Roses Are Red (Alex Cross 6)

Sampson spotted a small-time drug hustler and snitch we knew. Darryl Snow was hanging out with his boys in front of a bar and grill that kept changing its name and now was called Used-To-Be’s.

Sampson and I hopped out of the Porsche and came up fast on Snow. He had nowhere to run. As always, Darryl was a drug-hustler fashion plate: crimson nylon shorts over blue nylon pants, Polo T-shirt, Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker, Oakley shades.

“Hey there, Snowman,” Sampson said in his deep voice. “You’re melting away to nothing.”

Even Snow’s hustler friends laughed. Darryl was around five-eleven, and I doubt he weighed a hundred and twenty pounds with his clothes on, designer labels and all.

“Walk and talk with me, Darryl,” I told him. “This is not open to discussion.”

His head shook like a dashboard doll’s, but he reluctantly went along. “I don’t wanna talk to you, Cross.”

“Errol and Brianne Parker,” I said, once we were far enough away from the others.

Darryl looked at me and frowned heavily as his head continued to bob. “You the one was married to his sister or whatever? Why you askin’ me? Why you always prosecutin’ me, man?”

“Errol doesn’t spend a lot of time with the family anymore. He’s too busy robbing banks. Where is he, Darryl? Sampson and I don’t owe you any favors right now. That’s a dicey place to be.”

“I can live with it,” Darryl said, and looked away into the streetlights.

My hand shot out and grabbed some windbreaker and shirt. “No, you can not. You know better, Darryl.”

Snow sniffled and cursed under his breath. “I hear Brianne be over the old First Avenue projects. Rat-shit buildings on First? I don’t know she still at that place, though. That’s all I got.” He held out his hands, palms up.

Sampson came rolling up behind Snow. “Boo,” he said, and Darryl’s sneakered feet almost left the ground.

“Is Darryl being helpful?” he asked me. “Seems a little jumpy.”

“Are you being helpful?” I asked Snow.

He whined pathetically. “I told you where Brianne Parker be seen, din’t I? Why don’ you just go over there? Check it out, man. Leave me the hell alone. You two like the Blair Witch Project or somethin’. Scary, man.”

“Much scarier,” said Sampson, and he grinned. “Blair Witch is just a movie, Darryl. We’re for real.”

Chapter 13

“I HATE THIS nasty, eerie, middle-of-the-night shit,” Sampson said as we approached the First Avenue project on foot. What we saw up ahead were abandoned tenement buildings where junkies and homeless people lived, if you could call it living, in America’s capital city.

“Night of the Living Dead all over again,” Sampson muttered. He was right; the hangarounds outside the buildings did look like zombies.

“Errol Parker? Brianne Parker?” I said in a low voice as I walked past badly strung-out men with hollow, unshaven faces. Nobody answered. Most of them wouldn’t even look at me or Sampson. They knew we were police.

“Errol? Brianne Parker?” I continued, but still no one answered.

“Thanks for the help. God loves you,” Sampson said. He was mimicking the rap of the more irritating panhandlers around town.

We began to walk through each of the buildings, floor by floor, basement to the roof. The final building we came to looked deserted and for a good reason: It was the most squalid and broken down.

“After you, Alphonse,” Sampson growled. It was late and he was getting grumpy.

I had the flashlight, so I led the way. As we’d done in the other buildings, we started in the cellar. The floor was potholed, heavily stained cement. Dusty cobwebs wove from one end of the basement to the other.

I came to a closed wooden door and pushed it open with my foot. I could hear rodents of various sizes scurrying around inside the walls, scratching furiously as if they were trapped. I waved my flashlight around. Nothing but a couple of glaring rats.

“Errol? Brianne?” Sampson called to them. They chittered back at us.

He and I continued the floor-to-floor search. The building was damp and smelled of urine, feces, mildew. The stench was unbearable.

“I’ve seen better Holiday Inns,” I said, and Sampson finally laughed.