Jack and Jill

~cPROLOGUE

THE GAMES BEGIN

SAM HARRISON swung his agile body out of the silver blue Ford Aerostar, which he
had parked on Q Street in the Georgetown section of Washington. Horror stories and
games are popular for a good reason, he was thinking as he locked the vehicle and set its
alarm. Not the comfortable sit-around-the-campfire horror tales and games we used to
cherish as kids, but the real-life horror stories that are around us everywhere these days.

Now I'm living one myself. I'm about to become part of the horror.

How easy it is. How terribly, terribly easy to move past the edge and into the darkness.

He had stalked and shadowed Daniel Fitzpatrick for two long weeks. He'd done his job
in New York City, London, Boston, and finally, here in Washington, D.C. Tonight he
was going to murder the United States senator. In cold blood, execution-style. No one
would be able to figure out why. No one would have a clue that might matter later on.

That was the first and most important rule of the game called Jack and Jill.

In many ways this was a textbook celebrity-stalker pattern.

He knew it to be true as he took up his post across from 211 Q Street.

And yet, if anyone bothered to look more closely, it was like no other stalking pattern
before. What he was going to do now was more provocative than secretly observing
Senator Fitzpatrick down obscene numbers of Gleniivet cocktails at The Monocle, his
favorite bar in Washington. This was the truest form of madness, Sam Harrison knew. It
was pure madness. He didn't believe he was mad. He believed only in the validity of the
game of chance.

And then, less than thirty yards across the shiny-wet street -- there was Daniel Fitzpatrick
himself. Right on schedule.

At least, close enough.

He watched the senator stiffly climb out of a gleaming, navy blue Jaguar coupe, a 1996
model. He wore a gray topcoat with a paisley silk scarf. A sleek, slender woman in a
black dress was with him. A Burberrys raincoat was casually thrown over her arm. She
was laughing at something Fitzpatrick had said. She threw her head back like a beautiful,
spirited horse. A wisp of her warm breath met the cool of the night.

The woman was at least twenty years the senator's junior. She wasn't his wife, Sam
knew. Dannyboy Fitzpatrick rarely if ever slept with his wife. The blond woman walked
with a slight limp, which made the two of them even more intriguing. Memorable,
actually Sam Harrison concentrated fiercely Measure twice, measure five times, if
necessary. He took stock of all the details one final time. He had arrived in Georgetown
at eleven-fifteen. He looked as if he belonged in the chic, attractive, fashionable
neighborhood around Q Street. He looked exactly right for the part he was going to play
Avery big part in a very big story, one of the biggest in America's history. Or some
would say American theater.

A leading-man role, to be sure.

He wore professorial, tortoiseshell glasses for the part. He never wore glasses. Didn't
need them.

His hair was light blond. His hair wasn't really blond.

He called himself Sam Harrison. His name wasn't really Sam.

Or Harrison.

For that night's special occasion, he'd carefully selected a soft black cashmere turtleneck,
charcoal gray trousers, which were pleated and cuffed, and light-brown walking boots.
He wasn't really such a dapper, self-absorbed dresser. His thick hair was cut short,
vaguely reminiscent of the actor Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard, one of his least-
favorite movies. He carried a small black duffel bag, swinging it like a baton as he now
walked briskly toward 211. A camcorder was tucked inside the bag.

He planned to capture as much of this as possible on film.

This was history in the making. It really was history: America at the end of its century,
America at the end of an era, America at the end.

At quarter to twelve, he entered 211 through a darkened service entranceway that smelled
strongly of ammonia and of dust and decay He walked up to the fourth floor, where the
senator had his flat, his study, his love nest in the capital.

He reached Daniel Fitzpatrick's door, 4J, at ten minutes to twelve. He was still pretty
much on time. So far, so good. Everything was going exactly as planned.

The highly polished mahogany door opened right in his face.

He stared at an ash-blond woman who was slender and trim and well kept. She was
actually somewhat plainer looking than she had appeared from a distance. It was the
same woman who had gotten out of the blue Jag with Fitzpatrick. The woman with the
limp.

Except for a gold barrette in her hair, a lioness from a trip to the Museum of Modern Art
in New York, and a gold choker, she was gloriously naked.

"Jack," she whispered.

"Jill," he said, and smiled.

IN A DIFFERENT PARTof Washington, in a different world, another would-be killer
was playing an equally terrifying game. He had found an absolutely terrific hiding place
among the thick pines and a few towering, elderly oaks at the center of Garfield Park. He
made himself comfortable inside a kind of tent formed by the overhanging tree limbs and
a few sturdy, overgrown shrubs.

"Let's get busy," he whispered, though no one was in the hiding place with him. This was
going to be a wonderful adventure, a great fantasy. He believed it with his whole heart,
body, and what remained of his soul.

He sat cross-legged on the damp grass and began to work on his face and hair. A tune
from the rock band Hole was blasting from the speakers inside his head. This was really
good stuff. He loved it to death. Disguises and costumes were a rush. They were about
the only thing that let you truly escape, and goddamn, did he ever need to escape.

When he eventually finished with the costume, he emerged from the shadows of the trees.
He had to laugh. He was cracking himself up today This was the best yet. It was so
goofy that it was great. Reminded him of a good joke: Roses are red/violets are blue/I'm
schizophrenic/ad so am I.

Hardy-hat!

He definitely looked like an old, homeless fuck-bum now. He really did look like a
hopeless old fart. Like the mangy character in the rock song "Aqualung." He had put on
a white fright wig and a salt-and-pepper beard from an actor's costume kit. Any slight
failure of his imagination, or skill as a makeup artist, was covered by the floppy hood of
his sweatshirt.

The sweatshirt had }tAPPY, ?IAPPY. JOY, JOY printed on it.

What an incredible, mindblowing adventure this was going to be, he kept thinking.
Happy, happy. Joy, joy. That was the ticket. That said it all. The irony just killed him.

The killer-to-be crossed the park, walking quickly now, almost breaking into a run. He
was headed in the general direction of the Anacostia River.

He began to see people. Strollers, muggers, lovers, whatever the hell they were. Most of
them were black, but that was okay.

That was good, actually. Nobody gave a damn about the blacks in D.C. That was a fact
of life.

"Aqualung, oh-oh-oh, Aqualung," he sang the old rock-and-roll-tune as he walked. It
was from a really great old band called Jethro Tull. He listened to rock music
incessantly, even in his sleep. Earphones on all the time. He had just about memorized
the entire history of rock and roll. If he could just force himself to listen to Hootie and
the Blowfish, he'd have it all down cold.

Hardy-har, he laughed at his Hootie joke. He was in a really fine mood today. This was
such a cool, fucked-up, freaky blast of a head trip. It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times.

Best and worst, worst and best, worst and worse?

He had already selected the spot for the murder. The thicket of spruce trees and
evergreens up close to the Southeast Freeway It was wild and overgrown and nearly
perfect.

The spot was at a ninety-degree angle to a grouping of delapo, yellow-brick row houses
and a popular bodega on Sixth Street in Southeast. He had already scouted there, scoped
the area out, fallen in love with his spot. He could already see kids from the Sojourner
Truth Elementary School traipsing in and out of the corner candy store. The little
buggers were so cute at that age.

Man, I hate cute with a passion you wouldn't believe. Little fucking robots was what
they really were. Mean little parasites, too. Kidz! Everything about them was so kute.

He scrunched down and climbed under the thick, scratchy bushes and got down to serious
business. He began to blow up several latex balloons -- red, orange, blue, yellow ones.

These were big, really colorful suckers that no kids in their wrong mind could resist.
Personally, he had always hated balloons intensely Hated the forced, phony gaiety they
seemed to symbolize. But most kids were ya-ya about balloons. Figured, right?

He tied about a ten-foot length of twine around one balloon.

Then he secured the string to a thick tree branch.

The balloon floated lazily above the old tree. It looked like a pretty, decapitated head.

He waited in his tree hut. He hung out with himself, which he liked to do anyway

"Got to waste some-body to-day," he hummed a little non-song to a non-melody "Got to,
got to. Just gotta, gotta, gotta," he sang and kind of liked the riff.

He heard something move near his hiding place. Something cracked. A branch or

something? Somebody come to visit?
He listened closely. Tree branches were definitely being moved, stepped on, broken.
Everything sounded amplified -- like SNAPPP!

His mind had slipped away and the noise startled the hell out of him, if anybody really
wanted to know the truth. His adrenaline was kicking in like crazy He almost swallowed
his Adam's apple.

Suddenly, the top half of a face appeared, came into his view.
Just the forehead and the whites of someone's eyes.
THE WHITES OF HER EYES!
Peeking through the tree branches at him.
He saw the face of a tiny black girl. Five or six years old, really cute. She saw him, too.

Fair and square.
I SEE YOU, HONEYPiE. YES, I DO. I SEE YOU!
"Hi." He said it real nice and polite, which he could be when he wanted to. He smiled,

and she almost smiled back.

He spoke softly "You want a big balloon? I've got plenty of extra balloons, balloons-aplenty,
balloons galore. Here's a cherry red balloon with your name on it."
The little girl just stared at him. She didn't speak a syllable.
Didn't move. She was afraid of him -- imagine that. Probably confused because he'd said

her name was on one of the balloons.

"Okay, no balloon then. Fine. Forget about the free balloon offer. No balloon for you,
little girl. That's okey-dokey with me.
No free balloon today! No sir!"
"Yesssss, please," she suddenly said. Her brown eyes widened like blossoming flowers.

Beautiful little girl, right? Beautiful, chestnut brown eyes.
"Stop being so shy, girl. Come over here, I'll give you a big, beautiful balloon. Let's see,
I've got stop-sign red, sky blue, Popsicle orange, mellow yellow. Every color in the
rainbow and then some."

He mimicked somebody maybe it was that nutcase Kevin Bacon in The River Wild,
which he'd rented a week or so back.

Two weeks back? Who knew? Who cared! As he was speaking, his hand tightened on
the handle of a miniature baseball bat, which was reinforced with electrical tape. The bat
was eighteen and a half inches long, the kind the local gangbangers used to keep law and
order in the projects.

He continued to speak to the little girl in a happy singsong that was actually sarcastic and
ironic as hell.

"Red one," the girl finally chirped. Of course. She had a red ribbon in her hair. Red is
the color of my true love's love.

She lightly, very tentatively, stepped out into the clearing. He noticed her feet were so
tiny. Like a size minus three. She reached toward the colorful balloons clutched tightly
in his outstretched hand. She didn't seem to notice that his hand was shaking badly.

Behind his back, he gripped the short, powerful ballbat. Then he swung -- real hard.

Happy, happy. Joy, joy.

COULD THEYactually get away with murder -- especially a high-level, provocative
murder like this? Jack was confident they could. It was easier than anyone knew to kill
another human being, or several of them, and never get caught, never even be suspected.
It happened all the time.

Jill was scared and visibly tense, though. He couldn't blame her. In "real life," she was a
Washington careerist, well-bred, bright, certainly not the typical murderous kook you
read about.

Not a very likely Jill, and therefore perfect for her part in the game of games. Almost as
perfect as he was for his.

"He's drunk, completely out," she whispered as they stood in the dark foyer of the
apartment. "It helps that he's such an absolutely repellent snake."

"You know what they say about our Dannyboy He's a very bad senator, but a much worse
date."

A hint of a smile -- a nervous smile -- from her. "Bad joke, but I can vouch for that.
Let's go. Jack."

Jill turned on her bare heels, and he followed close behind.

He watched the slight hitch in her step. Bewitching in its way He watched her slender
figure retreat through a tiny sitting room that was dimly lit by the hallway lamp. This
was the way to the flat's bedroom, he knew.

They walked silently through a small living room. An American flag proudly stood
beside the stone fireplace. The sight of the flag turned his stomach. Color photographs
on the wall of a sailing regatta.somewhere, probably Cape Cod.

"Izzit you, my dear?" a gruff, whiskey-soaked voice thundered from behind the living
room walls.

"Who else could it be?" Jill answered.

Jack and Jill entered the bedroom together. "Surprise party," Jack announced. He had a
Beretta semiautomatic out. It was aimed at the senator's head.

His gun hand was steady, his head very clear now. History' in the making. No chance to
go back now.

Daniel Fitzpatrick bolted up in his bed, surprised and burning mad. "What the bloody
hell? What the... who the frig are you? How the shit did you get in here?" he slurred his
words. His face and neck were bright red.

Jack couldn't help it -- he smiled in spite of everything that was going on. The senator
looked like a beached whale, or perhaps an aging walrus, in his fancy bed.

"I guess you could say I'm your despicable past, finally catching up to you, Senator," he
said. "Now shut up. Please. Let's make this as easy as we possibly can."

He stared at Daniel Fitzpatrick and was reminded of something he'd read somewhere
recently Upon seeing the senator at a speaking engagement, a spectator had remarked,
"My God, hek an old man now." Indeed he was. Fitzpatrick was a white-haired, jowly,
graceless, sprawlingly fat, old white man.

He was also the enemy Jack opened the black duffel bag and handed Jill a pair of
handcuffs. "One hand to each bedpost. Please and thank you."

"It will be my pleasure," she said. There was a simple elegance in the way she spoke,
acted, even the way she moved.

"You're in on this?" Fitzpatrick gasped as he looked around at the blond woman he'd
picked up at the bar in La Colline. He seemed to be actually seeing her for the first time.

Jill smiled. "No, no. I was attracted by your vast, bloated belly, your alcoholic breath."

Jack took out the camcorder and handed it over to Jill. She immediately aimed it at

Senator Fitzpatrick, focused, and started to film. She was good with the camera.
"What in God's name are you doing?" Fitzpatrick asked. His washed-out blue eyes were
wide with astonishment, and then with genuine fear. "What the hell do you want? What's
going on here? Dammit, I'm a United States senator."

Jill began with the shocked and surprised and hurt look on the senator's face. She pulled
out to a wider shot. Oops, a little too wide. Grabbed focus again.

Jack smiled at the inappropriate outburst of bravado. How very Fitzpatrick.
Then, voili! It was as if the whiskey-dullness swirling in his brain suddenly stopped.
Daniel Fitzpatrick finally understood.

"I don't want to die," he whispered.
Tears unexpectedly rolled from his eyes. It was strangely affecting.
"Please don't do this. You don't have to hurt me," he said.
"It doesn't have to be like this. Please, I beg you. Listen to me.
Will you just listen to what I have to say?"
This was incredibly important footage, Jill knew. Academy Award stuff. Perhaps the

documentary film of the century. They needed this for the game of games, for one of the

surprises later on.
Jack walked brislly across the bedroom. He placed the Beretta inches from the senator's
forehead.

This was it. This was where the exquisite game truly began.

Rule two: This is history. What you're doing is important. Never forget that for a single
moment.
"I'm going to kill you, Senator Fitzpatrick. There's nothing for us to talk about. There's

no way out of this. You were a Roman Catholic, so if you believe in God, say a prayer.

Please say one for me, too. Say a prayer for Jack and Jill."
This was gut-check time. He noticed that his hand was shaking a little now. Jill saw it,
too.

He told himself, This is an execution, and it well deserved And this is most definitely a
horror story that I'm in.

He fired once, from a distance of no more than a few inches.
Daniel Fitzpatrick's head exploded. He fired a second time.
Measure twice; cut twice as well.
History was made.
The game of games had begun.
PART 1
TOMORROW AGAIN
OH NO, it's tomorrow again.
It seemed as if I had no sooner fallen asleep than I heard banging in the house. It was

loud, as disturbing as a car alarm.
Persistent. Trouble too close to home?
"Shit. Dammit," I whispered into the soft, deep folds of my pillow. "Leave me alone.

Let me sleep through the night like a normal person. Go away from here."
I reached for the lamp and knocked over a couple of books on the table. The Generalk

Daughter and My American Journey and Snow Falling on Cedars. The mishap jolted me
fully awake.
I grabbed my service revolver from a drawer and hurried downstairs, passing the kids'

room on the way. I heard, or thought that I could hear, the sound of their soft breathing
inside. I had been reading them Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit the night
before. Don't go into Mr. McGregork garden: Your father had an accident there; he was
put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

I clutched the Glock even more tightly in my right hand. The banging stopped. Then
started up again. Downstairs.

I glanced at my wristwatch. It was three-thirty in the morning.
Jesus, mercy The witching hour again. The hour I often woke up without any help from
outside forces, from things that go BANG, BANG, BANG in the middle of the night.

I continued down the steep, treacherous stairs. Cautious, suspicious.
Suddenly, it was quiet all around me.

I made no sound myself. My skin felt electrified in the darkness.

This was not the recommended way to start the day, or even the middle of The night.
Don't go into Mr. McGregor garden: Your father had an accident....

I continued into the kitchen -- my gun drawn -- where I suddenly saw the source of the
banging. The day's first mystery was solved.

My friend and partner was lurking at the back door like some high-octane version of a
neighborhood hugger-mugger.

John Sampson was the noisemaker; he was the trouble in my life; the day's first
disturbance, anyway. All six foot nine, two hundred forty pounds of him. Two-John as
he's sometimes called.

Man Mountain.

"There's been a murder," he said as I unlocked, unchained, and opened up for him. "This
one is a honey, Alex."

"OH, JESUS, JOHN. You know what time it is? You have any concept of time? Please
get the hell away from my house. Go home to your own house. Bang on your own door
in the middle of the night."

I groaned and slowly shook my head back and forth, working nasty sleep-kinks out of my
neck and shoulders. I wasn't quite awake yet. Maybe this was all a bad dream that I was
having.

Maybe Sampson wasn't on the back porch. Maybe I was still in bed with my pillow-
lover. And maybe not.

"It can wait," I said. "Whatever the hell it is."

"Oh, but it can't," he answered, shaking his head. "Believe me, Sugar, it can't."

I heard a creaking noise behind me in the house. I swung around quickly, still a little
spooked and jumpy My little girl was standing there in the kitchen. Jannie was in her
electric-blue-butterfly pajamas, in her bare feet, with a frightened look on her face. The
latest addition to our family, a beautiful Abyssinian cat named Rosie, trailedJannie by a
step or two. Rosie had heard the noise downstairs, too.

"What's the matter?"Jannie asked in a sleepy whisper, rubbing her eyes. "Why are you up
so early? It's something bad, isn't it, Daddy?"

"Go back to sleep, sweetheart," I told Jannie in the softest voice I could manage. "It's
nothing," I had to lie to my little girl.

My work had followed me home again. "We'll go upstairs now, so you can get your
beauty sleep."

I carried her up the stairs, softly nuzzling her cheek on the way, whispering sweet
nonsense, dream talk. I tucked her in and checked on my son, Damon. Soon the two of
them would be heading off to their respective schools -- Damon at Sojourner Truth,
Jannie at Union Street. Rosie the cat continually crisscrossed between my legs as I
performed my ministrations.

Then I got dressed, and Sampson and I hurried to the early-morning crime scene in his
car. We didn't have far to go.

This one is a honey, Alex.

Just four blocks from our house on Fifth Street.

"I'm awake now, whether I like it or not, and I don't like it. Tell me about it," I said to
Sampson as I watched the glittering red and blue lights of police cars and EMS trucks
come into focus up ahead.

Four blocks from our house.

A lot of blue-and-whites were clustered at the end of a tunnel of leafless oak trees and
red-brick project buildings. The disturbance appeared to be at my son Damon's school.
(Jannie's school is a dozen blocks in the opposite direction.) My body tensed all over.
There was a roaring, wintry shitstorm inside my head.

"It's a little girl, Alex," Sampson said in an unusually soft voice for him. "Six years old.
She was last seen at the Sojourner Truth School this afternoon."

It was Damon's school. We both sighed. Sampson is almost as close to Damon and
Jannie as I am. They feel the same way about him.

A lot of people were already gathered outside the Federal-style two-story building that
was the Sojourner Truth Elementary School. Half the neighborhood seemed to be up at
four in the morning. I saw angry and shocked faces everywhere in the crowd. Some
folks were in bathrobes, others wrapped in blankets.

Their frosty breath poured out like car exhaust all over the school yard. The Washington
Post had reported that more than five hundred children under the age of fourteen had died
in D.C.

during the past year alone. But the people here knew that. They didn't have to read it in
the newspaper.

A little six-year-old girl. Murdered at or near Damon school, the Truth School. I
couldn't have imagined a worse nightmare to wake up to.

"Sorry about this, Sugar," Sampson said as we climbed out of his car. "I figured you had
to see this, though, to be here yourself."

MY HEART was hammering and felt as if it were suddenly too big for my chest. My
wife, Maria, had been shot down and killed not far from this place. Memories of the
neighborhood, memories of a lifetime. I'll always love you, Maria.

I saw a dented and rusting truck from the morgue in the school yard, and it was an
unbelievably disturbing sight for me and everybody else. Rap music with a lot of bass
was playing from somewhere on the edge of the bright police lights.

Sampson and I pushed and angled our way through the frightened and uneasy crowd.
Some wiseass muttered, "What's up, Chief?" and risked finding out. There was yellow
crime-scene tape everywhere on the school grounds.

At six three, I'm not as large as Man Mountain, but we are both big men. We make quite
the pair when we arrive at a crime scene: Sampson with his huge shaved skull and black
leather car Coat; me usually in a gray warm-up jacket from Georgetown. Shoulder
holster under the coat. Dressed for the game that I play, a game called sudden death.

"Dr. Cross is here," I heard a few low rumbles in the crowd.

My name uttered in vain. I tried to ignore the voices as best I could. Block them out of
my consciousness. Officially, I was a deputy chief of detectives, but I was mostly
working as a street detective these days. It was the way I wanted it for now. The way it
had to be. This was definitely an "interesting" time for me. I had seen enough homicide
and violence for one lifetime. I was considering going into private practice as a shrink
again. I was considering a lot of things.

