'Don't worry about Rock hearing you,' said Rachel. 'He'd be happy if you went out on your own.'
'I'm gonna do it, Miss Lopez. I am going to
'I believe you. Your sons are in Anacostia as well?'
'Yeah. Both of 'em bought little houses over there in Southeast. I helped 'em out with the down payments. I had a, what do you call that,
'It's all about family.'
'Yes,' said Eddie. He looked her over. 'You look nice today, you don't mind my sayin' so.'
'I was feeling poorly this morning. But I'm better now.'
'You gonna be able to come by that barbecue this weekend? My sons and their kids are gonna be there. They'd love to see you.'
'I'll try.'
Eddie pointed a gnarled finger in her direction. 'I'm not gonna let you lose touch.'
'I promise. We've come too far together, you and me.'
'God is good,' said Eddie Davis.
He can be, thought Rachel. They hugged again before she left the shop.
Out in her Honda, Rachel looked through her files. She had one more stop to make before returning to the office. The offender had given her his work schedule, by her request. He was a person she needed to stay on top of, a career criminal who up to this point had been unable to leave the drug game behind.
Rachel wanted to interview the offender at his place of employment whenever possible, to verify that he was there consistently. It looked as if she had missed that opportunity when she had failed to make all of her calls the day before. She'd have to visit him at his residence on Sherman Avenue.
According to her records, that's where the offender, a man named Melvin Lee, stayed.
CHAPTER 20
Rico Miller sat on a folding chair by the big front window of the apartment, watching the street. Melvin had told him not to stay there, but he was bored. He had tried playing Counter-Strike on Xbox, but he was used to the PS2 controller and grew frustrated using one he didn't know nothing about. He had thought getting high might help him master the system, but that didn't educate him either. The fat joint he'd smoked had only made him more confused. And that had sent him to where he was at right now, staring out the window. Wasn't much skill you needed for that.
Down on Sherman, a white woman with stuff in her hands got out of her car, some square-back hooptie. Looked like she was carrying a file or something like that. A cell too, and some kind of little leather case.
She didn't look all white. She might have been Spanish or something; he couldn't tell. She was wearing jeans and a shirt had no style. She didn't belong on this street. It wasn't her color. There were a few whites and plenty of browns down here. It was the way she carried herself, walking down the sidewalk, aware of where she was, trying to act like this was her neighborhood when it was not. Miller had this talent. He could smell police.
Soon as this entered his mind, a 4D patrol car, heading east on Irving, turned up Sherman. It slowed near where the woman was walking and pulled over to the curb. The woman hesitated, seemed to recognize the driver, and went to the open window. He couldn't see the woman's face as she bent forward.
That woman's talking to one of her own, thought Miller. She's conspiring with the police in the car.
The uniform police spoke to the woman police for a couple of minutes, and then the uniform took off. The Crown Vic's tires caught rubber on the street. The woman got back up on the sidewalk, went down it some, and turned toward Melvin's row house. As she made her way to it, she looked up at the third-floor window. Miller leaned back in his chair.
She seen me, he thought. I fucked up. Police coming up here looking for Melvin. I should do what Melvin say to do and go out the fire escape and run.
He went back to the bedroom and opened the window. He looked down at the mesh platform outside the window and the ladder below it. What good would it do Melvin if he, Rico, was to book on out? If the police was looking at Melvin for the murders, they would get him up there at the car wash just the same. What Rico needed to do was to stop them from looking. Leastways, hold them off until he and Melvin could leave out of town. Besides, to run on out of here, from a woman? That didn't work for him.
High like he was, it was hard to know what to do. He closed the window and stood stupidly in the center of the room.
Miller put his hand in his pocket and touched leather. He touched the rough part of the leather where the letter
Miller heard a grinding sound.
Rachel parked on Sherman, gathered her badge case, her cell, and her file on Melvin Lee, and got out of her car. She locked the Honda and went down the sidewalk toward Lee's address. It was a row house like all the others on the block. The file said he lived on the third floor.
An MPD patrol car came off Irving and up Sherman. Rachel clocked the Fourth District designation and identification numbers on the Crown Vic. It came to a stop curbside. As the window slid down, she saw that it was Donald Peterson, one of the many cops she had worked with over the years, behind the wheel. Peterson was a sergeant, black, and somewhere on the good side of forty. He was well built, close to handsome, and, like many cops, divorced.
She liked him; he had a confident cool. He had flirted with her when they'd first met, down at the District Courthouse, and asked her out. It was a respectful, non-aggressive flirtation, and she had been flattered. But she had politely declined, explaining that she had just come through a rough stretch, dealing with the illness of her parents, and wasn't ready to date. Of course, it had nothing to do with her parents. She had never been in an equal relationship, one where she was not in complete control. The thought of it frightened her.
'Hey, Donald,' she said, leaning on the lip of his window, feeling the bite of the ice-cold air-conditioning blowing in the car.
