Cook’s car.

  He had been very quiet. No one had come out of a house and no one had driven down the street. Holiday sat down on the curb and smoked a Marlboro. He was working on another one when Ramone’s Tahoe turned the corner and pulled up behind the Town Car.

  Ramone sat behind the wheel, finishing his call to Regina. He had been speaking to her on his cell as he drove into P.G. County. When he was done telling her about Asa Johnson and the events of his day, including the death of Cook, he assured her that he would not be home too late. He asked her to keep Diego up if she could. He wanted to speak to him before he went to sleep.

  Ramone killed the engine and got out of the SUV. Holiday stood to meet him. They nodded at each other but did not speak. Then Ramone went to the Marquis and examined Cook. Ramone returned to where Holiday stood leaning against the Lincoln.

  “Why was he here?” said Ramone.

  “That’s Reginald Wilson’s house over there.”

  “The security guard.”

  “Right,” said Holiday.

  “He was, what, surveilling him?”

  “He was doing what he’d been doing for the last twenty years. He was looking for a break in the case.”

  “That’s a long time to play a hunch.”

  “Cook wasn’t wrong too often when he was homicide police. If you could DNA Wilson —”

  “No PC.”

  “Fuck probable cause.”

  “It would be nice if it worked that way.”

  Holiday lit another smoke. His hand shook as he held the match.

  “You call this in?” said Ramone.

  “Not yet.”

  “When were you planning to do that?”

  “After I move him off this
street. I’m gonna take him up to Good Luck Road and park his car in a strip mall. I’ll wipe my prints off and call in an anonymous.”

  “That’s gettin’ to be a habit with you.”

  “I don’t want him found here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Long while back, the Post did a feature on Cook,” said Holiday. “The headline read, ‘Years Later, Palindrome Murders Still Haunt Retired Detective,’ something like that. The article quoted Cook as saying he strongly suspected a man named Reginald Wilson who by then had been incarcerated on other charges. It made Cook out to be half nuts. It’s possible that some reporter’s gonna go through the morgue material and connect Cook to Wilson and this street. The old man shouldn’t go out like that. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Maybe not,” said Ramone. “But you’re committing a crime.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken him out with me. I owe him some dignity in death.”

  “He was a sick man, Danny. It was his time. It doesn’t look like he went out with much pain.”

  “He went out not knowing.”

  “We might never know,” said Ramone. “Chances are, the Palindrome case won’t ever be closed. You know this. We don’t always get to win in the end. It’s not about slaps on the back and confetti.”

  “He wasn’t looking for glory. He wanted to solve this for those kids.”

  “How do you solve a murder? Tell me. ’Cause I’d really like to know.”

  “What are you talkin about?”

  “Would finding that killer raise those kids back from the dead? Would it bring closure to the families? What would it solve, exactly?” Ramone shook his head bitterly. “I lost the idea a long time ago that I was accomplishing anything. Occasionally I put assholes away for life, knowing they can’t kill again. That’s how I speak for the fallen few. But as far as solving goes? I don’t solve shit. I go to work every day and I try to protect my wife and kids from the bad things that are out there. That’s my mission. That’s all I can do.”