Alex Cross 03 - Jack & Jill

by James Patterson

  But was it a dream, or had I committed the grisly murders? he wondered as he opened his eyes. He tried to focus on the surroundings. Where the hell am I?

  Then he remembered where he was, where he had come to sleep for the night. What a mindblower! What a cool idea he’d had.

  The song, his song, blared inside his head:

  I’m a loser, baby.

  So why don’t you kill me?

  This hiding place was cool as shit. Or maybe he was just being too stupid and careless. Cool as shit? Or dumb and dumber? You be the judge.

  He was in his own house, up on the third floor.

  He wrapped his mind around the idea that he was “safe and sound” for now. Man, he loved the power of that thought.

  He was in total control. He was mission control. He could be as big and important as Jack and Jill. Hell, he could be bigger and better than those trippy assholes. He knew that he could. He could stomp Jack and Jill’s asses.

  He felt around on the floor for his trusty backpack. Where the hell is his stuff?… Okay. There it is. Everything is cool. He fumbled inside—located his flashlight. He flicked the ON switch.

  “Let there be light,” he whispered. “Wah-lah!”

  Awhh, too bad sports fans—he was definitely in the attic of his home. This wasn’t a dream. He was the Truth School killer, after all. He shined the bright light down on his wrist-watch. It was a twelfth-birthday present. It was the kind of sophisticated watch that pilots wore. Wow, he was so damn impressed! Maybe he could study to be a jet pilot after this was all behind him. Learn to fly an F-16.

  It was 4:00 A.M. on the jet pilot’s watch! Must be 4:00 A.M., then.

  “The hour of the werewolf,” he whispered softly. It was time to come down out of the attic. It was time to continue to make his mark in the world. Something cool and amazing had to happen now.

  Perfect murders.

  Had to, had to, had to.

  CHAPTER

  75

  HE LET the bulky foldaway stairs drop down very slowly to the second floor of the house. His house. If his foster parents happened to get up for a pee right now—BIG PROBLEMS FOR HIM.

  BIG SURPRISE FOR THEM, THOUGH.

  MAJOR SHITSTORM FOR EVERYBODY CONCERNED.

  He was having a little trouble with his breathing. None of this was easy now. He needed to set the heavy, unwieldy stairs down quietly on the second floor, but there was a little thud right at the end.

  “Damn you. Loser,” he whispered.

  He still couldn’t exactly catch his breath. His body was covered with a thick coat of sweat, the kind horses break on a morning workout. He had seen that phenomenon on his grandparents’ farm. Never forgot it: sweat that almost turned into this frothy cream, right before your eyes.

  “Pusillanimous,” he whispered, mocking his own cowardice. “Chickenshit bastard. Punk of the month. Loser, man.” His theme song again.

  He tried to let some of the icy panic and nervousness pass. He took long, slow, deep breaths as he paused at the top of the folding stairs. This was so freaky. It was helter fucking skelter, in real life, in real time.

  He finally began to climb down the wobbly wooden stairway, on wobbly wooden legs that felt like stilts. He was being as careful and quiet as he could be.

  He felt a little better as he got to the bottom. Terra firma.

  He walked on his tiptoes down the upstairs hallway to the door of the master bedroom. He opened the door and was immediately struck with a blast of really cold air.

  His foster father kept the window open, even in December, even when it fucking snowed. He would. The arctic cold probably kept his silver-blond crew cut short. Saved him on haircuts. What a super jerk-off the guy was.

  “Do you screw her in the cold dark?” he whispered under his breath. That sounded about right, too.

  He walked up real close to their king-size bed. Real close. He stood at their altar of love, their sacred throne.

  How many times had he imagined a moment like this? This very moment.

  How many other kids had imagined this same scene a thousand thousand times? But then done nothing about it Losers! The world was full of them.

  He was on the verge of one of his worst rages, a real bad one. The hair on the back of his neck was standing at attention. TEN-SHUN. It felt like it, anyway.