Sampson lightly touched my shoulder. He sensed this was bad for me. He saw it was
maybe too close to the bone. "You okay, Alex?"

"I'm fine," I lied for the second time that morning.

"Sure you are, Sugar. You're always fine, even when you're not. You're the
dragonslayer, right?" Sampson said and shook his head.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young woman wearing a black sweatshirt with Alu.
ALWAYS LOVE YOU, in white letters.

Another dead child. Tysheika. People in the neighborhood sometimes wore the dark
shirts to funerals of murdered kids. My grandmother, Nana Mama, had quite a collection
of them.

Something else caught my eye. A woman standing back from the crowd, under the
spectral branches of a withering elm. She didn't seem to quite fit with the rest of the
neighborhood group.

She was tall and nice-looking. She wore a belted raincoat over ieans, and flat shoes.
Behind her, I could see a blue sedan. A Mercedes.

Shek the one. That's her. She the one for you. The crazy thought just came out of
nowhere. Filled my head with sudden, inappropriate joy I made a mental note to find out
who she was.

I stopped to talk with a young, intense homicide detective wearing a red Kangol hat with
a brown sport jacket and brown nitted tie. I was beginning to take control.

"Bad way to start the day, Alex," Rakeem Powell said as I came up to him. "Or to end
one, in my case."

I nodded at Rakeem. "Can't imagine a worse way." I felt sick in the well of my stomach.
"What do you know about this so far, Rakeem? Anything juicy for us to go on? I need to
hear it all."

The detective glanced at his small black notepad. He flipped a few pages. "kirtle girl's
name is Shanelie reen. Popular girl.

A sweetheart, from what I hear so far. She was in the first grade here at the Truth School.
lives two blocks from school in the Northfield Village projects. Parents both work. They
let her walk home by herself. Not too goddamn smart, but what can you do, you know?
They came home tonight, Shanelie wasn't there.

They reported her missing around eight. That's the parents over there."

I glanced around. They were just a couple of kids themselves.

kooked completely devastated and heartbroken. I knew they would never be the same
after this horrifying night. Nobody could be.

"Neither of them suspects?" I had to ask.

Rakeera shook his head and said, "I don't think so, Alex.

Shanelie was their life."

"Please check them, Rakecm. Check both parents. How did she get here in the school
yard?" I asked him.

Powell sighed. "That's the first thing we don't know. Where she was killed is the second.
Who did it is strike three for the Mod Squad."

It was obvious from looking at Shanelie that she had been dumped here, probably
murdered someplace else. We were right at the beginning of this terrible case. kots of
work to do. My case now.

"You know how she was killed?" I asked Rakeera.

The homicide detective frowned. "Take a look for yourself.

Tell me what you think."

I didn't want to look, but I had to. I bent down close to Shanelie. I could smell the little
girl's blood: copper, like a lot of pennies had been thrown on the ground. I couldn't help
thinking of Damon andJannie, my own kids. I couldn't stop the overwhelming sadness I
felt. It ate at me, like acid splashed all over my body I knelt on the cracked and broken
concrete to examine the body of the six-year-old girl. Shanelie lay in a fetal position. All
she had on was a pair of flowered pink-and-blue underpants. A red bow was impossibly
tangled up in her braids, and she had tiny gold earrings in her ears.

The rest of her clothes were missing. The killer had apparently taken the little girl's
school clothes with him.

She was such a little beauty, such a sweetheart, I could see. Even after what someone had
done to her. I was looking at the how; the manner in which the six-year-old girl had been
brutally murdered sometime earlier that night, her whole life silenced in an instant of
madness and horror.

I gently turned the girl's body a few inches. Her head lolled to one side, the neck
probably broken. She weighed next to nothing.

Just a baby The right side of her little face was partly gone.

Obliterated was a better description. The murderer had struck Shanelie so many times,
and so violently, that little on the right side of the face was recognizable.

"How could he do this to such a beautiful little girl?" I muttered under my breath. "Poor
Shanelie. Poor baby," I whispered to no one but myself. A tear formed in my eye. I
blinked it away, There was no place for that here.

One of Shanelle's eyes was missing. Her face is like a two-sided, two-faced mask. Two
sides to a child? Two faces? What did that mean?

There was another fiend on the loose in Washington.

A child killer this time.

A TALL, THIN MAN in a black raincoat and black floppy rain hat slowly, cautiously
approached the door of Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick's apartment a little before six o'clock
Tuesday morning.

He examined the outer hallway for signs of a break-in, a struggle of some sort, but didn't
find any He was thinking that he didn't want to be outside this apartment or anywhere
near it. He wasn't sure what he expected to find inside, but he had the feeling it would be
bad. Powerfully, overwhelmingly bad. This was so unreal.

It was so odd for him to be here, a mystery inside a mystery. But here he was.

The man noticed everything about the hallway Sprinkles of fallen plaster on the rug.
Eight other doorways in sight. He had once been reasonably good at this routine. Being
an investigator was like riding a bicycle, right? Sure it was.

He jimmied open the door to 4J with a square of plastic very much like a credit card, only
thinner, slicker to the touch. He guessed that breaking and entering was like riding a
bike, too.

You never forgot how.

"I'm inside 4J," he spoke softly into a compact hand radio.

Sweat had begun to form all over his body. His legs quivered slightly He was disgusted
and he was afraid and he was definitely someplace that he shouldn't be. Unrealville, he
called it in his mind.

He quickly walked through the foyer and into the small living room with photos of
Senator Fitzpatrick on every wall. Still no sign of a break-in or any trouble.

"This could be a very nasty hoax," he reported into the radio. "I hope that's what it is."
He paused. "Uh-oh. We have a problem."

Everything had happened in the bedroom, and whoever had done everything had left a
terrible mess. It was worse than anything he could have imagined it might be.

"This is real bad. Senator Fitzpatrick is dead. Daniel Fitzpatrick has been murdered.
This is not a hoax. The body appears to be fully rigorous. Flesh has a waxy tone.
There's a lot of blood. Jesus, there's a lot of blood."

He bent over the senator's corpse. He could smell cordite, almost taste it on his tongue.
Most likely from the gun that killed Fitzpatrick. Unfortunately, there was much more to
the brutal murder scene. Too much for him to handle. He fought to keep his cool.
Riding a bike, right?

"Two shots to the head. Close-in. Execution-style," he said into the handset. "Entry
wounds about an inch apart."

He sighed heavily Waited a moment, then began again. They didn't need to know
everything he was seeing and feeling right now.

"The senator is handcuffed to his bedposts. Look like police cuffs to me. His body is
nude and not a pretty sight. Penis and scrotum appear to have been gouged out of the
body There's a lot of blood all over the bed, a humongous stain. Big stain on the rug, too,
where it soaked through."

He forced his face even closer to the senator's silver-haired chest. He didn't like it, being
this close to a dead man- or any man, for that matter. Fitzpatrick was wearing some kind
of religious medal. Probably real silver. He smelled of a woman's perfume. The tall
man, the investigator, was almost certain of it. "The D.C. police are going to be guessing
jealous lover.

Some kind of crime of high passion," he said. "Wait -- there's something else here. Okay
Hold on. I've got to check this out."

He didn't know how he'd missed it at first, but he sure as hell saw the note now. It was
right next to the cordless telephone on the bed stand. Impossible to miss, right? But he'd
missed it. He picked it up in his gloved hand.

The note was typewritten on thick, expensive bond. He read it quickly Then he read it
again, just to be sure... that the note was for real.

Ah Dannyboy, we knew ya all too well One useless, thieving, rich bastard down So many
more to go.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill To hose down all the slime Most imperiled Was poor
Fitzpatrick Right schmuck, wrong place, wrong time.

Truly, He read the note over the hand phone. He took one more look around, then left the
senator's apartment as it was: in a state of bedlam and horror and death. When he was
safely down on Q Street, he called in the homicide to the Washington police.

He made the call anonymously No one could know that he'd been inside the senator's
apartment, or especially, how it came to happen, and who he was. If anybody found out,
all hell would really break loose -- as if it hadn't started already Everything was unreal,
and it promised to get much worse.

Jack and Jill had promised it.

One useless, thieving, rich bastard down So many more to go.

AT EVERY HUMAN TRAGEDY like this one, there is always someone who points. A
man stood outside the crime-scene tape and pointed at the murdered child and also at me.
I was remembering Jannie's prophetic words to me earlier that morning: It's something
bad, isn't it, Daddy?

Yes, it was. The baddest of the bad. The murder scene at the Sojourner Truth School
was heartbreaking to me and, I was sure, to everyone else. The school yard was the
saddest, most desolate place in the world.

The chatter of portable police radios violated the air and made it hard to breathe. I could
still smell the little girl's blood. It was thick in my nostrils and my throat, but mostly
inside my head.

Shanelle Green's parents were weeping nearby, but so were other people from the
neighborhood, even complete strangers to the little girl. In most cities, in most civilized
countries, a child murdered so young would be a catastrophe, but not in Washington,
where hundreds of children die violent deaths every single year.

"I want as large a street canvass as we can manage on this one," I told Rakeem Powell.
"Sampson and I will be part of the canvass ourselves."

"I hear you. We're on it in a big way. Sleep is overrated, anyway"

"Let's go John. We've got to move on this now," I finally said to Sampson.

He didn't argue or object. A murder like this is usually solved in the first twenty-four
hours, or it isn't solved. We both knew that.

From 6:00 A.M. on, Sampson and I canvassed the neighborhood with the other
detectives and patrolmen that cold, miserable morning. We had to do it our way, house
by house, street by street, mostly on foot. We needed to be involved in this case, to do
something, to solve the heinous murder quickly, About ten in the morning, we heard
about another shocking homicide in Washington. Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick had been
murdered the night before. It had been a real bad night, hadn't it?

"Not our job," Sampson said with cold, flat eyes. "Not our problem. Somebody else's."

I didn't disagree.

No one Sampson or I spoke to that morning had seen anything out of the ordinary around
the Sojourner Truth School. We heard the usual complaints about the drug pushers, the

zombielike crackheads, the prossies who work on Eighth Street, the growing number of
gangbangers.

But nothing out of the usual.

"People loved that little sweetheart Shanelie," the ageless Hispanic lady who seemed to
have run the corner grocery near the school forever told Sampson and me. "She always
buy her Gummi Bears. She have such a pretty smile, you know?"

No, I had never seen Shanelle Green smile, but I found that I could almost picture it. I
also had a fixed image of the battered right side of the little girl's face. I carried it around
like a bizarre wallet photo inside my head.

Uncle Jimmie Kee, a successful and influential KoreanAmerican who owned several
neighborhood businesses, was glad to talk with us. Jimmie is a good friend of ours.
Occasionally, he comes along with us to a Redskins or Bullets game.

He supplied a name that we already had on our shortlist of suspects.

"What about this bad actor, Chop-It-Off-Chucky?" Uncle Jimmie volunteered as we
spoke in the back of Ho-Woo-Jung, his popular restaurant on Eighth Street. I read the
sign behind Jimmie: IMMIGRATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY.

"Nobody catch that motherfucker yet. He kill other children before. He the worst man in
Washington, D.C. Next to the president," Jimmie said and chuckled wickedly, "No
bodies, though. No proof of it," Sampson said to Jimmie.

"We don't even know if there really is a Chucky."

That was true enough. For years there had been rumors about a horrifying child molester
who worked the Northfield Village neighborhood, but there was nothing concrete.
Nothing had ever been proved.

"Chucky real," UncleJimmie insisted. His dark eyes narrowed to even thinner slits.
"Chucky real as the devil. I see Chop-it-Off-Chucky in my dreams sometimes, Alex. So
do the children who live around here."

"You ever hear anything more specific about Chucky? Where he's been seen? Who saw
him?" I asked. "Help us out if you can, Jimmie."

"Oh, I gladly do that." He nodded his head and bunched his thick brown lips, his triple
chin, his bulging throat. Jimmie habitually wore a chocolate brown suit with a tan fedora
that bobbed as he spoke. "You meditating yet, Alex, getting in touch with chi energy?"
he asked me.

"I'm thinking about it, thinking about my chi Jimmie. Maybe my chi is running a little
low right now. Tell us about Chucky."

"I know lots bad stories about Chop-It-Off-Chucky. Scare kids all the time. Even the
gangbangers scared of him. Young mothers, grandmothers, put up handbills in
playgrounds. In my stores, too. Sad stories of missing children. I always permit it,
Detectives.

Man who harms children is the worst. You agree, Alex? You see it differently?"

"No. I agree with you. That's why Sampson and I are out here today."

I knew a lot about the child molester who had been nicknamed Chop-It-Off-Chucky. The
unsubstantiated rumor was that he sliced off the genitalia of young kids who lived in the
projects. Little boys and girls. No gender preference. Whether or not it was true, it
seemed undeniable that someone had molested several children from the Northfield and
Southv'ew Terrace projects, not far from here. Other children had simply disappeared.

The police in the area didn't have the resources to create an effective crisis team to find
Chucky, if Chucky existed. I had gone to the wall about it several times with the chief of
detectives, but nothing had happened. Extra detectives never seemed available for duty
in Southeast. The unfairness of the situation put me in a rage, made me as crazy as
anything I can think of.

"Sounds like another Mission: Impossible," Sampson said as we walked up G Street, in
the general direction of the Marine barracks. "We're on our own. We're supposed to
catch a chimera."

"Nice image," I said, and had to smile at Man Mountain, his wild imagination, his mind.

"Thought you'd like it, man of culture and refinement that you are."

We were sipping steaming herb tea from Jimmie's restaurant.

Patrolling the street. We looked like detectives, with our collars up and all. Big bad
detectives. I wanted people to see us out working the neighborhood.

"No real leads, no clues, no support," I said, agreeing with Sampson's judgment of the
current state of affairs. "We take the assignment, anyway?"

"We always do," he said. His eyes were suddenly hard and dull and almost scary to me.
"Watch out, Chucky, watch your back. We're right on your sorry mythical ass."

"Your chimera ass."

"Exactly so, Sugar. Exactly so."

IT WAS REAL GOOD to be working the streets of Southeast with Sampson again. It
always is, even on a horror-show murder case that can make my blood boil over. Our last
big case had taken place in North Carolina and California, but Sampson had been around
only for the beginning and end of it. The two of us have been fast friends since we were
nine or ten, and growing up in this same neighborhood. We get closer every year it
seems. No, we do get closer.

"What's our primary goal here, Sugar?" Sampson asked as we walked along G Street. He
had on the black leather car coat, nasty Wayfarer sunglasses, a slick black bandanna. It
worked for him.

"How do we know that we did good today?" he asked.

"We get the word out that we're personally looking for the Truth School killer," I said.
"We show our pretty faces around.

Make the families here feel as safe as we can."

"Yeah, and then we catch Chop-It-Off-Chucky and chop his off," Sampson said and
grinned like the big bad wolf that he can be. "I'm not kidding."

I didn't doubt it for a minute.

When I finally got home that night, it was past ten. Nana Mama was waiting up for me.
She had already put Damon and Jannie to bed. The concerned look on her face told me
that she couldn't get to sleep, which is unusual for her. Nana could sleep in the eye of a
hurricane. Sometimes, she is the eye of a hurricane.

"Hello, sweetheart," she said to me. "Bad day for you? I can see that it was." Sometimes
she can be unbelievably sympathetic and kind and sweet, too. I like that she goes both
ways equally well, and I can never predict which way is coming at me next.

As we sat together on the living room couch, my eighty-one-year-old grandmother held
my hand in both of hers. I told her what I knew so far. She was shaking slightly and that
wasn't like her, either. She is not a weak person, not in any way She rarely shows her
fear to anyone, even me. Nana Mama does not seem to be losing anything of herself;
instead, she is becoming more luminous and concentrated.

"I feel so bad about this killing at the Sojourner Truth School," Nana said, and her head
lowered.

"I know. It's all I've thought about today I'm working every angle I can."

"You know much about Sojourner Truth, Alex?"

"I know she was a powerful abolitionist, an ex-slave."

"Sojourner Truth should be talked about when they mention Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Alex. She couldn't read, so she memorized most of the Bible for her
teaching. She actually helped stop segregation of the transportation system here in
Washington. And now we have this abomination at the school named in her honor.

"Catch him, Alex," Nana suddenly whispered in a low, almost desperate, voice. "Please
catch this terrible man. I can't even say the name they call him -- this Chucky. He's real,
Alex. He's not a made-up bogeyman."

I would definitely try my damnedest. I was on the murder case.

I was chasing down the chimera as best I could.

My mind was working overtime already. A child molester? Boys and girls. Now a child
killer? Chop-It-Off-Chucky? Was he real, or had he been made up by frightened
children ? Was he a chimera ? Had he murdered Shanelle Green ?

I needed to pound the piano on our porch for a little while after Nana went up to bed. I
played "Jazz Baby" and "The Man I Love," but the piano wasn't the ticket that night.

Just before I fell off to sleep, I remembered something. Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick had
been murdered in Georgetown. What a day it had been. What a nightmare.

Two of them.

Sam and Sara.

Whoever they really were, the two of them lay on their stomachs on a tasteful, knock-off
Persian rug in the small living room of her Washington pied-hid-terre. It was a kind of
safe house. A fire blazed and crackled; fragrant apple logs were being crisped. They
were playing a board game on the rug, which covered a hatched parquet floor. It was a
special game. Unique in every way. The game of life and death, they called it.

"I feel like a damn Washington, D.C., Georgetown University white liberal yuppie," Sam
Harrison said and smiled at the unlikely image created in his mind.

"Hey, I resemble that remark." Sara Rosen made a pouting face. She was kidding. She
and Sam weren't yuppies. Sam certainly wasn't.

And yet a guinea hen was roasting in the kitchen, the aroma sweetening the air. They
were playing a parlor game on the living room rug.

The game wasn't anything like Monopoly or Risk, though.

Actually, they were playing a game to choose their next murder target. In turn, they
calmly rolled the dice, then moved a marker around a rectangle of photos. The photos
were of very famous people.

The board game was important to Jack and Jill. It was a game of chance. It made it
impossible for the police or FBI to predict their movements or their motive.

If there was a motive. But of course there was a motive.

Sam rolled the dice again. Then he moved the marker. Sara watched him in the warm,
flickering glow of the fire. Her eyes glazed over slightly She was remembering their very
first meeting, the initial contact between them. The beginning of every thing that was
happening now.

This was how the complex and beautiful and very mysterious game had begun. They had
agreed to meet at a coffee shop inside a bookstore in downtown D.C. Sara had arrived
first, her heart trapped in her throat. Everything about the meeting was insane, maybe
dangerously insane, and insanely irresistible to her. She couldn't pass up this chance, this
opportunity, or especially this cause. The cause was everything to her.

At the time of their first meeting, she had no idea what Sam Harrison would look like,
and she was surprised and delighted when he sat at her table. He excited her.

She had seen him enter the coffeehouse area, watched him order espresso and a scone.
She hadn't imagined that the dreamy-looking man at the counter would turn out to be
Harrison, though.

So this was The Soldier. This was her potential partner. He kind of fit in at the
bookstore. He would fit in anywhere. He didn't look like a killer, but then again, neither
did she. He looks a little like an airline pilot, Sara thought as she sized him up. A
successful Washington lawyer? He was over six feet tall, trim and fit.

He had a strong, confident face. And he also had the brightest, clearest blue eyes. He
had a sensitive, gentle look about him.

Not at all what she had expected. She liked him immediately She knew that they agreed
on the important things in life, that they shared a vision.

"You're looking at me as if I'm supposed to be a bad person, and you're surprised that I'm
not," he'd said as he sat across from her at the cafe "I'm not a bad person, Sara. You can
call me Sam, by the way I'm a pretty good guy, actually"

No, Sam was much better than that. He was amazing -- extremely smart, strong, and yet
always considerate of her feelings, and committed to their cause. Sara Rosen had fallen
in love with him within a week of their meeting. She knew that she shouldn't, but she
had; and now here they were. Living this secret life.

Playing the game of life and death as a guinea hen slowly spun on the spit. Sitting before
a cozy fire. Thinking about making love -- at least, she was. She thought about being
with Sam, with Jack, all the time. She loved it when he was inside her.

"This roll should do it," Sam said, and he handed her the dice.
"Your turn. Six rolls for each of us. You do the honors, Sara."
"Here we go, huh?"
"Yes, here we go again."
Sara Rosen's heart began to thunder. She could feel it thump, thump under her blouse.

She had the paralyzing thought that this single roll of the dice was like the murder itself.
It was almost as if she were pulling the trigger right now.

Who was going to die next? It was all in her hand, wasn't it? Who would it be?
She squeezed the three dice incredibly tight. Then she shook them and let the dice go,
watched them wobble and roll forward and then stop abruptly, as if someone had pulled
an invisible string. She quickly added up the number of the roll -- nine.

Sara picked up the marker and counted off nine places, nine photographs.
She stared down at the face of the next target, the next celebrity to die. It was a woman!
It's for the cause, she told herself, but Sara Rosen's heart continued to beat loudly all the

same.
The next victim was a very famous woman.
Washington, the whole world, would be shocked and outraged for a second time.
SAMPSON AND I walked into the fog-shrouded heart of Garfield Park, which borders

the Anacostia River and the Eisenhower Freeway and isn't far from the Sojourner Truth

School. The color of truth is gray, I was thinking as we entered the ground smog.
Always gray. We weren't out for an early-morning run -- we were hurrying to the place
where Shanelle Green had actually been murdered, her skull crushed by some fiend.

Several uniforms, a captain, and another detective were already at the homicide scene. A
dozen or so casual onlookers were on hand -- looky-loos. Search dogs originally brought
in from Georgia had led a search party to the murder site. I could see Sixth Street from
the thicket of evergreens where the killer had brutally savaged the little girl. I could
almost see the Sojourner Truth School.

"Think he carried the body out of here to the school yard?"

