Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

by Patterson, James

  When I came up again, I fired. I carefully aimed away from the little girl. But I fired.

  I went down in the crouch again, hidden behind the dark tank.

  I knew I hadn't hit anybody My shot had only been a warning, a final one. Andrew Klauk had been right when we'd talked in the Sterlings' backyard. The CIA “ghost” was the one who told me all I needed to know right now -- the game is played with no rules.

  “Jeanne, put the goddamn gun down!” I called to her. “Your little girl is in danger.”

  No answer came back, just terrifying silence.

  Jeanne Sterling would do whatever it took to get away. She had murdered a president, ordered it done, helped plan every step.

  Would Jeanne Sterling really sacrifice her own child, though?

  For what? For money? A cause she and her husband believed in?

  What cause could be worth the life of a president? Of your own child?

  Take her alive. Even if she deserves to die here in this garage.

  Execution-style.

  I popped up again. I fired a second shot into the car windJack and shield -- the driver's side, far right. Glass shattered all over the garage. Glass fragments sprayed against the ceiling, then rained back down again.

  The noise was deafening in the closed space. Karon was sobbing and screeching.

  I could see Jeanne Sterling through the mosaic of broken windshield glass. There was blood all over one side of her face.

  She looked startled and shocked. It's one thing to plan a murder, quite another to be shot at. Io be wounded. To take a hit. Io feel that deadly thud in your own body I took three fast steps toward the Volvo station wagon.

  I grabbed the car door and yanked it open. I kept my head down low, close to my chest. My teeth were gritted so hard that they hurt.

  I grabbed a full handful of Jeanne Sterling's blond hair. Ihen I hit her. I popped Jeanne with a full, hard shot. Same as her husband got. The right side of her face crunched as it met my fist.

  Jeanne Sterling sagged over the steering wheel. She must have had a glassjaw. Jeanne was a killer, but not much of a prizefighter.

  She went out with the first good punch. We had her now. I had taken her down alive.

  We finally had Jack and Jill.

  Her little girl was crying in the front seat, but she wasn't hurt.

  Neither was the mother. I couldn't have done it any easier, any other way We had Jack, and now we had Jill. Maybe we would hear the truth. No -- we would hear the truth!

  I grabbed the little girl and held her tight against me. I wanted to erase all this for her. I didn't want her to remember it. I kept repeating, “It's all right, it's all right. Everything is all right.”

  It wasn't, though. I doubted it ever would be again. Not for the Sterling children, not for my own kids. Not for any of us.

  There are no rules anymore.

  THE NIGHT of the capture of Jeanne and Brett Sterling, the television networks were filled with the powerful, highly disturbing story. I did a brief interview with CNN, but mostly I declined the attention. I went home and stayed there.

  President Edward Mahoney delivered a statement at nine.

  Jack and Jill had wanted Edward Mahoney to be president, I couldn't help thinking as I watched him address hundreds of millions of people around the world. Maybe he was involved with the shooting; maybe not. But someone had wanted him to be president instead of Thomas Byrnes, and Byrnes had distrusted Mahoney.

  All I knew about Mahoney was that he and two Cuban partners had made a fortune in the cable business. Mahoney had then become a popular governor of Florida. I remembered that there had been a lot of money behind his campaign. Look for the money.

  I watched the dramatic three-ring TV circus along with Nana and the kids. Damon andJanelle knew too much to be excluded from the big picture now. From their perspective, their daddy was a hero. I was someone to be proud of, and maybe even listen to and obey every now and again. But probably not.

  Jannie and Rosie the cat cuddled with me on the couch as we watched the nonstop parade of news features on the assassination and the subsequent capture of the real Jack and Jill. Every time I appeared in a film sequence, Jannie gave me a kiss on the cheek. “You approve of your pop?” I asked her after one of her best, loudest smackers.

  . “Yes, very much so,” Jannie told me. "I love seeing you on TV.

  So does Rosie. You're handsome, and you talk real nice. You're my hee-ro."

  “What do you have to say, Damon?” I checked on his royal majesty's reaction to the strange goings-on.