  He could see red everywhere in the bedroom. Like this misting red. It was almost as if he were viewing the room through a nightscope.

  He… was… just… about… to… go… off… wasn’t …he?

  He could feel himself… exploding … into … a … billion… pieces.

  Suddenly, he screamed at the top of his voice. “Wake up and smell the fucking Folger’s coffee!”

  He was sobbing now, too. For what reason, he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember crying like this since he was a real little kid, real little.

  His chest hurt as if he’d been punched hard. Or hit with an eighteen-inch ballbat. He realized that he was starting to wimp out. Mister Softee was coming back. He felt like Holden Caulfield. Repentant Always triple-thinking every goddamn move both before and after he made it.

  “POW,” he screamed at the top of his voice.

  “POW,” he screamed the word again.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.

  “POW.”

  And with every bloodcurdling yell, he pulled the trigger of the Smith & Wesson. He put another 9mm bullet into the two sleeping figures. Twelve shots, if he was counting correctly, and he was counting everything very correctly. Twelve shots, just like Jose and Kitty Menendez got.

  The Roosevelt military education finally came in handy, he couldn’t help thinking. His teachers had been right, after all. Colonel Wilson at the school would have been proud of the marksmanship—but most of all, the firm resolve, the very simple and clear plan, the extraordinary courage he had shown tonight.

  His foster parents were annihilated, completely vanquished, almost disintegrated by all the firepower he’d brought to the task. He felt nothing—except maybe pride in what he had done, in his fine workmanship.

  Nobody was here. Nobody did this, man.

  He wrote it in their blood.

  Then he ran outside to play in the snow. He got blood all over the yard, all over everything. He could, you know. He could do anything he wanted to now. There was no one to stop Nobody.

  CHAPTER

  76

  ANOTHER MURDERED CHILD has been discovered.

  A male. Less than an hour ago.

  John Sampson got the news about seven o’clock in the evening. He couldn’t believe it. Could not, would not, accept what he had just been told. Friday the thirteenth. Was the date deliberate?

  Another child murdered in Garfield Park. At least, the body was left there. He wanted Sumner Moore bad, and he wanted him now.

  Sampson parked on Sixth Street and began the short walk into the desolate and dreary park. This is getting worse, he thought as he walked toward the red and yellow emergency lights flashing brightly up ahead.

  “Detective Sampson. Let me through,” he said as he pushed his way inside a circle of police uniforms.

  One of the uniforms was holding a gray-and-white yapping mutt on a leash. It was a weird touch at a weird scene. Sampson addressed the patrolman. “What’s with the dog? Whose dog?”

  “Dog uncovered the victim’s body. Owner let it loose for a run after she got home from work. Somebody covered up the dead kid with tree branches. Not much else. Like he wanted somebody to find it.”

  Sampson nodded at what he’d heard so far. Then he moved on, stepped closer to the body. The victim was clearly older than either Vernon Wheatley or Shanelle Green. Sumner Moore had graduated from murdering very small children. The creepy little ghoul was on a full rampage now.

  A police photographer w
as taking pictures of the body, the camera’s harsh flashes dramatic against the blanket of snow covering the park.

  The boy’s mouth and nose were wrapped with silver duct tape. Sampson took a deep breath before he stooped down low next to the medical examiner, a woman he knew named Esther Lee.

  “How long you think he’s been dead?” Sampson asked the M.E.

  “Hard to say. Maybe thirty-six hours. Decomposition is slowed a lot in this cold weather. I’ll know more after the autopsy. The boy took a brutal beating. Lead pipe, wrench, something nasty and heavy like that. He tried to fight the killer off. You can see defensive bruises on both hands, on his arms. I feel so bad for this boy.”

  “I know, Esther. Me, too.”

  What John Sampson could see of the boy’s neck was discolored and badly bloated. Tiny black bugs crawled along the hairline. A thin line of maggots spilled from a split in the scalp above the right ear.

