Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill Read online

  “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 trace on the Jeep, now.”

  “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-to-earth 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.

  Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

  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.