Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

by Patterson, James

  A police cruiser was waiting at Andrews as promised. Somebody had put together material for me on Daniel Boudreaux. The boy had been under a psychiatrist's care since he was seven. He had been severely depressed. He'd apparently committed bizarre acts of animal torture as early as seven. Daniel Boudreaux's real mother had died during his infancy, and he blamed himself. His real father had committed suicide. The father had been a state trooper in Virginia. Another cop, I noted. Probably some kind of transference going on inside the boy's head.

  I recognized Summer Street as soon as we branched off the John Hanson Highway. A detective from Prince Georges County sat with me in the backseat of the cruiser. His name was Henry Fornier. He tried to brief me on the hostage situation as best he could under the bizarre circumstances.

  “As we understand it, Dr. Cross, George Johnson has been shot, and he may be dead in the house. The boy won't allow the body to be removed or to receive any medical attention,” Officer Fornier told me. “He's a nasty bastard, I'll tell you. A real little prick.”

  “Boudreaux was being treated for his anger, his depression and rage cycles, with Depakote. I'll bet anything that he's off it now,” I said. I was thinking out loud, trying to prepare myself for whatever was coming just a few blocks up this peaceful-looking street.

  It didn't matter that the Boudreaux boy was thirteen years old. He had already killed five times. That's what he did: he killed.

  Another monster. A very young, horrifying monster.

  I spotted Sampson, who was half a head taller than the other policemen stationed outside the Johnson house. I tried to take in everything. There were scores of police, but also soldiers in riot gear with military camouflage at the scene. Cars and trucks with government license plates were parked all over the street.

  I walked right over to Sampson. He knew the things I needed to hear, and he would know how to-talk to me. “Hey there, Sugar,” he greeted me with a hint of his usual ironic smile. “Glad you could make it to the party.”

  “Yeah, nice to see you, too,” I said.

  “Friend of yours wants to see you. Wants to talk the talk with Dr. Cross. You've got the damnedest friends.”

  “Yeah. I sure do,” I said to Sampson. He was one of them.

  “They're holding back firepower because he's a kid? Is that what's going on so far?”

  Sampson nodded. I had it right. “He's just another stone killer, Alex,” he said. “You remember that. He's just another killer.”

  A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD MURDERER.

  I began to pay very close attention to the staging area that had been set up around the perimeter of the Johnson house. Even relatively small, local police forces were getting good at this sort of thing. Terror was invading towns with names like Ruby Ridge and Waco, and now, Mitchellville.

  A late-model, dark blue van with its back doors open held TV monitors, state-of-the-art sound equipment, phones, a desktop workstation. A techie was crouched near a windblown willow tree listening to the house with a microphone gun. The gun could pick up voices from well over a hundred yards.

  Surveillance shots and also assorted photos of the boy were tacked to a board propped against a squad car. A helicopter was spraying high-intensity beams on the rooftops and trees. Here the hostage drama was unfolding as we know and love it.

  In suburbia this time.

  A thirteen-year-old boy named Daniel Boudreaux.

  Just another stone killer.

  “Who do they have talking to him?” I asked Sampson as we wandered closer to the house. I spotted a black Lexus parked in the driveway George Johnson's car? “Who's the negotiator on this?”

  “They got Paul Losi down here as soon as they found out about the hostage situation, and how goddamn bad it was.”

  I nodded and felt a little relief at the choice of a negotiator.

  “That's good. Losi is tough. He's good under pressure, too. How is the boy communicating from the house?”

  "At first, over the phone lines. Then he demanded a megaphone.

  Threw a real tantrum. Threatened to shoot the teacher and himself on the spot. So the bad boy got his own blowhorn.

  He uses that now. He and Paul Losi are not exactly what you call 'hitting it off.“”

  “How about Christine Johnson? She still okay? What do you hear?”

  “Appears to be all right, so far. She's been cool under fire. We think she's holding the bad boy in control somehow, but just barely She's tough.”

  That much I knew already She's even tougher than you are, Daddy. I hoped Damon was one hundred percent right. I hoped she was tougher than all of us.