Sampson asked. His tone of voice indicated he didn't believe it. Neither did I. So how
did the little girl's body get to the school yard?

A bright red balloon floated a couple of feet above the overgrown bushes where the
terrible murder had occurred.

"O marks the spot?" Sampson asked. "That balloon the marker?"

"I don't know... I wonder," I muttered as I pushed aside the thick evergreen branches and
made my way into the hideaway.

The smell of pine was heavy, even in the cold air. Reminded me that the Christmas
season was here.

I could feel the presence of the killer inside the tree branches, challenging me. I sensed
Shanelle's presence as well, as if she were trying to tell me something. I wanted to be
alone in here for a moment or two.

It was a small clearing where the murder had actually taken place. Dried blood was on
the ground and had even splashed across some of the branches. He lured her in here.
How did he do that? She'd be suspicious, or scared, unless she knew him from the
neighborhood. It suddenly struck me. The balloon! It was just a guess, but it seemed
right to me. The red balloon could have been the lure, the killer bait for the little girl.

I crouched down and was very still inside the tent of trees.

The killer liked it in here, hiding in the darkness. He doesn't like himself much, though.
Prefers the dark. He likes his mind, his thoughts, but not what he looks like. There
probably something distinctive about him physically.

I didn't know any of that for sure, but it seemed right; it felt right as I crouched at the
murder site.

He was hiding in here, probably because there something about him people might
remember. If so, it was a good clue.

I could see Shanelie Green's battered face again. Then an image of my dead wife, Maria,
came to me. I could feel the rage climbing from my gut to my throat, blowing and
billowing inside me. I thought of Jannie and Damon.

I had one more thought about the child killer: anger usually implies an awareness of self-
worth. Strange, but true. The killer was angry because he believed in himself much
more than the world did.

Finally, I rose up and pushed my way back out of the hideaway. I'd had enough.

"Haul down that balloon," I called to a patrolman. "Get that damn balloon out of the tree
now. It's evidence."

THERE WAS SOMETHING distinctive about him physically. I was almost certain of it.
It was a place to start.

That afternoon Sampson and I were out on the street again, working near the Northfield
Village projects. The Washington newspapers and TV hadn't bothered much about the
murder of a little girl in Southeast. Instead, they were filled with stories about the killing
of Senator Fitzpatrick by the so-called Jack and Jill stalkers. Shanelle Green didn't seem
to matter very much.

Except to Sampson and me. We had seen Shanelle's broken body and met her
heartbroken parents. Now we talked to our street sources, but also to our neighbors. We
continued to let people see us working, walking the streets.

"I sure do love a good homicide. Love walking the mean streets in the dead cold of
winter," Sampson opined as we went past a local dealer's black-on-blackJeep. It was
blaring rap, lots of bass.

"Love the suffering, the stench, the funky sounds." His face was flat. Beyond angry.
Philosophical.

He was wearing a familiar sweatshirt under his open topcoat.

The shirt had his message for the day:

I DON'T GIVE A SHIT

I DON'T TAKE ANY SHIT

I'M NOT IN THE SHIT BUSINESS

Concise. Accurate. Very much John Sampson.

Neither of us had felt much like talking for the past hour or so. It wasn't going all that
well. That was The Job, though. It was like this more often than it wasn't.

Man Mountain and I arrived at the Capitol City Market about four in the afternoon. The
Cap is a popular gyp joint on Eighth Street. It's just about the dingiest, most depressing
bargain-basement store in Washington, D.C.- and that takes some doing.

The featured products are usually written in pink chalk on a gray blue cinder block wall
in front. That day the specials were cold beer and soda pop, plantains, pork rinds,
Tampax, and Lotto -- your basic complete-and-balanced breakfast.

A young brother with tight wraparound Wayfarer sunglasses, a shaved head, and small
goatee caught our immediate attention in front of the minimart. He was standing next to
another man who had a chocolate bar hanging from his mouth like a cigar.

The shaved head motioned to me that he wanted to talk to us, but not right there.

"You trust that rowdyass?" Sampson asked as we followed at a safe distance. "Alvin
Jackson."

"I trust everybody." I winked. No wink came back from Sampson.

"You are badly fucked-up, Sugar," he said. His eyes were still seriously hooded.

"Just trying to do the right thing."

"Ah, yeah, you're trying too hard, then."

"That's why you love me."

"Yes, it is," Sampson said and finally grinned. "If lovin' you is wrong, I don't want to be
right," he talk-sang a familiar lyric.

We met Roadrunner Alvin Jackson around the corner.

Sampson and I had occasionally used Alvin as a snitch. He wasn't a bad man, really, but
he was living a dangerous life that could suddenly get much, much worse for him. He
had been a decent high school track star who used to practice in the streets. Now he was
running a little base and selling smoke as well. In many ways, Alvin Jackson was still a
man-child. That was important to understand about a lot of these kids, even the most
dangerous and powerful-looking ones.

"Thalilshanelle," Alvin said as if the three words were one, "you still lookin' for
information on who ice her and alladat?"

Alvin's car coat was unbuttoned. He was sporting the current fashion look that's called
jailin', or baggin'. His red-and-white pinstriped underwear was visible above the
waistband. The look is inspired by the fact that a prisoner's belt is taken away in jail,
tending to make the trousers droop and the underwear be accentuated. Role models for
our neighborhood.

"Yeah. What have you heard about her, Alvin, but no Chipmunks?" Sampson said.

"Man, I'm tryin' to do you a solid," Alvin Jackson protested in my direction. His shaved
head never stopped bobbing. His hoop earring jangled: His long, powerful arms
twitched. He kept picking his Nike-sneakered feet up and putting them back down.

"We appreciate it," I told him. "Smoke?" I offered Alvin a Camel. Joe Cool, right?

He took it. I don't smoke, but I always carry. Alvin had smoked like a chimney when he
was a high school road-and-track man.

Things you notice.

"Lil' Shanelie, she live in my auntie's building. Over in Northfield? I think I know 'bout
somebody maybe 'sponsible.

You unnerstand what I'm sayin'?"

"So far." Sampson nodded. He was trying to be nice, actually, A head of lettuce could
follow Alvin Jackson's patter.

"You want to show us what yo, I don't want to be right," he talk-sang a familiar lyric.

We met Roadrunner Alvin Jackson around the corner.

"Thalilshanelle," Alvin said as if the three words were one, "you still lookin' for
information on who ice her and alladat?"

"Yeah. What have you heard about her, Alvin, but no Chipmunks?" Sampson said.

"We appreciate it," I told him. "Smoke?" I offered Alvin a Camel. Joe Cool, right?

He took it. I don't smoke, but I always carry. Alvin had smoked like a chimney when he
was a high school road-and-track man.

Things you notice.

"Lil' Shanelie, she live in my auntie's building. Over in Northfield? I think I know 'bout
somebody maybe 'sponsible.

You unnerstand what I'm sayin'?"

"So far." Sampson nodded. He was trying to be nice, actually, A head of lettuce could
follow Alvin Jackson's patter.

"You want to show us what you got?" I asked him. "Help us out here?"

"I'll show you Chucky myself. Howzat?" He smiled and nodded at me. "But only cuz it's
you and Sampson. I tried to tell some a them other detectives, months back. They
wouldn't have none of it. Man, they wouldn't listen to jack shit. Didn't have the time of
day for my airplay."

I felt like his father or uncle or older brother. I felt responsible.

I didn't like it so much.

"Well, we're listening," I told him. "We've got the time for you."

Sampson and I went with Alvin Jackson to the Northfield Village projects. Northfield is
one of the most dangerous crime areas in D.C. Nobody seems to care, though. The 1st
District police have given up. You visit Northfield once, it's hard to blame them
completely, This didn't seem like a very promising lead to me. But Alvin.Jackson was a
man on a mission. I wondered why that was. What was I missing here?

He pointed a long, accusatory finger at one of the yellow-brick buildings. It was in the
same shabby state of disrepair as most of the others. An electric-blue metal sign was
over the double front doors: BULI)L6 3. The front stairs were cracked and looked as if
they'd been hit by lightning or somebody's sledgehammer.

"He lives in there. Ak-ak city. Leastways, he did. Name's Emmanuel Perez. Sometimes
he works as a porter at Famous.

You know, Famous Pizza? He goes after the little kids, man. Real freakazoid. He's a
nasty fucker. Scary fucker, too. Don't like it none when you call him Manny, He's Eeman-
uel. Insists on it."

"How do you know Emmanuel?" Sampson asked.

Alvin Jackson's eyes suddenly clouded over and looked hard as rocks. He took a few
seconds before he spoke. "I knew him.

He was around when I was a little kid. Buggin' back then, too.

Emmanuel always been around, you unnerstand?"

I got it. I understood now. Chop-It-Off-Chucky wasn't a chimera anymore.

There was an asphalt-topped playground across the quad.

Young kids were playing hoops, but not very well. The basket had no net. The rim was
bent this way and that. Nobody any good played on these particular courts. Suddenly,
something in the playground caught Alvin Jackson's eye.

"That's him over there," he said in a high-pitched whine.

Fearful. "That's him, man. That's Emmanuel Perez doggin' those kids."

He had no sooner said the words when perez spotted us. It was as weird as a bad dream.
I saw that he had a longish red beard that stuck out stiffly from his chin. It was
something distinctive about him physically. Something people would have remembered
if he'd been seen in Garfield Park. He leveled Alvin Jackson with a dark, scary look.
Then he took off in a dead run.

Emmanuel Perez was a very fast runner. But so were we; at least, we were the last time I
checked.

c aplerlO

SAMPSON AND I raced behind Perez, closing a little ground on him. We shot down a
littered, twisting concrete alley that ran between the tall, depressing buildings. We could
both still move pretty well.

"Stop! Police detectives!" I yelled loudly at the sorry excuse for a man running ahead of
us. Bogeyman? Chimera? Innocent restaurant porter?

Perez, the suspected child murderer and child molester, was definitely trying to escape.
We didn't know for sure if he was Chop-It-Off-Chucky, but he had some reason to run
from Sampson and me, from the police.

Had we finally caught a break on the case? Something sure as hell was happening right
now.

I had a very bad thought lodged in the front of my brain. If we're this close to catching

him, after two days on the streets, why wasn't he caught before?
I thought I knew the answer, and I didn't like it much. Because nobody cares what
happens in these wretched neighborhoods around the projects. Nobody cares.

"We're back!" Sampson suddenly shouted as we sprinted between the cavernous
buildings, stirring up street garbage in our wake, rousting pigeons.
"Remains to be seen," I yelled to him.
Nobody cares!
"Don't doubt it for a minute, Sugar. Think only positive thoughts."
"Emmanuel is fast, too. That's positively the ruth."
Nobody cares!
"We're faster, stronger, tougher than Manny ever dreamed of being."
"Better trash talkers," I huffed. Just one huff, but a huff all the same.

"That, too, Sugar. Goes without saying."
We followed Perez/Chop-It-Off out onto Seventh Street, which is lined with four- and
five-story row houses, bombed-out stores, a few tank bars.

Perez suddenly turned into a beaten-down Federal-style building near the middle of the
block. The windows were mostly boarded with sheet metal, looking like silver teeth in a
rotting mouth.

"He seems to know what the hell he's doing," Sampson yelled.
"Knows where he's going."
"At least that makes one of us."
Sampson and I entered the sagging, ramshackle building several strides behind Perez.

The strong smell of urine and decay was everywhere. As we climbed the steep,
reinforced concrete stairs, I could feel a fire spreading into my chest.
"Had his escape route all figured out!" I huffed. A definite huff.
"He's smart."

"He's trying to escape from us. That's not too smart. Never happen...
WE GOT YOU, MANNY!" Sampson yelled up the stairs.
His voice echoed like thunder in the narrow quarters. "HEY, MANNY! MANNY,

MANNY, MANNY!"

"Stop! Police! Manny Perez, stop!" Sampson shouted at the fleeing suspect. He had his
gun out, a nasty 9mm Glock.
We could hear Perez still running above us, his sneakers slapping stairs. He didn't yell

back. Nobody else was on the stairs or in any of the stairwells. Nobody cared that there
was a police chase going on inside the building.

"You think Perez really did it?" I yelled to Sampson.
"He did something. He's running like his ass is on fire. Spreading right up his spinal
cord."

"Yeah. We lit the fuse."
We burst out a gray metal door Onto a broad, uneven expanse of tar roof. Overhead the
sky was a cool, hard blue. There were shiny surfaces and maximum glare everywhere.

There was nothing but bright blue sky above. I had the urge to take off--fly away from all
of this. The urge, but not the means.
Where the hell had he gone? He was nowhere in sight. Where was Emmanuel Perez?

Where was the Sojourner Truth School killer?
Chimera.
"FUCK YOU, peachfuzz," Perez suddenly yelled. "You hear me, peachfuzz?"
"Peachfuzz?" Sampson looked at me and made a face.
I saw a quick flash of Chop-it-Off-Chucky He was off to our extreme right. He was

sprinting across a connecting rooftop and was already about thirty yards away I saw him

grab a quick, worried look back over his shoulder.
His small eyes were hard black beads, evil-looking as they come. He had that weird red
beard. Maybe he was a total psycho.

Or maybe he really was just a pizza-store porter? Forget it, I told myself.
Four teenage boys and a girl were up there on the roof doing their sneaky business.
Crack, probably I hoped they weren't snorting heroin. They idly watched the wild, wild

world go by The real city game was in progress here. Cops and robbers. Child molester-
killers. It made no difference to these kids.

Sampson and I covered three more narrow rooftops in a powerful hurry. We were gaining
on him a little, but only by a step or two. Sweat was running down my forehead and
cheeks, burning my eyes.

"Stop! We'll shoot!" I yelled. "Stop, Emmanuel Perez?

Perez looked back again. He looked straight at me this time and grinned! Then he
seemed to disappear over the far side of the brick-walled building.

"Fire escape!" Sampson yelled.

Seconds later, the two of us were rushing headlong down skinny, twisting, rusted metal
stairs. Perez flew down the flimsy fire escape ahead of us. He was really moving. This
was definitely his event, his home course.

Sampson and I were both too big for the tight-radius maneuvering. He gained a full
flight on us, maybe a flight and a half.

Chucky definitely had an escape route figured out, I was thinking.

He'd practiced this. I was almost sure of it. He a smart one. He guilty. Those vicious
eyes! Mad-dog eyes. What had Alvin Jackson said -- that Emmanuel Perez had always
been around?

We saw him down on E Street. The red beard jutted out as if it were petrified wood. He
was already a full block away Lots of rush-hour traffic everywhere. He was getting into
a gypsy cab, a dull red-and-orange hack that read, CAPPY'S. WE GO ANYWHERE.

"STOP, YOU FUCKING SQUIRREL!" Sampson screamed at the top of his voice.
"GODDAMN YOU, MANNY!"

Perez gave us the finger in the crud-crusted rear window of the cab.

"PEACHFUZZ!" he leaned out and screamed back at us.

SAMPSON AND I scrambled out onto E Street. Sweat was still streaming down my
forehead and cheeks, my neck, back, legs.

Sampson ran in front of a Yellow Cab and the driver screeched to a stop. Intelligent of
the cabdriver to avoid hitting Man Mountain and totaling his car.

"Metro police! Detective Alex Cross!" my voice boomed as we simultaneously swung
open the cab's back doors. "Follow that hack. Go! Go! Go! Dammit."

"Don't you lose him!" Sampson threatened the driver. "Don't you even think about it."
The poor man was scared to death. He never even looked back. Never said a word. But
he didn't lose visual contact with CAPPY'S. WE GO ANYWHERE.

We hit a bad snarl of traffic at Ninth Street where it approaches Pennsylvania Avenue.
Cars and trucks were backed up for at least three blocks. Angry horns were honking
everywhere. One tractor-trailer had a foghorn like an oceangoing vessel's.

"Maybe we better get out and run him down," I said to Sampson.

"I was thinking the same thing. Let's go for it."

It was one of those fifty-fifty calls. Either way, we could lose Chucky right here. My
heart was pounding hard in my chest. I could see the crushed-in skull of little Shanelie
Green. Emmanuel had always been around! Those mad-dog eyes! I wanted Chop-ItOff-
Chucky real bad.

Sampson already had the creaking door on his side of the cab open. I was half a step
behind. Maybe less.

Chucky must have felt us breathing fire on the back of his neck. He jumped out of his
cab and started to run.

We followed him between the tight rows of barely moving traffic.

Blaring car horns provided chaotic background noise for the foot chase along Ninth
Street.

Chop-It-off-Chucky burst forward. He'd gotten his second wind.

Suddenly, he veered right and into a gleaming, glass-and-steel office building. The
building looked silver blue.

Madness, pure and simple.

I had my detective's shield already out as we entered the office building several strides
behind Chucky. "Spanish guy, red beard. Which way?" I yelled at the dazed and
confused-looking security guard standing around in the plush, paneled lobby.

He pointed to the middle car at a metal-on-metal elevator bank. The car had already left
the ground floor. I watched the floor indicator: three -- four -- rising fast. Sampson and I
jumped into the open door of the car nearest the front entrance.

I hit ROOFTOP with the palm of my hand. That was my best guess.

"Roadrunner said Perez was a porter at Famous Pizza," I told Sampson. "There was a
Famous on the ground floor here."

"Think Chucky's a creature of habit? Likes roofs? Has his favorites all picked out?"
"I think he had a couple of escape routes figured out, just in case. And, yeah, I think he's
a creature of habit."

"He's most definitely a creature."
The elevator bell rang, and Sampson and I scrambled out, guns first. We could see the

Capitol in the distance. Also the Statue of Freedom. Pretty sight under other
circumstances.
Weird, now. Kind of sad.
I couldn't stop thinking about Shanelie Green. I kept seeing her brutalized face. What

had he hit her with? How many times?

Why? I wanted to catch this bastard so bad, it hurt. Hurt my body; hurt my head even
worse.
We moved away from the building, and I finally spotted Chucky outlined against the

skyline. My heart sank.

Chucky did have an escape route in mind. He had thought about this before. Somebody
coming to get him. He sure was acting guilty. He had to be our killer.
"Fuck you, peachfuzz!" he screeched, taunting us again.
Then he took off on a long, running start. He had a powerful stride -- a long stride.
"No," I moaned. "No, no, no."
I knew what he was going to do.
Perez was going to jump from building to building.
"Stop, you son of a bitch," Sampson shouted, "or I will shoot!"
But he didn't stop. We watched him take a flying leap.
We ran to the edge of the roof, both of us screaming at the top of our lungs. There was a

second office building catty-corner to our roof. The top of that building was a floor below
where Sampson and I now stood.

Chop-It-Off-Chucky was airborne between the buildings, the glass-and-steel caverns.

"Jesus!" I gasped as I peered straight down over the side. The gap between the buildings
was at least twenty feet wide, maybe more.

"Fall, you bastard. Hit a wall," Sampson yelled at the flying figure. "Go down, Chucky!"

He done this before. He practiced his escape, I thought as I watched. No wonder he
never been caught. How many years on the loose? How many kids molested or
murdered?

We had our guns out, but neither of us fired. We had no proof that he was the killer. He
had only run from us, had never pointed a weapon. Now, this insane leap from one office
building to another.

Chucky looked suspended in motion sixteen floors up. A long, long way down.

Something was wrong.

Chucky was pumping his legs furiously It was as if he were trying to pedal a bike straight
across the sky His long arms reached out, muscles hard and taut. His lead leg stretched
until it was almost straight out from his body. Nike sneaker-poster stuff.

His frame was stiff, like a runner caught in a prizewinning photograph.

"Jesus Christ," Sampson whispered at my side. I felt his warm breath on my cheek.

Chucky's arm was outstretched, but his hand barely touched the restraining wall on the
roof of the nearby office building, his legs still pumping in midair.

Then Chop-It-Off-Chucky screamed -- bloodcurdling sounds, muffled only by the
windows and walls of the two buildings.

He continued to shriek as he fell twenty stories. His arms and legs were flailing, stroking
the air at a futile, furious pace.

As I watched, I saw his body suddenly twist in midair.

He looked up at me -- still screaming in a hopeless, plaintive way, screaming with his
mouth and his eyes, and that bushy red beard, screaming. Chucky was dying as I
watched. The fall seemed to take forever. Four or five seconds that seemed like an
eternity My stomach was falling with him. I experienced vertigo. The narrow alley
below was a spinning gray band. The buildings, the canyon, seemed so steep and dark
and faraway Then I heard Chucky hit the pavement. Splat! It was other-worldly to hear.

I stared at the crumpled body spread-eagled down below. I could feel no joy in it,
though. There was nothing even remotely human about it. It was crushed like the side of
Shanelle Green's face, Chucky's unearthly screams still echoed inside my brain.

"Flameout," Sampson said at my side. "Case closed. Score one for the peachfuzz."

I holstered my semiautomatic. Emmanuel Perez had practiced his escape, but he hadn't
practiced enough.

MAJOR FAKEOUT. Faked you out something fierce, didn't I? I faked you all out.

The real Sojourner Truth School killer was alive and well. The killer couldn't have been
any better, thank you very much. He had just committed the perfect crime, hadn't he?
He had just gotten away with murder.

Yes, he sure as hell had. Scot-free. The crackerjack Washington police had caught and
toasted the wrong twisted asshole. Somebody named Emmanuel Perez had paid for his
sins, paid with his life, paid in full.

All he had to do now was cool it, he knew. That was what he had to concentrate on. He
had already decided to hide out for a while -- inside his mind.

He was cruising the Pentagon City mall in Arlington.

He was getting absolutely rabid as he strolled through The Gap, and then Victoria's
Secret. He was obsessing about how to get back at -- anybody and everybody. At tout le
monde -- pardon his French, s'il vous plait.

