James Patterson - Roses Are Red

"Then there'll be another one and another one after that. I saw a pretty good saying the other day there's always room for improvement -then you die. What do you think of that one?"

I nodded and let out a deep sigh. "You tired of being with a homicide detective, too? Can't say that I blame you."

Nana crinkled up her face. "No, not at all. Actually, I enjoy it. But I do understand why it might not be to everyone's liking."

"I do, too, especially on days like today. I don't like what happened between Christine and me. I hate it, actually. Makes me sad. Hurts my heart. But I do understand what she was afraid of. It scares me too."

Nana's head bobbed slowly. "Even if it can't be Christine, you still need someone. So do Jannie and Damon. How about you get those priorities straight."

"I spend a lot of time with the kids. But I'll work on it," I said as I plopped the cold chicken and fixings in a pan.

"How can you, Alex? You're always working on murder cases. That seems to be your priority these days."

Nana's statement hurt. Was it the truth? "These days, there seem to be a lot of bad murder cases. I'll find someone. Has to be somebody out there will think I'm worth a little trouble."

Nana cackled. "Probably some serial killer. They sure seem attracted to you."

I finally trudged up to bed around one o'clock. I was at the top of the stairs when the phone started to ring. Damn it! I cursed and hurried to my room. I picked up before it woke the whole house.

"Yeah?"

"Sorry. "I heard a whispering voice. "I'm sorry, Alex."

It was Betsey.

I was glad to hear her voice anyway. "It's all right. What's up," I asked.

"Alex, we have a break in the case. It's good news. Something just happened. A fifteen-year-old girl in Brooklyn made a claim on the

9m insurance-company reward! This is being taken very seriously in New York. The girl says her father was one of the men involved in the Metro Hartford job. She knows the others involved too. Alex, they're New York police detectives. The Mastermind is a cop."

The Mastermind is a cop. If it was true, it made sense out of a whole lot of things. It partly explained how he'd known so much about bank security, and about us.

At five-fifteen in the morning, I met Betsey Cavalierre and four other FBI agents at Boiling Field. A helicopter was waiting for us. We took off into a thick, gray soup that made the ground disappear seconds after we were airborne.

We were pumped up and extremely curious. Betsey sat in the first row with one of her senior agents, Michael Doud. She was wearing a light gray suit with a white blouse, and she looked serious and official again. Agent Doud handed out folders on the suspected New York City detectives.

I read the background material as we flew steadily toward New York. The detectives in question were from Brooklyn. They worked out of the Sixty-first Precinct, which was near Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay. The crib notes said the precinct was a mix of cultures and assorted criminals: Mafia, Russian mob, Asians, Hispanics, Blacks. The five suspected detectives had worked together for a dozen years and were reportedly close friends.

They were supposed to be 'good cops," the file said. There had been warning signals, though. They'd used their weapons more than average, even for narcotics detectives. Three of the five had been disciplined repeatedly. They jokingly called one another 'goomba'. "The leader of the pack was Detective Brian Macdougall.

There were also about a half-dozen pages on the fifteen-year-old witness: Detective Brian Macdougall's daughter. She was an honor student at Ursuline High School. She was apparently a loner there and never had many friends. She seemed to be responsible and solid and

9m believable, according to the NYPD detectives who had interviewed her. Her reason for giving up her father was credible too he drank and struck her mother often when he was home. "And he's guilty of the Metro Hartford kidnapping. He and his detective pals did it," said the girl.

Actually, I felt very good about this. It was the way police work usually went. You put out a lot of nets, you checked them, and every so often something was actually in one of the nets. More often than not, it came from a relative or friend of the perp. Like an angry daughter who wanted retribution against her father.

At seven-thirty, we entered the conference room at One Police Plaza and met up with several members of the NYPD, including the chief of detectives. I was the representative from the Washington police, and I knew Kyle Craig was instrumental in getting me into the meeting. He wanted me to hear the girl's story first-hand.

Kyle wanted to know if I believed her.

Veronica Macdougall was already in the large conference room. She wore wrinkled blue jeans and a ratty green sweatshirt. Her curly red hair was unkempt. The darkish, puffy rings under both eyes told me she hadn't slept in a while.

Veronica stared impassively at us as we introduced ourselves around a massive mahogany and glass conference table inside what the NYPD called The Big Building." Chief of Detectives Andrew Gross then introduced the girl. "Veronica is a very brave young woman," he said "She'll tell her story in her own words."

The girl took a quick, deep breath. Her eyes were small green beads and they were filled with fear. "I wrote out something last night. Organized myself. I'll give my statement, and then there can be questions if you want."

Chief of Detectives Gross broke in gently. He was a heavyset man with a thick gray mustache and long side-burns. His manner was subdued. "That would be fine, Veronica. However you want to do it. However it happens to go is perfect for us. Take your time."

Veronica shook her head and looked very, very unsteady. 'I'm okay. I need to do this," she said. Then she began her story.

"My father is what you people call a man's man. He's very proud of it too. He's loyal to his friends, and especially to other cops. He's this "great guy," right? Well, there's another side to him. My mother used to be pretty. That was ten years and thirty pounds ago. She needs nice things. I mean, she physically needs things, possessions like clothes and shoes. She is her possessions.

"She's not the smartest person in the world, but my father thinks he is right up there and that's why he picks on her unmercifully. A few years back he started to drink a lot. And then he started to get really

mean, to hit my mother. He calls her "the bag," and "speed bag." Isn't that clever of him?"

Veronica paused and looked around the room; she checked our reaction to what she was saying. The conference room was eerily silent. None of us could look away from the teenager and the anger blooming in those green eyes.

"That's why I'm here today. That's how I'm able to do this terrible thing to "rat out" my own father. To break the sacred Blue Wall."

She stopped and stared defiantly at us again. I couldn't take my eyes away from her. No one in the room could. This made so much sense: A break coming from a family member.

"My father doesn't realize that I'm actually a lot smarter than he is, and I'm also observant. Maybe I learned that from him. I remember when I was around ten or so, I just knew I was going to be a police detective too. Pretty ironic, huh. Pretty pathetic, don't you think?

"As I got older I noticed observed that my father had lots more money than he ought to have. Sometimes he would take us on a "guilt trip" Ireland, maybe the Caribbean. And he always had money for himself. Really good clothes, fancy threads from Barneys and Saks. A new car every other year. A sleek white sailboat parked in Sheepshead Bay.

"Last summer my father was disgustingly drunk one Friday night. I remember he was going out to Aqueduct racetrack with his running dog detective pals on Saturday. He took a walk to my grandmother's house, which is a few streets away from us. I followed him that night. He was too far gone to even notice.