Alex Cross 03 - Jack & Jill

by James Patterson

  She was still trembling. She had suffered a horrible, unspeakable loss. We had both spent a night in hell. “I can’t feel anything. Everything is so unreal,” she told me. “I know this isn’t a nightmare, and yet I keep thinking that it has to be one.”

  Sampson drove me home at one in the morning. My eyes felt lidless. My brain was still going at a million miles an hour, still buzzing loudly, still overheated.

  What was our world coming to? Gary Soneji? Bundy? The Hillside Strangler? Koresh? McVeigh? On and on and on. Gandhi was asked once what he thought of Western civilization. He replied, “I think it could be a good idea.”

  I don’t cry too much. I can’t. The same is true for a lot of police officers I know. I wish I could cry sometimes, let it all out, release the fear and the venom, but it isn’t that easy. Something has gotten blocked up inside.

  I sat on the stairs inside our house. I had been on my way to my bedroom, but I hadn’t made it. I was trying to cry, but I couldn’t.

  I thought about my wife, Maria, who was killed in a drive-by shooting a few years back. Maria and I had fit together beautifully. That wasn’t just selective memory on my part. I knew how good love could be—I knew it was the best thing I’d ever done in my life—and yet here I was alone. I was taking chances with my life. I kept telling everybody that I was all right, but I wasn’t.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there in the darkness with my thoughts. Maybe ten minutes, maybe it was much more than that. The house was quiet in a familiar, almost comfortable way, but I couldn’t be soothed that night.

  I listened to sounds that I had been hearing for years. I remembered being a small boy there, growing up with Nana, wondering what I would become someday. Now I knew the answer to that question. I was a multiple-homicide expert who got to work the biggest, nastiest cases. I was the dragonslayer.

  I finally climbed the rest of the stairs and stopped in at Damon and Jannie’s room. The two of them were fast asleep in the bedroom they share in our small house.

  I love the way Damon and Jannie sleep, the trusting, innocent ways of my young son and daughter. I can watch them for long stretches, even on a howling-bad night like this one. I can’t count how many times I have peeked in and just stood in the doorway. They keep me going, keep me from flying apart some nights.

  They’d gone to sleep wearing funky, heart-shaped sunglasses like the ones the kids wear in the singing group called Innocence. It was cute as hell. Precious, too. I sat on the edge of Jannie’s bed. I quietly took off my boots and carefully laid them on the floor without making any noise.

  Then I stretched myself out across the bottom of both their beds. I listened to my bones crack. I wanted to be near my kids, to be with them, for all of us to be safe. It didn’t seem too much to ask out of life, too much reward for the day I had just lived through.

  I gently kissed the rubber-soled slipper-sock of Jannie’s pajamas.

  I laid my hand very lightly against Damon’s cool bare leg.

  I finally closed my eyes, and I tried to push the rushing scenes of murder and chaos out of my mind. I couldn’t do it. The monsters were everywhere that night. They truly were all around me.

  There are so goddamn many of them. Wave upon wave, it seems. Young and old, and everything in between. Where are these monsters coming from in America? What has created them?

  Lying there alongside my two children, I finally was able to sleep somehow. For a few hours, I was able to forget the most horrifying thing of all, the reason for my extreme sorrow and upset.

  I had heard the news before I left the Johnson house. President Thomas Byrnes had died early that morning.

  CHAPTER

  103

  I WAS HOLDING and gently petting Rosie the cat. I had the kitchen door open and peered outside, squinted at Sampson.

  He stood in a freezing-cold rain. He looked like a big, dark boulder in the teeming rainstorm, or maybe it was hail that he was weathering so stoically.

  “The nightmare continues,” he said to me. A simple declarative sentence. Devastating.

  “Yeah, doesn’t it, though? But maybe I don’t care about it anymore.”

  “Uh-huh. And maybe this is the year the Bullets win the NBA championship, the Orioles win the World Series, and the rag-gedyass Redskins go to the Super Bowl. You just never know.”

  A day had passed since the long night at the Johnson house, since the even longer morning in New York City. Not nearly enough time for any kind of healing, or even proper grieving. President Edward Mahoney had been sworn in the day before.