  George Pittman wandered up beside Sampson and me while we were talking. The chief of detectives was the last person I wanted to see then, absolutely the last. I still suspected he was the one who had “volunteered” me to the White House. I swallowed any anger I was feeling; swallowed my pride, too.

  “FBI has sharpshooters in place,” Pittman informed us.

  “Trouble is, the powers won't let us use them. The little bastard's been out in the open a couple of times.”

  I stayed even and calm with Pittman. He still had a gun to my head. We both knew it. "Trouble is, the killer is thirteen years old.

  He's probably suicidal," I said. I was making an educated guess, but I was almost certain it was the right one. He had cornered himself in the Johnson house, then started screaming come and get me.

  Pittman's face became a dark scowl. His face was tinged with red down to his bull neck. “He thinks the five murders he's committed are funny Little fucker told the negotiator that already He laughs about the murders. He's asking for you specifically Now how do you feel about the sharpshooters?” Pittman came back at me before he walked away.

  Sampson shook his head. “Don't even think about going in there to play games with Dennis the Menace,” he said.

  “I need to understand him better. I have to talk to him to do that,” I muttered and looked at the Johnson house. There were plenty of lights on downstairs. None up on the second floor.

  “You understand him too goddamn much already, though you'd deny it. You understand so much about the crazies, you're going over the edge yourself. You hear me? You understand that?”

  I did understand. I had a fair idea of my own strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time, anyway. Maybe not on a night like this one, though.

  A voice on a megaphone interrupted us. The Sojourner Truth School killer had decided to speak.

  “Hey! Hey, out there! Hey, you dumb bastards! Did you forget something? Remember me?”

  I got to hear Danny Boudreaux for the first time. He sounded like a boy. Nasal, high-pitched, ordinary as hell. Thirteen years old.

  “You sons of bitches are screwing with my head, aren't you?”

  he screeched. “I'll answer my ownquestion. Yeah, you are! You're fucking with the wrong falcon.”

  Paul Losi blew once on his bullhorn. “Hold on. That's really not the case, Danny. You've been in control all the way so far. You know that, Danny Let's be fair about this.”

  “Bullshit!” Danny Boudreaux answered back angrily. "That's so much bullshit, it makes me sick to the gills just to hear it.

  You make me sick, Losi. You also make me super pissed-off, you know that, Losi?"

  “Tell me what the problem is.” The negotiator maintained a cool head under fire. "Talk to me, Danny. I want to talk to you.

  I know you might not believe that, but I do."

  "I know you do, asshole. It's your job to keep me on the line.

  Trouble is, you cheated, you lied, you said you loved me. You lied! So nowyou're off my team. Not one more word from you, or I'll murder Mrs. Johnson. It'll be your fault.

  "I'll kill her now. I swear to God, I will. Even though she was nice enough to make me a fried egg sandwich before. BANG!...

  BANG!... SHE'S DEAD!"

  The police were everywhere outside the Johnson house. They began to lower their dark Plexiglas face masks. Riot shields were
slowly raised. The forces were getting ready to rush the house. If they did, Christine Johnson would very likely die.

  “What is your problem?” the negotiator cautiously asked the boy “Talk to me. We'll work it out, Danny. We can come to a solution that works for you. What's the problem?”

  For a while it was eerily quiet on the front lawn and on the street. I could hear the wind rush through willow and evergreen trees.

  Then Danny Boudreaux screamed out.

  "What's my problem? What's my problem? You're such aphony asshole, is part of my problem.... The other part is that the man is here. Alex Cross is here, and you didn't tell me. I had to find out on the TV news]

  “You have exactly thirty seconds, Detective Cross. Make that twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. I can't wait to meet you, sucker. I can't wait for this. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six. Twenty-five...”

  The Sojourner Truth School killer was calling the shots. A thirteen-year-old boy A command performance.

  “THIS IS ALEX CROSS,” I called out to the teenage murderer. I was standing on the outer edge of the Johnson's frostbitten lawn.

