The Night Gardener

Rhonda made eye contact with Ramone. They moved into the second bedroom, a mirror image of the first.

Back out in the living room, Shaylene Vaughn stood sullenly. Rhonda took out her pad and pen.

'Who pays the rent here?' said Rhonda.

'Huh?'

'Whose name is on the lease of this apartment?'

'I don't know.'

'We can find out by calling the rental company.'

Shaylene tapped her hand against her thigh. 'Dominique Lyons. He pays for it.'

'I thought you didn't know his name,' said Rhonda.

'I just now remembered.'

'You have a job. Can't you afford to pay it?'

'Me and Darcia give him the money we make from the club. He holds on to it for us.'

'Is he Darcia's boyfriend?' said Rhonda. 'Is he yours?'

Shaylene stared at Rhonda.

'Does Dominique have a street name, anything like that?' said Ramone.

'Not that I know.'

'Where's he stay at?'

'Huh?'

'Does he have an address?'

'Said I didn't know.'

'Where were you late last night… say, after midnight?'

'Dancing at the Twilight till, like, one thirty. And then I came home.'

'Alone?'

Shaylene did not answer.

'What about Darcia?' said Rhonda.

'She was working there, too.'

'Was Dominique at the Twilight as well?'

'Maybe he was. He could have been.'

'Do you know a Jamal White?' said Rhonda.

Shaylene looked down at her bare feet and shook her head.

'What's that?' said Rhonda.

'I know some Jamals. I ain't know their last names.'

Rhonda breathed out slowly and handed Shaylene her card. 'My number's on there. You can leave a message, day or night. I'm looking to speak to Darcia and Dominique. You're not going anywhere, are you?'

'No.'

'Thanks for your time. We'll be seeing you again.'

'Take care,' said Ramone.

They left the apartment, glad to breathe fresh air, and got back into the Ford.

'Trick pad,' said Rhonda, settling under the wheel. 'That's all that is.'

'And you think Dominique Lyons is their pimp.'

'Maybe. I got to run him through the system first, see what he's about.'

'Jamal White falls in love with a dancer-slash-ho, her pimp doesn't like him cutting into his girl's action, and boom.'

'I like it so far.' Rhonda stared out the windshield. 'At one time that girl in there was a baby that someone held and sang to at night.'

'If you say so.'

'And look where she is now. Not that I blame her for giving her love to a man. You know, devoting all my time to my sons and this job, it's easy for people to forget that I'm still a woman. Even a Christian woman like me, well, every once in a while I have the need for some penis.'

'For real?'

'This Dominique Lyons fella, though, he must have one special penis. I'm talkin about the kind of penis that could make a girl dance naked in a bar and give up her hard-earned money to him at the end of the night. The kind of penis that could make her prostitute herself in a roach-infested crib with no furniture or food or drink, and make her feel like she's a loyal queen. I'm sayin, that must be some extraordinary penis.'

'Okay.'

'Gus?' Rhonda Willis turned the key on the Ford. 'I do not need that kind of penis.'

Holiday and cook were parked in the Town Car three houses down from a white-sided ranch-style home in Good Luck Estates, a clean middle-class community off Good Luck Road in the New Carrollton area of Prince George's County. A late-model Buick sat in the driveway. The curtains of the house were charcoal gray and drawn closed. 'He doesn't live but ten minutes from my own house,' said Cook. 'Makes it real convenient for me to drop over here and watch him.'

'Tell me about him,' said Holiday.

'Reginald Wilson. He'd be close to fifty now.'

'You say he was a security guard?'

'At the time of the killings, yes. We were interested in men who could be mistaken for cops because of their uniforms.'

'Why him?'

'After the third murder, we questioned all the security guards who worked in the area, and then, on the second round, went back to those who lived in close proximity to the victims. Wilson was a guy I personally interviewed. There was something missing in his eyes, and I backgrounded him. He had done some brig time in the army for two incidents of violence, both against fellow soldiers. He managed to come out with an honorable discharge, which allowed him to apply to the MPD and the P.G. County force. Neither would take him. His intelligence wasn't the issue. In fact, he scored highly there. He had flunked the psychiatric.'

'I'm with you so far. Good IQ, bad head. So now he's go

'I know,' said Cook. 'It's a stretch. I had no evidence of anything, to tell you the truth. Not even a pedophilic history at that time. Just a hunch that this guy was wrong. I felt like I had seen him before, maybe at one of the crime scenes. But my memory wasn't helping me out. Neither did the killer. Remember, there were no fibers found on the bodies, not even human hair follicles or fibers from the carpets of homes or cars. No foreign blood cells. No tissue under the fingernails. The bodies were clean. The only thing left behind was semen in their rectums. And there wasn't a way to match that 'cause there was no DNA testing in eighty-five.'

'So he left behind some jizz. Did he take anything?'

'You're pretty bright,' said Cook.

'I can be.'

'There were small cuts of hair missing from all three of the victims' heads. He kept souvenirs. That was a detail we never released to the press.'

'Did you ever get into his place?'

'Sure, I interviewed him at his crib. I remember noting that he had almost no furniture, but he did have a monster record collection. All jazz, he said. Electric jazz, whatever that means. Damn if I could ever get into that shit. I like instrumental stuff, but you better be able to dance to it.'

'So what happened?' said Holiday, losing patience.

'A month after the third murder, Reginald Wilson fondles a thirteen-year-old boy who's wandered onto his job site, a warehouse near an apartment building where the boy stayed, and gets charged. While he's in the D.C. Jail, waitin on his date, some dude calls him a faggot or somesuch thing, and Wilson takes him down forever. Beats him to death with his fists. Couldn't even plead self-defense, so now he draws real time. Inside the federal joint, he's marked as a short eyes and kills another inmate who came at him with a single-edge. Now he gets more years heaped on top of the original.'

'The murders stopped when he went away.'

'Right. For nineteen years and change. He ain't been out but a few months and now they started again.'

'It's possible he's the one,' said Holiday. 'But the only thing you've really got is that Wilson's prone to violence and is sexually attracted to kids. Pedophilia's a long way off from murder.'

'It's a kind of murder.'

'You won't get an argument from me there. But basically you've got nothing. We'd be hard-pressed to get a warrant to search his house. That is, if we were still police.'

'I know it.'

'Does he have a job?'

'Man's on paper, he got to. Takes cash at an all-night gas-and-convenience station down on Central Avenue. Works different shifts there, including the late. I know, 'cause I tailed him, more than once.'

'We could check with his PO, get his hours, talk to his employer. See if he was working the night Johnson was killed.'

'Uh-huh,' said Cook with no enthusiasm.

'That's no palace,' said Holiday, looking at the white rancher, 'but this is a pretty fair neighborhood for a guy like him to land in right out of prison.'

'It's his parents' house. They died while he was in the joint, and as he was their only child, it went to him. There's no nut on it; all he has to do is pay the taxes. The Buick's not his, either.'