Cat & Mouse

Chapter 102

A DOZEN OF the best FBI agents available stood in an informal grouping on the airfield in Quantico, Virginia. Directly behind them, two jet black helicopters were waiting for takeoff. The agents couldn’t have looked more solemn or attentive, but also puzzled.

As I stood before them, my legs were shaking and my knees were hitting together. I had never been more nervous, more unsure of myself. I had also never been more focused on a murder case.

“For those of you who don’t know me,” I said, pausing not for effect, but because of nerves, “I’m Alex Cross.”

I tried to let them see that physically I was fine. I wore loosefitting khaki trousers and a long-sleeved navy blue cotton knit shirt open at the collar. I was doing my best to disguise a mess of bruises and lacerations.

A lot of troubling mysteries had to unfold now. Mysteries about the savage, cowardly attack at my house in Washington-and who had done it; dizzying mysteries about the mass murderer Mr. Smith; and about Thomas Pierce of the FBI.

I could see by their faces that some of the agents remained confused. They clearly looked as if they’d been blindsided by my appearance.

I couldn’t blame them, but I also knew that what had happened was necessary. It seemed like the only way to catch a terrifying and diabolical killer. That was the plan, and the plan was all-consuming.

“As you can all see, rumors of my imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated. I’m just fine, actually,” I said and cracked a smile. That seemed to break the ice a little with the agents.

“The official statements out of St. Anthony’s Hospital-‘not expected to live,’ ‘grave condition,’ ‘highly unusual for someone in Dr. Cross’s condition to pull through’-were overstatements, and sometimes outright lies. The releases were manufactured for Thomas Pierce’s benefit. The releases were a hoax. If you want to blame someone, blame Kyle Craig,” I said.

“Yes, definitely blame me,” Kyle said. He was standing at my side, along with John Sampson and Sondra Greenberg from Interpol. “Alex didn’t want to go this way. Actually, he didn’t want any involvement at all, if my memory serves me.”

“That’s right, but now I involved. I’m in this up to my eyebrows. Soon you will be, too. Kyle and I are going to tell you everything.”

I took a breath, then I continued. My nervousness was mostly gone.

“Four years ago, a recent Harvard Medical School grad named Thomas Pierce discovered his girlfriend murdered in their apartment in Cambridge. That was the police finding at the time. It was later corroborated by the Bureau. Let me tell you about the actual murder. Now let me tell you what Kyle and I believe really happened. This is how it went down that night in Cambridge.”

Chapter 103

THOMAS PIERCE had spent the early part of the night out drinking with friends at a bar called Jillian’s in Cambridge. The friends were recent med-school graduates and they’d been drinking hard since about two in the afternoon.

Pierce had invited Isabella to the bar, but she’d turned him down and told him to have fun, let off some steam. He deserved it. That night, as he had been doing for the past six months, a doctor named Martin Straw came over to the apartment Isabella and Pierce shared. Straw and Isabella were having an affair. He had promised he would leave his wife and children for her.

Isabella was asleep when Pierce got to the apartment on Inman Street. He knew that Dr. Martin Straw had been there earlier. He had seen Straw and Isabella together at other times. He’d followed them on several occasions around Cambridge and also on day trips out into the countryside.

As he opened the front door of his apartment, he could feel, in every inch of his body, that Martin Straw had been there. Straw’s scent was unmistakable, and Thomas Pierce wanted to scream. He had never cheated on Isabella, never even come close.

She was fast asleep in their bed. He stood over her for several moments and she never stirred. He had always loved the way she slept, loved watching her like this. He had always mistaken her sleeping pose for innocence.

He could tell that Isabella had been drinking wine. He smelled the sweet odor from where he stood.

She had on perfume that night. For Martin Straw.

It was Jean Patou’s Joy-very expensive. He had bought it for her the previous Christmas.

Thomas Pierce began to cry, to sob into his hands.

Isabella’s long auburn hair was loose and strands and bunches flowed free on the pillows. For Martin Straw.

Martin Straw always lay on the left side of the bed. He had a deviated septum that he should have tended to, but doctors put off operations, too. He couldn’t breathe very well out of the right nostril.

Thomas Pierce knew this. He had studied Straw, tried to understand him, his so-called humanity.

Pierce knew he had to act now, knew that he couldn’t take too much time.

He fell on Isabella with all his weight, his force, his power. His tools were ready. She struggled, but he held her down. He clutched her long swanlike throat with his strong hands. He wedged his feet under the mattress for leverage.

The struggle exposed her bare breasts and he was reminded of how “sexy” and “absolutely beautiful” Isabella was; how they were “perfect together”; “ Cambridge ’s very own Romeo and Juliet.” What bullshit it was. A sorry myth. The perception of people who couldn’t see straight. She didn’t really love him, but how he had loved her. Isabella made him feel for the one and only time in his life.

Thomas Pierce looked down at her. Isabella’s eyes were like sandblasted mirrors. Her small, beautiful mouth fell open to one side. Her skin still felt satin soft to his touch.

She was helpless now, but she could see what was happening. Isabella was aware of her crimes and the punishment to come.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he finally said. “It’s as if I’m outside myself, watching. And yet…I can’t tell you how alive I feel right now.”

Every newspaper, the news magazines, TV, and radio reported what happened in gruesome detail, but nothing like what really happened, what it was like in the bedroom, staring into Isabella’s eyes as he murdered her.

He cut out Isabella’s heart.

He held her heart in his hands, still pumping, still alive, and watched it die.

Then he impaled her heart on a spear from his scuba equipment.

He “pierced” her heart. That was the clue he left. The very first clue.

He had the feeling, the sixth sense, that he actually watched Isabella’s spirit leave her body. Then he thought he felt his own soul depart. He believed that he died that night, too.

Smith was born from death that night in Cambridge.

Thomas Pierce was Mr. Smith.

Chapter 104

THOMAS PIERCE is Mr. Smith,” I said to the agents gathered at Quantico. “If any of you still doubt that, even a little bit, please don’t. It could be dangerous to you and everyone else on this team. Pierce is Smith, and he’s murdered nineteen people so far. He will murder again.”

I had been speaking for several moments, but now I stopped. There was a question from the group. Actually, there were several questions. I couldn’t blame them-I was full of questions myself.

