He fell and thudded heavily to the ground again. His head cracked hard against the pavement. The spasms and twitching slowed noticeably. A terrible gargling sound escaped from his throat.
I got down on my hands and knees beside `›/:,' him. "Where is Agent Doud? Where's Michael Doud?" I pleaded. "For God's sake, tell us."
Francis stared up at me, and he said the last words I wanted to hear. "You've got the wrong man."
Then he died.
Epilogue The Right Man
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-One
Three weeks had passed and my life was finally returning to something approaching normal. Not a day went by that I didn't think about getting out of police work, though. I didn't know if it had been the intensity of the Mastermind case, or an accumulation of cases, but I was experiencing all the basic- symptoms of job burnout.
Most of the fifteen million dollars from Francis's share hadn't been found, and that was driving everybody at the FBI a little crazy. Locating it was consuming all of Betsey's time. She was working weekends again and I hadn't seen much of her. She had said it all in Florida, I suppose. I'm going to miss you so much.
Tonight was Nana Mama's fault; at least I blamed her for it. Here we were Sampson and I trapped inside the ancient and venerable First Baptist Church on Fourth Street near my house.
All around Sampson and me, men and women were sobbing. The minister and his wife were busy telling everybody that the outpouring of emotion was for the best just to let it all out, the anger, the fear, the poison inside. Which just about everybody in the church was doing. Everybody but Sampson and me seemed to be crying their eyes out.
"Nana Mama owes us big time for this little number," Sampson leaned in and said in a whisper.
I smiled at what he'd said, his lack of understanding of this woman he'd known since he was ten years old. "Not in her mind. Not to her way of thinking. We still owe Nana for all the times she saved our little butts when we were growing up."
"Well, she does have a point there, sugar. But this wipes out a lot of old debts."
"You're preaching to the choir," I told him.
"No, the choir's busy wailing, "he said and chuckled," This is definitely a three-hankie evening."
John and I were squeezed in tight between two, women who were weeping and shouting prayers and amens and other heartfelt entreaties. The occasion was something called "Sister, I'm sorry," a special church service that was gaining popularity in DC. Men came to churches and other venues to pay tribute to the women for all the physical and emotional abuse they had taken, and the abuse they might have given women in their lifetimes.
"It's so good of you to come," the woman next to me suddenly proclaimed in a voice loud enough for me to hear over the shouting and screaming around us. She hugged my shoulder. "You're a good man, Alex. One of the few."
"Yeah, that's my problem," I muttered under my breath. But then, loud enough for her to hear, I said, "Sister, I'm sorry. You're a good woman too. You're a sweetheart."
The woman grabbed me harder. She was a sweetheart, actually. Her name was Terri Rashad. She was in her early thirties, attractive, proud and usually joyful. I had seen her around the neighborhood.
"Sister, I'm sorry," I heard Sampson say to the woman standing beside him in the church pew.
"Well, you damn well ought to be sorry," I heard Lace McCray say. "But thank you. You're not as bad as I thought you were."
Sampson eventually nudged me and whispered in his deep voice, "It's kind of emotional when you get into it. Maybe Nana was right to have us come."
"She knows that. Nana is always right," I said," She's like an octogenarian Oprah."
"How're you doing, sugar?" John finally asked as the singing and screeching and sobbing crescendoed.
I thought about it for a few seconds. "Oh, I miss Christine. But we're happy to have the boy with us. Nana says it will add years to her life. He lights up our whole house, morning to night. He thinks we're all his staff."
Christine had left for Seattle at the end of June. At least she'd finally told me where she was going. I'd gone over to Mitchellville to say goodbye to her. Her new SUV was packed up. Everything was ready. Christine finally gave me a hug and then she started to cry, to heave against my body. "Maybe someday," she whispered. Maybe someday,
But now she was out in the state of Washington, and I was here in the Baptist church in my neighborhood. I figured Nana Mama was trying to get me a date. It was a funny idea actually, and I finally started to laugh.
"You sorry for the sisters, Alex?" Sampson asked. He was getting gabby. I looked at Sampson, then around the church.
"Sure I am. Lots of good people here, trying to do the best they can. They just want to be loved a little bit now and then."
"Nothing wrong with that," Sampson said and clasped me hard around the shoulder.
"No. Nothing at all. Just trying to do the best we can."
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two
A couple of nights later, I was home playing the piano on the sun porch at around eleven-thirty. The rest of the house was silent, nice and peaceful, the way I like it sometimes. I had just gone up, checked on the boy, and found him sleeping like a precious little angel in his crib. I was playing Gershwin, one of my favorites, "Rhapsody in Blue."
I was thinking about my family, about our old house on Fifth Street, and how much I loved it here in spite of everything that was wrong with the neighborhood. I was starting to get my head on straight again. Maybe all that screeching and crying in the Baptist church had helped. Or maybe it was the Gershwin.
The phone rang and I hurried to the kitchen to get it before it woke everyone up, especially little Alex, or AJ, as Jannie and Damon had started to call him.
It was Kyle Craig on the line.
Kyle almost never called the house and never this late. This was how everything had started on the Mastermind case with Kyle.
"Kyle," I said, 'why are you calling me here? What's wrong? I can't start on another case."
"It's bad, Alex. I don't even know how to tell you this," he said in the softest, quietest voice. "Oh shit, Alex… Betsey Cavalierre is dead. I'm at her place now. You should come here. Just come."