Roses Are Red (Alex Cross 6)

Mr. Blue continued to wheeze until he was right up beside the car. Then he pulled out a Sig Sauer pistol and whacked her jaw with the barrel. Victoria Casselman’s head snapped to the side and she cried out in pain.

“We’re going back to the house!” he shouted as he jumped into the car. He held the gun to her forehead.

“Where the hell were you going at seven-forty? Oh, just shut up. I don’t really care. You made a mistake, Victoria. You made a bad mistake.” It was all Mr. Blue could do not to shoot her dead in the front seat of her car.

Chapter 44

A ROBBERY WAS IN PROGRESS at the Chase Manhattan Bank branch near the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Betsey Cavalierre and I didn’t talk much on the ride from the FBI offices to the bank. We were both dreading what we might find.

Betsey was all business. She’d placed a siren on the roof and we raced through Washington. It was raining again, and streaks of water hammered the car’s roof and windshield. The city of Washington was crying. This nightmare was deepening and seemed to be accelerating. It was as scary and unpredictable as any multiple-murder case I had worked before. It didn’t make sense to me. A bank-robbing crew, or possibly a couple of crews, was operating like a gang of mass killers. The press coverage was massive and overwhelming; the public was terrified, and had a right to be; the banking industry was up in arms that the robberies and murders hadn’t been stopped.

I was shaken from my reverie by the sound of police sirens wailing up ahead. The shrill chorus made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Then I saw the blue-and-white sign of the Chase Bank branch.

Betsey stopped about a block away on Twenty-eighth Street. It was as close as we could get. Even with the heavy rain, there were a hundred spectators, dozens of ambulances, police cruisers, even a fire truck had arrived on the scene.

We ran through the hissing downpour toward a modest red-brick building on the corner of Calvert. I was a few strides ahead of Betsey, but she was moving.

“Metro police. Detective Cross,” I said, and flashed my badge at a patrolman who tried to block the way into the bank parking lot. The patrolman saw the gold shield and stepped aside.

The assorted police and emergency sirens continued to wail loudly, and I wondered why. The moment I walked inside the bank lobby, I knew. I counted five bodies. Tellers and executives: three women, two men. All had been shot dead. It was another massacre, possibly the worst one so far.

“Why? Jesus!” Agent Cavalierre muttered at my side. For a second she held on to my arm, but then realized what she had done and let go.

An FBI agent hurried up to us. His name was James Walsh, and I remembered him from the first meeting at the field office. “Five are dead here. They’re all on staff, bank employees.”

“Hostages at home?” Betsey asked.

Walsh shook his head. “The manager’s wife is dead, too. Shot at close range. Executed for no reason we can figure out. . . . Betsey, they left a survivor at the bank. He has a message for you and Detective Cross. It’s from someone

called the Mastermind.”

Chapter 45

THE SURVIVOR’S NAME was Arthur Strickland, and he was being kept in the slain manager’s office, as far away as possible from the press. He was the bank’s security guard.

Strickland was a tall, slender, well-built man in his late forties. Although physically impressive, he looked to be in a state of shock. Beads of perspiration covered his face, his thick mustache. His light blue uniform shirt was entirely soaked through.

Betsey went up to the bank guard and spoke very softly, compassionately. “I’m Senior Agent Cavalierre from the FBI. I’m in charge of this investigation, Mr. Strickland. This is Detective Cross from the D.C. police. I hear that you have a message for us?”

The powerful-looking man suddenly broke down. He sobbed into his hands. It took him a minute or so before he pulled himself together and was able to talk.

“They were nice people that got killed here today. They were my friends,” he said. “I was supposed to protect them, and our customers, of course.”

“It’s a terrible thing that happened, but it’s not your fault,” Betsey said to the guard. She was trying to be kind, to calm him, and she was doing a good job. “Why did the gunmen kill them? How did you get away?”

The guard shook his head in dismay. “I didn’t get away,” he said. “They held me in the lobby with the others. Two of ’em did the job. All of us were told to stay facedown on the floor. They said they had to be out the bank quarter past eight. No later than that. No mistakes, they said several times. No alarms. No panic buttons.”

“They were late getting out of the bank?” I asked Arthur Strickland.

“No, sir,” the guard said to me. “That’s just it. They could have made it on time. They didn’t seem to want to. They told me to stand up. I thought they was going to shoot me right then. I was in Vietnam, but I was never this afraid.”

“They gave you a message for us?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir. A message for both of you. ‘You like this bank?’ one of them asked me. I said that I liked my job. He called me a dumb spade asshole. Then he said that I was to be their messenger. I should tell FBI Agent Cavalierre and Detective Cross that there was a mistake made at the bank. He said there could be no more mistakes. He repeated that several times. No more mistakes. He said, ‘Tell them the message is from the Mastermind.’ Then they shot everybody else. They shot them where they lay on the floor, in cold blood. It’s all my fault. I was the guard on duty at the bank. I let it happen.”

“No, Mr. Strickland.” Betsey Cavalierre spoke softly to the bank guard. “You didn’t. We’re the ones at fault, not you.”

Chapter 46