I hadn't asked Sampson in yet, either.
“Morning, Sugar,” Sampson persisted. Then he rolled back his upper lip and showed off some teeth. His smile was brutally joyful. I finally had to smile back at my friend and nemesis.
It was a little past nine o'clock and I had just gotten up. This was late for me. It was shameful behavior by Nana's standards. I was still sleep-deprived, trauma-shocked, in danger of losing the rest of my mind, throwing up, something shitty and unexpected.
But I was also much better. I looked good; I looked fine.
“Aren't you even going to say good morning?” Sampson asked, pretending to be hurt.
“Morning, John. I don't even want to know about it,” I said to him. “Whatever it is that brings you here this cold and bleak morning.”
“First intelligent thing I've heard out of your mouth in years,” Sampson said, “but I'm afraid I don't believe it. You want to know everything. You need to know everything, Alex. That's why you read four newspapers every damn morning.”
“I don't want to know, either,” Nana contributed from behind me in the kitchen. She had been up for hours, of course. “I don't need to know. Shoo, fly Go fry some ice. Take a long walk off a short dock, Johnnyboy”
“We got time for breakfast?” I finally asked him.
“Not really,” he said, careful to keep his smile turned on, “but let's eat, anyway Who could resist?”
“He invited you, not me,” Nana warned from over by her hot stove.
She Was kidding Sampson. She loves him as if he were her own son, as if he were my physically bigger brother. She made the two of us scrambled eggs, homemade sausage, home fries, toast. She knows how to cook and could easily feed the entire Washington Redskins team at training camp. That would be no problem for Nana.
Sampson waited until we had finished eating before he got back into it, whatever it was, whatever had happened now. His dark little secret. It may seem odd--but when your life is filled with homicides and other tragedies, you have to learn to take time for yourself. The homicides will still be there. The homicides are always there.
“Your Mister Grayer called me a little while ago,” Sampson said as he poured his third cup of coffee. “He said to let you have a couple days off, that they could handle this. Them, like the great old horror flick that used to scare the hell out of us.”
“That, what you just said, makes me suspicious and fearful right away. Handle what?” I asked.
I was finishing the last of half a loaf of cinnamon toast made from thick homemade bread. It was, honestly, quite seriously, a taste of heaven. Nana claims that she's been there, stolen several recipes. I tend to believe her. I've seen and tasted the proof of her tale.
Sampson glanced at his wristwatch, an ancient Bulova given to him by his father when he was fourteen.
“They're looking over Jill's office in the White House right about now. Then they're going to her apartment on Twenty-fourth Street. You want to go? As my guest? Got you a guest pass, just in case.”
Of course I wanted to be there. I had to go. I needed to know everything about Jill, just as Sampson had said I did.
“You are the devil,” Nana hissed at Sampson.
“Thank you, Nana.” He beamed bright eyes and a thousand and one teeth. “High praise, indeed.”
WE DROVE to Sara Rosen's apartment in Sampson's slippery-quick black Nissan. Nana's hot breakfast had brought me back to the real world at least. I was feeling partially revived. Physically, if not emotionally.
I was already highly intrigued about visiting Jill's home. I wanted to see her office at the White House, too, but figured that could wait a day or two. But her house. That was irresistible for the detective, and for the psychologist.
Sara Rosen lived in a ten-story building on Twenty-fourth and K. The building had an officious front-desk “captain” who studied our police IDs and then reluctantly let us proceed. The lobby was cheery otherwise. Carpeted, lots of large potted plants.
Not the kind of building where anyone would expect to find an assassin.
But Jill had lived right here, hadn't she?
Actually, the apartment fit the profile we had of Sara Rosen.
She was the only child of an Army colonel and a high school English teacher. She had grown up in Aberdeen, Maryland, then gone to Hollins College in Virginia. She had majored in history and English, graduating with honors. She'd come to Washington sixteen years ago, when she was twenty-one. She had never married, though she'd had several boyfriends over the years. Some of the staff at the White House press and communications offices called her “the sexy spinster.”
Her apartment was on the fifth floor of the ten-story building.
It was bright, with a view of an interior courtyard. The FBI was already at work inside. Chopin came softly from a stereo. It was a relaxed atmosphere, almost pleasant, devil-may-care. The case was, after all, closed.
Sampson and I spent the next few hours with the Feebie technicians who were searching the apartment for anything that might give the Bureau a clue about Sara Rosen.
Jill had lived right there.
Who the hell were you, Jill? How did this happen to you? What happened, Jill? Talk to us. You know you want to talk, lonely girl.
Her apartment was a one-bedroom with a small den, and we would examine every square inch of it. The