  Damon grinned ear to ear. He couldn't help himself. “Pretty good,” he admitted. “I feel good inside.”

  “I hear you,” I said to my young cub. “You want to give me a hug?”

  He did, so I knew Damon was happy with me for the moment.

  That was important to me.

  “Mater familias?” I asked for Nana's opinion last. She was propped up in her favorite armchair. She hugged herself tightly as she watched the traumatic news coverage with rapt attention and a snide commentary

  “Not familias enough lately,” Nana offered a quick complaint.

  "Well, mostly I agree withJannie and Damon. I don't see why the white Secret Service man is taking most of the credit, though.

  Seems to me that the President got shot on his watch."

  “Maybe he got shot on all of our watches,” I said to her.

  Nana shrugged her deceptively frail-looking shoulders. “At any rate, as always, I am proud of you, Alex. Has nothing to do with the heroics, though. I'm proud of you because of you.”

  “Thank you,” I told Nana. "Nobody can say anything nicer.

  Not to anybody."

  “I know that,” Nana got the last word in; then she finally grinned. “Why do you think I said it?”

  I hadn't been home much during the past four weeks, and we were all hungry for one another's company. We were starved, in fact. I couldn't walk anywhere in the house without one of the kids firmly attached to an arm or leg.

  Even Rosie the cat got into the act. She was definitely family now, and we were all glad she'd somehow found her way to our house.

  I didn't mind any of it. Not one minute of the attention. I was starved myself. I had a quick regret that my wife, Maria, wasn't around to enjoy the special moment, but the rest was okay. Pretty good, actually. Our life was going to get back to normal again now. I vowed it would happen this time.

  The next morning I was up to take Damon over to the Sojourner Truth School. The place was already bouncing back nicely. Innocence has a short memory. I stopped by Christine Johnson's office, but she wasn't back at work yet.

  Nobody knew when she would return to the school, but they all missed her like a cure for the flu. So did I, so did i. There was something special about her. I hoped she was going to be all right.

  I got home at quarter to nine that morning. The house on Fifth Street was incredibly quiet and peaceful. Kind of nice, actually. I put on Billie Holiday: The Legacy 1933-1958. One of my all-time favorites.

  The phone rang about nine. The damn infernal phone.

  It was Jay Grayer. I couldn't imagine why he would be calling me at home. I almost didn't want to hear the reason for his call.

  “Alex, you have to come out to Lorton Prison,” he said in an urgent-sounding voice. “Please come, right now.”

  I BROKE every posted speed limit traveling out to the federal prison in Virginia. My head was spinning, threatening to come right off, to smash through the car windshield. As a homicide detective, you need to think that you're strong and that you can take just about anything that's dished out, but sooner or later you find out you really can't. Nobody can.

  I had been to Lorton Prison a few times before. The kidnapper and mass killer Gary Soneji had been kept in maximum security there once upon a time.

  I arrived about ten in the morning. It was a crisp, blue-skied morning. A few reporters were in the parking lot and on the side la
wns when I arrived.

  “What do you know, Detective Cross?” one of them asked.

  “Beautiful morning,” I said. “You can quote me. Feel free.”

  This was where the Sterlings were being held in custody, where the government had decided to keep them until their trial for the murder of Thomas Byrnes.

  Alex, you have to come out to Lorton Prison. Please come, right now.

  I met Jay Grayer on the fourth floor of the prison building.

  Warden Marion Campbell was there, too. The two of them looked as pale as the institution's stucco walls.

  “Oh, goddamn, Alex,” Dr. Campbell groaned when he saw me approaching. The two of us went back. I took his hand and shook it firmly. “Let's go upstairs,” he said.

  More police and prison personnel were posted outside an examination room on the fifth floor. Grayer and I filed inside behind the warden and his closest aides. My heart was in my throat.

  We had to wear blue surgical masks and clear plastic gloves for the occasion. We were having trouble breathing, even without the masks.

  “Oh, goddammit,” I muttered as we entered the room.

  Jeanne and Brett Sterling were dead.