“Can I backtrack for just a second here? Your family was attacked?” A young crew-cut agent asked. “You did sustain injuries?”

“There was an attack at my house. For reasons that we don’t understand yet, the intruder stopped short of murder. My family is all right. Believe me, I want to understand about the attack, and the intruder, more than anyone does. I want that bastard, whoever he is.”

I held up my cast for all of them to see. “One bullet clipped my wrist. A second entered my abdomen, but passed through. The hepatic artery was not nicked, as was reported. I was definitely banged up, but my EKG never showed ‘a pattern of decreased activity.’ That was for Pierce’s benefit. Kyle? You want to fill in some more of the holes you helped create?”

This was Kyle Craig’s master plan, and he spoke to the agents.

“Alex is right about Pierce. He is a cold-blooded killer and what we hope to do tonight is dangerous. It’s unusual, but this situation warrants it. For the past several weeks, Interpol and the Bureau have been trying to set a foolproof trap for the elusive Mr. Smith, who we believe to be Thomas Pierce,” Kyle repeated. “We haven’t been able to catch him at anything conclusive, and we don’t want to do something that might spook him, make him run.”

“He’s one scary, spooky son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that much,” John Sampson said from his place alongside me. I could tell he was holding back, keeping his anger inside. “And the bastard is very careful. I never caught him in anything close to a slipup while I was working with him. Pierce played his part perfectly.”

“So did you, John.” Kyle offered a compliment. “Detective Sampson has been in on the ruse, too,” he explained.

A few hours earlier, Sampson had been with Pierce in New Jersey. He knew him better than I did, though not as well as Kyle or Sondra Greenberg of Interpol, who had originally profiled Pierce, and was with us now at Quantico.

“How is he acting, Sondra?” Kyle asked Greenberg. “What have you noticed?”

The Interpol inspector was a tall, impressive-looking woman. She’d been working the case for nearly two years in Europe. “Thomas Pierce is an arrogant bastard. Believe me, he’s laughing at all of us. He’s one hundred percent sure of himself. He’s also high-strung. He never stops looking over his shoulder. Sometimes, I don’t think he’s human either. I do believe he’s going to blow soon. The pressure we’ve applied is working.”

“That’s becoming more evident,” said Kyle, picking up the thread. “Pierce was very cool in the beginning. He had everyone fooled. He was as professional as any agent we’ve ever had. Early on, no one in the Cambridge police believed he had murdered Isabella Calais. He never made a mistake. His grief over her death was astonishing.”

“He’s for real, ladies and gents.” Sampson spoke up again. “He’s smart as hell. Pretty good investigator, too. His instincts are sharp and he’s disciplined. He did his homework, and he went right to Simon Conklin. I think he’s competing with Alex.”

“So do I,” said Kyle, nodding at Sampson. “He’s very complex. We probably don’t know the half of it yet. That’s what scares me.”

Kyle had come to me about Mr. Smith before the Soneji shooting spree had started. We had talked again when I’d taken Rosie to Quantico for tests. I worked with him on an unofficial basis. I helped with the profile on Thomas Pierce, along with Sondra Greenberg. When I was shot at my house, Kyle rushed to Washington out of concern. But the attack was nowhere near as bad as everyone thought, or as we led them to believe.

It was Kyle who decided to take a big chance. So far, Pierce was running free. Maybe if he brought him in on the case, on my case? It would be a way to watch him, to put pressure on Pierce. Kyle believed that Pierce wouldn’t be able to resist. Big ego, tremendous confidence. Kyle was right.

“Pierce is going to blow,” Sondra Greenberg said again. “I’m telling you. I don’t know everything that’s going on in his head, but he’s close to the limit.”

I agreed with Greenberg. “I’ll tell you what could happen next. The two personas are starting to fuse. Mr. Smith and Thomas Pierce could merge soon. Actually, it’s the Thomas Pierce part of his personality that seems to be diminishing. I think he just might have Mr. Smith take out Simon Conklin.”

Sampson leaned into me and whispered, “I think it’s time that you met Mr. Pierce and Mr. Smith.”

Chapter 105

THIS WAS it. The end. It had to be.

Everything we could think of was tightly in place by seven o’clock that night in Princeton. Thomas Pierce had proven to be elusive in the past, almost illusory. He kept mysteriously slipping in and out of his role as “Mr. Smith.” But he was clearly about to blow.

How he accomplished his black magic, no one knew. There were never any witnesses. No one was left alive.

Kyle Craig’s fear was that we would never catch Pierce in the act, never be able to hold him for more than forty-eight hours. Kyle was convinced that Pierce was smarter than Gary Soneji, cleverer than any of us.

Kyle had objected to Thomas Pierce’s assignment to the Mr. Smith case, but he’d been overruled. He had watched Pierce, listened to him, and became more and more convinced that Pierce was involved-at least with the death of Isabella Calais.

Pierce never seemed to make a mistake, though. He covered all of his tracks. Then a break came. Pierce was seen in Frankfurt, Germany, on the same day a victim disappeared there. Pierce was supposed to be in Rome.

It was enough for Kyle to approve a search of Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Nothing was found. Kyle brought in computer experts. They suspected that Pierce might be sending himself messages, supposedly from Smith, but there was no proof. Then Pierce was seen in Paris on the day Dr. Abel Sante disappeared. His logs stated that he was in London all day. It was circumstantial, but Kyle knew he had his killer.

So did I.

Now we needed concrete proof.

Nearly fifty FBI agents were in the Princeton area, which seemed like the last place in the world where a shocking crime ought to occur, or a notorious murder spree end.

Sampson and I waited in the front seat of a dark sedan parked on an anonymous-looking street. We weren’t part of the main surveillance team, but we stayed close. We were never more than a mile, or at most two, from Pierce. Sampson was restless and irritable through the early night. It had gotten excruciatingly personal between him and Pierce.

I had a very personal reason to be in Princeton myself. I wanted a crack at Simon Conklin. Unfortunately, Pierce was between me and Conklin for now.

We were a few blocks from the Marriott in town where Pierce was staying.

“Quite a plan,” Sampson mumbled as we sat and waited.

“The FBI tried just about everything else. Kyle thinks this will work. He feels Pierce couldn’t resist solving the attack on my house. It’s the ultimate competition for him. Who knows?”

