turned out to be a wasp-waisted buxom blonde, who opened the front door in a flowered dressing gown that wasn’t closed completely. Vernon feasted his eyes on her in the spacious foyer.
“Most of our pots and pans are set out in the attic to collect leaks, Mr. Lanier.” She spoke in a honeyed Southern drawl. “But, I’m afraid the rain is winning this war.” She pressed her palm to his chest, sending a quiver through his body. “Please say you can help me.”
Vernon strapped on his tool belt and went out an attic window onto Mrs. Frazier’s mansard roof. Even in rain, he loved walking a roof and looking over the city. He felt at home in the sky.
A few tugs of his hammer’s claw, and he found the problem. He ended up sending Jeremiah, the elderly colored man who worked for Mrs. Frazier, to the hardware store for boards, while he got to work taking up the rotten ones.
“You poor man,” Mrs. Frazier said to him at nightfall. She’d come up to the attic with a mug of tea for him. She and Vernon sat on wooden boxes and faced each other. Around them, rain pinged in pots and buckets.
He accepted the tea and told her the extent of the damages. “It’s a big job, Ma’am.” Okay, he was exaggerating. It would be tough for a lone man, not that he wanted another roofer’s help here. “But I’ll get her done for you.” Holding his mug in his palm, he lifted the warm liquid to his lips and gulped. No sipping for him. Nothing ever tasted so sweet.
“That’s great news, Vernon. Why don’t you just stay here?” she said. “I’ve got plenty of room on the third floor, and after the roof is fixed, there are lots of little jobs like doors that stick and kitchen cabinets that need painting. Jeremiah’s a dear, but he’s not handy like you.”
Vernon didn’t need convincing. He almost ran to his boarding house in Georgetown to pick up the feed sack stuffed with his things and tell his landlady he wouldn’t be returning.
Only on his way back, he remembered the silver captain’s bars, which he’d wrapped in a cloth scrap and tucked in the bottom of the sack. Thoughts of that pin made his load heavier. He carried the murdered girl’s memory wherever he went. Go away, Doris. Leave me please.
Someone knocked at the bathroom door. Vernon stirred in the water.
The door creaked open. “Hope you don’t mind, Vernon, but I thought you might like some lavender shampoo.” Mrs. Frazier entered, wearing that same dressing gown, barely closed now.
Vernon drew his knees to his chest. She could see him naked through the water.
“Oh relax, Vernon.” Her hands pressed on his shoulders. “Would you like for me to wash your hair?” Her voice came from behind him.
“Yes, Ma’am. I’d appreciate it.” He sunk into the water and stretched his legs. Let her see what she’d done to him.
She giggled, got a towel, positioned it on the floor behind his head, and knelt. Her fingers massaged his scalp. The steamy room filled with the sweetness of lavender and the sound of his breathing.
He didn’t kid himself, though. Mrs. Frazier ran a house of ill repute, and the young ladies who entertained gentlemen downstairs in the evening weren’t really her nieces. But whenever Bess’s voice sounded in his head, he cut her off like a spigot. He’d been living the sweet life here on 14th Street for two days and did not want it to end.
After his bath, Mrs. Frazier wrapped him in a big cotton towel and led him to his bedroom, where he sprawled across the bed and watched her. She opened her silky dressing gown, dropped her drawers, and presented her big soft breasts to him. He held them and suckled their brown tips until she climbed on top of him and rode him into the dawn.
“Thy rod it comforts me,” she whispered in his ear, giggling. “Can you tell my daddy was a preacher?” After they were done filling up with each other, they shared the rolled cigarette on his bedside table before she curled next to him and slept.
He lay back against the pillow. Through the blinds, fingers of sunlight reached across the flowered bedspread. He didn’t know when he’d been this happy. Yes, he did. It was before he and Bess married, when he imagined they would have a lifetime of such bliss.
The rain stopped at last, and he was sorry for it. That rain had blessed him.
Jeremiah had left his wet boots on newspaper beside the door. From here he read the headline: Government Girl Murdered in Arlington Cemetery. Carefully he got to his feet without disturbing Mrs. Frazier, and crept to the newspaper. He picked it up and returned to her warm nakedness.
The paper was dated Tuesday, May 30. On the bottom front page of The Washington Herald was a photograph of the murdered girl taken from her high school yearbook. She could have been Doris. Her dark eyes sent a quiver through him as if Doris was speaking to him.
The story continued on page six with another photograph of two men taken through a car windshield. A colored man named Alonso Crooms was driving. The other man was identified as Jessup Lindsay, a special agent with the FBI. According to the story, Jessup Lindsay was a famous detective, who’d caught the Dothan child killer and went on to solve murders all over the South. The reporter couldn’t confirm what Lindsay was doing in Washington City, but the reader could make an accurate guess. This girl’s murder wasn’t the first, and Jessup Lindsay was trying to find the killer before he killed again.
This idea sent Vernon’s heart thumping: before he killed again. He knew what he had to do.
10
Vernon walked around the circle, where the statue of General Thomas on horseback watched over the junction of Massachusetts and Vermont Avenues. Steam drifted up from asphalt the color of licorice. The general and his horse were pointed in the direction Vernon was headed.
A young boy selling newspapers called, “Troops in France, our troops in France.” Vernon bought a Washington Post, whose headline read: ALLIES LAND IN FRANCE, WIPE OUT BIG AIR BASES. Before he could read more, the streetcar approached, its bell clanging.
Onboard everyone was excited about D-Day. Strangers talked to each other like friends. In his “Fireside Chats,” the President kept saying they were all in this war together, and today his words felt true.
“This is what everyone’s been waiting for,” Vernon said to the elderly man beside him in a suit that smelled of mothballs.
The man gave a sad smile. “Our men landed on those beaches, but at an awful cost, I’m afraid.”
Vernon patted his shoulder. “I take your meaning.” Many American boys must have died already. He sent out a prayer for the troops. “What does the D in D-Day stand for?”
“Wondered that myself,” the man said. “I know they landed in a place called Normandy.” Tears in his voice. “The Germans were dug in and waiting…”
Vernon closed his eyes. He’d never seen the ocean, but he went to picture shows and could imagine the dark swells, boats opening up in the water and from the shore that awful mechanical rattle of machine guns, death in the salty air.
The Justice Department took up an entire block. He marveled at its roofs that went on forever, as he walked around the five-story marble mountain. It fronted Tenth Street and Constitution Avenue. Its deep windows reminded him of watching eyes.
His hand dug in his pocket, and he touched the
