Sampson nodded calmly “Let's do it then. Not daylight yet, maybe he's still in his coffin.”
Five-twenty A.M. and my adrenaline was pumping wildly I had already met all the human monsters I cared to meet in my lifetime. I didn't need any more on-the-job experience in this particular area.
“Am I here to watch your ass?” I asked as Man Mountain and I moved toward the big house perched on the corner.
“You got it, Sugar. I need you on this. You got the magic touch with these psycho-killers,” Sampson said without looking back at me.
“Thanks. I think,” I muttered. There was a real loud noise roaring in my head, as if I'd just taken nitrous oxide at the dentist's.
I really didn't want to meet another psychopath; I didn't want to meet Colonel Franklin Moore.
We cut across a spongy lawn leading to a long, deep porch with an ivy trellis.
I could see a man and woman standing in the kitchen. Two people were already up inside.
“Must be Frank and Mrs. Frank,” Sampson muttered.
The man was eating something as he leaned over the kitchen counter. I could make out a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts pastry, a carton of skim milk, and the morning's Washington Post.
“Very Partridge Family,” I whispered to John. “I really don't like this at all. He's leading us all the way, right to the door.”
“Homicidal maniac,” he said through brilliantly white, gritted teeth. “Don't let the Pop-m-ups fool you. Only psychos eat that shit.”
“Not easily fooled,” I said to Sampson.
“So I hear. Let's do it then, Sugar. Time to be unsung heroes again.”
We both crouched down below the level of the kitchen windows -- no easy task. We couldn't see the man and woman from there, and they couldn't see us.
Sampson grasped the doorknob and slowly turned it.
THE BACK DOOR into the Moore house was unlocked, and Sampson pushed it right in. The two of us exploded into the homey kitchen with its smells of freshly toasted Pop-Tarts and coffee. We were in the Capitol Hill section of Washington. The house and kitchen looked it. So did the Moores. Neither Sampson nor I was fooled by the trappings of normaIcy, though. We'd seen it before, in the homes of other psychos.
“Hands on top of your heads! Both of you. Put your arms up slow and easy,” Sampson yelled at the man and woman we had surprised in the kitchen.
We had our Glocks trained on Colonel Moore. He didn't look like too much of a threat: a short man, thin and balding, middle-aged paunch, eyeglasses. He wore a standard-issue Army uniform, but even that didn't help his image too much.
“We're detectives with the Metro D.C. police,” Sampson identified the two of us. The Moores looked in shock. I couldn't blame them. Sampson and I can be shocking under the wrong circumstances, and these were definitely the wrong circumstances.
“There's been some kind of really bad, really crazy mistake,” Colonel Moore finally said very slowly and carefully.
'I'm Colonel Franklin Moore. This is my wife, Connie Moore.
The address here is 418 Seward Square North.“ He slowly enunciated each word. ”Please lower your weapons, Officers. You're in the wrong place.'
“We're at the correct address, sir,” I told the colonel. And you're the crank caller we want to talk to. Either you ''re a crank or you're a killer.
“And we're looking for Colonel Frank Moore,” Sampson filled in. He hadn't lowered his revolver an inch, not a millimeter.
Neither had I.
Colonel Moore maintained his cool pretty well. That concerned me, set my inner alarms off in a loud jangle.
“Well, can you please tell us what this is all about? And please do it quickly Neither of us has ever been arrested. I've never even had a traffic violation,” he said to both Sampson and me, not sure who was in charge.
“Do you subscribe to Prodigy, Colonel?” Sampson asked him.
It sounded a little crazy when it came out, like everything else lately Colonel Moore looked at his wife, then he turned back to us.
“We do subscribe, but we do it for our son, Sumner. Neither of us has much time in our schedules for computer games. I don't understand them much and don't want to.”
“How old is your son?” I asked Colonel Moore.
'What difference does that make? Sumner is thirteen years old. He's in the ninth grade at the Theodore Roosevelt School.
He's an honor student. He's a great kid. What is this all about, Officers? Will you please tell us why you're here?'
“Where is Sumner now?” Sampson said in a very low and threatening voice.
Because maybe young Sumner was listening somewhere near in the house. Maybe the Sojourner Truth School killer was listening to us right now.