Sampson’s eyes narrowed. I knew the look-sharp, comprehending. “Yeah, and you had no part in any of the hinky shit, right?”

“Maybe I did offer a suggestion about why the setup might be attractive to Thomas Pierce, to his huge ego. Or why he might be cocky enough to get caught.”

Sampson rolled his eyes back into his forehead, the way he’d been doing since we were about ten years old. “Yeah, maybe you did. By the way, he’s an even bigger pain in the ass than you are to work with. Anal as shit, to coin a phrase.”

We waited on the side street in Princeton as night blanketed the university town. It was déjà vu all over again. John Sampson and Alex Cross on stakeout duty.

“You still love me,” Sampson said and grinned. He doesn’t get giddy too often, but when he does-watch out. “You do love me, sugar?”

I put my hand high on his thigh. “Sure do, big fellow.”

He punched me in the shoulder-hard. My arm went numb. My fingers tingled. The man can hit.

“I want to put the hurt on Thomas Pierce! I’m going to put the hurt on Pierce!” Sampson yelled out in the car.

“Put the hurt on Thomas Pierce,” I yelled with him. “And Mr. Smith, too!”

“Put the hurt on Mr. Smith and Mr. Pierce,” we sang in unison, doing our imitation of the Bad Boys movie.

Yeah!

We were back. Same as it ever was.

Chapter 106

THOMAS PIERCE felt that he was invincible, that he couldn’t be stopped.

He waited in the dark, trancelike, without moving. He was thinking about Isabella, seeing her beautiful face, seeing her smile, hearing her voice. He stayed like that until the living room light was switched on and he saw Simon Conklin.

“Intruder in the house,” Pierce whispered. “Sound familiar? Ring any bells for you, Conklin?”

He held a.357 Magnum pointed directly at Conklin’s forehead. He could blow him right out the front door and down the porch stairs.

“What the-?” Conklin was blinky-eyed in the bright light. Then his dark eyes grew beady and hard. “This is unlawful entry!” Conklin screamed. “You have no right to be here in my house. Get the hell out!”

Pierce couldn’t hold back a smile. He definitely got the humor in life, but sometimes he didn’t take enough pleasure in it. He got up out of the chair, holding the gun perfectly still in front of him.

There wasn’t much space to move in the living room, which was filled with tall stacks of newspapers, books, clippings, and magazines. Everything was categorized by date and subject. He was pretty sure that not-so-Simple Simon had an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“Downstairs. We’re going to your basement,” he said. “Down to the cellar.”

The light was already on downstairs. Thomas Pierce had gotten everything ready. An old cot was set up in the center of the crowded basement room. He had cleared away stacks of survivalist and sci-fi books to make room for the cot.

He wasn’t sure, but he thought Conklin’s obsession had to do with the end of the human race. He hoarded books, journals, and newspaper stories that supported his pathological idea. The cover of a science journal was taped to the cellar wall. It read: “Sex Changes in Fish-A Look at Simultaneous and Sequential Hermaphrodites.”

“What the hell?” Simon Conklin yelled when he saw what Pierce had done.

“That’s what they all say,” Thomas Pierce said and shoved him. Conklin stumbled down a couple of stairs.

“You think I’m afraid of you?” Conklin whirled and snarled. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Pierce nodded his head once and cocked an eyebrow. “I hear you, and I’m gong to straighten that out right now.”

He shoved Conklin hard again and watched him tumble down the rest of the stairs. Pierce walked slowly down toward the heap. “You starting to get afraid of me now?” he asked.

He whacked Conklin with the side of the Magnum and watched as blood spit from Simon Conklin’s head. “You starting to get afraid now?”

He bent down and put his mouth close to Conklin’s hairy ear.

“You don’t understand very much about pain. I know that about you,” he whispered. “You don’t have much in the way of guts either. You were the one in the Cross house, but you couldn’t kill Alex Cross, could you? You couldn’t kill his family. You punked out at his house. You blew it. That’s what I already know.”

Thomas Pierce was enjoying the confrontation, the satisfaction of it. He was curious about what made Simon Conklin tick. He wanted to “study” Conklin, to understand his humanity. To know Simon Conklin was to know something about himself.

He stayed in Conklin’s face. “First, I want you to tell me that you’re the one who snuck into Alex Cross’s house. You did it! Now just tell me you did it. What you say here will not be held against you, and will not be used in a court of law. It’s just between us.”

Simon Conklin looked at him as if he were a complete madman. How perceptive.

“You’re crazy. You can’t do this. This won’t matter in court,” Conklin squealed.

Pierce’s eyes widened in disbelief. He looked at Conklin as if he were the madman. “Didn’t I just say precisely that? Weren’t you listening? Am I talking to myself here? No, it won’t matter in their court. This is my court. So far, you’re losing your case, Simple Simon. You’re smart, though. I’m confident you can do a much better job over the next few hours.”

Simon Conklin gasped. A shiny, stainless-steel scalpel was pointed at his chest.

Chapter 107

“LOOK AT ME! Would you focus on what I’m saying, Simon. I’m not another gray suit from the FBI-I have important questions to ask. I want you to answer them truthfully. You were the one at Cross’s house! You attacked Cross. Let’s proceed from there.”

With a swift move of his left arm, Pierce pulled Conklin roughly up off the cellar floor. His physical strength was a shock to Conklin.

Pierce put his scalpel down and hog-tied Conklin to the cot with rope.

Pierce leaned in close to Simon Conklin once he was tied down and helpless. “Here’s a news flash-I don’t like your superior attitude. Believe me, you aren’t superior. Somehow, and this amazes me, I don’t think I’ve made myself clear yet. You’re a specimen, Simon. Let me show you something creepy.”

“Don’t!” Conklin screeched. He was helpless as Pierce made a sudden incision in the upper chest. He couldn’t believe what was happening. Simon Conklin screamed.

“Can you concentrate better now, Simon? See what’s on the table here? It’s your tape recorder. I just want you to confess. Tell me what happened inside Dr. Cross’s house. I want to hear everything.”

“Leave me alone,” Conklin whispered weakly.

“No! That’s not going to happen. You will never be alone again. All right, forget the scalpel and the tape recorder. I want you to focus on this. Ordinary can of Coca-Cola. Your Coke, Simon.”