  Sampson sucked it up, grimaced, and forced himself to move around to the other side of the boy’s body. Nobody knew it, not even Alex, but this was the part of homicide that he just couldn’t handle. DOAs. Bodies in decomposition.

  “You won’t like it,” Esther Lee told him before he looked. “I’m warning you.”

  “I know I won’t,” he muttered. He blew warmth on his hands, but it didn’t help much.

  He could see the boy’s face now. He could see it—but he couldn’t believe it. And he certainly didn’t like it Esther Lee was right about that.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said out loud. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Make this terrible thing stop.”

  Sampson stood up straight. He was six nine again, only it wasn’t tall enough, wasn’t big enough. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen—the boy’s face.

  This killing was too much even for him, and he had seen so much in D.C. during the past few years.

  The murdered boy was Sumner Moore.

  Part V

  No Rules. No Regrets.

  CHAPTER

  77

  NOTHING EVER BEGINS at the time we believe it does. Still, this is what I think of as the beginning.

  Jannie and I sat in the kitchen and we talked the talk, our own special talk. The words didn’t matter much, just the sentiments.

  “You know, this is an anniversary for us,” I said to her. “Special anniversary.” I touched her cheek. So soft. Soft as a butterfly’s belly.

  “Oh, really?” Jannie said and gave me her most skeptical Nana Mama look. “And what anniversary might that be?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. This just happens to be the five-hundredth time that I’ve read you The Stinky Cheese Man.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said and smiled in spite of herself, “so read the story already! I love the way you read it.” I read the story again.

  After we were done with our Stinky Cheese, I spent some time with Damon, and then with Nana. Then I went upstairs to pack.

  When I came back down, I talked out on the porch with Rakeem Powell. Rakeem was waiting to be relieved. Sampson was coming over for the night. Man Mountain was late as usual, and we hadn’t heard from him yet, which was a little unusual, but I knew he would be there.

  “You okay?” I asked Rakeem.

  “I’m fine, Alex. Sampson will get here eventually. You take care of yourself.”

  I went out to my car. I stepped inside and put in a tape that felt right for the moment at hand—for my mood, anyway. It was the finale to Saint-Saëns’s second piano concerto. I had always dreamed of being able to play the piece on the porch piano. Dream on, dream on.

  I listened to the blazing music as I drove out to Andrews airfield, where Air Force One was being prepared.

  President Byrnes was going to New York City, and I was going with him.

  No regrets.

  CHAPTER

  78

  THERE HAVE BEEN many conflicting accounts, but this is what happened and how it happened. I know, because I was there.

  On Monday evening, nine days before Christmas, we landed in a grayish-blue fog and light rain at La Guardia Airport on Long Island. No specific information about President Byrnes’s travel plans had been announced to the press, but the President was keeping his commitment to speak in New York the following morning. Thomas Byrnes was known for keeping his commitments, keeping his word.

  It had been decided to go from La Guardia into Manhattan by car, rather than by helicopter. The President wasn’t hiding anymore. Had Jack and Jill counted on just that kind of courage, or arrogance, from him? I wondered. Would Jack and Jill follow the President to New York? I was almost sure that they would. It fit everything we knew about them so far.

  “Ride with us, Alex,” Don Hamerman said as we hurried across the tarmac, a cold December rain blowing hard in our faces. Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and I had gotten off Air Force One together. During the plane ride we sat together, planning how to protect President Byrnes from an assassination attempt in New York. Our talk was so intense that I missed out on the specialness of the ride.

  “We’re traveling in the car directly behind the President. We can continue our little chat on the way into Manhattan,” Hamerman said to me.

  We climbed into a somber, blue Lincoln Town Car that was parked less than fifty yards from the jet. It was close to ten in the evening, and that part of the airfield had been secured. There were Secret Service men, FBI agents, and New York City policemen milling around everywhere.