A song, an oldie he'd heard that morning on MTV, was stuck in his head. The lyrics had
been bouncing around in his skull like ?ing-Pong balls for the last couple of hours. He
could hear the singer, Beck, a hopeless geek from Los Angeles: I'm a loser, baby. So
why don't you kill me?

I'm a loser, baby. So why don't you kill me? he repeated the lyric in his head.

I'm a loser, baby. So why don't you kill me?

He loved the way the dumb-ass lyrics worked two ways for him. They were about him,
and they were about his potential victims. Everything was an irritating circle, right? Life
was beautiful in its screwy simplicity, right?

WRONG! Life was not beautiful. Not at all.

He was watching a little sucker now, a potential victim who looked way too good to pass
up. The.Truth School killer loitered inside the Toys "R" Us at the mall Since it was the
holiday season, the store was jam-packed with idiots.

The overhead speakers were playing the chain's irritating and moronic theme song: "I
don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid." Over and over and over, the kind of
mindless repetition that kids loved. The sheer number of insane toys, the spoiled-rotten
little kids, the smug-looking mothers and fathers, the whole raw deal made him feel hot,
thickheaded, and almost physically sick.

I don't want to grow up, either, he said to himself. I'm a Toys "R" Us kid killer.

He watched his chosen little boy as the kid wandered alone down a wide aisle chock-full
of action games. The boy was five or so, a very manageable age.

The anger button inside his head was going off like a powerful alarm. WOM! WOM!
WOM! The terrible feeling quickly spread to his chest. WOM! WOM! It was tense and
uncomfortable. Both his hands were clenched tight. So was his stomach. The back of
his neck. His brain was clutching, too.

Be careful now, he cautioned himself. Don't make any mistakes.

Remember if you do perfect crimes.

THIS WAS GOING TO BE a mite tricky going, though, working in the crowded Toys
"R" Us store. What if the boy's parents were close by? WHICH THEY DEFINITELY
WERE! What if he were caught? WHICH HE WOULDN'T BE! COULDN'T BE!

That was incredibly important to him. Just watching the attractive, round-faced, sandy-
haired boy, he could feel how badly this particular kid would be missed and, even better,
mourned.

He needed to imagine the stories that would bombard the television screens and the thrill
of watching them, knowing he was responsible for so much pain and suffering and
emergency activity.

The little boy was getting itchy in his woolens and starting to panic a little. He had big
crocodile tears brimming in his eyes.

There didn't seem to be anybody, any adult, anywhere around him. Poor Little Boy Lost.
Poor Little Boy Blue.

The killer began to move in on his prey, slowly and carefully.

He couldn't stop now. His heart was beating like a big tin drum, and he loved the
powerful sensation. His legs and arms were a little wobbly. Jell-O city. His vision
tunneled; he was dizzy with anticipation, fear, dread, exhilaration.

Do it.

Now!

He bent, picked up the boy, and immediatelyoking mothers and fathers, the whole raw
deal made him feel hot, thickheaded, and almost physically sick.

I don't want to grow up, either, he said to himself. I'm a Toys "R" Us kid killer.

He watched his chosen little boy as the kid wandered alone down a wide aisle chock-full
of action games. The boy was five or so, a very manageable age.

Be careful now, he cautioned himself. Don't make any mistakes.

Remember if you do perfect crimes.

That was incredibly important to him. Just watching the attractive, round-faced, sandy-
haired boy, he could feel how badly this particular kid would be missed and, even better,
mourned.

He needed to imagine the stories that would bombard the television screens and the thrill
of watching them, knowing he was responsible for so much pain and suffering and
emergency activity.

The little boy was getting itchy in his woolens and starting to panic a little. He had big
crocodile tears brimming in his eyes.

There didn't seem to be anybody, any adult, anywhere around him. Poor Little Boy Lost.
Poor Little Boy Blue.

The killer began to move in on his prey, slowly and carefully.

Do it.

Now!

He bent, picked up the boy, and immediately started smiling and talking the happiest,
friendliest barf-babble he could come up with.
"Hi there, I'm Roger the Artful Dodger. I work here at Toys 'R' Us. What kind of

fantastical toys do you like best, huh? We've got every' kind of toy in the whole wide
world, 'cause we're the world's biggest, coolest toy store. Yahoo! How 'bout that? Let's
go find your superpathetic mom and dad!"

The boy actually smiled up at him. Kids could do weird mood changes like that. His
beautiful blue eyes sparkled, glistened; something wet and wonderful happened. "I want
Mighty Max," he proclaimed as if he were Richie Rich instead of Little Boy Lost.

"Okay, then come with me. One Mighty Max coming up!
Why? 'Cause you're a Toys 'R' Us kid."
He cradled the boy in his arms and began to hurry up the wide shopping aisle toward the

front of the store. Suddenly, he knew he could get away with it, even something this
audacious and shocking, with almost a hundred eyewitnesses in the store. Hey, he was
the new Pied Piper. Kids loved him.

"We'll get a Vac-Man. Then how about X-men? Or how about a Stretch Armstrong?"
"Mighty Max," the little boy repeated, stuck on his one track.
"I only want Mighty Max."
The killer peeked out of aisle three. He was less than thirty feet from the store's front

exit. The mall parking lot bordered on Columbia Park, which had been part of his escape
package from the start.
He took a couple of fast steps, then stopped dead in his tracks at the front of the store.
Shit! A couple in their late twenties were walking toward him!
The woman looked just like Little Boy Blue.
They had him... dead to rights. They had him nailed! They had him!

He knew what he had to do, so he never panicked for a nanosecond.
Except for the two or three major heart attacks he had on the inside. Well, here goes
everything. Time to bet the ranchero.

"Hey, hi there." He smiled broadly and went into his best stand-up routine ever. "This
little guy belong to you? He was lost in the action-figure section. Nobody came for him.
I figured I better bring him up to the store manager. Little guy was crying his eyes out.
You his mom?"

The mother reached out for her precious bundle of joy, while at the same time throwing
her husband a dirty look.

Aha, there was our villain! Pop was obviously the one who had lost the boy in the first
place. Pops couldn't get anything right these days, could they! His own pop sure hadn't
been able to.

"Thank you, so much," the mom said. She tossed another incredibly nasty look to pop.
"That was very sweet of you," she told the killer.

He continued to hold his best smile. Man, he was acting his heart out. "Anybody would
do the same thing. He's a nice little boy. Well, so long. Bye-bye. He wants a Mighty
Max. That's probably what he was searching for."

"Yes, he does want Mighty Max. Bye. Thanks again," said the mom.

"Bye-bye," the little boy mimicked, waving his hand.

"Bye-bye."

"Hope see ya some other time," said the Sojourner Truth School killer. "Bye-bye." You
morons! You incredible idiots.

You pathetic simps.

He walked away from the family. Never looked back once.

He was wetting his pants, but he was also beginning to laugh.

He couldn't stop himself from laughing. Here was another thing in his favor -- even if he
was caught someday -- they wouldn't believe that he was the Truth School killer. No way
in hell.

AH, THIS WAS MUCH BETTER. Life was good again. I opened my eyes and Jannie
was there, staring at me from about three feet away. Jannie had Rosie the cat in her arms.
Jannie likes to watch me sleep sometimes. I like to watch her sleep, too. Fair is fair.

"Hey there, sweetness and light," I said to her. "You know the song, "Someone To
Watch Over Me'? You remember that one?"

I hummed a couple of bars for her.

Jannie nodded her head yes. She knew the song. She'd heard me play it on the piano
downstairs, on our porch. "You have guests," she announced.

I sat up in bed. "How long have they been here?"
"They just came. Nana sent me and Rosie up to get you. She's making them coffee.
You, too. You have to get up."

"Is it Sampson and Rakeem Powell?" I asked.

Jannie shook her head. She seemed unusually shy this morning, which isn't really like
her. "They're white men."
I was starting to wake up in a hurry "I see. You happen to catch the names?" Suddenly, I

thought I knew the names. I solved the mystery myself-- at least, I thought I had.
Jannie said, "Mr. Pittman and Mr. Clouser."
"Very good," I complimented her.
Not good, not good at all, I was thinking about my "guests." I didn't want to see the chief

of detectives, or the police commissioner -- especially not in my house.
Especially not for the reason I imagined that they were here to see me.
Jannie bent and gave me my morning kiss. Then a second kiss.
"Oh, what lies there are in kisses," I winked and said to her.
"Nope," she said. "Not my kisses."
It took me less than five minutes to get as ready as I was going to get for this. Nana was

entertaining our visitors in the parlor.

Commissioner Clouser had come to my house twice before. This was a first for the chief
of detectives. The Jefe. I assumed that Clouser had forced him to come.
ChiefPittman and Commissioner Clouser were sipping Nana's steaming coffee, smiling at

a story she was spinning for them. I wondered what it was she had decided to get off her

chest. This was a dangerous time -- for Pittman and Clouser.
"I was just rebuking these gentlemen for allowing Emmanuel Perez to roam our streets
for so long," she told me as I entered the parlor. "They promised not to let that sort of
thing happen again. Should I believe them, Alex?"

Both Pittman and Clouser chuckled as they looked at me.

Neither of them realized this was no chuckling matter, and that my grandmother was no
one to mess with or, even worse, condescend to in her house.

"No, you shouldn't believe one word they say Are you finished now?" I asked her,
returning her sweet, phony smile with one of my own.

"I didn't think I could trust either of them. I wanted to get their promise in writing," Nana
said.

I nodded and smiled, as if she'd just made a joke, which I knew she hadn't. She was dead
serious. The Jefe and Commissioner Clouser both laughed heartily They thought Nana
Mama was a stitch. She isn't. She's the whole nine yards.

"Can the three of us talk in here?" I asked her. "Or should we go outside for our
discussion?"

"I'll go in my kitchen," Nana evil-eyed me and said. "So nice to meet you, Chief Pittman,
Commissioner Clouscr. Don't forget your promise. I won't."

Once she had left the room, the commissioner poke right up "Well, congratulations are in
order, Alex. I understand that you found all kinds of kiddie porn in Manuel Pcrez's
apartment."

"Detective Sampson and I found the pornography," I said.

Then I was silent. I had decided not to make this easy for them.

Actually, I agreed one hundred percent with the point Nana had been trying to make.

"I'm sure you're wondering what we're doing here, so let me explain," Chief of Detectives
Pittman spoke up. He and I were not close, to put it mildly. Never had been, never
would be.

Pittman is a bully and also a closet racist, and those are his better points. He could never
seem to see a belt without wanting to hit below it.

"I'd appreciate it," I said to The Jefe. "I was thinking that maybe you had just been in the
neighborhood and you dropped by for my grandmother's coffee. It's worth a trip."

Pittman didn't come close to breaking a smile. "We received a formal request from the
FBI late last night. They've asked that you work on the investigation of Senator
Fitzpatrick's murder.

Special Agent Kyle Craig strongly suggested that your background and recent experience
might serve the investigation well.
Obviously, it's an important case, Alex."
I let Chief Pittman finish, then I slowly shook my head no.
"I've got a half-dozen open homicides here in Southeast," I said.

"The case I just worked on should have been solved months ago.
Then another little girl wouldn't have died for no goddamn reason. A homicide detective
got reassigned off the killer's trail back then.

Now a little girl is dead. Six years old."
"This is a major case, Alex," the commissioner said. He had snow-white hair. His face

was bright red, which happened when he was angry or disturbed. The two of us went
back some. Usually, we went along, got along. Maybe not this time.
"Tell the FBI that I can't be spared for this Jack and Jill mess.
I'll call Kyle and make my peace with him. Kyle will understand.
I'm on several homicide cases in Southeast. People die here, too.
We have our own messes, and even major cases."
"Let me ask you something, Alex," the police commissioner said. He smiled gently as he

spoke. Lots of beautifully capped white teeth. I could have played some sweet Gershwin
on them, though maybe some key-slamming Little Richard would have been more
satisfying.

"Do you still want to be a cop?" he asked.
That one landed, and it stung. It was a sucker punch, but a pretty good one.
"I want to be a good cop," I said to him. "I want to do some good if I possibly can. Same

as always. Nothing's changed."
"That's the right answer," the commissioner said as if I were a child who needed his

instruction. "You're on the Jack and Jill investigation. It's been decided in very high
places. You have experience with these kinds of murders, with lunatic psychotics.
You are officially off all your other cases. Now, be a very good cop, Alex. The FBI is

almost certain Jack and Jill are going to kill again."

So was I, so was I.

And I felt the very same thing about the Sojourner Truth School killer.

I RESISTED the unique charms of the Jack and Jill case for one more day. Half a day,
anyway. I tried to clear a few things on my watch in Southeast. I was furious about what
had happened with Clouser and Pittman.

Shanelie Green had died because more detectives hadn't been assigned to find Chop-ItOff-
Chucky, hadn't given Alvin Jackson the time of day The whole sorry affair was race-
related, no way around it, and it made me both angry and sad.

I came home early and spent the evening with Nana and the kids. I wanted to make sure
they were okay after the murder at the Sojourner Truth School. At least that horror tale
had been solved. But I still wasn't over the child killing. I couldn't get past it for a lot of
reasons.

For half an hour or so, I gave Damon andJannie their weekly boxing lesson in the
basement. To Damon's credit, he's never complained that the sessions include his sister.
He just puts on the gloves.

They're becoming tough little pugs, but more important, they're learning when not to
fight. Not many kids mess with them at school, but that's mainly because they're nice
kids and know how to get along.

"Watch that footwork, Damon," I told him. "You're not supposed to be putting out a fire
with your feet."

"You're supposed to be dancing," Jannie threw a little verbal jab at her brother. "Step,
right. Back. Step, step, left."

"I'll do a dance on you in a minute," Damon warned her off, and then they both laughed
like hell.

A little later, we were upstairs in front of the tube. Jannie was crossing her small arms,
squinting her brown eyes, and making a tough-as-nails face at me. It was her official,
nonnegotiable bedtime, but she had decided to lodge a protest.

"No, Daddy. Nope, nope, nopeee," she said. "Your watch is too fast."

"Yes Jannie. Yep, yep yepeee." I held my ground, held my own against my chief
nemesis. "My watch is too slow."

"No, siree. No way," she said.

"Yes, indeedee. No escaping it. You're busted."

The long arm of the law finally reached out and corralled another repeat offender. I
grabbed Jannie off the couch and carried my little girl up to bed at eight-thirty on the dot.
Law and order reigns at the Cross house.

"Where we going, Daddy?" she giggled against my neck. "Are we going out for ice
cream? I'll have pralines 'n' cream."

"In your dreams."

As I tightly held Jannie in my arms, I couldn't help thinking about little Shanelle Green.
When I had seen Shanelle in that school yard, I was scared. I'd thought of Jannie. It was
a vicious circle that kept playing inside my head.

I lived in fear of the human monsters coming to our house.

One of them had come here a few years back. Gary Soneji. That time no one had been
hurt, and we had been very lucky Jannie and I had worked out a prayer that we both
liked.

She knelt beside her bed and said the words in a beautiful little whisper.

Jannie said, "God up in heaven, my grandma and my daddy love me. Even Damon loves
me. I thank you, God, for making me a nice person, pretty and funny sometimes. I will
always try to do the right thing, if I can. This is Jannie Cross saying goodnight."

"Amen Jannie Cross," I smiled and said to my girl. I loved her more than life itself. She
reminded me of her mother in the best possible way. "I'll see you in the morning. I can't
wait."

Jannie grinned and her eyes widened suddenly. She popped back up in bed. "You can
see me some more tonight. Just let me stay up," she said. "I scream for ice cream."

"You are funny," I said and kissed her goodnight. "And pretty and smart." Man, I love
her and Damon so much. I knew that was why the child murder had really gotten under
my skin. The madman had struck too close to our house.

Maybe for that reason Damon and I went for a walk a little later that night. I draped my
arm over my son's shoulders. It seemed as if every day he got a little bigger, stronger,
harder. We were good buddies, and I was glad it had worked out this way so far.

The two of us strolled in the direction of Damon's school. On the way, we passed a
Baptist church with angry, dark-red and black graffiti markings: I don't care 'boutJeez, '
causeJeez don't care 'bout me. That was a common sentiment around here, especially
among the young and restless.

One of Damon schoolmates had died at the Sojourner Truth School. What a horrible
tragedy, and yet he had already seen so much of it. Damon had witnessed a death in the
street, one young man shooting another over a parking space, when he was only six years
old.

"You ever get afraid to be at the school? Tell me the truth.

Whatever you really feel is okay to say, Damon," I gently reminded him. "I get afraid
sometimes, too. Beavis and Butt-head scares me. Ren and Stimpy, too."

Damon smiled, and he shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afraid sometimes, yeah. I was
shivering on our first day back. Our school isn't going to close down, is it?"

I smiled on the inside, but kept a straight face. "No, there'll be classes as usual tomorrow.
Homework, too."

"I did it already," Damon answered defensively. Nana has him a little too sensitive about
grades, but that probably isn't so terribly bad. "I get mostly all OKs, just like you."

"Mostly all Ks," I laughed. "What kind of sentence is that?"

"Accurate." He grinned like a young hyena who had just been told a pretty good joke on
the Serengeti.

I grabbed Damon in a loose, playful headlock. I gently slid my knuckles over the top of
his short haircut. Noogies. He was okay for now. He was strong, and he was a good
person. I love him like crazy, and I wanted him to always know that.

Damon wiggled out of the headlock. He danced a fancy Sugar Ray Leonard-style two-
step and fired a few quick, testing punches at my stomach. He was showing me what a
tough little cub he was. I had no doubt about it.

Right about then I noticed someone leaving the school building.

It was the same woman I'd seen in the early morning of Shanelie Green's murder. The
one who had blown me away then.

She was watching Damon and me tussle on the sidewalk. She had stopped walking to
watch us.

She was tall and slender, almost six feet. I couldn't see her face very well in the shadows
of the school building. I remembered her from the other morning, though. I remembered
her self-confidence, a sense of mystery I'd felt about her.

She waved, and Damon waved back. Then she headed down to the same dark blue
Mercedes, which was parked up against the wall of the building.

"You know her?" I asked.

"That's the new principal of our school," Damon informed me.

"That's Mrs. Johnson."

I nodded. Mrs. Johnson. "She works late. I'm impressed. How do you like Mrs.
Johnson?" I asked Damon as I watched her walk to her car. I remembered that Nana had
talked about the principal and been very positive about her, calling her "inspirational" and
saying she had a sweet disposition.

She was certainly attractive, and seeing her made my heart ache just a little. The truth
was, I missed not having someone in my life. I was getting over a complicated friendship
I'd had with a woman- Kate McTiernan. I had been working a lot, avoiding the whole
issue that fall. I was still avoiding it that night.

Damon didn't hesitate with his answer to my question. "I like her. Everybody likes Mrs.
Johnson. She's tough, though. She's even tougher than you are, Daddy," he said.

She didn't look so tough with her Mercedes sedan, but I had no reason not to believe my
son. She was definitely brave to be in the school alone at night. Maybe a little too brave.

"Let's head on home," I finally said to Damon. "I just remembered this is a school night
for you."

"Let's stay up and watch the Bullets play the Orlando Magic," he coaxed and grabbed
onto my elbow.

"Oh -- sure. No, let's get Jannie up and we'll all pull an all-nighter," I said and laughed
loudly. We both laughed, sharing the jokey moment.

I slept in with the kids that night. I was definitely not over the murder at the Truth
School. Sometimes, we'll throw blankets and pillows on the floor and sleep there as if we
were homeless. It gives Nana fits, but I believe she thrives on her fits, so we make
certain she has one every other week or so.

As I lay there with my eyes open, and both kids sleeping peacefully, I couldn't help
thinking about Shanelie Green. It was the last thing I needed to think about. Why had
someone brought the body back to the school yard? I wondered. There are always loose
ends on cases, but this one made no sense, so it concerned me. It was a piece that didn't
fit in a puzzle that was supposed to be finished.

Then I began thinking about Mrs. Johnson for a moment or two. That was a better place
to be. She's even tougher than you are, Daddy. What a glowing recommendation from
my little man. It was almost a dare. Everybody likes Mrs. Johnson, Damon had said.

I wondered what her first name was. I made a wild guess -- Christine. The name just
came to me. Christine. I liked the sound of it in my head.

I finally nodded off to sleep. I slept with the kids in the pile of blankets and pillows on
the bedroom floor. No monsters visited us that night. I wouldn't let them.

The dragonslayer was on guard. Tired and sleepy and oversentimental, but ever so
watchful.

THIS WAS REALLY NUTS, insane, demented. It was so great The killer wanted to go
for it again, right now. Right this minute. He wanted to do the two of them. What a gas
that would be. What a large charge. A real shockeroo.

He had watched them from afar --father and son. He thought of his own father, the
totally worthless prick. up and watch the Bullets play the Orlando Magic," he coaxed and
grabbed onto my elbow.

"Oh -- sure. No, let's get Jannie up and we'll all pull an all-nighter," I said and laughed
loudly. We both laughed, sharing the jokey moment.

I wondered what her first name was. I made a wild guess -- Christine. The name just
came to me. Christine. I liked the sound of it in my head.

I finally nodded off to sleep. I slept with the kids in the pile of blankets and pillows on
the bedroom floor. No monsters visited us that night. I wouldn't let them.

The dragonslayer was on guard. Tired and sleepy and oversentimental, but ever so
watchful.

He had watched them from afar --father and son. He thought of his own father, the
totally worthless prick.

Then he saw the tall, pretty schoolteacher wave and get into her car. Instinctively, he
hated her, too. Worthless black bitch.

Phony teacher smile spread all over her face.

POW! POW! POW!

Three perfect headshots.

Three exploding head melons.

That what they all deserved. Summary executions.

A really rude thought was forming in his mind as he watched the scene near the school.
He already knew a lot of things about Alex Cross. Cross was his detective, wasn't he?
Cross had been assigned to his case, right? So Cross was his meat. A cop, just like his
own father had been.