He shook the bright red can, shook it up good, and popped it open. Then he pulled Conklin’s head back. Grabbed a handful of long, greasy hair. Pierce pushed the harmless-looking can under Conklin’s nostrils.

The soda exploded upward, fizz, bubbles, sugary-brown water. It shot up Conklin’s nose and toward the brain. It was an army interrogator’s trick. Excruciatingly painful, and it always worked.

Simon Conklin choked horribly. He couldn’t stop coughing, gagging.

“I hope you appreciate the kind of resourcefulness I’m showing. I can work with any household object. Are you ready to confess? Or would you like some more Coke?”

Simon Conklin’s eyes were wider than they had ever been before. “I’ll say whatever you want! Just please stop.”

Thomas Pierce shook his head back and forth. “I just want the truth. I want the facts. I want to know I solved the case that Alex Cross couldn’t.”

He turned on the tape recorder and held it under Conklin’s bearded chin. “Tell me what happened.”

“I was the one who attacked Cross and his family. Yes, yes, it was me,” Simon Conklin said in a choked voice that made each word sound even more emotional. “ Gary made me. He said if I didn’t, somebody would come for me. They’d torture and kill me. Somebody he knew from Lorton Prison. That’s the truth, I swear it is. Gary was the leader, not me!”

Thomas Pierce was suddenly almost tender, his voice soft and soothing. “I knew that, Simon. I’m not stupid. I knew that Gary made you do it. Now, when you got to the Cross house, you couldn’t kill him, could you? You’d fantasized about it, but then you couldn’t do it.”

Simon Conklin nodded. He was exhausted and frightened. He wondered if Gary had sent this madman and thought that maybe he had.

Pierce motioned with the Coke can for him to keep going. He took a hit of the Coke as he listened. “Go on, Simon. Tell me all about you and Gary.”

Conklin was crying, bawling like a child, but he was talking. “We got beat up a lot when we were kids. We were inseparable. I was there when Gary burned down his own house. His stepmother was inside with her two kids. So was his father. I watched over the two kids he kidnapped in D.C. I was the one at Cross’s house. You were right! It might as well have been Gary. He planned everything.”

Pierce finally took away the tape player and shut it off. “That’s much better, Simon. I do believe you.”

What Simon Conklin had just said seemed like a good break point-somewhere to end. The investigation was over. He’d proved he was better than Alex Cross.

“I’m going to tell you something. Something amazing, Simon. You’ll appreciate this, I think.”

He raised the scalpel and Simon Conklin tried to squirm away. He knew what was coming.

“Gary Soneji was a pussycat compared to me,” Thomas Pierce said. “I’m Mr. Smith.”

Chapter 108

SAMPSON AND I rushed through Princeton, breaking just about every speed limit. The agents trailing Thomas Pierce had temporarily lost him. The elusive Pierce, or was it Mr. Smith-was on the loose. They thought they had him again, at Simon Conklin’s. Everything was chaos.

Moments after we arrived, Kyle gave the signal to move in on the house. Sampson and I were supposed to be a Jafos at the scene-just a fucking observer. Sondra Greenberg was there. She was a Jafo, too.

A half dozen FBI agents, Sampson, myself, and Sondra hurried through the yard. We split up. Some went in the front and others through the back of the ramshackle house. We were moving quickly and efficiently, handguns and rifles out. Everybody wore windbreakers with “FBI” printed large on the back.

“I think he’s here,” I told Sampson. “I think we’re about to meet Mr. Smith!”

The living room was darker and gloomier than I remembered from an earlier visit. We didn’t see anyone yet, neither Pierce nor Simon Conklin nor Mr. Smith. The house looked as if it had been ransacked and it smelled terrible.

Kyle gave a hand signal and we fanned out, hurrying through the house. Everything was tense and unsettling.

“See no evil, hear no evil,” Sampson muttered at my side, “but it’s here all the same.”

I wanted to Pierce to go down, but I wanted to get Simon Conklin even more. I figured it was Conklin who had come into my house and attacked my family. I needed five minutes alone with Conklin. Therapy time-for me. Maybe we could talk about Gary Soneji, about the “great ones,” as they called themselves.

An agent called out-“The basement! Down here! Hurry!”

I was out of breath and hurting already. My right side burned like hell. I followed the others down the narrow, twisting stairs. “Awhh Jesus,” I heard Kyle say from his position up ahead.

I saw Simon Conklin lying spread-eagled across an old striped-blue mattress on the floor. The man who had attacked me and my family had been mutilated. Thanks to countless anatomy classes at John Hopkins, I was better prepared than the others for the gruesome murder scene. Simon Conklin’s chest, stomach, and pelvic area had been cut open, as if a crackerjack medical examiner had just performed an on-the-scene autopsy.

“He’s been gutted,” an FBI agent muttered, and turned away from the body. “Why in the name of God?”

Simon Conklin had no face. A bold incision had been made at the top of his skull. The cut went through the scalp and clear down to the bone. Then the scalp had been pulled down over the front of the face.

Conklin’s long black hair hung from his scalp to where the chin should have been. It looked like a beard. I suspected that this meant something to Pierce. What did obliterating a face mean to him, if anything.

There was an unpainted wooden door in the cellar, another way out, but none of the agents stationed outside had seen him leave. Several agents were trying to chase down Pierce. I stayed inside with the mutilated corpse. I couldn’t have run down Nana Mama right then. For the first time in my life, I understood what it would be like to be physically old.

“He did this in just a couple of minutes?” Kyle Craig asked. “Alex, could he work this fast?”

“If he’s crazy as I think he is, yeah, he could have. Don’t forget he did this in med school, not to mention his other victims. He has to be incredibly strong, Kyle. He didn’t have morgue tools, no electric saws. He used a knife, and his hands.”

I was standing close to the mattress, staring down at what remained of Simon Conklin. I thought of the cowardly attack on me, on my family. I’d wanted him caught, but not like this. Nobody deserved this. Only in Dante were such fierce punishments imposed on the damned.

I leaned in closer and peered at the remains of Simon Conklin. Why was Thomas Pierce so angry at Conklin? Why had he punished Conklin like this?

The basement of the house was eerily quiet. Sondra Greenberg looked pale, and was leaning against a cellar wall. I would have thought she’d be used to the murder scenes, but maybe that wasn’t possible for anybody.

