George Pelecanos: The Night Gardener

'… and she drops a bomb on me. Tells me she likes me and all that bulljive, but she's dating one of the Redskins, too.'

'Joe Jacoby?' said Ramone, side-glancing Holiday.

'Nah, not that beast.'

'So who?'

'A receiver. And not Donnie Warren, if you catch my drift.'

'You're saying she's dating a black receiver.'

'One of 'em,' said Holiday. 'And you know they like white girls.'

'Who doesn't,' said Ramone.

Over the crackle of the radios coming from the cars they heard Cook telling one of the men in his squad to keep the Channel 4 reporter, who was attempting to move under the tape, away from the deceased. 'Punk motherfucker,' said Cook, saying it loud, making sure the reporter could hear. 'He's the one got that witness killed down in Congress Park. Goes on the air and talks about how a young lady's about to give testimony…'

'I had a problem with what she told me, I gotta be honest,' said Holiday, watching Cook but going ahead with his story.

"Cause he's black.'

'I can't lie. It was hard for me to forget him and her after that. When I was in the rack with her, is what I'm talkin about.'

'You felt, what, inadequate or somethin?'

'Come on. Pro football player, a brother…' Holiday held his palm out a foot from his groin. 'Guy's gotta be like this.'

'It's an NFL requirement.'

'Huh?'

'They check their teeth, too.'

'I'm sayin, I'm just an average guy. Down there, I mean. Don't get me wrong; it's Kielbasa Street when the blood gets to it, but when it's just layin there-'

'What's your point?'

'Knowin this girl was hanging off the end of this guy's dick, it just ruined her for me, I guess.'

'So you what, let her go?'

'Not with that ass of hers, I wasn't gonna let her go. No, sir.'

A woman had wandered under the tape while they were talking, and as she approached the body of the girl and got a look at it, she vomited voluminously into the grass. Sergeant Cook removed his hat, ran a finger along the brim, and breathed deeply. He replaced the Stetson on his head, adjusted it, and allowed his eyes to search the perimeter of the scene. He turned to the man beside him, a white detective named Chip Rogers, and pointed to Ramone and Holiday.

'Tell those white boys to do their jobs,' said Cook. 'People regurgitatin, fucking up my crime scene… If they can't keep these folks back, find some men who will. I'm not playin.'

Ramone and Holiday immediately went to the yellow tape, turned their backs to it, and affected a pose of authority. Holiday spread his feet and looped his fingers through his utility belt, unfazed by Cook's words. Ramone's jaw tightened as he felt a twinge of anger at being called a white boy by the homicide cop. He had heard it occasionally growing up outside D.C. and many times while playing baseball and basketball in the city proper. He didn't like it. He knew it was meant to cut him and he was expected to take it, and that made it burn even more.

'How about you?' said Holiday.

'How 'bout me what ?' said Ramone.

'You been gettin any hay for your donkey?'

Ramone did not answer. He had his eye on one woman in particular, a cop, God help him. But he had learned not to let Holiday into his personal world.

'C'mon, brother,' said Holiday. 'I showed you mine, now you show me yours. You got someone in your gun sights?'

'Your baby sister,' said Ramone.

Holiday's mouth fell open and his eyes flared. 'My sister died of leukemia when she was eleven years old, you piece a shit.'

Ramone looked away. For a while there was only the squawk and hiss of the police radios and the low conversations of the spectators in the crowd. Then Holiday cackled and slapped Ramone on the back.

'I'm kiddin you, Giuseppe. Oh, Christ, but I had your ass.'

The description of the victim had been matched to a list of missing teenagers in the area. A half hour later, a man was brought to the scene to identify her. As he looked at the body, a father's anguished howl filled the night.

The victim's name was Eve Drake. In the past year, two other black teenagers, both living in the poorer sections of town, had been murdered and dumped in similar fashion in community gardens, both discovered shortly after sunrise. Shot in the head, both had traces of semen in their rectums. Their names were Otto Williams and Ava Simmons. Like Otto and Ava, Drake's first name, Eve, was spelled the same way backward as it was forward. The press had made the connection and dubbed the events the Palindrome Murders. Within the department, some police had begun to refer to the perpetrator as the Night Gardener.

Across town. At the same time the father cried out over his daughter's body, young Washingtonians were in their homes, tuning in to Miami Vice, doing lines of coke as they watched the exploits of two hip undercover cops and their quest to take down the kingpins of the drug trade. Others read best-selling novels by Tom Clancy, John Jakes, Stephen King, and Peter Straub, or sat in bars and talked about the fading play-off prospects of the Jay Schroeder-led Washington Redskins. Others watched rented VCR tapes of Beverly Hills Cop and Code of Silence, the top picks that week at Erol's Video Club, or barely sweated to Jane Fonda's Workout, or went out and caught the new Michael J. Fox at the Circle Avalon or Caligula at the Georgetown. Mr Mister and Midge Ure were in town, playing the clubs.

As these movers of the Reagan generation entertained themselves west of Rock Creek Park and in the suburbs, detectives and techs worked at a crime scene at 33rd and E, in the neighborhood of Greenway, in Southeast D.C. They could not know that this would be the last victim of the Palindrome Killer. For now, there was only a dead teenager, one of three unsolved, and someone out there, somewhere, doing the murders.

On a cool rainy night in December 1985, two young uniformed police and a middle-aged homicide detective were on the scene.

The wiry little man in the box, sitting low in his chair, was William Tyree. In the opposite chair was Detective Paul 'Bo' Green. A can of Coca-Cola and an ashtray holding dead Newports sat on the rectangular table between them. The room stank of nicotine and the crack sweat coming off Tyree.

'Those the kicks you were wearing?' said Green, pointing at Tyree's shoes. 'Those right there?'

'These here are the Huaraches,' said Tyree.

'Those shoes you've got on right now, you saying you weren't wearing those yesterday?'

'Nah, uh-uh.'

'Tell me something, William. What size you wear?'

Tyree's hair held specks of fuzz. A small cut, now congealed, was visible below his left eye.

'These here are nine and a half,' said Tyree. 'I wear tens most times. You know them Nikes be runnin big.'

Detective Sergeant Gus Ramone, watching the interview on a monitor in a space adjacent to the interrogation room, allowed himself the first smile of the day. Even being questioned for murder, even under the fluorescent lights of an interrogation, a man damn near always felt the need to lie about or explain away his shoe size.

'Okay,' said Green, his hands folded on the table before him. 'So those Nikes you got on now… you telling me you weren't wearing those yesterday?'

'I was wearin Nikes. But not these ones, no.'

'Which type were you wearing, William? What I mean specifically is, which type of Nikes were you wearing when you visited your ex-wife yesterday at her apartment?'

Green's brow wrinkled as he considered the question. 'It was the Twenties.'

'Yeah? My son has those.'

'They're popular with the young ones.'

'The black Twenties?'

'Uh-uh. I got the white with the blue.'

'So, if we were to go to your apartment, would we find a pair of white Twenties, size nine and a half?'