  Surrounding the five limousines of the presidential motorcade were at least three dozen NYPD blue-and-white squad cars, not to mention a few Harley motorcycles. The Secret Service agents stared into the foggy night as if Jack and Jill might suddenly appear on the runway at La Guardia.

  I had learned that the NYPD would have a minimum of five thousand uniformed officers on the special-service detail for the length of the President’s visit. More than a hundred detectives would also be assigned. The Secret Service had tried to convince the President to stay at the Coast Guard base on Governors Island, or at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. The President had insisted on making a statement by staying in Manhattan. No regrets. His words in the Oval Office played over and over in my head.

  I settled back into the cushy and comfortable leather seat of the town car. I could sense the power. What it was like to ride in a motorcade directly behind the President’s car, which the Secret Service called “Stagecoach.”

  A couple of NYPD police cruisers pulled out in front of the pack. Their red and yellow roof lights began to revolve in quick kaleidoscopic circles. The presidential motorcade started to wind its way out of La Guardia Airport.

  Don Hamerman spoke as soon as we were moving. “No one has seen Kevin Hawkins in the past three days, right? Hawkins seems to have fallen off the face of the earth,” he said. His voice was full of frustration, anger, and the usual petulance. He enjoyed bullying people beneath him, but neither Grayer nor I would put up with it.

  “No one knows the route we’re taking,” Hamerman said. “We didn’t have a final route until a few minutes ago.”

  I couldn’t keep quiet. “We know the route. People in the NYPD know it, or they will momentarily. Kevin Hawkins is good at uncovering secrets. Kevin Hawkins is good, period. He’s one of our best.”

  Jay Grayer was peering out of the rain-streaked window into the fast lane of the New York highway we were traveling on. His voice sounded far away. “What’s your instinct about Hawkins?” he asked me.

  “I think Kevin Hawkins is definitely involved somehow. He’s extreme right-wing. He’s associated with some groups that are opposed to the President’s policies and plans. He’s been in trouble before. He’s suspected of a homicide inside the CIA. It all fits.”

  “But something’s bothering you about him?” Grayer asked. He’d learned how to read me pretty well already.

  “According to everything I’ve read, he’s never worked closely with anyone before. Hawkins has always been a loner, at least until now. He seems to have problems relating to women, ot
her than his sister in Silver Spring. I don’t understand how Jill would fit in with him. I don’t see Hawkins suddenly working with a woman.”

  “Maybe he finally found a soul mate. It happens,” Hamerman said. I doubted that Hamerman ever had.

  “What else pops out about Hawkins?” Jay Grayer continued to probe. He shut his eyes as he listened.

  “All his FBI psych profiles and workups suggest a potential loose cannon. I don’t know how they justified keeping him active for all those years in Asia and South America. Here’s the interesting part. Hawkins can get committed to causes that he believes in, though. He strongly believes in the importance of intelligence for our national defense. President Byrnes doesn’t, and he’s said so publicly several times. That could explain the Jack and Jill scenario. Could explain it. Hawkins is experienced and resourceful enough to pull off an assassination. He definitely could be Jack. If he is, he will be very hard to stop.”

  We were starting to cross the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Manhattan. New York, New York. The presidential motorcade was a strange, eerie parade of wailing sirens and bright flashing lights. The island of Manhattan lay straight ahead of us.

  New York looked amazingly huge and imposing, capable of swallowing us whole. Anything can happen here, I was thinking, and I’m sure Don Hamerman and Jay Grayer were, too.

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bam!

  The three of us jumped forward in the backseat of the town car. I had my hand on my gun, ready for almost anything, ready for Jack and Jill.

  We all stared in horror at the President’s car up ahead— Stagecoach. There was total silence in our car. Awful silence. Then we began to laugh.

  The loud noises hadn’t been gunshots. They just sounded like it. They were false alarms. But it was chilling all the same.