I had to clear my throat before I could speak again. “He cut away the front quadrant of the skull,” I said. “He performed a frontal craniotomy. It looks like Thomas Pierce is practicing medicine again.”

Chapter 109

I HAD KNOWN Kyle Craig for ten years, and been his friend for nearly that long. I had never seen him so troubled and disconsolate about a case before, no matter how difficult of gruesome. The Thomas Pierce investigation had ruined his career, or at least he thought so, and maybe he was right.

“How the hell does he keep slipping away?” I said. We were still in Princeton the next morning, having breakfast at PJ’s Pancake House. The food was excellent, but I just wasn’t hungry.

“That’s the worst part of it-he knows everything we would do. He anticipates our actions and procedures. He was one of us.”

“Maybe he is an alien,” I said to Kyle, who nodded wearily.

Kyle ate the remainder of his soft, runny eggs in silence. His face was bent low over his plate. He wasn’t aware of how comically depressed he looked.

“Those eggs must be real good.” I finally broke the silence with something other than the scraping sound of Kyle’s fork on the plate.

He looked up at me with his usual deadpan look. “I really messed this up, Alex. I should have taken Pierce in when I had the chance. We talked about it down in Quantico.”

“You would have had to let him go, release him in a few hours. Then what would you do? You couldn’t keep Pierce under surveillance forever.”

“Director Burns wanted to sanction Pierce, take him out, but I strongly disagreed. I thought I could get him. I told Burns I would.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. “The director of the FBI approved a sanction on Pierce? Jesus.”

Kyle ran his tongue back and forth over his teeth. “Yes, and not just Burns. This went all the way to the attorney general’s office. God knows where else. I had them convinced Pierce was Mr. Smith. Somehow the idea of an FBI field agent who’s also a multiple killer didn’t sit very well with them. We’ll never catch him now. There’s no real pattern, Alex, at least nothing to follow. No way to trace him. He’s laughing at us.”

“Yeah, he probably is,” I agreed. “He’s definitely competitive on some level. He likes to feel superior. There’s a whole lot more to this, though.”

I had been thinking about the possibility of some kind of abstract or artistic pattern since I’d first heard about the complicated case. I was well aware of the theory that each of the murders was different, and worse, seemed arbitrary. That would make Pierce almost impossible to catch. The more I thought about the series of murders, though, and especially about Thomas Pierce’s history, the more I suspected that there had to be pattern, a mission behind all of this. The FBI had simply missed it. Now I was missing it, too.

“What do you want to do, Alex?” Kyle finally asked. “I understand if you’re not going to work this one, if you’re not up to it.”

I thought about my family back home, about Christine Johnson and the things we’d talked over, but I didn’t see how I could step away from this awful case right now. I was also somewhat afraid of retribution from Pierce. There was no way to predict how he might react now.

“I’ll stay with you for a few days. I’ll be around, Kyle. No promises beyond that. Shit, I hate that I said that. Damn it!” I pounded that table and the plates and flatware jumped.

For the first time that morning, Kyle offered up half a smile. “So, what’s your plan? Tell me what you’re going to do.”

I shook my head back and forth. I still couldn’t believe I was doing this. “My plan is as follows. I’m going home to Washington, and that’s nonnegotiable. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll fly up to Boston. I want to see Pierce’s apartment. He wanted to see my house, didn’t he? Then, we’ll see, Kyle. Please keep your evidence gatherers on a leash before I get to his apartment. Look, photograph, but don’t move anything around. Mr. Smith is a very orderly man. I want to see how Pierce’s place looks, how he arranged it for us.”

Kyle was back to the deadpan look, superserious, which I actually prefer. “We’re not going to get him, Alex. He’s been given a warning. He’ll be more careful from now on. Maybe he’ll disappear like some killers do, just vanish off the face of the earth.”

“That would be nice,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s going to happen. There is a pattern, Kyle. We just haven’t found it.”

Chapter 110

AS THEY say in the wild, Wild West, you have to get right back on the horse that threw you. I spent two days back in Washington, but it seemed more like a couple of hours. Everybody was mad at me for getting into the hunt. Nana, the kids, Christine. So be it.

I took the first flight into Boston and was at Thomas Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge by nine in the morning. Reluctantly, the dragon slayer was back in play.

Kyle Craig’s original plan to catch Pierce was one of the most audacious ever to come out of the usually conservative Bureau, but it probably had to be. The question now-had Thomas Pierce been able to get out of the Princeton area somehow? Or was he still down there?

Had he circled back to Boston? Fled to Europe? Nobody knew for sure. It was also possible that we might not hear from Pierce, or from Mr. Smith, for a long time.

There was a pattern. We just had to find it.

Pierce and Isabella Calais had lived together for three years in the second-floor apartment of a building in Cambridge. The front door of the place opened onto the foyer and kitchen. Then came a long railroad-style hallway. The apartment was a revelation. There were memories and reminders of Isabella Calais everywhere.

It was strange and overwhelming, as if she still lived here and might suddenly appear from one of the rooms.

There were photographs of her in every single room. I counted more than twenty pictures of Isabella on my first pass, a quick sight-seeing tour of the apartment.

How could Pierce bear to have this woman’s face everywhere, looking at him, staring silently, accusing him of the most unspeakable murder?

In the pictures, Isabella Calais has the most beautiful auburn hair, worn long and perfectly shaped. She has a lovely face and the sweetest, natural smile. It was easy to see how he could have loved her. But her eyes had a far-off look in some of the pictures, as if she weren’t quite there.

Everything about their apartment made my head spin, my insides, too. Was Pierce trying to tell us, or maybe tell himself, that he felt absolutely nothing-no guilt, no sadness, no love in his heart?

As I thought about it, I was overwhelmed with sadness myself. I could imagine the torture that must be his life every day-never to experience real love or deep feelings. In his crazed mind did Pierce think that by dissecting each of his victims he would find the answer to himself?

Maybe the opposite was true.

Was it possible that Pierce needed to feel her presence, to feel everything with the greatest intensity imaginable? Had Thomas Pierce loved Isabella Calais more than he’d thought he was capable of loving anyone? Had Pierce felt redeemed by their love? When he’d learned of her affair with a doctor named Martin Straw, had it driven him to madness and the most unspeakable of acts: the murder of the only person he had ever loved?