  I didn't need a megaphone for Danny Boudreaux to hear me. Your detective is here. Everything is going just the way you want it to go.

  “This is Detective Cross,” I called out again. "You're right, I'm here. I just arrived, though. I came because you asked for me.

  We're taking this seriously Nobody's messing around with you.

  Nobody would do that."

  Not yet, anyway, Give me half a chance, though, and I'll mess with you good. I remembered poor little Shanelle Green. I remembered seven-year-old Vernon Wheatley, I thought about Christine Johnson trapped inside with the young killer who had shot her husband before her eyes. I wanted the chance to mess with Daniel Boudreaux.

  Boudreaux suddenly laughed into his megaphone -- a high-pitched girlish giggle. Spooky as hell. A few people in the crowd of onlookers and ambulance-chasers laughed along with the boy, Nice to know you have friends out there.

  "Well, it's about time, Detective Alex Cross. It's so nice that you can fit me into your busy schedule. Mrs. Johnson thinks so, too.

  We're here waiting, waiting, waiting for you... so c'mon in the house. Let's have a party"

  The boy was openly challenging me and my authority, He needed to be the one in charge. I was charting everything in my head, keeping track of his every move, but also the sequence.

  Paranoid schizophrenic was a possible diagnosis. Bipolar or conduct disorder was a better guess. I needed to talk to him to find out the rest.

  Danny Boudreaux seemed coherent, anyway, He appeared to be following actions in real time. I wondered if he might be taking his Depakote again.

  A voice close behind me said, “Alex, come over here, goddammit. I want to talk to you. Alex, come here.”

  I turned around and faced the music. Sampson was scowling from ear to ear. “We don't need another hostage in there,” he said in no uncertain terms. He was angry with me already His eyes were dark beads, his brow deeply furrowed. “You didn't hear him raving before, through most of last night. The bad boy is real crazy, The boy is crazy as shit, Alex. All he wants to do is kill somebody else.”

  “I think I'll be all right with him,” I said. “He's my type of boy, Gary Soneji, Casanova, Danny Boudreaux. Besides, I don't have a choice.”

  “You have a choice, Sugar. You just don't have any good sense.”

  I looked back at the house. Christine Johnson was in there with the killer. If I didn't go in, he'd kill her. He'd said so, and I believed him. What choice did that leave me? Besides, no good deed goes unpunished, right?

  Chief Pittman signaled that I had the go-ahead from him. It was up to me. Doctor-Detective Cross.

  I sucked in a deep breath and began to walk across the wet, springy front lawn to the house. The news photographers took a flurry of flashshots in the few seconds it took me to move to the front door. Suddenly, all the TV cameras were aimed at me.

  I was definitely concerned about Danny Boudreaux. He was incredibly dangerous right now. He'd been on a killing spree.

  Five indiscriminate murders within the last few weeks. Now he was cornered. Even worse, he had cornered himself.

  My hand reached out for the front doorknob. I was feeling numb and a little out of it. My vision was tunneled. I focused on the whitewashed door and nothing else.

  “It's open.” A voice came from behind the door.

  A boy's voice. A little raspy. Small and fragile without the megaphone to amplify it.

  I pushed open the front door and finally saw the Truth School killer in all of his insane glory.

  Danny Boudreaux wasn't much more than five three or four.

  He had thin, squinty eyes like a rodent's, large ears, a bad buzz haircut. He was an odd-looking boy, clearly an outcast, a freak.

  I sensed that other kids wouldn't like him much, that he was a loner, and had been for all of his life.

  He had a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic aimed chest-high at me.

  “Military school,” he reminded me. “I'm an expert marksman, Detective Cross. I have no difficulty with human targets.”

  MY HEART was clanging around inside the tight metal cage that was supposed to be my chest. The loud buzzing sound in my head was still there, like irritating static on a radio. I didn't feel much like a police hero. I felt scared. It was worse than usual. Maybe because the killer was thirteen years old.

