Chapter 37
S AMPSON’S PARTNER THESE DAYS was a twenty-eight-year-old detective named Marion Handler, who was almost as big as Sampson was. Handler was certainly no Alex Cross, though. He was currently living with a large-breasted but small-minded cheerleader for the Washington Redskins, and he was looking to make a name for himself in Homicide. “I’m fast-tracking, dude,” he liked to say to Sampson, without a hint of humor or self-effacement.
Just being around the cocky detective was exhausting, and also depressing. The man was plain stupid; worse, he was arrogant about it, flaunting his frequent logic lapses.
“I’ll take the point on this one,” Handler announced as they reached the front porch of Giametti’s house. Four other detectives, one holding a battering ram, were already waiting at the door. They looked to Sampson for direction.
“Take the lead? No problem, Marion. Be my guest,” he said to Handler. Then he added, “First in, first to the morgue.” He spoke to the detective holding the battering ram: “Take it down! Detective Handler goes in first.”
The front door collapsed in two powerful strikes with the ram. The house alarm system began to wail, and the detectives hurried inside.
Sampson’s eyes took in the darkened kitchen. Nobody there. New appliances everywhere. An iPod and CDs scattered on the floor. Kids in the house.
“He’s downstairs,” Sampson told the others. “Giametti doesn’t sleep with his wife anymore.”
The detectives hurried down steep wooden stairs on the far side of the kitchen. They hadn’t been inside more than twenty seconds. In the basement, they burst in the first door they came to. “Metro Police! Hands up. Now, Giametti,” Marion Handler’s voice boomed.
The Greaseball was up quickly. He stood in a protective crouch on the far side of the king-size bed. He was a short, potbellied, hirsute man in his midforties. He looked groggy and still out of it, maybe drugged up. But John Sampson wasn’t fooled by his physical appearance ? this man was a stone-cold killer. And much worse.
A pretty, naked young girl with long blond hair and fair white skin was still on the bed. She tried to cover her small breasts and shaved genital area. Sampson knew her name, Paulina Sroka, and that she was from Poland originally. Sampson had known she would be here and that Giametti was rumored to be madly in love with the blond beauty he’d imported from Europe six months ago. According to sources, the Greaseball had killed the girl’s best friend because she’d refused to have anal sex with him.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Sampson said to Paulina. “We’re the Washington police. You’re not in any trouble. He is.”
“Just shut the hell up!” Giametti yelled at the girl, who looked both confused and scared. “Don’t say a word to them! Not a word, Paulie! I’m warning you!”
Sampson moved faster than it looked like he could. He threw Giametti on the floor, then cuffed him like a steer at a rodeo.
“Don’t say a word!” Giametti continued to yell, even though his face was pressed into the shag rug. “Don’t talk to them, Paulie! I’m warning you! You hear me?”
The girl looked pathetic and lost as she sat among the rumpled bedsheets, attempting to cover herself with a man’s shirt she’d been given by the detectives.
She finally spoke in the softest whisper. “He make me do anything he say. He do everything bad to me. You know what I am saying ? everything you could imagine. I can hardly walk
I am fourteen years old.”
Sampson turned to Handler. “You can take it from here, Marion. Get him the hell out of here. I don’t want to touch the slime.”