Why were her pictures still looming everywhere in the apartment? Why had Thomas Pierce been torturing himself with this constant reminder?

Isabella Calais was watching me as I moved through every room in the apartment. What was she trying to say?

“Who is he, Isabella?” I whispered. “What is he up to?”

Chapter 111

I BEGAN a more detailed search of the apartment. I paid careful attention not just to Isabella’s things, but to Pierce’s, too. Since both had been students, I wasn’t surprised by the academic texts and papers lying about.

I found a curious test-tube rack of corked vials of sand. Each vial was labeled with the name of a different beach: Laguna, Montauk, Normandy, Parma, Virgin Gorda, Oahu. I thought about the curious notion that Pierce had bottled something so vast, infinite, and random to give it order and substance.

So what was his organizing principle for Mr. Smith’s murders? What would explain them?

There were GT Zaskar mountain bikes stored inside the apartment and two GT Machete helmets. Isabella and Thomas biked together through New Hampshire and across into Vermont. More and more, I was sure that he had loved her deeply. Then his love had turned to a hatred so intense few of us could imagine it.

I recalled that the first Cambridge police reports had convincingly described Pierce’s grief at the murder scene as “impossible to fake.” One of the detectives had written, “He is shocked, surprised, utterly heartbroken. Thomas Pierce not considered a suspect at this time.”

What else, what else? There had to be a clue here. There had to be a pattern.

A framed quote was hung in the hallway. Without God, We Are Condemned to Be Free. Was it Sartre? I thought so. I wondered whose thinking it really represented. Did Pierce take it seriously himself or was he making a joke? Condemned was a word that interested me. Was Thomas Pierce a condemned man?

In the master bedroom there was a bookcase with a well-preserved, three-volume set of H. L. Mencken’s The American Language. It rested on the top shelf. Obviously, this was a prized possession. Maybe it had been a gift? I remembered that Pierce had been a dual major as an undergraduate: biology and philosophy. Philosophy texts were everywhere in the apartment. I read the spines: Jacques Derrida, Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Heidegger, Habermas, Sartre.

There was several dictionaries as well: French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. A compact, two-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary had type so small it came with a magnifying glass.

There was a framed diagram of the human voice mechanism directly over Pierce’s work desk. And a quote: “Language is more than speech.” Several books by the linguist and activist Noam Chomsky were on his desk. What I remembered about Chomsky was that he had suggested a complex biological component of language acquisition. He had a view of the mind as a set of mental organs. I think that was Chomsky.

I wondered what, if anything, Noam Chomsky or the diagram of the human voice mechanism had to do with Smith, or the death of Isabella Calais.

I was lost in my thoughts, when I was startled by a loud buzzing noise. It came from the kitchen at the other end of the hall.

I thought I was alone in the apartment, and the buzzing spooked me. I took my Glock from its shoulder holster and started down the long narrow hallway. Then I began to run.

I entered the kitchen with my gun in position and then understood what the buzzing was. I had brought along a PowerBook that Pierce had left in his hotel room in Princeton. Left on purpose? Left as another clue? A special alarm on the laptop personal computer was the source of the noise.

Had he sent a message to us? A fax or Voice mail? Or perhaps someone was sending a message to Pierce? Who would be sending him messages?

I checked voice mail first. It was Pierce.

His voice was strong and steady and almost soothing. It was the voice of someone in control of himself and the situation. It was eerie under the circumstances, to be hearing it alone in his apartment.

Dr. Cross-at least I suspect it’s you I’ve reached. This is the kind of message I used to receive when I was tracking Smith.

Of course, I was using the messages for misdirection, sending them myself. I wanted to mislead the police, the FBI. Who knows, maybe I still do.

At any rate, here’s your very first message-Anthony Bruno, Brielle, New Jersey.

Why don’t you come to the seashore and join me for a swim? Have you arrived at any conclusions about Isabella yet? She is important to all of this. You’re right to be in Cambridge.

Smith/Pierce

Chapter 112

THE FBI provided me with a helicopter out of Logan International Airport to fly me to Brielle, New Jersey. I was on board the Disorient Express and there was no getting off.

I spent the flight obsessing about Pierce, his apartment, Isabella Calais, their apartment, his studies in biology and modern philosophy, Noam Chomsky. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, wouldn’t have dreamed it possible, but Pierce was already eclipsing Gary Soneji and Simon Conklin. I despised everything about Pierce. Seeing the pictures of Isabella Calasis had done it for me.

Alien? I wrote on the foolscap pad lying across my lap. He identifies with descriptor.

Alienated? Alienated from what? Idyllic upbringing in California. Doesn’t fit any of the psychopathic profiles we used before. He’s an original. He secretly enjoys that, doesn’t he?

No discernible pattern to murders that link with a psychological motive.

Murders seem haphazard and arbitrary! He revels in his own originality.

Dr. Sante, Simon Conklin, now Anthony Bruno. Why them? Does Conklin count?

Seems impossible to predict Thomas Pierce’s next move. His next kill.

Why go south toward the New Jersey Shore?

It had occurred to me that he was originally from a shore town. Pierce had grown up near Laguna Beach in Southern California. Was he going home, in a manner of speaking? Was the New Jersey Shore as close to home as he could get-as close as he dared go?

I now had a reasonable amount of information about his background in California before he came east. He had lived on a working farm not far from the famous Irvine Ranch properties. Three generations of doctors in the family. Good, hardworking people. His siblings were all dong well, and not one of them believed that Thomas was capable of any of this mayhem and murder he was accused of committing.

FBI says Mr. Smith is disorganized, chaotic, unpredictable, I scribbled in my pad.

What if they’re wrong? Pierce is responsible for much of their data about Smith. Pierce created Mr. Smith, then did the profile on him.

I kept revisiting his and Isabella’s apartment in my mind. The place was so very neat and organized. The home had a definite organizing principle. It revolved around Isabella-her pictures, clothes, even her perfume bottles had been left in place. The smell of L’Air du Temps and Je Reviens permeated their bedroom to this day.

Thomas Pierce had loved her. Pierce had loved. Pierce had felt passion and emotion. That was another thing the FBI was wrong about. He’d killed because he thought he was losing her, and he couldn’t bear it. Was Isabella the only person who had ever loved Pierce?

