What the hell was going on from sea to shining sea?
The heavy wooden door to the inner administrative office was open, but the assistant appeared to have left. On her desk was a collection of Caucasian, African-American, and Asian play dolls. A sign read: Barbara Breckenridge, I can really tap-dance.
I felt like a housebreaker, a neighborhood break-and-enter artist, a bad character of some sort or other. Suddenly, I was concerned about the principal working late by herself in the school.
Anyone could walk in here, just as I had done. The Sojourner Truth School killer could walk in here some night. It would be so easy. This easy.
I turned the corner into the main office and was about to announce my presence when I saw Mrs. Johnson. I thought of my made-up name for her—Christine.
She was busy at work at an old-fashioned rolltop desk that looked at least a hundred years old. She was lost in the work, actually.
I watched her for a couple of seconds. She wore gold-wire glasses to do her paperwork. She was humming the “Shoop Shoop” song from Waiting to Exhale. Sounded nice.
There was something enormously right, even touching, about the scene—the dedicated teacher, the educator, at work. A smile passed across my lips. She’s even tougher than you are. Daddy.
I still wondered about that. She didn’t look tough at the moment. She looked serene, happy in her work. She looked at peace, and I envied her that.
I finally felt a little awkward standing in the doorway unannounced. “Hi there. It’s Detective Alex Cross,” I said. “Hello. Mrs. Johnson?”
She stopped humming and looked up. There was the slightest glint of fear in her eyes. Then she smiled. Her smile was warm and welcoming. Very nice to be on the receiving end of one of her easy smiles.
“Ahh, it is Detective Cross,” she said. “And what brings you to the principal’s office?” she said in a put-on voice of authority.
“I guess I need some help from the principal. Extra help with my homework.” That was true enough, I suppose. “I need to talk with you a little about Vernon Wheatley, if that’s possible. I also wanted to get your okay to speak with some of the teachers again, to see if any of them heard anything from the kids after Vernon’s murder. Somebody might have seen something that would help us, even if they don’t think they did. Maybe something the kids heard their parents say.”
“Yes, I figured the same thing,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Somebody here at the school could have a clue, something useful, and might not know it”
I liked everything I saw about Mrs. Johnson, but as soon as I saw it, I pushed it out of my mind. Wrong time, wrong place, and wrong woman. I’d done some questionable things in my life, and I’m no angel, but trying to fool with a married woman wasn’t going to be one of them.
“There’s not too much new to report, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’ve been working a little overtime on your account. I grilled the teachers at lunch today. Interrogated them, actually. I told them that they should tell me if they heard or saw anything suspicious. They talk to me about most things. We have a pretty close-knit group here.”
“Are any of the teachers still here? I could talk to them now if they are. I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect the killer might have watched the school at some point,” I said to her. I didn’t want to frighten Mrs. Johnson or the other teachers, but I did want them on the alert and cautious. I believed that the killer probably had scouted the school.
She shook her head slowly back and forth. Then she cocked it softly to the left. She seemed to be looking at me in a new way. “Almost all of them are long gone by four. They like to leave together, if possible. Safety in numbers.”
“That makes a lot of sense to me. It isn’t a great neighborhood. Well, it is and it isn’t”
“And being here at five or so, with a lot of unlocked doors, doesn’t make any kind of sense,” she said. It was what I had been thinking ever since I arrived at her office door.
I didn’t say anything, didn’t comment on the unlocked doors. Mrs. Johnson was certainly free to live her life in whatever way she chose. “Thanks for checking with the teachers for us,” I said to her. “Thanks for the overtime work.”
“No, thank you for coming by,” she said. “I’m sure this must be very hard for you and for Damon. For your whole family. It certainly is for all of us at the school.”
She finally took off the wire-rim glasses and slid them into the pocket of her work smock. She looked good with or without glasses.
Intelligent, nice, pretty.
Off-limits, out-of-bounds, off your radar charts, I reminded myself. I could almost feel a ruler rap across my knuckles.
Faster than I would have thought possible, she slid a snub-nose .38 Special out of an open drawer on the right side of the desk. She didn’t point it in my direction, but she easily could have. Easily.
“I lived in this neighborhood for a lot of years,” she explained. Then she smiled and put the gun away. “I try to be prepared for whatever might happen,” she said calmly. “And shit does happen around here. I knew you were there in the doorway, Detective. The kids claim I have eyes in the back of my head. Actually, I do.”
She laughed again. I did like her laugh. Anyone with a pulse would. Say goodnight, Alex.
I had mixed feelings about civilians owning guns, but I was sure hers was registered and legal. “You learn to use that revolver in the neighborhood?” I asked.
“No, actually, I learned at the Remington Guns Club out in Fairfax. My husband was, is, worried about my coming to work here, too. You men seem to think alike. Sony, sorry,” she said and smiled again. “I try to catch myself when even I say outrageous sexist things like that. I don’t like that. No how, no way. Sorry.”
She stood up and flicked off the Mac laptop on her desk. “I’ll walk you to the front door,” she said. “Make sure you get out safely, since it’s well after four”
“That’s a good idea.” I went along with her little joke. She had me smiling some, anyway. That was pretty good, under the circumstances of the past few days. “Are you always this funny? This loose?”