The really interesting thing was that nobody had paid much attention to the first killing.
The murder had almost gone unnoticed. The papers in Washington had barely picked it
up. Same with TV. Nobody cared about a little black girl in Southeast. Why the hell
should they?

All they cared about was Jack and Jill. Rich white people afraid for their lives. Scary!
Well, fuck Jack and Jill. He was better than Jack and Jill, and he was going to
demonstrate it.

The school principal drove past his hiding place in a cluster of overgrown bushes. He
knew who she was, too. Mrs. Johnson of the Truth School. The Whitney Houston of
Southeast, right?

Screw her, man.

His eyes slowly drifted back to Alex Cross and his son. He felt anger rising inside him,
steam building up. It was as if his secret button had been pushed again. The hair on his
neck was standing at attention. He was beginning to see red, feeling spraying mists of red

in his brain. Somebodyblood, right? Cross's? His son's? He loved the idea of them
dying together. He could see it, man.

He followed Alex Cross and his kid home- in his rage state -- but keeping a safe distance.
He was thinking about what he was going to do next.

He was better than Jack and Jill. He'd prove it to Cross and everyone else.

THE FESTIVE charity gala for the Council on Mental Health was being held at the
Pension Building on F Street and Fourth on Friday night. The grand ballroom was three
stories, with huge marble columns everywhere, and more than a thousand guests noisily
seated around a glistening working fountain. The waiters and waitresses wore Santa
Claus hats. The band broke into a lively swing version of "Winter Wonderland." What
great fun.

The guest speaker for the evening was none other than the Princess of Wales. Sam
Harrison was there as well. Jack was there.

He observed Princess Di closely as she entered the glittering, stately ballroom. Her
entourage included a financier rumored to be her next husband, the Brazilian ambassador
and his wife, and several celebrities from the chic American fashion world: Ironically,
two of the models in the group appeared to suffer from anorexia nervosa m the flip side
of bulimia, the nervous disorder that had plagued Diana for the previous dozen years.

Jack moved a few steps closer to Princess Di. He was in-trigned, and had serious
questions about the quality of her security arrangement. He watched the Secret Service
boys make a discreet sweep, then remain on duty nearby, earphones at the ready A formal
toastmaster had been brought all the way from England to properly salute the queen- the
council's presidentand host Walter Annenberg. The ambassador spoke briefly, then a
lavish, though overcooked and underspiced, din-her followed: baby lamb with sauce
Niqoise and haricots verts.

When the princess finally rose to speak during dessert, an orange almond tart with orange
sauce and Marsala cream, Jack was less than thirty feet away from her. She wore an
expensive gold sheath of taffeta with sequins, but he found her somewhat gawky, at least
to his taste. Her large feet made him think of the cartoon character Daisy Duck. Princess
Daisy, that was his moniker for Di.

Diana's speech at the gala was very personal, if familiar, to those who had followed her
life closely. A troubled childhood and adolescence, a debilitating search for perfection,
feelings of self-revulsion and low personal esteem. All this had led to what she spoke of
as her "shameful friend," bulimia.

Jack found the speech strangely off-putting and cloying. He wasn't at all touched by
Diana's self-pity, or the near hysteria that seemed to reside just below the surface of her
performance --perhaps her entire life.

The audience clearly had a different reaction, even the usually cool-as-ice Secret Service
guards seemed to react emotionally to the popular Di. The applause when she had
finished speaking was thunderous and seemed heartfelt and sincere.

Then the entire room stood up Jack included, and continued the warm, noisy tribute. He
could almost have reached out and touched Di. Here to bulimia, he wanted to call out.
Here's to worthwhile causes of all kinds.

It was time for him to move into action again. It was time for number two in the Jack and
Jill story. Time for a lot of things to begin.

It was also his turn to be the star tonight- to solo, as it were. He had been watching
another well-known personality that evening at the party He had watched her, studied her
habits and mannerisms on a few other occasions as well.

Natalie Sheehan was physically striking, much more so than Di, actually The much-
admired TV newswoman was blond, about five eight in heels. She wore a simple,
classic, black silk dress. She oozed charm, but especially class. First class. Natalie
Sheehan had been aptly described as "American royalty, an American princess."

Jack started to move at a little past nine-thirty Guests were already dancing to an eight-
piece band. The breezy chitchat was flowing freely: Marion Gingrich's business
dealings, trade problems with China, John Major's problems du jour, planned ski trips to
Aspen, Whistler, or Alta.

She had downed three margaritas -- straight up, with salt around the rim. He had watched
her. She didn't show it but she had to be feeling something, had to be a little high.

She was an extremely good actor, Jack was thinking as he came up beside her at one of
the complimentary bars. She a master of the one-night stand and the one-weekend affair.
Jill had researched the hell out of her. I know everything about you, Natalie.

He took two sidelong steps, and suddenly they were face to face. They nearly collided,
actually He could smell her perfume.

Flowers and spices. Very nice. He even knew the delightful fragrance's name- ESCADA
acre 2. He'd read that it was Natalie's favorite.

"I'm sorry. Excuse me," he said, feeling his cheeks redden.

"No, no. I wasn't looking where I was going. Clumsy me," Natalie said and smiled. It
was her killer TV close-up smile.

Really something to experience firsthand.

Jack smiled back, and suddenly his eyes communicated recognition.

He knew her. "You never forgot a name, or a face, not in eleven years of broadcasting,"
he said to Natalie Sheehan. "That's an accurate quote, I believe."
Natalie didn't miss a beat. "You're Scott Cookson. We met at the Meridian. It was in

early September. You're a lawyer with...
a prestigious D.C. law firm. Of course."
She laughed at her small joke. Nice laugh. Beautiful lips and perfectly capped teeth.

The Natalie Sheehan. His target for the evening.

"We did meet at the Meridian?" she said, checking her facts like the good reporter she
was. "You are Scott Cookson?"
"We did, and I am. You had another affair to attend after that, at the British embassy."
"You seem never to forget a face or factoid, either," she said.
The smile remained fixed. Perfect, glowing, almost effervescent.
The TV star in real life, if this was real life.
Jack shrugged, and acted shy, which wasn't so hard to do with Natalie. "Some faces,

some factoids," he said.
She was classically beautiful, extremely attractive at any rate, he couldn't help thinking.
The warm heartland smile was her trademark, and it worked very well for her. He had

studied it for hours before tonight. He wasn't completely immune to her charms -- not
even under the circumstances.
"Well," Natalie said to him. "I don't have another party after this one. Actually, I'm

cutting back on parties. Believe it or not.
This is a good cause, though."
"I agree. I believe in good causes."
"Oh, and what's your favorite cause, Scott?"
"Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," he said.
"That's my pet cause."

He tried to look pleasantly surprised that she would remain talking with him. He could
play parlor games as well as anyone -- when he had to, when he wanted to.

"If I might be just a little bold," he said, "would you consider the two of us cutting back
together?" His very natural and unassuming smile undercut the forward-sounding line. It
was a come-on just the same. There was no disguising that. Natalie Sheehan's answer
was tremendously important, to both of them.

She stared at him, slightly taken aback. He'd completely blown it, he thought. Or maybe
she was acting now.

Then Natalie Sheehan laughed. It was a hearty laugh, almost raucous. He was sure that
no one in America had ever heard it in her prim and proper role as a network television
reporter.

Poor Natalie, Jack thought. Number two.

NATALIE TOOK another margarita for the trip home. "A roadie," she told him and
laughed that deep, wonderful laugh of hers again.

"I learned how to party a little bit at St. Catherine's Academy in Cleveland. Then at
Ohio State," she confided as they walked to the garage under the Pension Building. She
was trying to show him that she was different from her television persona. Looser, more
fun. He got that much, got the message. He even liked her for it. He was noticing that
her usually crisp and exact enunciation was just a little off now. She probably thought it
was sexy, and she was right. She was actually very nice, very down-to-earth, which
surprised him a little.

They took her' car, as Jill had accurately predicted. Natalie drove the silverblue Dodge
Stealth a little too fast. All the while she talked rapid-fire, too, but kept it interesting:
GATT, Boris Yeltsin's drinking problems, D.C. real estate, campaign-financing reform.
She showed herself to be intelligent, informed, high-spirited, and only slightly neurotic
about the ongoing struggle between men and women.

"Where are we going?" he finally thought he should ask. He already knew the answer, of
course. The Jefferson Hotel.

Natalie's honey trap in D.C. Her place.

"Oh, to my laboratory," she said. "Why, are you nervous?"

"No. Well, maybe a little nervous," he said and laughed. It was the truth.

She brought him upstairs to her private office in the Jefferson Hotel on Sixteenth Street.
Two beautiful rooms and a spacious bath overlooked downtown. He knew that she also
had a house in Old Town Alexandria. Jill had visited there. Just in case.

Just to be thorough. Measure twice. Measure five times, if necessary.

"This place is my treat for myself. A special spot where I can work right here in the
city," she told him. "Isn't the view breathtaking?

It makes you feel as if you own the whole city It does for me, anyway"

"I see what you mean. I love Washington myself," Jack said.

For a moment he was lost, peering off into the distance. He did love this city and what it
was supposed to represent -- at least, he had once upon a time. He still remembered his
very first visit here. He had been a marine private, twenty years old. The Soldier.

He quietly surveyed her workspace. Laptop computer, Canon Bubblejet, two VCRs, gold
Emmy, pocket OAG. Fresh-cut flowers in a pink vase beside a black ceramic bowl filled
with foreign pocket change.

Natalie Sheehan, this is your life. Kind of impressive; kind of sad; kind of over.

Natalie stopped and looked at him closely, almost as if she were seeing him for the first
time. "You're very nice, aren't you?

You strike me as being a very genuine person. The genuine article, as they say, or used
to say You're a nice guy, aren't you, Scott Cookson?"

"Not really," he shrugged. He rolled his sparkling blue eyes and an engaging little half-
smile appeared. He was good at this: getting the girl -- if it was necessary. Actually,
though, under normal circumstances, he never ran around. He was at heart a one-woman
guy

"Nobody's really nice in Washington, right? Not after you've lived here for a while," he
said and continued to smile.

"I suppose that's true. I guess that's basically accurate," she snorted out a raucous laugh,
then laughed again. At herself? He could see that Natalie was disappointed a little in his
answer.

She wanted, or maybe she needed, something genuine in her life. Well, so did he; and
this was it." The game was exquisite, and it was definitely the genuine article. It was so
important. It was history. And it was happening right now in this Jefferson Hotel suite.

This irresistible, dangerous game he was playing, this was his life. It was something with
meaning, and he felt fulfilled. No, he felt, for the first time in years.

"Hi there, Scott Cookson. Did we lose you for a see?"

"No, no. I'm right here. I'm a here-and-now kind of person.

Just admiring the wonderful view you have here. Washington in the wee hours."

"It's our view for tonight. Yours and mine."

Natalie made the first physical move, which was also as he had predicted and was
therefore reassuring to him.

She came up close to him, from behind. She placed her long slender arms around his
chest, bracelets jangling. It was extremely nice. She was highly desirable, almost
overpoweringly so, and she knew it. He felt himself become aroused, become extremely
hard down the left side of his trousers. That kind of arousal was like a small itch
compared to everything else he was feeling now. Besides, he could use it. Let her feel
your excitement.

Let her touch you.

"Are you okay with this?" she asked. She actually was nice, wasn't she? Thoughtful,
considerate. It was too bad, really Too late to change the plan, to switch targets. Bad
luck, Natalie.

"I'm very okay with this, Natalie."

"Can I take your tie off, tasteful as it is?" she asked.

"I think that ties should be done away with altogether," he answered.

"No, ties definitely have a place. First Communions, funerals, coronations."

Natalie was standing very close to him. She could be so sweetly, gently seductive- and
that was sad. He liked her more than he'd thought he would. Once upon a time, she had
probably been the simple Midwestern beauty she now half pretended to be. He had felt
nothing but revulsion for Daniel Fitzpatrick, but he felt a great deal tonight. Guilt, regret,
second thoughts, compassion. The hardest thing was killing up close like this.

"How about white pima cotton shirts? Are you a white-shirt man?" Natalie asked.

"Don't like white shirts at all. White shirts are for funerals and coronations. And charity
balls."

"I agree a thousand percent with that sentiment," Natalie said as she slowly unbuttoned
his white shirt. He let her fingers do the walking. They trailed down to his belt. Teasing.
Expert at this. She rubbed her palm across his crotch, then quickly took her hand away.

"How about high heels?" Natalie asked.

"Actually, I like those on the right occasion, and on the right woman," he said. "But I
like going barefoot, too."

"Nicely put. Give a girl her choice. I like that."

She kicked off just one black slingback, then laughed at her joke. A choice -- one shoe
on, one off.

"Silk dresses?" she whispered against his neck. He was rock-hard now. His breathing
was labored. So was Natalie's. He considered making love to her first. Was that fair
game? Or was it rape? Natalie had managed to confuse the issue for him.

"I can do without those, depending on the occasion, of course," he whispered back.

"Mmm. We seem to agree on a lot of things."

Natalie Sheehan slid out of her dress. Then she was in her blue lacy underwear, one
shoe, black stockings. Around her neck was a thin gold chain and cross that looked as if
it had come with her all the way from Ohio.

Jack still had his trousers on. But no white shirt, no tie. "Can we go in there?" she
whispered, indicating the bedroom. ,'It's really nice in there. Same view, only with a
fireplace. The fireplace even works. Something actually works in Washington."

"Okay. Well, let's start a fire then."
Jack picked her up as if she weighed nothing, as if they were both elegant dancers, which

in a way they were. He didn't want to care about her, but he did. He forced the thought
out of his mind.
He couldn't think like that, like a schoolboy, a Pollyanna, a normal human being.
"Strong, too. Hmmm," she sighed, finally kicking off the other shoe.
The picture window in the bedroom was astonishing to behold.
The view was north up Sixteenth Street. The streets and Scott Circle below were like a

lovely and expensive necklace, jewelry by Harry Winston or Tiffany. Something

Princess Di might wear.
Jack had to remind himself that he was stalking Natalie. Nothing must stop this from
happening now. The final decision had been made. The die was cast. Literally.

He forced himself not to be sentimental. Just like that! He could be so cold, and so good

at this.
He thought about throwing the high-spirited and beautiful newswoman through the plate
glass window of her bedroom. He wondered if she would crash through or just bounce
back off the glass.

Instead, he set Natalie down gently on a bed covered with an Amish quilt. He pulled out
handcuffs from his jacket pocket.
He let her see them.
Natalie Sheehan frowned, her blue eyes widening in disbelief.

She seemed to deflate, to depress, right before his eyes.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" She was angry with him, but she was also hurt. She
figured he was a freak, and she was right beyond her wildest nightmares.

His voice was very low. "No, this isn't a joke. This is very serious, Natalie. You might

say that it's newsworthy."
There was a sudden and very sharp knock at the door to the demi-apartment. He held up
a finger for Natalie to be quiet, very quiet.

Her eyes showed confusion, genuine fear, an uncustomary loss of her cool demeanor.
His eyes were cold. They showed nothing at all.
"That's Jill," he told Natalie Sheehan. "I'm Jack. I'm sorry. I really am."
I EASED MY WAY inside the Jefferson Hotel just before eight in the morning. A little

Gershwin was rolling through my head, trying to soothe the savage, trying to smooth out
the jagged edges.

Suddenly, I was playing the bizarre game, too. Jack and Jill. I was part of it now.
The cool dignity of the hotel was being scrupulously main-rained; at least, it was in the
elegant front lobby It was difficult to grasp the reality that a bizarre and unspeakable
tragedy had struck here, or that it ever could.

I passed a fancy grillroom and a shop displaying couture fashion. A century-old clock
gently chimed the hour; otherwise, the room was hushed. There was no sign, not a hint,
that the Jefferson m indeed the entire city of Washington -- was in shock and chaos over
a pair of grisly, high-profile murders and threats of still more to come.

I am continually fascinated by facades like the one I encountered at the Jefferson. Maybe
that's why I love Washington so much. The hotel lobby reminded me that most things
aren't what they appear to be. It was a perfect representation for so much that goes on in

D.C. Clever facades fronting even morfrom his jacket pocket.
He let her see them.

Natalie Sheehan frowned, her blue eyes widening in disbelief.

She seemed to deflate, to depress, right before his eyes.

"Is this some kind of sick joke?" She was angry with him, but she was also hurt. She
figured he was a freak, and she was right beyond her wildest nightmares.

His voice was very low. "No, this isn't a joke. This is very serious, Natalie. You might
say that it's newsworthy."

There was a sudden and very sharp knock at the door to the demi-apartment. He held up
a finger for Natalie to be quiet, very quiet.

Her eyes showed confusion, genuine fear, an uncustomary loss of her cool demeanor.

His eyes were cold. They showed nothing at all.

"That's Jill," he told Natalie Sheehan. "I'm Jack. I'm sorry. I really am."

I EASED MY WAY inside the Jefferson Hotel just before eight in the morning. A little
Gershwin was rolling through my head, trying to soothe the savage, trying to smooth out
the jagged edges.

Suddenly, I was playing the bizarre game, too. Jack and Jill. I was part of it now.

The cool dignity of the hotel was being scrupulously main-rained; at least, it was in the
elegant front lobby It was difficult to grasp the reality that a bizarre and unspeakable
tragedy had struck here, or that it ever could.

D.C. Clever facades fronting even more clever facades.

Jack and Jill had committed their second murder in five days. In this serene and very
posh hotel. They had threatened several more murders -- and no one had a clue why, or
how to stop the celebrity stalking.

It was escalating.

Clearly, it was.

But why? What did Jack and Jill want? What was their sick game all about?

I had already been on the phone very early that morning, talking to my strange friends in
abnormal psych at Quantico. One of the advantages I have is that they all know I have a
doctorate in psych from Johns Hopkins and they're willing to talk with me, even to share
theories and insights. So far, they were stumped.

Then checked in with a contact of mine at the FBI's evidence analysis labs. The evidence
hounds didn't have much of anything to go on, either. They admitted as much to me.
Jack and Jill had all of us chasing our tails in double time.

Speaking of which, I had been ordered by the chief of detectives to work up "one of your
famous psych profiles" on the homicidal couple, if that's what they really were. I felt the
task was futile at this point, but hadn't been given a choice by The Jefe. Working at
home on my PC, I ran a wide swath through the available Behavioral Science Unit and
Violent Criminal Apprehension Program data. Nothing obvious or very useful popped
up, as I suspected it wouldn't. It was too early in the chase, and Jack and Jill were too
good.

For now at least the correct steps were (1) gather as much information and data as
possible; (2) ask the right questions, and plenty of them; (3) start collecting wild hunches
on index cards that I would carry around until the end of the case.

I knew about several stalker cases, and I ran the information down in my head. One
inescapable fact was that the Bureau now had a database of more than fifty thousand
potential and actual stalkers. That was up from less than a thousand in the 1980s. There
didn't seem to be any single stalker profile, but many of them shared traits: first and
foremost, obsession with the media; need for recognition; obsession with violence and
religion; difficulty forming loving relationships of their own. I thought of Margaret Ry,
the obsessed fan who had broken into David Letterman's home in Connecticut numerous
times. She had called Letterman "the dominant person in my life." I watch Letterman
sometimes myself, but he's not that good.

Then there was the Monica Seles stabbing in Hamburg, Germany Katarina Witt had
nearly suffered the same fate at the hand of a "fan."

Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Jodie Foster had all been seriously
stalked and attacked by people who claimed to adore them.

But who were Jack and Jill? Why had they chosen Washington, D.C., for the murders?
Had someone in the government harmed one or both of them in some real or imagined
way?

What was the link between Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick and the murdered television
newswoman Natalie Sheehan? What could Fitzpatrick and Sheehan possibly have in
common? They were liberals -- could that be something? Or were the killings radom,
and therefore nearly impossible to chart? Random was a nasty word that was sticking in
my head more and more as I thought about the case. Random was a very bad word in
homicide circles. Random murders were almost impossible to solve.

Most celebrity stalkers didn't murder their prey- at least, they didn't use extreme violence
right away. That bothered the hell out of me about Jack and Jill. How long had they
been obsessed with Senator Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan? How had they ultimately
chosen their victims? Don't let these be random selections and murders. Anything but
that.

I was also intrigued by the fact that there were two of them, working closely together.

I had just come off a dizzying, high-profile case in which two friends, two males, had
been kidnapping and murdering women for more than thirteen years. They had been
cooperating, but also competing with each other. The psychological principle involved
was known as twinning.

So what about Jack and Jill? Were theyfreak-friends? Were they romantically involved?
Or was their bond something else? Was it a sexual thing for them? That seemed like a
reasonable possibility.

Power dominance? A really kinky parlor game, maybe the ultimate sex fantasy? Were
they a husband-and-wife team? Or maybe spree killers like Bonnie and Clyde?

Was this the beginning of a gruesome crime spree? A multiple-murder spree in
Washington ?

Would it spread elsewhere? To other large cities where celebrities tend to cluster? New
York? Los Angeles? Paris? London?

I stepped off the elevator on the seventh floor of the Jefferson Hotel and looked into a
corridor of dazed and confused faces.

Judging from the looks at the crime scene, I was pretty much up to speed.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill To kill, to kill, to kill.

"THE GOOD DOCTOR CROSS, the master of disaster. Well, I'll be. Alex -- hey, Alex
-- over here!"

I was lost in a bad jumble of thoughts and impressions about the murders when I heard
my name. I recognized the voice immediately, and it brought a smile to my lips.