  It was necessary according to law, but it almost seemed indecent to me.

  I had on dungarees and a white T-shirt. Bare feet on a cold linoleum floor. Steaming coffee mug in hand. I was convalescing nicely. I hadn’t washed off my whiskers, as Jannie calls the act of shaving. I was almost feeling human again.

  I hadn’t asked Sampson in yet, either.

  “Morning, Sugar,” Sampson persisted. Then he rolled back his upper lip and showed off some teeth. His smile was brutally joyful. I finally had to smile back at my friend and nemesis.

  It was a little past nine o’clock and I had just gotten up. This was late for me. It was shameful behavior by Nana’s standards. I was still sleep-deprived, trauma-shocked, in danger of losing the rest of my mind, throwing up, something shitty and unexpected. But I was also much better. I looked good; I looked fine.

  “Aren’t you even going to say good morning?” Sampson asked, pretending to be hurt.

  “Morning, John. I don’t even want to know about it,” I said to him. “Whatever it is that brings you here this cold and bleak morning.”

  “First intelligent thing I’ve heard out of your mouth in years,” Sampson said, “but I’m afraid I don’t believe it. You want to know everything. You need to know everything, Alex. That’s why you read four newspapers every damn morning.”

  “I don’t want to know, either,” Nana contributed from behind me in the kitchen. She had been up for hours, of course. “I don’t need to know. Shoo, fly. Go fry some ice. Take a long walk off a short dock, Johnnyboy.”

  “We got time for breakfast?” I finally asked him.

  “Not really,” he said, careful to keep his smile turned on, “but let’s eat, anyway. Who could resist?”

  “He invited you, not me,” Nana warned from over by her hot stove.

  She was kidding Sampson. She loves him as if he were her own son, as if he were my physically bigger brother. She made the two of us scrambled eggs, homemade sausage, home fries, toast. She knows how to cook and could easily feed the entire Washington Redskins team at training camp. That would be no problem for Nana.

  Sampson waited until we had finished eating before he got back into it, whatever it was, whatever had happened now. His dark little secret. It may seem odd—but when your life is filled with homicides and other tragedies, you have to learn to take time for yourself. The homicides will still be there. The homicides are always there.

  “Your Mister Grayer called me a little while ago,” Sampson said as he poured his third cup of coffee. “He said to let you have a couple days off, that they could handle this. Them, like the great old horror flick that-used to scare the hell out of us.”

  “That, what you just said, makes me suspicious and fearful right away. Handle what?” I asked.

  I was finishing the last of half a loaf of cinnamon toast made from thick homemade bread. It was, honestly, quite seriously, a taste of heaven. Nana claims that she’s been there, stolen several recipes. I tend to believe her. I’ve seen and tasted the proof of her tale.

  Sampson glanced at his wristwatch, an ancient Bulova given to him by his father when he was fourteen.

  “They’re looking over Jill’s office in the White House right about now. Then they’re going to her apartment on Twenty-fourth Street. You want to go? As my guest? Got you a guest pass, just in case.”

  Of course I wanted to be there. I had to go. I needed to know everything abou
t Jill, just as Sampson had said I did.

  “You are the devil,” Nana hissed at Sampson.

  “Thank you, Nana.” He beamed bright eyes and a thousand and one teeth. “High praise, indeed.”

  CHAPTER

  104

  WE DROVE to Sara Rosen’s apartment in Sampson’s slippery-quick black Nissan. Nana’s hot breakfast had brought me back to the real world at least. I was feeling partially revived. Physically, if not emotionally.

  I was already highly intrigued about visiting Jill’s home. I wanted to see her office at the White House, too, but figured that could wait a day or two. But her house. That was irresistible for the detective, and for the psychologist.

  Sara Rosen lived in a ten-story building on Twenty-fourth and K. The building had an officious front-desk “captain” who studied our police IDs and then reluctantly let us proceed. The lobby was cheery otherwise. Carpeted, lots of large potted plants. Not the kind of building where anyone would expect to find an assassin.

