Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

“Nina’s sister, Marie, takes care of the kids,” Sampson said as we rode down Monroe. “She’s a nice girl. Had a drug problem one time, beat it. Nina helped her. The whole family is close-knit. A lot like yours. This is going to be real bad, Alex.”

I turned to him. Not surprisingly, he was taking Nina’s death even harder than I was. It’s unusual for him to show his emotions, though. “I can do it, John. You stay here in the car. I’ll go up and talk to the family.”

Sampson shook his head and sighed loudly. “Doesn’t work that way, sugar.”

He snugged the Nissan up to the curb, and we both climbed out. He didn’t stop me from coming along to the apartment, so I knew he wanted me there with him. He was right. This was going to be bad.

The Childs apartment took up the first and second floors. The front door was slightly ornate, aluminum. Nina’s husband was already at the door. He had on the proletariat uniform of the D.C. Housing Authority, where he worked: mud-stained work boots, blue trousers, a shirt marked DCHA. One of the babies snuggled in his arms, a beautiful girl who looked at me and smiled and cooed.

“Could we come inside for a moment?” Sampson asked.

“It’s Nina,” the husband said, and started to break down right there in the doorway.

“I’m sorry, William,” I spoke softly. “You’re right. She’s gone. She was found this morning.”

William Childs started to sob loudly. He was a powerful-looking workingman, but that didn’t matter. He held his bewildered little girl to his chest and tried to control the crying, but he couldn’t.

“Oh, God, no. Oh, Nina, Nina baby. How could somebody kill her? How could anybody do that? Oh, Nina, Nina, Nina.”

A young, pretty woman came up behind him. She had to be Nina’s sister, Marie. She took the baby from her sister’s husband, and the little girl began to scream, as if she knew what had happened. I had seen so many families, so many good people, who had lost loved ones on these merciless streets. I knew it would never completely stop, but I felt it ought to get better. It never did.

The sister motioned for us to come inside, and I noticed a hall table on which there were two pocketbooks, as if Nina were still about. The apartment was comfortable looking and neat, with light bamboo and white-cushioned furniture. The whir of a window air conditioner was constant. A Llardo porcelain figure of a nurse stood on an end table.

I was still sorting through details of the homicide scene, trying to connect the murder to the other Jane Does. We learned that Nina had attended a health-care charity dinner on Saturday night. William had been working overtime. The family called the police late Saturday night. Two detectives had shown up, but no one had been able to find Nina until now.

Then I was holding the baby while Nina’s sister took the chill off a bottle of formula. It was such a sad and poignant moment, knowing this poor little girl would never see her mother again, never know how truly special her mother had been. It reminded me of my own kids and their mother, and of Christine, who was afraid I would die during some murder investigation like this one.

The older little girl came up to me while I was holding her baby sister. She was two or three at the most. “I got a new hairstyle,” she said proudly and did a half-turn to show me.

“You did? It’s beautiful. Who did those braids for you?”

“My mommy,” said the girl.

It was an hour later when Sampson and I finally left the house. We drove away in silence and despair, the same way we’d come. After a couple of blocks, Sampson pulled over in front of a ramshackle neighborhood bodega covered with beer and soda posters.

He gave a deep sigh, put his hands to his face, and then cried. I’d never ever seen John like this before, not in all the years we’d been friends, not even when we were just boys. I reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, and he didn’t move away. Then he told me something he hadn’t shared before.

“I loved her, Alex, but I let her get away. I never told her how I felt. We have to get this son of a bitch.”

Chapter 11

I SENSED I WAS AT THE START of another homicide mess. I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t stop the horror. I had to try to do something about the Jane Does. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.

Although I was assigned to the Seventh District as a senior detective, my job as liaison with the FBI gave me some extra status and also the freedom to occasionally work without too much supervision or interference. My mind was running free, and I’d already made some associations between Nina’s murder and at least some of the unsolved killings. First, there had been no identification on the victims at each crime scene. Second, the bodies had frequently been dumped in buildings where they might not be found quickly. Third, not a single witness had seen anyone who might be a suspect. The most we ever got was that there had been traffic, or people out on the street, where one of the bodies had been found. That told me that the killer knew how to blend in, and that he possibly was a black man.

Around six that night, I finally headed home. This was supposed to be my day off. I had things to do there, and I was trying to balance the demands of Job and homelife as best I could. I put on a happy face and headed inside the house.

Damon, Jannie, and Nana were singing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ de Boat” in the kitchen. The show tune was music to my ears and other essential parts of my anatomy. The kids looked happy as could be. There is a lot to be said for the innocence of childhood.

I heard Nana say, “How about ‘I Can Tell the World’?” Then the three of them launched into one of the most beautiful spirituals I know

. Damon’s voice seemed particularly strong to me. I hadn’t really noticed that before.

“I feel like I just walked into a story by Louisa May Alcott,” I said, laughing for the first time that long day.

“I take that as a high compliment,” Nana said. She was somewhere between her late seventies and early eighties now, but not telling—and also not showing—her age.

“Who’s Louise Maise Alcott?” Jannie said, and made a lemon-sucking face. She is a healthy little skeptic, though almost never a cynic. In that way, she takes after both her father and her grandmother.