I turned and saw Kyle Craig of the FBI. Another dragonslayer, this one originally from
Lexington, Massachusetts. Kyle was not your typical FBI agent. He was a totally
straight shooter. He wasn't uptight, and he usually wasn't bureaucratic. Kyle and I had
worked together on some very bad cases in the past. He was a specialist in high-profile
crimes that were marked by extreme violence or multiple murders. Kyle was an expert in
the nasty, scary stuff most Bureau agents didn't want to be involved with on a regular
basis. Beyond that, he was a friend.

"They've got all the big guns out on this one," Kyle said as we shook hands in the foyer.
He was tall, still gaunt. Distinctive features and strikingly black hair, coal black hair. He
had a long hawk's nose that looked sharp enough to cut.

"Who's here so far, Kyle?" I asked him. He would have everything scoped out by now.
He was smart and observant, and his instincts were usually good. Kyle also knew who
everybody was and how they fit into the larger picture.

Kyle puckered up. He made a face as if he had just sucked on a particularly sour lemon.
"Who the hell isn't here, Alex? Detectives from D.C., your own cornpadres. The Bureau,
of course.

DEA, believe it or not. The blue suit is CIA. You can tell by the clipped wings. Your
close friend Chief Pittman is in visiting with Ms. Sheehan's lovely corpse. They're in the
boudoir as we speak."

"Now that's scary," I said and smiled thinly. "About as grotesque as you can get."

Kyle pointed to a closed door, which I assumed was the bedroom.

"I don't think they want to be disturbed. A rumor circulating at Quantico has it that Chief
of Detectives Pittman is a necrophiliac," he said with a deadpan look. "Could that be
true?"

"Victimless crimes," I said.

"How about a little respect for the dead," Kyle said, peering down his nose at me. "Even
in death, I'm certain Ms. Sheehan would find a way to rebuff your chief of detectives."

I wasn't surprised that The Jefe himself had come to the Jefferson. This was developing
into the biggest D.C. homicide case in years. It definitely would be if Jack and Jill
struck again soon -- as they had promised.

Reluctantly, I parted company with Kyle and walked toward the closed bedroom door. I
opened it slowly, as if it might be booby-trapped.

The one and only Chief George Pittman was in the bedroom with a man in a gray suit.
Probably a forensics guy. They both glanced around at me. Pittman was chomping on an
unlit Bauza cigar. Pittman frowned and shook his head when he saw who it was.
Nothing he could do about it. It was Commissioner Clouser's invitation-order that I be on
the case. It was obvious that The Jefe didn't want me here.

He muttered "the late Alex Cross" to the other suit. So much for polite introductions and
light banter.

The two of them turned back to the famous corpse on the bed.

Chief Pittman had been abusive for no apparent reason. I didn't let it bother me too
much. It was business-pretty-much-as-usual with the rude, bullying prick. What a
useless bastard, a real horseass. All he ever did was get in the way.

I breathed in slowly a couple of times. Got into the job, the homicide scene. I walked
over to the bed and started my routine: the collection of raw impressions.

A G-string was pulled partly over Natalie Sheehan's head, and the waistband was
wrapped around her throat. Panties covered her nose, chin, and mouth. Her wide blue
eyes were fixed on the ceiling. She was still wearing black stockings and a blue bra that
matched the panties.

Here was evidence of kinkiness again, and yet I didn't quite believe it. Everything was
too orderly and arranged. Why would they want us to suspect kinky sex might be
involved? Was that something? Were Jack and Jill frustrated lovers? Was Jack
impotent?

We needed to know whether anyone had sex with the victim.

It was a particularly disturbing death scene. Natalie Sheehan had been dead for about
eight hours, according to Kyle's information.

She was no longer beautiful, though, not even close. Ironically, she had taken her biggest
news story with her to the grave.

She knew Jack -- and maybe Jill.

I could remember watching her on TV, and it was almost as if someone I knew
personally had been murdered. Maybe that's why there's such fascination with celebrity
murder cases. We see people like Natalie Sheehan on almost a daily basis; we come to

think that we know them. And we believe they lead such interesting lives. Even their
deaths are interesting.

I could already see that there were some obvious and striking similarities to the murder of
Senator Fitzpatrick. The element of kinky sadism for one thing. Natalie Sheehan was
manacled to the bedposts with handcuffs. She was seminude. She also seemed to have
been "executed," just as the senator had been.

The news celebrity had received one close-range gunshot to the left side of her head,
which hung to one side as if her long neck had been broken. Maybe it had been.

Was this the Jack and Jill pattern? Organized, efficient, and cold-blooded as hell. Kinky
for some reason known only to them.

Pseudokinky ? Sexual obsession, or a sign of impotence? What was the pattern telling
us? What was it communicating?

I was beginning to formulate a psychological personality print for the killers. The
method and style of the killings were more important to me than any physical evidence.
Always. Both murders had been carefully planned -- methodical, very structured, and
leisurely --Jack and Jill were playing a cold-blooded game.

So far, there had been no significant slipups that I knew of. The only physical evidence
left at the scenes was intentional -- the notes.

Sexual fantasy was obvious -- both in exhibiting the female on her bed and in the
senator's case, male mutilation. Did Jack and Jill have trouble with sex?

My initial impression was that both killers were white, somewhere between the ages of
thirty and forty-five- probably closer to the latter, based on the high level of organization
in both murders. I suspected well above average intelligence, but also persuasiveness and
physical attractiveness. That was particularly telling, and bizarre to me -- since the killers
had managed to get inside the celebrities' apartments. It was the best clue we had.

There was much more for me to take in, and I did, madly scribbling away in my notepad.
Occasionally, TheJefe looked my way and glared at me. Checking up on me.

I wanted to go at him. He represented so many things that were wrong with the
department, the Washington PD. He was such a controlling macho asshole, and not half
as bright as he thought he was.

"Anything, Cross?" he finally turned and asked in his usual clipped manner.

"Not so far," I said.

That wasn't the truth. What definitely occurred to me was that Daniel Fitzpatrick and
Natalie Sheehan might both have been "promiscuous," in the old-fashioned sense of the
word. Maybe Jack and Jill "disapproved" of them. Both bodies had been left exposed, in
compromising and very embarrassing positions. The killers seemed preoccupied with sex
-- or at least the sex lives of famous people.

Exposed... or to expose I wondered. Exposed for what reason?

"I'd like to look at the note," I told Pittman, trying to be civil and professional.

Pittman waved a hand in the direction of an end table on the far side of the bed! His
gesture was dismissive and rude. I wouldn't treat the rawest rookie patrolman that way. I
had shown more respect to Chop-It-Off-Chucky.

I walked over and read the note for myself. It was another poem.

Five lines.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill To right another error.

To make it short Her news report Was filled with her own terror.

I shook my head back and forth a few times, but didn't say anything about the note to
Pittman. To hell with him. The rhyme didn't tell me much of anything yet. I hoped it
would eventually. Actually, the rhymes were clever, but without emotion. What had
made these two killers so clever and cold?

I continued to search the bedroom. I was infamous in homicide circles for spending a lot
of time at crime scenes. Sometimes I'd spend a whole day. I planned to do the same
thing here. Most of the dead woman's effects seemed to tie in with her career, almost as
if she had no other life. Videocassettes, expense sheets from her network, a pilfered
stapler with CBS engraved on it. I observed the murder scene, and the dead woman,
from several angles. I wondered if the killers had taken anything with them.

I couldn't concentrate the way I wanted to, though. Chief Pittman had gotten on my
nerves. I had let him get to me.

Why had both victims been left exposed? What was it that connected them in death- at
least in the minds of the murderers?

The killers felt compelled to graphically point out certain things to us. In fact, everything
about Fitzpatrick and Sheehan was in public view now. Thanks to Jack and Jill.

This is so bad, I thought and had to reach down deep for a breath.

Worst of all, I was completely hooked on the case. I was definitely hooked.

Then everything took a turn for the worse in the bedroom. A bad and unexpected turn.

I was standing near George Pittman when he spoke again, without looking at me. "You
come back after we're finished, Cross. Come back later."

The Jefe's words hung like stale smoke in the air. I had trouble believing that he'd
actually said them. I have always tried to act with some respect toward Pittman. It's been
hard, nearly impossible most of the time, but I've done it anyway.

"I'm talking to you, Cross," Pittman raised his voice a notch.

"You hear what I said? Do you hear me?"

Then the chief of detectives did something he shouldn't have, something so bad,
something I couldn't look past. He reached out and pushed me with the heel of his hand.
Pushed me hard.

I stumbled back a half-step. Caught my balance. Both my fists slowly rose to my chest.

I didn't stop to think. Maybe some stored-up venom and powerful dislike made me act.
That was part of it.

I reached out and grabbed Pittman with both hands. This unspoken thing between us, the
pattern of disrespect from him, had been building for a couple of years -- at least that
long. Now it flared big-time and ugly. It exploded inside the dead woman's bedroom.

George Pittman and i are about the same age. He's not as tall as I am, but he's probably
heavier by thirty pounds. He has the squat, blocklike build and look of a football
linebacker from the early sixties. He's bad at his job and he shouldn't have it. He resents
the hell out of me because I'm decent at what I do. Fucker!

I grabbed and picked him up, right off the floor. I look fairly strong, but I'm actually a lot
stronger. Pittman's eyes widened in disbelief and sudden fear.

I slammed him hard against the bedroom wall. Then banged him into the wall a second
time. Nothing lethal or too damaging, but definitely a bell-ringer, an attention-grabber.

Each time his body hit, the staid Jefferson Hotel seemed to shake to its very foundation.
TheJefe's body went slack. He didn't fight back. He couldn't believe what I'd just done.
To be honest, neither could I.

I loosened my grip on Pittman. I finally let him go, and he wobbled on his feet. I knew I
hadn't hurt him much physically, but I had hurt his pride. I had also made a big mistake.

I didn't say a word. Neither did the other gray suit in the room.

I took some solace in the fact that Pittman had pushed first. He had started this, and for
no reason. I wondered if the other suit had seen it that way, but I doubted it.
I left the crime-scene bedroom. Pittman never spoke to me.

I wondered also if I had just left the Washington Police Department.
"THIS IS AN ALERT! Something is going down at Crown. Up and at 'em, everybody!
We've got trouble at Crown. This is a real alert! This is not a drill! This is for real."

Half a dozen Secret Service agents took the sudden alert very seriously. They watched
Jack through Range master binoculars, three sets of them.

Jack was on the move.
They couldn't believe what they were witnessing. Not one of the agents could believe
this very bad scene playing out before them. The alert was definitely for real, though.

"It's Jack, all right. What is he -- crazy?"

"We have full visual contact with Jack. Where the hell is he going? Goddamn him.
What's going on?"
The six watchers comprised three highly professional teams.
They were all first-teamers, among the best and brightest of more than two thousand

Secret Service agents working around the world. They sat inside dark-colored Ford
sedans parked on Fifteenth Street Northwest. This was getting very serious, and very
scary, in a hurry.

This is a real alert.
This is not a drill.
"Jack is definitely leaving Crown now. It's twenty-three forty.
At this moment, we have Jack in our crosshairs," one of the agents spoke into the car

mike.

"Yeah. Jack can be a real tricky fellow, though. He's proven it before. Keep him right in
your sights. Where's the lovely Jill, home base?"
"This is home base," a female agent's voice came onto the line immediately

"Good for Jill. How the hell did Jack get out?"
"He used that old tunnel between the basement of Crown and the Treasury Building.
That's how he got out!"

This is an alert.
This is not a drill.
Jack is on the move.
"Jack is approaching Pennsylvania Avenue now. He's near the Willard Hotel. He just

glanced back over his shoulder. Jack's paranoid, as well he should be. I don't think he
saw us. Oh, shit, somebody just flashed their high beams in front of the Willard.
A vehicle is pulling out -- and pulling up alongside Jack! RedJeep!

Jack is getting inside the fucking redJeep."
"Roger. So much for having Jack in our damn crosshairs. We'll follow him pronto.
Virginia plates on the Jeep. License number two-three-one HCY. Koons dealer sticker.
Start a te -- crazy?"

"We have full visual contact with Jack. Where the hell is he going? Goddamn him.
What's going on?"

The six watchers comprised three highly professional teams.
They were all first-teamers, among the best and brightest of more than two thousand
Secret Service agents working around the world. They sat inside dark-colored Ford
sedans parked on Fifteenth Street Northwest. This was getting very serious, and very
scary, in a hurry.

This is a real alert.
This is not a drill.
"Jack is definitely leaving Crown now. It's twenty-three forty.

At this moment, we have Jack in our crosshairs," one of the agents spoke into the car

mike.
"Yeah. Jack can be a real tricky fellow, though. He's proven it before. Keep him right in
your sights. Where's the lovely Jill, home base?"

"This is home base," a female agent's voice came onto the line immediately

"Jill is nice and comfy up on the third floor of Crown. She's reading Barbara Bush on
Barbara Bush. She's in her jammies. Not to worry about Jill."
"We're absolutely sure about that?"
"Home base is sure about Jill. Jill's in bed. Jill is being a good girl, for tonight anyway"
"Good for Jill. How the hell did Jack get out?"
"He used that old tunnel between the basement of Crown and the Treasury Building.

That's how he got out!"
This is an alert.
This is not a drill.
Jack is on the move.
"Jack is approaching Pennsylvania Avenue now. He's near the Willard Hotel. He just

"We're following the red Jeep. We're on Jack's ass. Full alert for the Jackal. Repeat: full
alert for the Jackal. This is not a drill!"
"Do not lose Jack tonight of all nights. Do not lose Jack under any circumstances."
"Roger. We have Jack in plain sight."

Three dark sedans took off in hot pursuit of the Jeep. Jack was the Secret Service's code
name for President Thomas Byrnes.

Jill was the code name for the First Lady. Crown had been the Service's code word for
the White House for nearly twenty years.

Most of the current-duty agents genuinely liked President Byrnes. He was a down-toearth
guy, a very regular person as recent presidents went. Not too much bullshit about
him. Occasionally, though, the President took off on an unannounced date with some
lady friend, either in D.C. or on the road. The Secret Service referred to this as "the
president's disease." Thomas Byrnes was hardly the first to suffer from this malady. John
Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially Lyndon Johnson had been the worst
offenders. It seemed to be a perk of high office.

The coincidence of the names chosen by the two psychopathic killers in D.C., the so-
called celebrity stalkers, wasn't lost on the Secret Service. The Secret Service didn't
believe in coincidences. They had already met four times on the matter -- long, difficult
meetings in the Emergency Command Center in the West Wing basement of the White
House. The name for any would-be assassins of the president was Jackal.

Jackal had been used by the Secret Service for more than thirty years.

The "coincidence" of the names worried the PPD, the Presidential Protection Division, a
great deal- especially.when President Byrnes decided to go out on one of his
unannounced walks, which for obvious reasons didn't include any of his bodyguards.

There were two Jacks and two Jills.

The Secret Service did not, could not, accept this as a coincidence.

"We've lost the red Jeep around the Tidal Basin. We've lost Jack," an agent's voice
suddenly exploded over the car-radio speakers.

Everything was chaos. Full-alert chaos.

This was not a test.

PART 2

DRAGONSLAYER

ON MONDAY NIGHT something.finally broke on Jack and Jill.

It was something potentially big. I hoped it wasn't a hoax.

I'd just gotten home to try and catch a bite of dinner with the kids when the phone rang.
It was Kyle Craig. He told me a videotaped message, reportedly from Jack and Jill, had
been delivered to the CNN studios. The killers had made a home movie for the world to
see. Jack and Jill had also sent cover letters to the Washington Post and the New York
Times. They were planning to "explain" themselves that night.

I had to rush out before Nana's roast chicken hit the supper table. Jannie and Damon gave
me their not-again looks. They were right to think that way.

I hurried to the Union Station section of Washington, around H and North Capitol. I
didn't want to be late for the party that Jack andJillwere throwing. This was another
example of the two of them demonstrating their control over us.

I arrived at CNN headquarters just in time for the screening and only moments before the
video was to be aired on Larry King Live. Senior agents from the FBI and Secret Service
were crowded into a low-key, cozy CNN viewing room. So were various techies,
administrators, and lawyers from the news network. Everybody looked incredibly tense
and uptight.

The room was completely silent as the filmed message from Jack and Jill began. I was
afraid to blink. We all were.

"You believe this shit?" somebody finally muttered.

Jack and Jill had been filming us! That was the first shock of the night. They had
actually filmed the police outside Senator Fitzpatrick's apartment building a few days
earlier. They had been right there in the crowd of onlookers, the ambulance-chasers.

The film was a jarring, documentary-style collage of black and white, with some color.
The opening shots were from several angles outside Senator Fitzpatrick's building. It was
like a well-made student film, but a little artsy. Then something even more unexpected
and powerful came on the screen.

The murderers had filmed the last moments of Senator Fitzpatrick's life, seconds before
his murder, I guessed. There were haunting shots of the senator alive. It got worse from
there.

We saw graphic shots of Daniel Fitzpatrick, naked, handcuffed to his bed. We heard his
voice. "Please don't do this," he pleaded with his captors. Then we heard the click of a
trigger.

A shot was fired only an inch or two from Fitzpatrick's right ear. Then came a second
shot. The senator's head exploded on film. People gasped at the awful image and sound
that carried the senator into eternity.

"Oh, Jesus! Jesus!" a woman screamed. Several people looked away from the screen.
Others covered their eyes. I stayed with it. I couldn't miss anything. This was all vital
information for the case that I was trying to understand. This was more valuable than all
the DNA testing, serology, and fingerprinting in the world.

The tone of the film suddenly changed after the footage of Fitzpatrick's vicious murder.
Images of ordinary people on the streets of unidentified cities and small towns followed
the chilling death sequence. A few of the people on camera waved, some smiled broadly,
most seemed indifferent as they were being filmed, presumably by Jack and Jill.

The film continued to weave together black-and-white and color footage, but not in a
disorderly fashion. Whoever had stitched it together had a decent skill for editing.

One of them is an artist, or at least has strong artistic tendencies, I thought to myself and
made a mental note. What kind of artist would be involved in something like this? I was
familiar with several theories about links between creativity and psychopaths.

Bundy, Dahmer, even Manson, could be considered "creative" killers. On the other hand,
Richard Wagner, Degas, Jean Genet, and many other artists had exhibited psychopathic
behavior in their lives, but they didn't kill anyone.

Then, about sixty-five seconds into the film, a narration began.

We heard two voices: a man's and a woman's. Something dramatic was happening. It
caught all of us by surprise.

Jack and Jill had decided to speak to us.

It was almost as if the killers were right there in the studio. The two of them alternated
speaking as the film collage continued, but both voices had been electronically filtered,
presumably so they couldn't be recognized. I would move on unscrambling the voices as
soon as the show was over. But the show sure wasn't over yet.

jacK: For a long time, people like us have sat back and taken the injustices dished out by
the elite few in this country. We have been patient and suffering and, for the most part,
silent.

What is the cynical saying -- don't just do something, sit there ? We have waited for the
American system of checks and balances to take hold and work for us. But the system
has not worked for a long, long time. Nothing seems to work anymore. Does anyone
seriously dispute that?

JXLL: Unscrupulous people, such as lawyers and businessmen, have learned to take
advantage of our innocence and our goodwill and, most of all, our generosity of spirit.
Let us repeat that important thought--highly unscrupulous people have learned to take

advantage of our innocence, our goodwill, and our wonderful American spirit. Many of
them are in our government, or work closely with our so-called leaders.

jacK: Look at the faces before you in this film. These are the disenfranchised. These are
the people without any hope, or any belief in our country anymore. These are the victims
of the violence that originates in Washington, in New York, in Los Angeles. Do you
recognize the disenfranchised? Are you one of the victims? We are. We're just another
Jack and Jill in the crowd.

JLL: Look at what our so-called leaders have done to us. Look at the despair and
suffering our leaders are responsible for. Look at the sickness of cynicism they've
created. The dreams and hopes they have wantonly destroyed. Our leaders are
systematically destroying America.

jack Look at the faces.

JILL: Look at the faces.

jac: Look at the faces. Now do you understand why we are coming to get you? Do you
see?... Just look at the faces. Look at what you have done. Look at the unspeakable
crimes you have committed.

ju.: Jack and Jill have come to The Hill. This is why we're here. Beware to all those who
work and live in the capital, and attempt to control the rest of us. You've been playing
with all of our lives -- now we're going to play with yours. It's our turn to play. It's Jack
and Jill's turn.

The film ended with striking images of masses of homeless people in Lafayette Square,
right across from the White House.

Then another poem, another warning rhyme.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill On a grave and somber mission.

You've made them mad The time's so bad To be a politician.

jack These are the times that try men without souls. You know who you are. So do we.

"How long does their little masterpiece run?" One of the television producers wanted an
answer to the most practical of questions.

CNN was supposed to be on the air live with the film in less than ten minutes.

"Just over three minutes. Seemed like forever, I know," a technician with a stopwatch
reported. "If you're thinking about editing it down, tell me right now."

I felt a chill after hearing the rhyme, even though the viewing room was warm. No one
had left yet. The CNN people were talking among themselves, discussing the film, as if
the rest of us weren't even there. The talk-show host was looking pensive and troubled.
Maybe he understood where mass communications was heading, and realized it couldn't
be stopped.

"We're live in eight minutes," a producer announced to his crew. "We need this room,
people. We're going to make dupes for all of you."

"Souvenirs," someone in the crowd quipped. "I saw Jack and Jill on CNN."

"They're not serial killers," I said in a soft mumble, more for myself than anyone else. I
wanted to hear what the thought, the hunch, sounded like out loud.

I was in the minority, but my belief was strong. They're not pattern killers, not in the
ordinary sense. They were extremely organized and careful, though. They were clever
or personable enough to get close to a couple of famous people. They had a hang-up with
kinky sex, or maybe they just wanted us to think so. They had some kind of overarching
cause.

I could still hear their words, their eerie voices on the tape: "On a grave and somber
mission."