Another small piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place! I was so struck by it that I said it aloud in the helicopter. “Her heart on a spear!”

He had “pierced” her heart! Jesus Christ! He had confessed to the very first murder! He had confessed!

He’d left a clue, but the police missed it. What else were we missing? What was he up to now? What did “Mr. Smith” represent inside his mind? Was everything representational for him? Symbolic? Artistic? Was he creating a kind of language for us to follow? Or was it even simpler? He had “pierced” her heart. Pierce wanted to be caught. Caught and punished.

Crime and punishment.

Why couldn’t we catch him?

I landed in New Jersey around five at night. Kyle Craig was waiting for me. Kyle was sitting on the hood of a dark blue Town Car. He was drinking Samuel Adams beer out of a bottle.

“You find Anthony Bruno yet?” I called out as I walked toward him. “You find the body?”

Chapter 113

MR. SMITH goes to the seashore. Sounded like an unimaginative children’s story.

There was enough moonlight for Thomas Pierce to make his way along the long stretch of glowing White sand at Point Pleasant Beach. He was carrying a corpse, what was left of it. He had Anthony Bruno loaded on his back and shoulders.

He walked just south of popular Jenkinson’s Pier and the much newer Seaquarium. The boarded-up arcades of the amusement part were tightly packed along the beach shoulder. The small, grayish buildings looked forlorn and mute in their shuttered state.

As usual, music ran through his head-first Elvis Costello’s “Clubland,” then Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21, then “Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham. The savage beast inside him wasn’t calmed, not even close, but at least he could feel a beat.

It was quarter to four in the morning and even the surfcasting fishermen weren’t out yet. He’d seen only one police patrol car so far. The police in the tiny beach town were a joke anyway.

Mr. Smith against the Keystone Kops.

This whole funky seashore area reminded him of Laguna Beach, at least the tourista parts of Laguna. He could still picture the surf shops that dotted the Pacific Coast Highway back home-the Southern California artifacts: Flogo sandals, Stussy T’s, neroprene gloves and wet suits, beach boots, the unmistakable smell of board wax.

He was physically strong-had a workingman’s build. He carried Anthony Bruno over one shoulder without much effort. He had cut out all the vital parts, so there wasnt’t much of Anthony anymore. Anthony was a shell. No heart, liver, intestines, lungs, or brain.

Thomas Pierce thought about the FBI’s continuing search. The Bureau’s fabled “manhunts” were overrated-a holdover from the glory days of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. He knew this to be so after years of observing the Bureau chase Mr. Smith. They would never have caught Smith, not in a hundred years.

The FBI was looking for him in all the wrong places. They would surely have “numbers,” meaning excessive force, their trademark maneuver. They would be all over the airports, probably expecting him to head back to Europe. And what about the wild cards in the search, people like Alex Cross? Cross had made his bones, no doubt about that. Maybe Cross was more than he seemed to be. At any rate, he relished the thought of Dr. Cross being in on this, too. He liked the competition.

The dead weight on his back and shoulder was starting to get heavy. It was almost morning, close to daybreak. I wouldn’t do to be found lugging a disemboweled corpse across Point Pleasant Beach.

He carried Anthony Bruno another fifty yards to a glistening white lifeguard’s chair. He climbed the creaking rungs of the chair, and propped the body in the seat.

The remains of the corpse were naked and exposed for the world to see. Quite a sight. Anthony was a clue. If anybody on the search team had half a brain and was using it properly.

“I’m not an alien. Do any of you follow that?” Pierce shouted above the ocean’s steady roar.

“I’m human. I’m perfectly normal. I’m just like you.”

Chapter 114

IT WAS all a mind game, was’t it-Pierce against the rest of us.

While I had been at his apartment in Cambridge, a team of FBI agents went out to Southern California to meet with Thomas Pierce’s family. The mother and father still lived on the same farm, between Laguna and EI Toro, where Thomas Pierce had grown up.

Henry Pierce practiced medicine, mostly among the indigent farmworkers in the area. His lifestyle was modest and the reputation of the family impeccable. Pierce had an older brother and sister, doctors in Northern California, who were also well regarded and worked with the poor.

Not a person the profilers spoke to could imagine Thomas a murderer. He’d always been a good son and brother, a gifted student who seemed to have close friends and no enemies.

Thomas Pierce fit no brief for a pattern killer that I was familiar with. He was an original.

“Impeccable” was a word that jumped out of the FBI profiler reports. Maybe Pierce didn’t want to be impeccable.

I re-reviewed the news articles and clippings about Pierce from the time of Isabella Calais’s gruesome murder. I was keeping track of the more perplexing notions on three-by-five index cards. The packet was growing rapidly.

Laguna Beach -commercial shore town. Parts similar to point Pleasant and Bay Head. Had Pierce killed in Laguna in the past? Had the disease now spread to the Northeast?

Pierce’s father was a doctor. Pierce didn’t “Make it” to Dr. Pierce, but as a med student he had performed autopsies.

Looking for his humanity when he kills? Studying humans because he fears he has no human qualities himself?

He had a dual major as an undergrad: biology and philosophy. Fan of the linguist Noam Chomsky. Or is it Chomsky’s political writings that turn Pierce on? Plays word and much games on his PowerBook.

What were we all missing so far?

What was I missing?

Why was Thomas Pierce killing all of these people?

He was “impeccable,” wasn’t he.

Chapter 115

PIERCE STOLE a forest green BMW convertible in the expensive, quaint, quite lovely shore town of Bay Head, New Jersey. On the corner of East Avenue and Harris Street, a prime location, he hot-wired and grabbed the vehicle as slickly as a pickpocket working the boardwalks down at Point Pleasant Beach. He was so good at this, overqualified for the scut work.

He drove west through Brick Town at moderate speeds, to the Garden State Parkway. He played music all the way-Talking Heads, Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge, Blind Faith. Music helped him to feel something. It always had, from the time he’d been a boy. An hour and a quarter later he entered Atlantic City.

He sighed with pleasure. He loved it instantly-the shameless tawdriness, the grubbiness, the tattered sinfulness, the soullessness of the place. He felt as if he were “home,” and he wondered if the FBI geniuses had linked the Jersey Shore to Laguna Beach yet?