She tilted her head again. It was something she did often. Then she nodded confidently. “Always. At least this funny. Those were my two vocational choices: comedienne or educator. Obviously, I chose comedienne. More laughs here. Honest laughs. Most days, anyway.”
The two of us walked down the deserted halls of the school together. Our footfalls made clapping sounds that echoed loudly. The “Snoop Shoop” song played inside my head, the tune she’d been humming in her office. There were lots more questions I wanted to ask her, but I knew I shouldn’t be asking some of them. They had nothing to do with the murder case.
When we got to the school’s front door, a husky, middle-aged security guard was there to let me out. He surprised me. I hadn’t seen him on my way in.
He had a thick wooden nightstick and a walkie-talkie. It was the look and feel of D.C. schools that I knew all too well. Guards, metal detectors, steel-mesh screens covering every window. No wonder the people of the neighborhood hate and fear all established institutions, even their own schools.
“Goodnight, sir,” the school guard said with a most congenial smile. “You be leaving soon, Mrs. Johnson?”
“Pretty soon,” she said. “You can go home if you want to, Lionel. I have my Uzi inside.”
Lionel laughed at her joke. She had very good delivery, good timing. I’ll bet she could have done some stand-up work if she’d wanted.
“Goodnight, Mrs. Johnson,” I said. I couldn’t help adding, “Please be careful until this case is over.”
She stood just inside the heavy wooden door. She looked so wise, and she was attractive, in my way of viewing the world. “It’s ‘Christine,’” she said, “and I will be careful. I promise. Thank you for stopping by.”
Christine! Jesus! It was the same name I’d made up for her. Probably I’d heard it somewhere before, from Damon or Nana, but it seemed so strange. K
ind of magical, actually. Would have made James Redfield happy as hell.
I went home that evening thinking about the two child murders, and Jack and Jill, but also about the principal of the Sojourner Truth School. She was wise, funny, and pretty, too. She could take care of herself—even handle a gun.
Mrs. Johnson.
Christine.
Shoop. Shoop. Shoop. Shoop.
CHAPTER
28
IN THIS DANGEROUS AGE, everybody needs to think, It won’t happen to me. Not to me. What are the odds of it actually happening tome?
The motion picture actor Michael Robinson thought it was absurd and more than a little self-absorbed for him to be concerned or afraid of the maniac killers on the loose in Washington. What did the malicious Jack and Jill threats have to do with him, anyway? The answer, it seemed clear to him, was nothing at all.
Still, he was a trifle skittish and jumpy, so he tried to enjoy the adrenaline rush, to go with the nasty flow of the moment, of the times we live in.
A little before midnight, the Hollywood star finally got up his nerve and called for a date from the VIP escort service. A “snack” before bedtime. He had used the service many times before while visiting D.C. The Discreet, toney, very expensive sex-for-hire service had his requirements down pat M.R. was in its file, compliments of the star’s full-service business agent in Los Angeles.
After he made the phone call, the forty-nine-year old actor tried to read an expensive adventure-romance script he’d commissioned, but then got up and walked to the window of his penthouse suite at the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. He knew his fans would find it scandalous that he was paying for a lover, but that was their hang-up, not his.
The truth was, he found it far less complicated, and far easier on the psyche, to pay a thousand or fifteen hundred than to get involved in wooing, and then painfully separating from, lovers while on the road.
Actually, he was in a good mood tonight, feeling very level and grounded, he thought as he stared out on the street. He just needed some company, a little TLC, and some uncomplicated sex. All three of his requirements would be met shortly, he hoped.
In a way, he was still time-warped back in his hometown of Wichita, circa 1963, when he was a high school senior. The fantasies and desires he’d had then were still unresolved and operating full-tilt boogie inside him. There was one difference: he knew what he wanted tonight and he would get it without much trouble, guilt or the gnashing of teeth.
He glanced around the hotel suite and decided to tidy it up before the escort arrived. The neurotic tidying-up made him smile. How incredibly bourgeois he still was. You can take the boy out of Kansas, Michael Robinson thought.
He heard two quick raps on the door, and the noise caught him by surprise. The service had said the escort would be there within the hour, which usually meant at least that long, sometimes longer.
“Just a minute,” he called out “Be right there. One minute.”
Michael Robinson glanced at his watch. The “date” had arrived in about thirty minutes. Well, fine. He was ready for some quick nookie and then a night of blessed sleep. He was having breakfast with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee early the next morning. He’d been asked to do a fund-raiser for the Democrats. The chairman was a star-fucker of another variety. They all were, really. Everybody wanted what he thought he couldn’t have, and everybody couldn’t have Michael Robinson. Well, almost everybody.
He peeked through the hotel-door spyhole. Well, well, well. He definitely liked what he saw in the hallway; even through a fish-eye lens, the escort looked good. He felt a spike of adrenaline kick in. He opened the door and his fifteen-million-dollar-per-picture smile was automatically engaged.
“Hi, I’m Jasper,” the handsome escort said. “It’s very nice to meet you, sir.”