  The two bodies were laid out on matching stainless steel tables. Both Sterlings were stripped naked. The overhead lighting was bright and harsh. The glare was overpowering.

  The whole scene was beyond my powers of comprehension, beyond anyone's.

  Jack and Jill were dead.

  Jack and Jill had been murdered inside a federal prison.

  “Goddamnit. Goddamn them,” I said into my surgical mask.

  Brett Sterling was well-built and looked powerful even in death. I could imagine him as Sara Rosen's lover. I noticed that the bottoms of his feet were dirty Probably walking barefoot in his cell all night. Pacing? Waiting for someone to come for him?

  Who had gotten inside Lorton and done this? Was he murdered?

  What in the name of God had happened? How could it happen here?

  Jeanne Sterling had pasty-white skin, and she wasn't in good physical shape. She looked much better in tailored gray and blue suits than in the nude.

  Above her black pubic hair was a soft roll of paunch. Her legs were crisscrossed with varicose veins. She'd had a nosebleed either before she died or while she was dying.

  Neither of the Sterlings seemed to have suffered much. Was that a clue for us? They both had been found dead in their cells at the same 5:00 A.M. guard check.

  They had died close to the same time. According to plan? Of course, according to plan. But whose plan was it?

  Jack and Jill came to Lorton Prison... and what happened to them here? What the hell happened out here last night?... Who finally killed Jack and Jill?

  “They both underwent extensive body searches when they were brought here,” Warden Campbell said to Jay and me. “This may have been a joint suicide, but they had to have help, even for that. Someone got them the poison between six last night and early this morning. Somebody got inside their cells.”

  Dr. Marion Campbell looked directly at me. His eyes were bleary and wild and incredibly red-rimmed. “There was a small amount of skin and blood under her right index finger. She fought someone. Jeanne Sterling tried to fight back. She was murdered; at least, I think so. She didn't want to die, Alex.”

  I closed my eyes for a second or two. It didn't help. Everything was the same when I opened them again. Jeanne and Brett Sterling still lay naked and dead on the two stainless steel tables.

  They had been executed. Professionally Without passion.

  That was the eeriest part -- it was almost as if Jack and Jill had been visited and murdered by Jack and Jill.

  Had a “ghost” murdered Jeanne and Brett Sterling? I was afraid we would never know. We weren't supposed to know. We weren't important enough to know the truth.

  Except maybe one tenet, one principle: there are no rules.

  Not for some people, anyway.

  I ALWAYS WANT everything tied up nice and neat with a bright ribbon and bow on the package. I want to be the mastermind dragonslayer on every case. It just doesn't work out that way -- probably wouldn't be any fun if it did.

  I spent the next two and a half days at the Sterling house, working side by side with the Secret Service and FBI. Jay Grayer and Kyle Craig both came out to the house in Chevy Chase. I had an idea in the back of my head that maybe Jeanne Sterling had left us a clue to go on -- something to get back at her murderers.

  Just in case. I figured that she was capable of something nasty and vengeful like that -- her last dirty trick!

  After two and a half days, we didn't find anything in the house.

  If there had been a clue, then someone had gotten into the house first. I didn't discount that possibility

  Kyle Craig and I talked out in the kitchen late the afternoon of the third day We were both pretty well worn to the bone. We opened a couple of Brett Sterling's microbrewery ales and had a chat about life, death, and infinity.

  “You ever hear of the notion -- too many logical suspects?” I asked Kyle as we sipped our beers in the quiet of the Sterling kitchen.

  "Not that specific language, but I can see how it applies here.

  We have scenarios that could implicate the CIA, the military, maybe big business, maybe even President Mahoney History rarely moves in straight lines."

  I nodded at Kyle's answer. As usual, he was a quick study “Thirty-five years after the Kennedy assassination the only thing that's certain is that there was some kind of conspiracy,” I said to him.

  “No way to reconcile the physical evidence- ballistic and medical -- with one shooter in Dallas,” Kyle said.