  But Jill had lived right here, hadn’t she?

  Actually, the apartment fit the profile we had of Sara Rosen. She was the only child of an Army colonel and a high school English teacher. She had grown up in Aberdeen, Maryland, then gone to Hollins College in Virginia. She had majored in history and English, graduating with honors. She’d come to Washington sixteen years ago, when she was twenty-one. She had never married, though she’d had several boyfriends over the years. Some of the staff at the White House press and communications offices called her “the sexy spinster.”

  Her apartment was on the fifth floor of the ten-story building. It was bright, with a view of an interior courtyard. The FBI was already at work inside. Chopin came softly from a stereo. It was a relaxed atmosphere, almost pleasant, devil-may-care. The case was, after all, closed.

  Sampson and I spent the next few hours with the Feebie technicians who were searching the apartment for anything that might give the Bureau a clue about Sara Rosen.

  Jill had lived right there.

  Who the hell were you, Jill? How did this happen to you? What happened, Jill? Talk to us. You know you want to talk, lonely girl.

  Her apartment was a one-bedroom with a small den, and we would examine every square inch of it. The woman who had lived here had helped to murder President Thomas Byrnes. The den had been used as an editing room for their film. The apartment had historical importance now. For as long as this building stood, people would point at it and say, “That’s where Jill lived.”

  She had bought anonymous-looking furniture in a country-club style. They were middle-class trappings. A sofa and armchair made of brushed cotton twill. Local furniture store tags: Mastercraft Interiors, Colony House in Arlington. Cool, cold colors in every room. Lots of ivory-colored things at Jill’s place. An ice-blue, patterned area rug. A pale, distressed pine armoire.

  Several frames on the wall contained matted Christmas cards and letters from White House notables: the current press secretary, the chief of staff, even a brief note from Nancy Reagan. There were no pictures of any of the “enemies” mentioned to me by President Byrnes. Sara Rosen was a secret starfucker, wasn’t she? Had Jack been a star for her? Was Jack really Kevin Hawkins?

  Talk to us, Jill. I know you want to talk Tell us what really happened. Give us a clue.

  Sitting out on a small rolltop desk were mailings from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, both conservative organizations. There were several copies of U.S. News & World Report, Southern Living, Gourmet.

  Also flyers about future poetry readings at Chapters on K Street, and Politics and Prose, bookstores in the Washington area. Was Jill the poet?

  A poem had been cut from a book and taped to the wall above the desk.

  How dreary—to be—Somebody!

  How public—like a Frog—

  To tell one’s name—the live-long June—

  To an admiring Bog!

  —Emily Dickinson

  Emily Dickinson apparently had the same opinion of celebrities as Jack and Jill.

  The walls of the den and bedroom were covered with books. The walls were bookcases. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. High-and low-brow stuff. Jill the reader. Jill the loner. Jill the sexy spinster.

  Who are you, Jill? Who are you, Sara Rosen?

  There was even one bit of evidence that showed a sense of humor. A sign was framed in the front hallway: use an accordion, go to jail. That’s the law.

  Who are you, Sara-Jill?

  Did anybody really care about you before now? Why did you help to commit this horrible crime? Was it worth it? To die like this, a lonely spinster? Who killed you, Jill? Was it Jack?

  If I found one indisputable piece of truth, just one, all the rest would follow, and we would finally understand. I wanted to believe that it could go like that.

  I looked through Jill’s clothes closets. I found conservative business suits mostly in dark colors. Labels that told me Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor. Low pumps, running shoes, casual flats. There were several sweatsuits for running and exercise.

  Not many evening dresses for parties, for fun.

  Who were you, Sara?

  I searched for false walls, false bottoms, anywhere that she might have kept private notes, something that might help us to close this case forever, or open it wide.

  C’mon, Sara, let us in on your secret life. Tell us who you really were.

  What kept you going, Jill? Who were you, Sara? Sexy spinster? You want us to know. I know you do. You’re still in this apartment. I can feel it. I can feel your loneliness everywhere I look.

  You want us to know something. What is it, Sara? Give us one more rhyme. Just one.