Michael Robinson doubted that the escort was “Jasper.” He thought that a name like Jake or Cliff would fit the escort better. He was a tad older than Robinson had expected, possibly in his mid-thirties, but he was more than acceptable. He was near perfect, actually. Michael Robinson was already hard, and he was lubricated. Armed and dangerous, he called the ready state.
“How are you doing tonight?” The actor put out his hand and lightly touched the other man’s arm. He wanted “Jasper” to know that he was down-to-earth, unaffected, and most of all, a warm person. He truly was all of that. USA Today had recently published a list of the “nicest” stars in Hollywood. He was on it, courtesy of his business agent and lawyer, who spoke exceedingly well of him.
Jack unleashed his best smile as he entered Michael Robinson’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous hotel suite. He shut the door behind him. He figured he had about half an hour before the real escort arrived from the service. That would be enough time.
At any rate, Jill was watching the lobby of the Willard, just in case the male prostitute arrived early. She would take care of things downstairs. Jill was excellent with the details, all the loose ends. Jill was excellent, period.
“I’m a real fan,” Jack said to the big Hollywood star. “I’ve been following your career closely, actually.”
Michael Robinson spoke in a near-whisper that would have shocked male and female fans of his action-romance films. “Oh, really, Jasper? That’s always so nice for me to hear. It’s kind of you to say, anyway.”
“I swear to God, it’s true.” Sam Harrison continued his act “My name is Jack, by the way. Jill is down in the lobby. Maybe you’ve heard of us?”
Jack pulled out a Beretta with a silencer and aimed it between the actor’s startled deep-blue eyes. He fired. It fit the pattern of Jack and Jill. People in high places. Execution-style murder. Kinky touches and poem to follow.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill.
To kill, to kill, to kill.
CHAPTER
29
ONE SPECIFIC, and particularly fascinating, detail about the murders was weighing heavily on my mind, troubling the hell out of me. I thought about it as I turned onto crowded Pennsylvania Avenue and double-parked in front of the Willard Hotel—the latest helter-skelter murder scene.
I thought about the troubling detail as I marched inside and headed up to Michael Robinson’s suite.
I thought about it as the smooth-riding elevator whooshed open on the seventh floor, where half a dozen uniforms were standing around, and rolls of crime-scene tape ribboned the hallway like a tangle of distasteful Christmas wrapping.
There wasn’t much evidence of passion in the first two killings, I was thinking. Especially the second murder. The murders were so cold-blooded and efficient. The arrangement of the bodies of the victims seemed to have been art-directed. The kinkiness of the scenes seemed too directed and orderly. This is the exact opposite of the Sojourner Truth School murders, which were violent explosions of pent-up anger and pure rage.
I didn’t get the full significance yet, and neither did anyone else I spoke to about the murder case. Not inside the D.C. police, and not at the Federal Bureau in Quantico. If, as a detective, I had one basic rule about premeditated murders, it was this: they were almost always based on passion. There usually had to be extreme love. Or hate. Or greed… but these killings seemed to have none of that. It kept bugging me.
Why Michael Robinson? I wondered as I walked toward the hotel room where he had been murdered. What are these two bizarre psychopaths doing here in Washington? What sick and cruel game are they playing… and why do they crave millions of spectators for their sensational blood sport?
I spotted Kyle Craig once again. The FBI senior agent and I talked for several moments outside the suite. All around us, usually sangfroid D.C. cops appeared in mild shock. A lot of them were probably disappointed Michael Robinson fans.
“The medical examiner figures he’s been a famous corpse for about seven hours. So it happened around twelve last night,” Kyle told me, giving me the lay of the land. “Two shots fired to his head, Alex. Close range, just like the other
s. Take a look at the tattooing for yourself. Whoever did the shooting is a real heartless bastard.”
I agreed with what Kyle was saying.
Heartless.
No passion.
No rage.
“How was Michael Robinson found?”
“Oh, that’s another good part, Alex. A new wrinkle. They phoned it in to the Post. Told the newspaper where to pick up the trash this morning.”
“Is that a quote?” I asked Kyle.
“I don’t have the exact quote they used, but pick up the trash was definitely part of it,” Kyle said.
I was interested in any irreverence or cynicism Jack and Jill might use in describing the killings. They were obviously into wordplay. They were artistes. I also wondered if they might be out there on Pennsylvania Avenue, watching us again. Filming us as we bumbled and stumbled over one another inside the Willard. I wondered if they were preparing a second film, with their usual wide-release distribution method in mind. Surveillance had been posted outside, so if they were there, we had them.
I entered the living room of the suite, and I was relieved to see that Chief of Detectives Pittman was nowhere on the scene. The film actor Michael Robinson was there, however. As they say, he had been born to play the role—perhaps his greatest.
His naked body was in a sitting position on the floor, the head against the couch. It seemed as if the actor had been propped up to see anyone entering the room, and maybe that was the killers’ idea. His eyes stared out at me. To see, or to be seen? I wondered. He was not a pretty sight. I took note of the lividity. The blood had already pooled in the lowermost parts of his body, which now had an ugly purplish red color.
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