Maybe this wasn't a game to them. It was a war.

IT WAS the worst of times; it was the worst of times. On Wednesday morning, just two
days after Shanelie Green's murder, a second murdered child was found in Garfield Park,
not far from the Sojourner Truth School. This time the victim was a seven-year-old boy.
The crime was similar. The child's face had been crushed, possibly with a metal club or
pipe.

I could walk from my house on Fifth Street to the horrifying murder scene. I did just
that, but I dragged my feet. It was the fourth of December and children were already
thinking of Christmas. This shouldn't have been happening. Not ever, but especially not
then.

I felt bad for another reason, besides the murder of another innocent child. Unless
someone was copycatting the first murder, and that seemed highly unlikely to me, the
killer couldn't have been Emmanuel Perez, couldn't have been Chop-it-Off-Chucky.
Sampson and I had made a mistake. We had run down the wrong child molester. We
were partly responsible for his death.

The wind swirled and howled across the small park as I entered across from the bodega.
It was a miserable morning, terribly cold and darkly overcast. Two ambulances and a
half-dozen police cruisers were parked on the grounds inside the rim of the park.

There were at least a hundred people from the neighborhood at the crime scene. It was
eerie, ghastly, completely unreal. Police and ambulance sirens screamed in the
background, a terrifying dirge for the dead. I shivered miserably, and it wasn't only from
the cold.

The horrifying crime scene reminded me of a bad time a few years back when we had
found a little boy's body the day before Christmas. The image was everlasting in my
mind. The boy's name was Michael Goldberg, but everybody had called him Shrimpie.
He was only nine years old. The murderer's name was Gary Soneji, and he had escaped
from prison after I caught him.

He had escaped, and he had disappeared off the face of the earth.

I'd come to think of Soneji as my Dr. Moriarty, evil incarnate, if there was such a thing,
and I had begun to believe that there was.

I couldn't help thinking and wondering about Soneji. Gary Soneji had a perfect reason to
commit murders near my home.

He had vowed to pay me back for his time spent in prison: every day, every hour, every
minute. Payback time, Dr. Cross.

As I ducked under the crisscrossing yellow crime-scene tapes, a woman in a white rain
poncho yelled out to me, "You're supposed to be a policeman, right? So why the hell
won't you do something! Do something about this maniac killing our children!

Oh yeah, and have a happy, goddamn holiday!"

What could I possibly say to the angry woman? That real police work wasn't like N.Y.P

D. Blue on television? We had no leads on the two child killings so far. We had no
Chop-It-Off-Chucky to blame anymore. There was no getting around a simple fact:
Sampson and I had made a mistake. A bad hombre was dead, but probably for the wrong
reason.
The news coverage continued to be very limited, but I recognized a few reporters at the
tragic scene: Inez Gomez from El Diario and Fern Galperin from CNN. They seemed to
cover everything in Washington, occasionally even murders in Southeast.

"Does this have anything to do with the child murder last week, Detective? Did you get
the real murderer? Is this a serial killer of little kids?" Inez Gomez shot off a clipped
barrage of questions at me. She was very good at her job, smart and tough and fair most
of the time.

I said nothing to any of the reporters, not even to Gomez. I didn't even look their way
There was an ache at the center of my chest that wouldn't go away Is this a serial killer of

little kids? I don't know, Inez. I think it might be. I pray that it isn't. Was Emmanuel
Perez innocent? I don't believe so, Inez. I pray that he wasn't.

Could Gary Soneji be the killerof these two children? I hope not.

I pray that isn't the case, Inez.

Lots of prayers this cold, dismal morning.

It was too harsh for early December, too much snow. Somebody on the radio said
they've been shoveling so much in D.C., it felt like an election year.

I pushed my way through the crowd to the dead child lying like a broken doll on an
expanse of frost-covered grass. The police photographer was taking pictures of the small
boy He had a short haircut like Damon's, what Damon called a "baldie."

Of course, I knew it wasn't Damon, but the effect was incredibly powerful. It was as if I
had been punched in the stomach, hard. The sight took all the breath out of my chest and
stomach, and left me wheezing. Cruelty isn't softened by tears. I had learned that lesson
many times by then.

I knelt down low over the murdered boy He looked as if he were sleeping, but having a
terrible nightmare. Someone had closed his eyes, and I wondered if it could have been
the killer.

I didn't think so. More likely it was the work of some. Good Samaritan or possibly a
good-hearted, but very careless, policeman.

The little boy had on worn, loose gray sweats that had holes in the knees and tattered
Nike sneakers. The right side of his face had been virtually destroyed by the killer blow,
just like Shanelle's. The face was crushed, but also pocked with jagged holes and tears.
Bright red blood was pooled under his head.

The maniac likes to decimate beautiful things. It gave me an idea. Is the killer disfigured
in some way himself? Physically?

Emotionally ? Maybe both.

Why does he hate small children so much? Why is he killing them near the Sojourner
Truth School?

I opened the little boy's eyes. The child stared up at me. I don't know why I did it. I just
needed to look.

"DR. CROSS... Dr. Cross... I know this boy," said a shaky voice. "He's in our lower
school. His name is Vernon Wheatley."

I looked up and saw Mrs. Johnson, the principal at Damon's school. She held back a
sob; she grabbed the sob back hard.

She's even tougher than you are, Daddy. That's what Damon had said to me. Maybe he
was right about that. The school principal wouldn't cry, wouldn't allow herself to.

The medical examiner was standing next to Mrs. Johnson.

I knew her, too. She was a white woman, Janine Prestegard.

Looked to be about the same age as Mrs. Johnson. Mid-thirties, give or take a few years.
They had been talking, consulting, probably consoling each other.

What was there about the Sojourner Truth School? Why this school? Why Damon
school? Shanelle Green and now Vernon Wheatley. What did the principal know, if
anything? Did the school principal believe she could help solve these terrifying murders?
She had known both victims.

The medical examiner was arranging for an autopsy to determine the cause of death. She
looked shaken by the savage attack the child had suffered. The autopsy of a murdered
child is as bad as it gets.

Two detectives from the local precinct waited nearby. So did the morgue team.
Everything was so quiet, so sad, so horribly bad, at the scene. There is nothing any worse
than the murder of a child. Nothing I've seen, anyway. I remember every one that I've
been to. Sampson sometimes tells me I'm too sensitive to be a homicide detective. I
counter that every detective should be as sensitive and human as possible.

I rose to my full height. At six three I was only a few inches taller than Mrs. Johnson.

"You've been at both murder scenes," I said to her. "You live around here? You live
nearby?"

She shook her head. She looked straight up into my eyes. Her eyes were so intense, so
large and round. They held mine and wouldn't let go. "I know a lot of people in the
neighborhood.

Someone called me at home. They felt I should know. I grew up near here in the Eastern
Market section," she volunteered. "This is the same killer, isn't it?"

I didn't answer her question. "I may need to talk to you about the murders later," I said.
"We might have to talk to some of the children at school again. I won't do that unless we
have to, though. They've been through enough. Thank you for your concern. I'm sorry
about Vernon Wheatley."

Mrs. Johnson nodded and kept looking at me with incredibly penetrating eyes. Who
exactly are you? they seemed to ask.

You've been at both murder scenes, too.

"How can you do this kind of work?" she suddenly blurted out.

It was an unexpected and startling question. It should have seemed tactless, but somehow
it didn't. It happened to be my own personal mantra. How do you do this work, Alex?
Why are you the dragonslayer? Who exactly are you? What have you become?

"I don't really know." I told her the truth.

Why had I admitted the weakness to her? I rarely did that with anyone, not even with
Sampson. It had suffered. The autopsy of a murdered child is as bad as it gets.

I rose to my full height. At six three I was only a few inches taller than Mrs. Johnson.

"You've been at both murder scenes," I said to her. "You live around here? You live
nearby?"

She shook her head. She looked straight up into my eyes. Her eyes were so intense, so
large and round. They held mine and wouldn't let go. "I know a lot of people in the
neighborhood.

Someone called me at home. They felt I should know. I grew up near here in the Eastern
Market section," she volunteered. "This is the same killer, isn't it?"

Mrs. Johnson nodded and kept looking at me with incredibly penetrating eyes. Who
exactly are you? they seemed to ask.

You've been at both murder scenes, too.

"How can you do this kind of work?" she suddenly blurted out.

"I don't really know." I told her the truth.

Why had I admitted the weakness to her? I rarely did that with anyone, not even with
Sampson. It was something about her eyes. They demanded the truth.

I lowered my eyes and turned away from her. I had to. I went back to my note taking.
My head was thick with questions, bad questions, bad thoughts, and worse feelings about
the murder.

The two murders. The two cases.

Why does he hate children so much? I kept asking myself. Who could possibly hate
these little children so much? He had to have been badly abused himself. Probably a
male in his twenties. Not too organized or careful.

I had the thought that we would catch this one -- but would we catch him soon enough?

I WAS WAITING for possible disciplinary action from the department, waiting for the
whisper of the ax. It didn't come right away Chief Pittman was holding his sharp knife
over my head.

The Jefe was playing with me. Cat and mouse.

Maybe the higher powers wouldn't let him act... on account of Jack and Jill. That was it.
It had to be. They felt that they needed me on the celebrity stalkings and murders.

While I waited in limbo, there was plenty of work to do. I passed the hours checking and
rechecking the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit data for anything that might possibly
connect the two child murders to any others in Washington--or anywhere else, for that
matter. Then I repeated almost the same process on Jack and Jill. If you want to
understand the killer, look at his work.

Jack and Jill were organized. The child killer was disorganized and sloppy The cases
couldn't have been more different.

I continued to feel that I couldn't work two complex homicide cases like these at the same
time. I believed it was time for my so-called deal with the department to start working
both ways.

I made some phone calls late in the afternoon. I called in a few chips, favors I was owed
inside the department. What did I have to lose?

That night four homicide detectives from the 1st District met me in the deserted parking
lot behind the Sojourner Truth School. pounds was a genuine badass in the department.
All in all, four troublemakers. Four very good cops, though. Probably the best I knew in
Washington.

The detectives I'd chosen all lived right in Southeast. They each took the child murders
personally and wanted the gruesome case solved quickly -- no matter what their other
priority assignments were.

Sampson was the last one to arrive, but he was only a few minutes past the ten o'clock
starting time. The secret get-together would definitely have been shut down by the chief
of detectives.

I was about to set up an off-duty unit to help find the killer of Shanelle Green and Vernon
Wheatley. We weren't vigilantes, but we were close.

"The late John Sampson," Jerome Thurman quipped and let out a high-pitched laugh
when Sampson finally entered the tight circle of homicide detectives. Thurman was close
to two hundred seventy pounds, not much of it soft. He and Sampson liked to go at each
other, but they were good friends. It had been that way since we all played roundball in
the D.C. high school leagues a thousand or so years ago.

"My watch says ten on the dot,,' Sampson said, without peeking at his ancient Bulova.

"Then ten o'clock it is," contributed Shawn Moore. Moore was a hard-driving, young
detective with three kids of his own. His family lived less than a mile from the Truth
School, as it's usually called in the neighborhood. One of his boys went there with
Damon.

"I'm glad you all could come out to play on this chilly night," I said after the ribbing and
small talk had settled down. I knew that these detectives got along and had respect for
one another. I also knew this meeting would never get back to TheJefe through any of
them.

"Sorry to get you out here so late. Best we don't be seen together.

Thanks for coming, though. This school yard seemed like the right place for what we
have to talk about. I'll make it as short as possible," I said, looking around at all the
faces.

"You'd better, Alex," Jerome warned me. "Freezin' my fat ass off."

"You've all heard about the Seven-year-old boy found in Garfield Park this morning?" I
asked the detectives. "Boy by the name of Vernon Wheatley."

Heads nodded solemnly around the circle. Bad homicide news always travels quickly.

"Well, I've been thinking about these child murders a lot.

I've run the evidence we have through the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and
also the Behavioral Science Unit databanks. Nothing comes up that's a match. I have a
preliminary psych profile working. I hope that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid there's a pattern
killer working in this neighborhood. This is probably a serial killer of children. I'm
almost sure of it."

"How bad a situation are we talking, Alex?" Rakeem Powell leaned in and asked me.

I knew what Rakeem was getting at. He and I had worked on a tough pattern-killer case
a few years back. "I think this one is already in heat, Rakeem. The two murders came
within days. There was a high level of violence. He seems to be in a rage, or damn close
to it. I say he, though it might be a she."

"Violent for a female," Sampson said. He cleared his throat.

"Too much... blood... crushed skulls... little kids." He shook his head no. "Doesn't feel
like a woman to me."

"I tend to agree," I said, "but you never know these days. Look at Jill."

"How many detectives assigned to the child murders? "Jerome Thurman asked through
thick lips that were pursed and stuck way out from his face, like those candy lips kids
wear and then eat when they tire of having fat lips.

"Two teams." I told them the bad news. "Only one is full-time, though. That's the reason
I wanted us to meet. The chief of detectives is resisting any theory that the same person
killed both children. Emmanuel Perez is stilll on the books as the killer of the girl."

"That dumb motherfuck asshole," Jerome Thurman growled angrily. "That bastard's as
useless as titties on a bull."

The other detectives cursed and grumbled. I had expected a negative reaction to anything
The Jefe said or did. Still, I wasn't into cheap shots. Much as I was tempted.

"How sure are you about this being the same killer, Alex?" Rakeem asked. "You said
your profile is preliminary. I know this shit takes time."

I sniffed in the cold, then went on. "The second child, the little boy, had his face badly
smashed in, Rakeem. Only one side of the face, though. It was exactly like the murdered
little girl's face. Same side, the right. No significant variation that I could find. The
medical examiner corroborates that. The "unsub" probably feels that he has a good and a
bad side. The bad side gets punished--destroyed, is more like it.

"The final thing, and this is just a best guess at this point, I think he's a beginner at this.
But devious and clever just the same... a risk taker. He'll make a mistake. I think we can
get him soon, if we work together. But it has to be soon. I think we can nail this one!"

Sampson finally spoke up. "You going to talk about what's really going down here, Alex,
or you want me to?"

I smiled at what Sampson had said, the cranky way he'd said it. "No, I thought I'd leave
the real dirty work to you."

"As usual," he said. "Here's what Alex hasn't said so far. Just to get it out on the dance
floor. The real reason one team of detectives is assigned to these murders goes
something like this.

One, it happened in the area of the projects, and we know all the shit flows downhill in

D.C. and eventually ends up here. Two, Jack and Jill is sucking up everybody's time in
the department.
Rich white people are being killed. They're scared shitless up on Capitol Hill and such.
So of course we drop everything else. Two little black kids don't matter much, not in the
greater scheme, not in the big picture."

"Sampson and I have been working on the Truth School murders."

I picked up his thread, just lowered the volume a touch.

"Strictly off the books. We have to do our own surveillance," I added, so that everybody
knew the deal. "We need some help now. This is a major homicide case. Unfortunately,
there are two major cases in Washington at this time."

"Only one case on my mind," Rakeem Powell said. "One guess which case it is."

"You know you've got the Fatman on board." Jerome Thurman raised his high-pitched
voice and punched his stubby club of an arm into the air. "I'm in. I'm on your nonpayroll
with all its nonbenefits and risks for forced early retirement. Sounds great."

"My boy goes to the Sojourner Truth School, Alex," Shawn Moore said. "I'll make the
time for this. Hope I can fit in Jack and Jill."

We laughed at the jokes. It was our hardass approach to the difficult problems at hand.
The five of us were in. We just didn't have any idea what we were in for.

There were definitely two major murder cases in Washington and now there were two
task forces to try and solve them. One and a half task forces, anyway.

"Cocktails, anyone?" Jerome Thurman asked in the softest, most cultivated voice. You'd
have thought we were at the old Cotton Club in Harlem as he passed around his beat-up
Washington Redskins game flask.

We all took a hit; more like two or three.

We were blood brothers.

I WORKED the Jack and Jill case from five in the morning until three o'clock in the
afternoon. Me and about ten thousand other harried law officers around D.C. I was
checking for a possible link between Senator Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan. We even
looked at news photos taken of them in the past months.

Maybe somebody interesting would show up in the background of a shot. Or even better,
show up twice. I had a detective visiting all of the kinky sex shops around D.C. He
called the assignment the ultimate Jack-off.

I met Sampson at the Boston Market restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue at three-thirty It
was time for our second job. Our other homicide case, the "back burner" case. This
arrangement was definitely much better -- not great, but a significant improvement over
the past few days of frustration and utter madness for me.

"I think you might be right on the button about one thing, Alex," Sampson told me over a
lunch of double-glazed meat loaf and mashed potatoes made from scratch. "The Truth
School killer is an amateur. He's sloppy Maybe a first-timer at this. He left prints all over
the second crime scene, too. The techies got his prints, some hair, threads off his
clothing. Based on the prints, the killer is a small man -- or possibly a woman. If this
squirrel isn't careful, he or she is going to get their squirrel ass caught."

"Maybe the killer wants to," I said between bites of a meat loaf sandwich spiced with
decent tomato sauce. "Or maybe the killer just wants us to think he's a first-timer. That
could be the act. Someone might play it like that."

Sampson grinned broadly It was his best killer smile. "Do you have to double- and triple-
think everything, Sugar?"

"Of course I do. That's my job description. That's Alex's cross," I said and offered my
own killer smile.

"Oh, ho !" said Man Mountain and grinned again. Man, I loved being with him, loved to
make him laugh.

"Anything in from the rest of the team?" I asked him. "Jerome?

Rakeem?"

"They're all working the case, but still no tangible results.

Nothing yet from the go-team."

"We need surveillance at the boy's funeral and at Shanelle's gravesite. The killer might
not be able to stay away A lot of them can't."

Sampson rolled his eyes. "We'll do what we can. Do our best.

Surveillance at a child's gravesite. Shee-it."

At quarter past four, the two of us split. I headed over to the Sojourner Truth School.

The principal's car was sitting in the small, fenced-in parking lot. I remembered that Mrs.
Johnson sometimes worked late after classes. That was good for me. I wanted to talk to
her about Shanelie Green and Vernon Wheatley What connection was there between the
Truth School and the killer? What could it be?

I knew approximately where the principal's office was located in the annexed building, so
I walked directly there. It was a very nice school, for just about any area of the city
Outside, near the street, a chain-link fence with razor wire ran the perimeter of the school
yard, but the inside was festive, very bright, imaginatively decorated.

I read several hand-lettered posters and banners as I walked.

CHILDREN FIRST. GROW WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED. SUCCESS COMES IN
CANS, Comball, but nice. Inspiring for the children, and for me as well.

That particular week the hallway display cases were filled with "animal shelters," which
were made by the kids, each one illustrating an animal and its habitat. It struck me that
the Sojoumer Truth School was a terrific habitat itself. Under normal circumstances, it
was a sweet place for Damon to grow and learn.

Unfortunately, two little babies from this school had been murdered in the last week.

That made me furiously angry, and it also frightened me more than I wanted to admit.
When I was growing up, tough as it was supposed to have been in D.C., kids seldom if
ever died at our school. Now, for a lot of reasons, it happened all the time in schools.
Not only in Washington but in L.A."s schools. New York's. Chicago's. Maybe even
Sioux City's.

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 Sojoumer 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 snubnose.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 Gun Club out in Fairfax. My husband was, is,
worried about my coming to work here, too. You men seem to think alike. Sorry, 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 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 snubnose.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

She stood up and flicked off the Mac laptop on her desk. "I'll walk you to the front

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 "Shoop 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.
Kind 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.

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 to me?

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 starfucker 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.

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 others. 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 then.

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. 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.

Another celebrity had been exposed. Brought down to earth.

Punished for some real or imagined sin ? What connection was there with Fitzpatrick
and Sheehan? Why a senator, a newswoman, and an actor?

Three murders in such a short time. Celebrities are supposed to be safer than the rest of
us, more protected at least, and above all this. It got to me, seeing Michael Robinson dead
and violated.

There was something visceral and system-shocking about what the killers were doing.

What was the bizarre, complex message from Jack and Jill?

That nobody was safe anymore? I rolled the outrageous thought around in my head. It
was a good starting place, a concept to work with.

Nobody is safe?Jack and Jill were telling us they could come for anyone, at any time.
They knew how to get inside.

There was another note with the body Another Jack and Jill rhyme. It was on the night
table, where the weird and ghoulish killers, or killer, had left it for us to find.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill To do some deadly deeds.

They weren't far wrong To judge how long A bleeding liberal bleeds.

One of Michael Robinson's agents was in the room. He'd flown down from New York.
He was a good-looking man, with silver-blond hair. He wore a long cashmere coat over
an Armani suit. I noticed his eyes were red and swollen. He seemed to have been crying.
Two medical examiners were working on the film actor's body I suppose you could call
all that attention going out in style.

Only the best for Michael Robinson.

There were some other obvious connections to the Fitzpatrick and Sheehan murders.
There was a tawdry, kinky side to all three killings. Each had been an execution. And
maybe most important so far, they were all "bleeding liberals," weren't they? They had
all been exposed for what they were.

"Dr. Alex Cross ? Excuse me, you're Dr. Alex Cross, aren't you ?"
I turned to a tall, rangy man who had spoken my name. He was clean-cut and his bearing

was almost military. About forty, I guessed. He wore a black raincoat over a dark gray
suit. A buttoned-down look. Definitely senior law enforcement of some kind, I figured.
"Yes, I'm Alex Cross," I said to him.
"I'm Jay Grayer from the Secret Service," he introduced himself formally There was

something about the very erect way that he held himself. Extreme confidence. Or was it
moral certitude? A stiff pole up his behind?

"I'm senior agent of the First Family detail."
"What can I do for you?" I asked Agent Grayer. Alarms were already sounding in my
head. I felt I was about to get a much fuller understanding of why I had been put on the
Jack and Jill investigation. By whom, and for exactly what reason.