  “So there's the same goddamn problem -- too many logical suspects. To this day, nobody can rule out the possible involvement of Lyndon Johnson, the Army, a CIA 'black op,' the Mafia, your outfit's old boss. There are such obvious parallels to what's happened here, Kyle. A possible coup d'etat to eliminate a troublemaker in office -- with a much friendlier replacement -- LB J, and now Mahoney -- waiting in the wings. The CIA and the military were extremely angry at both JFK and Thomas Byrnes. The system fiercely resists change.”

  “Keep that in mind, Alex,” Kyle said to me. “The system fiercely resists change, and also troublemakers.”

  I frowned, but nodded my head. “I have it in mind. Thanks for all your help.”

  Kyle reached out his hand and we shook. “Too many logical suspects,” I said. "Is that part of the nasty, badass plot, too? Is that their idea for cover in daylight?

  "It wouldn't surprise me if it was. Nothing surprises me anymore.

  I'm going home to see my kids," I finally said.

  “I can't think of anything better to do,” Kyle said and smiled and waved for me to go on and get out of there.

  I CAME HOME and played with the kids -- tried to be there for them. I kept flashing on the face of Thomas Byrnes, though.

  Occasionally, I saw beautiful little Shanelle Green or Vernon Wheatley or even poor George Johnson, Christine's husband. I saw the corpses of Jeanne and Brett Sterling on those stainless steel gurneys at Lorton Prison.

  I worked some hours at the soup kitchen at St. As over the next few days. I'm “Mr. Peanut Butter Man” there. I ration out the PB&J, and occasionally a little pro bono advice for those more or less unfortunate than myself. I really enjoy the work. I get back even more than I give.

  I couldn't concentrate on much of anything, though. I was there, but I wasn't really there. The concept of no rules was stuck like a fish bone in my throat. I was choking on it. There really were too many suspects to chase down and ultimately solve the murder of Thomas Byrnes. And there were limitations to how much a D.C. cop could do on such a case. It over now, I tried to tell myself, except the parts you will always carry with you.

  One night that week -- late -- I was out on the sun porch. I was scratching Rosie the cat's back and she was purring sweetly.

  I was thinking about playing the piano
, but I didn't do it. No Billie Smith, no Gershwin, no Oscar Peterson. The monsters, the furies, the demons were loose in my mind. They came in all shapes and sizes, all genders, but they were human monsters.

  This was Dante's Divine Comedy, all nine circles, and we were all living here together.

  Finally, I began to play my piano. I played “Star Dust” and then “Body and Soul,” and I was soon lost in the glorious sounds. I didn't think about a call I'd had earlier in the week. I had been suspended from the D.C. police force. It was a disciplinary action. !

  I had struck out at my superior, Chief George Pittman.

  Yes, I had. I was guilty as charged. So what? And now what?

  I heard a knock at the porch door. Then a second rap.

  I wasn't expecting company and didn't want any. I hoped it wasn't Sampson. It was too late for any visitors I needed to see that night.

  I grabbed my gun. Reflex action. Force of habit. Terrifying habit when you stop to think about it -- which I did.

  I rose from the piano bench and went to see who was there.

  After all the bad things that had happened, I almost expected to see the killer Gary Soneji, come to finally get even or at least, to try his luck.

  I opened the back door -- and I found myself smiling. No, I actually glowed. A light went on, or went back on, inside my head. What a nice surprise. I felt much, much better in an instant.

  It just happened that way. Pack up all my cares and woes.

  “I couldn't sleep,” Christine Johnson said to me. I recognized the line I had used once at her house.

  I remembered Damon's line, She's even tougher than you are, Daddy.

  “Hello, Christine. How are you? God, I'm glad it's you,” I whispered.

  “As opposed to?” she asked.

  “Everyone else,” I said.

  I took Christine's hand in mine, and we went inside the house on Fifth Street.

  Home.

  Where there are still rules, and everybody is safe, and the dragonslayer is alive and well.

  IT REALLY DOESN'T END -- the cruel, relentless nightmare, the roller-coaster ride from hell.

  It was Christmas Eve and the stockings were hung from the chimney with care. Damon, Jannie, and I had almost finished decorating the tree -- the final touch being long strings of popcorn and shiny red cranberries.