  Danny Boudreaux knew how to use the semiautomatic clenched in his hand, and sooner or later, he would. The only thing in the universe that mattered to me right then was to get that Smith & Wesson away from him.

  The image before me commanded all my attention: a thin, pimply thirteen-year-old boy with a powerful, deadly handgun.

  A semiautomatic was pointed at my heart. Although Boudreaux's hand was steady enough, he appeared to be more mentally and physically out of it than I had thought. He was probably decompensating. His behavior was likely to become increasingly more bizarre. His instability was obvious and scary to confront.

  It was in his eyes. His eyes darted about like birds caught in a glass bubble.

  He was weaving slightly as he stood in the foyer of the Johnson house. He waved the gun in small circles at me. He was wearing a strange sweatshirt with the printed message HAppy, HAPPY. JOY, JOY.

  His short hair was dripping wet with perspiration. His glasses were slightly fogged around the edges. Behind the glasses, his eyes were glazed and shiny-wet. He looked the part of the Truth School killer. I doubted that anyone had ever liked Danny Boudreaux too much. I didn't.

  His wiry body suddenly snapped rigidly to attention. “Welcome on board, Detective Cross, sir!”

  “Hello, Danny,” I spoke to him in as low-key and nonthreatening a way as I could. “You called, and now I'm here.” I'm the one who is going to take your ass down.

  He kept his distance. He was a jangle of raw nerves and incredible, pent-up anger. He was a puppet without a puppeteer.

  There was no way to predict how this was going to go from here.

  He was almost definitely suffering a withdrawal from his prescription drugs. Danny Boudreaux had the whole package of symptoms: aggression, depression, psychosis, hyperactivity, behavioral deterioration.

  A thirteen-year-old, stone-cold killer. How do I get the gun away from him?

  Christine Johnson was standing in the darkened living room behind him. She didn't move. She looked very distant in the background and small, in spite of her height. She looked frightened, sad, tired.

  To her right was an exquisitely carved fireplace that looked as if it had been scavenged from some big-city brownstone. I hadn't seen much of the living room before. I studied it closely now. I was looking for some kind of weapon. Anything to help us.

  George Johnson lay on the off-white marble floor in the foyer.

  Christine or the boy had placed a red plaid blanket over the body The slain lawyer looked as if he'd lain down to take a nap.

 
; “Christine, are you okay?” I called across the room. She started to speak, then stopped herself.

  “She's fine, man. She's mighty fine pudding. She's all right,”

  Boudreaux snapped at me. He slurred his words, so that they sounded like “cheese alriii.”

  “She's a-okay, all right. I'm the one who's losing it here. This is about me.”

  “I can understand how tired you are, Danny,” I said to him.

  I suspected that he would be experiencing dizziness, impaired concentration, cottonmouth.

  “Yeah. You got that right. What else do you have to say for yourself? Any more nuggets of wisdom about my delusional behavior?”

  Wham! He suddenly kicked shut the front door behind us.

  More impulsive behavior. I had definitely joined the party. He was still very careful to keep his distance -- he kept the semi-automatic always pointed at me.

  “I can shoot this son of a bitch real well,” he said,just in case I'd missed the point before. It reinforced my notion of his extreme paranoia, his agitation and nervousness.

  He was overly concerned about how I viewed him, how competent I judged him to be. He had me confused with his real father.

  The policeman father who had deserted him and his mother.

  I'd just learned about the connection on the ride over, but it made sense. It tracked perfectly, actually I reminded myself that this nervous, skinny, pathetic boy was a murderer. It wasn't hard for me to hate such a fiend. Still, there was also something tragically sad about the boy There was something so lonely and freakish about Daniel Boudreaux.

  “I believe that you can shoot extremely well,” I told him quietly I knew it was what he wanted to hear.

  I believe you.

  I believe you are a stone-cold killer. I believe you are a young monster, and probably unredeemable.

  How do I get your gun?

  I believe I may have to kill you before you kill me or Christine Johnson.

  I LOOKED at the words Happy, Happy. JOY, JOY. I knew exactly where the saying on his sweatshirt came from.