"You're wanted at the White House," he said. "I'm afraid it's a command performance,
Dr. Cross. It's about the Jack and Jill investigation. There's a problem we have to let you
know about."

"I'll bet it's a big problem, too," I said to Agent Grayer.

"Yes, I'm afraid it is. It's a very big problem, Dr. Cross. We have something we need to
share with you."
I had suspected as much. I'd had a quiet fear way in the back of my mind. Now it was up

front.
I was being summoned to the White House.
They wanted the dragonslayer there. Did they understand what that meant?
THE ONLY THING anybody seems to share very readily in Washington these days is

trouble.
I could hardly argue with the command from on high, though.
I dutifully accompanied Jay Grayer up the street to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Ask not

what I can do for my country.
The White House was only a short jaunt from the Willard Hotel.
Despite the relative performance of some of the recent occupants, the White House

continues to cast its spell over a lot of people, including me. I had been inside only

twice, on canned guided tours with my kids, but even they had been larger-than-life and
moving. I almost wished Damon and Jannie could be with me.

We were quickly passed through the blue-canopied guardhouse on West Executive Drive.
Agent Grayer was allowed to park his car in the garage under the White House. He
seemed modestly proud of the perk. He explained that the garage was still considered a
primary bomb shelter, but also an escape route in case of an attack.

"Good to know," I said and smiled. Grayer smiled back. It was forced conviviality, but
at least we were both making an effort.

"I'm sure you're curious as to why you've been asked to come.

I would be."

"I don't think I've been invited to tea," I said stiffly. "But, yes, I'm very curious."

"The reason is the Soneji and Casanova cases," Grayer explained to me as we took an
elevator one flight up from the garage.

"Your reputation precedes you here. You're aware that the FBI has never captured a
single serial killer, for all their expertise?

We want you on the tean:."

"What team is that?" I asked.

"You'll see in a few seconds. This is definitely the A team, though. Be ready for some
crazy shit. The Bureau has staked out the hotel room where John Hinckley stayed. Just
in case the killers might decide to stay there. Pay homage, or something like that."

"Not such a terrible idea," I told Grayer. He looked at me as if I were crazy, too. "Not a
particularly good idea, either," I said. He cracked a grin.

Half a dozen men and two women in business attire were gathered in the West Wing
office of the White House chief of staff. I sensed a lot of tension in the room, but
everyone was working hard to hide it. I was introduced as the representative of the
Washington police. Welcome to the team. Say hello to the dragonslayer.

The others at the table cordially introduced themselves. Two more senior agents from the
Secret Service, a woman named Ann Roper and a youngish, good-looking man named
Michael Fescoe; the director of intelligence from the FBI, Robert Hatfield; General
Aiden Cornwall from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Army; the national security
advisor, Michael Kane; the White House chief of staff, Don Hamerman. The other
woman turned out to be a senior officer in the CIA. The inspector general.

Her name was Jeanne Sterling. Her presence meant that a foreign power's involvement in
Jack and Jill was being considered. There was a twist I hadn't considered before.

It was fast company for a homicide detective from SoutheaSt D.C., even for a deputy
chief. But I figured I was pretty fast company, too. I had seen nasty things that none of
them had, or would ever want to.

Let the sharing begin.

Glistening sweet rolls, butter in ice, and coffee in silver pots had been put out for our
unusual breakfast club. It was obvious that some of the others had worked together
before. I had learned a long time ago that if you can't spot the pigeon in a poker game,
then you're probably it.

The national security advisor called the gathering to order a minute or so past ten. Don
Hamerman was a wiry, blond man in his mid-thirties who appeared to be tightly strung.
That definitely fit the White House staff profile in recent years: very young and very
uptight. On the move. On the make, get set, go.

"I'm going to use overheads for this presentation, folks. That's the way we do it here in
the Big House," Hamerman said and managed a thin, forced smile. He had an unsettling
kinetic energy.

He reminded me of high-flying D.C. public relations types, and even of Michael
Robinson's overwrought agent back at the Willard.

I gathered from his remark that White House meetings were usually bureaucratic and
somewhat formal, rather than loosy-goosy.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the small joke, anyway.

Actually, the forced cordiality disturbed me. I was still flashing On the death-mask
expression of Michael Rob Michael Fescoe; the director of intelligence from the FBI,
Robert Hatfield; General Aiden Cornwall from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S.
Army; the national security advisor, Michael Kane; the White House chief of staff, Don
Hamerman. The other woman turned out to be a senior officer in the CIA. The inspector
general.

Her name was Jeanne Sterling. Her presence meant that a foreign power's involvement in
Jack and Jill was being considered. There was a twist I hadn't considered before.

Let the sharing begin.

"I'm going to use overheads for this presentation, folks. That's the way we do it here in
the Big House," Hamerman said and managed a thin, forced smile. He had an unsettling
kinetic energy.

He reminded me of high-flying D.C. public relations types, and even of Michael
Robinson's overwrought agent back at the Willard.

I gathered from his remark that White House meetings were usually bureaucratic and
somewhat formal, rather than loosy-goosy.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the small joke, anyway.

Actually, the forced cordiality disturbed me. I was still flashing On the death-mask
expression of Michael Robinson. It wasn't an image I liked bringing with me into the
White House.

Michael Robinson's naked corpse was probably still in the Willard Hotel with the morgue
team, ready to be tagged and bagged.

"I have about an hour's worth of briefing material -- tops.

With full discussion, let's say we're at two hours," Hamerman continued. "That will take
us close to noon, but I believe the unfortunate circumstances warrant a tight briefing up
front."

What unfortunate circumstances, exactly ? I wanted to interrupt Hamerman, but I kept
my cool. It was neither the time nor the place.

Cups of coffee and several cigarette packs were already laid out on the worktable.
Everyone was prepared for a tough siege.

I guessed that was the way it was done at the Big House.

Hamerman placed his first overhead on the gently purring machine. The display screen
said Jack and Jill Investigation.

Not much to argue about so far.

"As you know, there have been three brutal celebrity murders in Washington in the past
week. The latest was the shooting sometime last night of the actor Michael Robinson at
the Willard.

The stalkers call themselves Jack and Jill. They leave artsy mash notes at their murder
scenes. They like to play games with the media. They seem to relish the spotlight a lot.

"They also seem to know what they're doing. They've successfully committed three high-
profile murders and haven't left us squat to work with. They appear to be signature or
serial killers, though of a particularly high order. That's debatable, or so I'm led to
understand. But it's one theory.

"Here's the first kicker," Hamerman said and arched his thin, blond eyebrows. "What
some of you don't know is that Jack and Jill' is also the Secret Service code name used for
President and Mrs. Byrnes. It has been since the President took office. We are not
comfortable accepting this fact as mere coincidence."

The blond woman from the CIA lit a cigarette. I remembered her name. Jeanne Sterling.
She blew out a pale gust of smoke.

I heard her mutter "shit." My sentiments exactly. This was the worst news we'd had so
far. Also, I didn't appreciate the fact it had been kept from us until this moment.

"We believe it is a very real possibility that an assassination attempt could be made on
either President Byrnes or Mrs. Byrnes.

Or perhaps on both of them," Hamerman said.

The words were absolutely chilling to hear. I glanced around the table and saw the
frozen expressions of concern.

"We have taken, or are taking, every precaution that we can think of. The President's
exposure outside the White House will be extremely limited for the time being. He's
been told everything about the unfortunate situation, and so has Mrs. Byrnes. They're
taking it well. They're both very smart, very impressive people.

They will not panic. I can promise you that. I'll do the panicking for both of them.

"Let me talk about some facts we don't have about the so-called stalkers Jack and Jill.
Actually, there are several thousand investigators assigned to the case, and we know
surprisingly little. Jack and Jill may be heading toward the White House next, and we
don't have the foggiest idea why. Or who they might be. Or what the hell is in this for
them."

Don Hamerman peered around the table. He was definitely wired. The other word to
describe him, the one that came to my mind anyway, was supercilious.

"Please feel free to correct me on any point I make. Feel free to add any updated
information you might have," he said with a tiny sneer.

Except for a few sighs, no one spoke. No one seemed to know any more than I did. No
one had a worthwhile clue so far. That was the scariest thing of all.

The possibility existed that the President and First Lady were the ultimate targets for Jack
and Jill... or maybe not even the ultimate targets?

Jack and Jill came to The Hill. What in the name of God for?

To wipe out all the bleeding liberals? To punish sinners? Was the President a sinner in
their minds ?

"Jay, do you want to say something now?" Hamerman asked Secret Service Agent
Grayer.

Grayer nodded and stood up at the worktable. He leaned against it with his hands. He
looked a little pale. "There's a very tough problem here," he said to us. "The danger is
real, believe me. This is as scary as anything I've seen in my time at the White House.
You see, I was the first one inside Senator Fitzpatrick's apartment after the killing. I was
there, alone, at six o'clock that morning. I called the Metro police... the same is true for
Ms. Sheehan and for Michael Robinson. Each time Jack and Jill has called the Secret
Service first. They've contacted us right here at the White House. They told us... that
they're practicing for the big one."

ON FRIDAY NIGHT Jack and Jill checked into a high-priced suite at the Four Seasons
Hotel, one of the Washington area's best. No one was scheduled to die at the exclusive
hotel. Not that they knew of, anyway. Actually, the killers were taking the weekend off--
while everyone else in Washington, the police geniuses especially, stewed in their own
juices.

What a fabulous treat the weekend was. What a delicious notion.

The six-hundred-dollar-a-night suite overlooked a corner of Georgetown, and they never
left it for a moment. A masseuse came Friday night for a double shiatsu session. Sara
had a facial and a manicure on Saturday morning. Room service sent up a personal chef
Saturday night, and he prepared their meal in their room. Sam had also provided for four
dozen white roses to be delivered when they arrived. It was paradise regained. They felt
they deserved it for what they had accomplished so far.

"This is so unbelievably decadent. It's a postmodern, grossly socially incorrect fairy
tale," Sara said at a luxurious high point late on Sunday night. "I love every minute of
it."

"But do you love every inch of it?" Sam asked her. Only he could get away with a
touchy line like that -- and he did.

Sara smiled and felt a rush of heat inside her body. She looked at him with warm and
inquiring eyes. "As a matter of fact, I do."

He was deep inside her, thrusting slowly and gently, and she was wondering if he truly
loved her. She wished for it with all her being, but she didn't believe it, couldn't believe
it. She was, after all, Sara the gimp, Sara the drudge, Sara the drone.

How could he have fallen in love with her? And yet sometimes it seemed that he had. Is
this part of the game for him, too? Sara wondered.

Her fingers ran all over his chest, played with individual hairs.

She touched him everywhere: his beautiful face, his throat, stomach, buttocks, his
dangling testicles, which seemed as large as a bull's. Sara arched up toward him, wanting
to be as close as she possibly could, wanting every inch, yes, wanting everything of him
that there was. Even his real name, which he wouldn't tell her.

"We've earned this weekend," Sam said. "It's also necessary, Sara. Rest and relaxation
are a real part of war, an important part.

Jack and Jill is going to get progressively harder from here on.

Everything escalates now."

Sara couldn't help smiling as she stared up at Sam's face. God she loved being with him.
Under him, over him, sideways, upside down. She loved his touch -- sometimes strong,
sometimes so surprisingly gentle. She loved, yes, every inch of him.

She'd never felt like this before, never thought that she would.

She would have bet anything against its happening. In a way, she had bet everything,
hadn't she? For the cause, but also for Sam, for this.

Sam was such a closet romantic, too. It was so unexpected from The Soldier, from any
man she had known before. The suite at the Four Seasons was his idea, just because she
had mentioned -- mentioned it once -- that it was her favorite hotel in Washington.

"Say," she said to him now, whispering during their lovemaking, "do you want to know
my favorite hotel in the whole wide world?"

He got the joke -- he got all of her humor and twisted ironies.

His large blue eyes sparkled. He grinned. He had brilliantly white teeth, and such a shy,
disarming smile. She thought he was much better looking than Michael Robinson had
been. Sam was a real-life action hero. The Soldier. In a real war for survival, the most
important war of our times. They both believed that to be the truth.

"Please, don't tell me the answer," he said with a laugh. "Don't you dare tell me your
favorite hotel in the world. You know I'll have to take you there somehow if you do.
Don't tell me, Sara!"

"The Cipriani in Venice," Sara blurted out, laughing.

She had never actually been there, but she'd read so much about it. She had read about
everything, but experienced so little until recently Sara the hopeless bookworm, Sara the
bibliophile, Sara the cipher. Well, no more. Now she lived as almost no one had before.
Sara the gimp lives!

"Okay, then. When this is all over -- and this will end -- we'll go to Venice, for a holiday
I promise you. The Cipriani it is."

"And Sunday brunch at the Danieli," she whispered against his cheek. "Promise?"

"Of course. Where else but the Danieli for brunch? That's a given. As soon as this is
finished."

"It's going to get worse, isn't it?" she said, hugging his powerful body a little tighter.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. But not tonight Jilly. Not tonight, my love.

So let's not ruin this by thinking too much about tomorrow. Don't make a wonderful
weekend into a bad Monday"

Sam was right, of course. He was a wise man, too. He started to move again on top of
her. He flowed like a fast river current over the top of her. He was such a generous and
beautiful lover; he was both teacher and student; he knew how to gve and take in bed.
Most important, Sam knew how to bring her out of herself.

God, she had needed that -- forever, it seemed. To get outside of herself. Not to be the
gimp anymore. Not ever again. She promised herself that.

Sara pursed her lips tightly. In pleasure? In pain? She wasn't even sure anymore. She
shut her eyes, then quickly opened them.

She wanted to look.

He held himself over her, as if he were pausing during a push-up. "So you've never been
to the Cipriani, Monkey Face?" he asked. His cheeks weren't even flushed. He
effortlessly held himself over her. His body was so beautiful, strong and agile, rock-
solid. Sara was in good shape also, but Sam was superb.

He called her "Monkey Face," from Hitchcock's Suspicion. It wasn't really such a great
movie, but it had hit the spot for them, hit their spot. Ever since they'd seen it, she'd been
the Joan Fontaine character, Lena. He was Johnny, who had been played by Cary Grant.
Johnny had called Lena "Monkey Face."

At the end of the film, Lena and Johnny had driven off into a sunset on the Riviera,
presumably to live happily ever after. The Hitchcock movie was an elegant, witty,
mysterious game, just as this was.

Their game. The most exquisite game two people had ever played together.

Will we drive off into the sunset after all this? Sara Rosen wondered. Oh, I think not. I
don't suppose that we will. What will happen to us, then? Oh, what will happen to us?
What will become of Jack and Jill?

"I've only been to the Cipriani in my dreams," she confessed to Sam. "Only in dreams.
But, yes, I've been there many, many times."

"Is this all a dream, Monkey Face?" Sam asked. His look was serious for a moment. She
couldn't help thinking how precious every moment like this was, and how fleeting. She
had secretly yearned for this all of her life, for one truly romantic experience.

"I think it's a dream, yes. It's like a dream anyway Please don't wake me, though, Sam."

"It's not a dream," Sam whispered. "I love you. You are the most lovable woman I've
ever met. You are, Sara. You're like staying at the Cipriani every day for me. Please
believe that, Monkey Face.

Believe in us. I do."

He clasped Sara from behind and pulled her closer. She savored the sweetness of his
breath, the smell of his cologne, the smell of him.

He began to move inside her and she felt herself melting into a liquid force. She did love
him -- she did, she did, she did. Her hands ran all over him, touching, possessing. There
had never been anything like this before in her life, nothing even close.

She slithered up and down on his long, powerful pole, his strength, his exquisite
malehess. Sara couldn't stop herself now, and she didn't want to. She was choking with
her own passion.

She heard her voice crying out and almost didn't recognize herself. She was joined with
him in a simple rhythm that got faster and faster as the two of them came closer to being
one --Jack and Jill, Jack and Jill, Jack and Jill, Jack and Jill!

THEIR FAIRY TALE ended with a quiet, almost disheartening thud, and Sara felt herself
crashing back to earth, tumbling, being rushed along in a powerful tide. Monday
morning meant a return to the dreary work world again, to real life.

Sara Rosen had held "normal," boring jobs around Washington for fourteen years, ever
since she'd graduated from Hollins College in Virginia. She had a day job now. A
perfect job for their purposes. The dreariest and weariest of jobs.

That morning, she rose early to get ready. She and Sam had separated on Sunday night at
the Four Seasons. She missed him, missed his humor, missed his touch, missed
everything about him. Every inch.

She had gotten lost in that thought. Inches. Millimeters. The essence of Sam. His
tremendous inner strength. She glanced at the luminescent face of the clock on her bed
stand. She groaned out loud. Quarter to five. Dammit, she was already late.

Her bathroom had a yoga corner with a custom-made leather mat. No time for that,
though her body and mind ached for the discipline and the release.

She took a quick shower and washed her hair with Salon Selectives shampoo. She put on
a navy Brooks Brothers suit, low pumps, a leather-strapped Raymond Weil watch. She
needed to look sharp, look alert, look freshly scrubbed this morning.

Somehow, she always came out like that anyway. Sara the freshly starched.

She hurried outside, where a grimy yellow cab was already waiting at the curb, wagging
a tail of smoke. The wind whooped and howled up and down K Street.

At five-twenty, the yellow cab pulled up in front of her workplace. The Liberty Cab
driver smiled and said, "A famous address, my lady. 50, are you somebody famous?"

She paid the driver and collected change from a five-dollar bill.

"Actually, I might be someday," she said. "You never know."

"Yeah, maybe I'm somebody, too," the driver said with a crooked smile. "You never
know."

Sara Rosen climbed out of the cab and felt the early December wind in her face. The
pristine building before her looked strangely beautiful and imposing in the early-morning
light. It appeared to be shining, actually, glowing from the inside out.

She showed her ID card, and security let her pass inside.

She and the guard even shared a quick laugh about her being a workaholic. And why
not? Sara Rosen had worked inside the White House for nine years.

PART 3

THE PHOTOJOURNALIST

THE PHOTOJOURNALIST was the last piece in the complex puzzle. He was the final
player. He was working in San Francisco on December 8. Actually, the photojournalist
was playing the game in San Francisco. Or rather, he was playing around the outer edges
of the game.

Kevin Hawkins sat in a scooped-out, gray plastic chair at Gate 31. He contentedly played
chess with himself on a PowerBook. He was winning; he was losing. He enjoyed it
either way Hawkins loved games, loved chess, and he was close to being one of the better
players in the world. It had been that way ever since he'd been a bright, lonely,
underachieving boy in Hudson, New York. At quarter to eleven he got up from his seat
to go play another kind of game. This was his favorite game in the world.

He was in San Francisco to kill someone.

As he walked through the busy airport, Kevin Hawkins snapped off photograph after
photograph -- all in his mind.

The prizewinning photojournalist was outfitted in his usual studied-casual manner: tight
black cord jeans with a black T-shirt, tribal bracelets from several trips to Zambia, a
diamond stud earring. A Lcica camera was looped around his neck on a leather strap
decorated with engravings.

The photojournalist slipped into a crowded bathroom in Corridor C. He observed a
ragged line of men slouched at the urinals.

They are like pigs at a through, he thought. Like water buffalo, or oxen, taught to stand
on their hind legs.

His eye composed the shot and snapped it off. A beauty of order and sly wit. The Boys
at the Bowl.

The urinal scene reminded him of a clever pickpocket he had once seen operate in
Bangkok. The thief, a keen student of human nature, would snatch wallets while gents
were in midstream at a urinal and were reluctant, or unable, to go after him.

The photojournalist couldn't forget the comical image whenever he entered an airport
men's room. He rarely forgot any image, actually. His mind was a well-run archive, a
rival to Kodak's vast storehouses of pictures in Rochester.

He peered at his own image, a rather haggard and pasty-white face, in one of the cloudy
bathroom mirrors. Unimpressive in every way, he couldn't help but think. His eyes were
war-weary, an almost washed-out blue. Gazing at his eyes depressed him -- so much so
that he sighed involuntarily.

He saw no other mind pictures to take in the mirror. Never, ever, a picture of himself.

He started to cough and couldn't stop. He finally brought up a thick packet of despicable,
yellowish paste. His inner core, he thought. His animus was slowly leaking out.

Kevin Hawkins was only forty-three, but he felt like a hundred.

He had lived too hard, especially the last fourteen years. His life and times had been so
very intense, often flamboyant and occasionally absurd. He had been burned, he often
imagined, from every conceivable angle. He had played the game of life and death too
hard, too well, too often.

He started to cough again and popped a Halls into his mouth.

Kevin Hawkins checked the time on his Seiko Kinetic wristwatch.

He quickly finger-combed his lank, grayish blond hair and then left the public bathroom.

He merged smoothly with the thick corridor traffic rolling past on the killing floor. It
was almost time, and he was feeling a nice out-of-body buzz. He hummed an old,
absolutely ridiculous song called "Rock the Casbah." He was pulling a dark Delsey
suitcase hinged on one of those cheap roller contraptions that were so popular. The
"walking" suitcase made him look like a tourist, like a nobody of the first order.

The red-on-black digital clock over the airport passageway read 11:40. A Northwest
Airlines jet from Tokyo had landed just a few minutes earlier. It had come into Gate 41,
right on schedule.

Somepeople just know how to fly. Wasn't that Northwest's tag line?

The gods were smiling down on him; Kevin Hawkins felt a grim, humorless smile of his
own. The gods loved the game, too.

Life and death. It was their game, actually.

He heard the first strains of a noisy commotion coming from the connecting Corridor B.
The photojournalist kept walking ahead, until he was past the point where the two wide
corridors connected.

That was when he saw the phalanx of bodyguards and wellwishers He saw no other mind
pictures to take in the mirror. Never, ever, a picture of himself.