  Sampson came up behind me while I was standing at a bedroom window overlooking the courtyard. I was thinking about all the possibilities the case held.

  “You got it solved yet? Got it all figured out, Sweets?”

  “Not yet. There’s something more, though. Give me another couple of days here.”

  Sampson groaned at the thought. And so did I. But I knew I would come back here. Sara Rosen had left something for us to remember her by. I was almost sure of it.

  Jill the poet.

  CHAPTER

  105

  MAYBE I WAS a glutton for crime and punishment, but I came back alone to her apartment very early the following morning. I was there by eight, long before anyone else. I wandered back and forth in the small apartment, nibbling from an open box of Nutri-Grain.

  Something was still bothering me about the sexy spinster and her hideaway in Foggy Bottom. Detective’s hunch. Psychologist’s intuition.

  For nearly an hour, I sat crouched at a window seat that looked out on K Street. I fixated on a bus shelter poster for a Calvin Klein perfume called Escape. The model in the poster looked unbearably sad and forlorn. Like Jill? Someone had written a thought balloon above the model’s head. It read: “Someone feed me, please.”

  What gave Sara Rosen sustenance? I wondered as I peered out into the D.C. ether. What was her secret? What drove her to the madness of celebrity stalking—or whatever she had been doing before she was killed in the Peninsula Hotel? She had been murdered in New York. What was her connection to Jack?

  What was the whole story? What was the real story? What secret still hadn’t been unlocked?

  I started in on the massive collection of books that dominated every room in the apartment, even the kitchen. Sara had been a voracious reader. Mostly literature and history, nearly all of it American. Sara the intellectual; Sara the real smart cookie.

  Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger. Special Trust by Robert McFarland. Caveat by Alexander Haig. Kissinger by Walter Isaacson. On and on and on. Fiction by Anne Tyler, Robertson Davies, Annie Proulx, but also Robert Ludlum and John Grisham. Poetry by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. A volume entitled Woman Alone.

  I opened each book, then carefully shook it out. There were well over a thousand volumes in the apartment. Maybe a couple of thousand. Lots
of books to look through.

  There were handwritten pages of notes stuffed into some of the books. Jottings Sara had made. I read every loose scrap. The hours went by. Meals were skipped. I didn’t much care.

  Inside a biography of Napoleon and Josephine, Sara Rosen had written “N. considered high intelligence an aberration in women. Stroked J.’s breasts in public. Cur. But J. got her just deserts. Cunt”

  Jill the poet. Jill the book lover. The mystery, the fantasy woman, the enigma. The killer.

  There were several videotapes of movies in the den, and I began to open each of the containers.

  Sara Rosen’s film collection featured well-known romances, mystery thrillers, and romantic thrillers. The Prince of Tides, No Way Out, Disclosure, The Godfather trilogy, Gone With the Wind, An Officer and a Gentleman.

  She also seemed to like older movies, especially noir mysteries: Raymond Chandler, James Cain, Hitchcock.

  I opened every single cassette, row by row, every box. I thought it was important, especially with someone as orderly as Sara. If Sampson had been around, I wouldn’t have heard the end of it. He would have called me crazier than Jack or Jill.

  I opened a cassette box for Hitchcock’s Notorious. I didn’t remember ever seeing the film myself, but one of Hitchcock’s favorite male leads, Cary Grant, was featured on the box cover.

  I found an unmarked cassette inside the box: It didn’t look like a movie. Curious, I popped the cassette into the VCR. It was the fourth or fifth unmarked cassette that I had viewed so far.

  The film wasn’t Notorious.

  I found myself looking at footage of the murder of Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick.

  This was apparently the uncut version, which ran considerably longer than the film that had been sent to CNN.

  The extra footage was even more disturbing and graphic than what had been viewed on the TV news network. The fear in Senator Fitzpatrick’s voice was terrible to hear. He begged the killers for his life, then he began to cry, to sob loudly. That part had been carefully edited from the CNN tape. It was too strong. It was brutal beyond belief. It put Jack and Jill in the worst possible light.