It isn’t the way most men act, but I was learning.
“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life, Christine. You help me see and feel things in new ways. I love your smile, your way with people—especially kids—your kindness. I love to hold you like this. I love you more than I could say if I stood here and talked for the rest of the night. I love you so much. Will you marry me, Christine?”
She didn’t answer right away. I felt her pull back, just a little, and my heart caught. I looked into her eyes, and what I saw was pain and uncertainty. It nearly broke my heart.
“Oh, Alex, Alex,” she whispered, and looked as if she might cry. “I can’t give you an answer. You just came back from Boston. You were on another horrible, horrible murder case. I can’t take that. Your life was in danger again. That terrible madman was in your house. He threatened your family. You can’t deny any of that.”
I couldn’t. It had been a terrifying experience, and I had nearly died. “I won’t deny anything you said. But I do love you. I can’t deny that, either. I’ll quit the police force if that’s what it takes.”
“No.” A softness came into her eyes. She shook her head back and forth. “That would be all wrong. For both of us.”
We held each other on the porch, and I knew we were in trouble. I didn’t know how to resolve it. I had no idea. Maybe if I left the force, became a full-time therapist again, led a more normal life for Christine and the kids. But could I do that? Could I really quit?
“Ask me again,” she whispered. “Ask me again, sometime.”
Chapter 8
CHRISTINE AND I had dated since that night, and it just felt right, easy, comfortable, and romantic. It always was that way between us. Still, I wondered if our problem could be fixed. Could she be happy with a homicide detective? Could I stop being one? I didn’t know.
I was brought out of my reverie about Christine by the high-pitched, stuttering wail of a siren out on Twelfth Street, just turning off E. I winced when I saw Sampson’s black Nissan pull up in front of St. Anthony’s.
He turned off the siren on his rooftop but then beeped the car horn, sat on it. I knew he was here for me, probably to take me somewhere I didn’t want to go. The horn continued to blare.
“It’s your friend John Sampson,” Jimmy Moore called out. “You hear him, Alex?”
“I know who it is,” I called back to Jimmy. “I’m hoping he goes away.”
“Sure doesn’t sound like it.”
I finally walked outside, crossing through the soup-kitchen line and receiving a few jokey jeers. People I had known for a long time accused me of working half a day, or said that if I didn’t like the job, could they have it.
“What’s up?” I called to Sampson before I got all the way out to his black sports car.
Sampson’s side window came sliding down. I leaned inside the car. “You forget? It’s my day off,” I reminded him.
“It’s Nina Childs,” Sampson said in the low, soft voice he used only when he was angry or very serious. He was trying to deaden his facial muscles, to look tough, not emotional, but it wasn’t working real well. “Nina’s dead, Alex.”
I shivered involuntarily. I opened the car door and got in. I didn’t even go back to the kitchen to tell Jimmy Moore I was leaving. Sampson jerked the car away from the curbside fast. The siren came on again, but now I almost welcomed the mournful wail. It numbed me.
“What do you know so far?” I asked as we rushed along the intensely bleak streets of Southeast, then crossed the slate-gray Anacostia River.
“She was dumped in a row house, Eighteenth and Garnesville. Jerome Thurman is out there with her. Says she’s probably been there since the weekend. Some needle pusher found the body. No clothes or I.D., Alex,” Sampson said.
I looked over at him. “So how did they know it was Nina?”
“Uniform guy on the scene recognized her. Knew her from the hospital. Everybody knew Nina.”
I shut my eyes, but I saw Nina Childs’s face and I opened them again. She had been the eleven-to-seven charge nurse in the E.R. unit at St. Anthony’s Hospital, where once I’d run like a tornado, with a dying little boy in my arms. Sampson and I had worked with Nina more times than I could remember. Sampson had also dated Nina for over a year, but then they’d broken it off. She’d married a neighborhood man who worked for the city. They had two kids, two little babies, and Nina had seemed so happy the last time I saw her.
I couldn’t believe she was lying dead in a tenement cellar on the wrong side of the Anacostia. She had been abandoned, like one of the Jane Does.
Chapter 9
NINA CHILDS’S BODY had been found in a battered row house in one of the city’s most impoverished, destroyed, and dismaying neighborhoods. There was only one patrol car on the scene, and a single rusted and dented EMS van; homicides in Southeast don’t attract much attention. A dog was barking somewhere, and it was the only sound on the desolate street.
Sampson and I had to walk past an open-air drug mart on the corner of Eighteenth Street. Mostly young males, but a few children and two women were also gathered there defiantly. The drug marts are everywhere in this part of Southeast. The neighborhood youth activity is the crack trade.
“Daily body pickup, Officers?” said one of the young men. He was wearing black trousers with black suspenders, no shirt, socks, or shoes. He had a prison-yard physique and tattoos everywhere.