Entering Atlantic City, he had half expected to see a beautifully maintained expanse of lawn sloping down to the ocean. Surfers with peroxided, gnarly hair; volleyball played around the clock.

But no, no, this was New Jersey. Southern California, his real home, was thousands of miles away. He mustn’t get confused now.

He checked into Bally’s Park Place. Up in his room, he started to make phone calls. He wanted to “order in.” He stood at a picture window and watched the ghostly waves of the Atlantic punish the beach again and again. Far down the beach he could see Trump Plaza. The audacious and ridiculous penthouse apartments were perched on the main building, like a space shuttle ready to take off.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, of course there was a pattern. Why couldn’t anyone figure it out? Why did he always have to be misunderstood?

At two in the morning, Thomas Pierce sent the trackers another voice-mail message: Inez in Atlantic City.

Chapter 116

GODDAMN HIM! Half a day after we recovered the body of Anthony Bruno, we got the next message from Pierce. He had taken another one already.

We were on the move immediately. Two dozen of us rushed to Atlantic City and prayed he was still there, that someone named Inez hadn’t already been butchered and “studied” by Mr. Smith and discarded like the evening trash.

Giant billboards screamed all along the Atlantic City Expressway. Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah’s, Merv Griffin ’s Resorts Casino Hotel, Trump’s Castle, Trump Taj Mahal. Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Now that was funny.

Inez, Atlantic city, I kept hearing inside my head. Sounds like Isabella.

We set up shop in the FBI field office, which was only a few blocks from the old Stell Pier and the so-called “ Great Wooden Way.” There were usually only four agents in the small office. Their expertise was organized crime and gambling, and they weren’t considered movers and shakers inside the Bureau. They weren’t prepared for a savage, unpredictable killer who had once been a very good agent.

Someone had bought a stack of newspapers and they were piled high on the conference table. The New York, Philly, and Jersey headline writers were having a field day with this one.

ALIEN KILLER VISITS JERSEY SHORE…

FBI KILLER-DILLER IN ATLANTIC CITY…

MR. SMITH MANHUNT: Hundreds of Federal agents flock to New Jersey Shore…

MONSTER ON THE LOOSE IN NEW JERSEY!

Sampson came up to the beach from Washington. He wanted Pierce as badly as any of us. He, Kyle, and I worked together, brainstorming over what Pierce-Mr. Smith might do next. Sondra Greenberg from Interpol worked with us, too. She was seriously jet-lagged, and had deep circles under her eyes, but she knew Pierce and had been at most of the European murder sites.

“He’s not a goddamn split personality?” Sampson asked. “Smith and Pierce?”

I shook my head. “He seems to be in control of his faculties at all times. He created ‘Smith’ to serve some other purpose.”

“I agree with Alex,” Sondra Greenberg said from across the table, “but what is the sodding purpose?”

“Whatever it was, it worked,” Kyle joined in. “He had us chasing Mr. Smith halfway around the world. We’re still chasing. No one has ever jerked around the Bureau like this.”

“Not even the great J. Edgar Hoover?” Sondra said and winked.

“Well.” Kyle softened, “as a pure psychopath, Hoover was in a class by himself.”

I was up and pacing again. My side was hurting, but I didn’t want anyone to know about it. They would try to send me home, make me miss the fun. I let myself ramble-sometimes it works.

“He’s trying to tell us something. He’s communicating in some strange way. Inez? The name reminds us of Isabella. He’s obsessed with Isabella. You should see the apartment in Cambridge. Is Inez a substitute for Isabella? Is Atlantic City a substitute for Laguna Beach? Has he thought Isabella home? Why bring Isabella home?”

It went on and on like that: wild hunches, free association, insecurity, fear, unbearable frustration. As far as I could tell nothing worthwhile was said all day and late into the night, but who could really tell.

Pierce didn’t try to make further contact. There were no more voice-mail messages. That surprised us a little. Kyle was afraid he’d moved on, and that he would keep moving until he drove us completely insane. Six of us stayed in the field office throughout the night and into the early morning. We slept in our clothes, on chairs, tables, and the floor.

I paced inside the office, and occasionally outside on the glittery, fog-laden boardwalk. As a last desperate resort, I bought a bag of Fralinger’s salt water taffy and tried to get sick to my stomach.

What kind of logic system is he using? Mr. Smith is his creation, his Mr. Hyde. What is Smith’s mission? Why is he here? I wondered, occasionally talking to myself as I strolled the mostly deserted boardwalk.

Inez is Isabella?

It couldn’t be that simple. Pierce wouldn’t make it simple for us.

Inez is not Isabella. There was only one Isabella. So why does pierce keep killing again and again?

I found myself at the corner of Park Place and Boardwalk, and that finally brought a smile. Monopoly. Another kind of game? Is that it?

I wandered back to the FBI field office and got some sleep. But not nearly enough. A few hours at most.

Pierce was here.

So was Mr. Smith.

Chapter 117

A FLAT, still sandy, still meadowy region…a superb range of ocean beach-miles and miles of it. The bright sun, the sparkling waves, the foam, the view-a sail here and there in the distance. Walt Whitman had written that about Atlantic City a hundred years before. His words were inscribed on the wall of a pizza and hot-dog stand now. Whitman would have been stricken to see his words on such a backdrop.

I went by myself for another stroll on the Atlantic City boardwalk around ten o’clock. It was Saturday, and so hot and sunny that the eroding beach was already dotted with swimmers and sunbathers.

We still hadn’t found Inez. We didn’t have a single clue. We didn’t even know who she was.

I had the uncomfortable feeling that Thomas Pierce was watching us, or that I might suddenly come upon him in the dense, sweltering crowds. I had my pager just in case he tried to contact us at the field office.

There was nothing else to be done right now. Pierce-Mr. Smith was in control of the situation and our lives. A madman was in control of the planet. It seemed like it anyway.

I stopped near Steeplechase Pier and the Resorts Casino Hotel. People were playing under a hot sun in the high, rolling surf. They seemed to be enjoying themselves and didn’t appear to have a care in the world. How nice for them.

This was the way it should be, and it reminded me of Jannie and Damon, my own family, and of Christine. She desperately wanted me to leave this job and I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t know if I could walk away from police work, though. I wondered why that was so. Physician, heal thyself. Maybe I would someday soon.

As I continued my walk along the boardwalk, I tried to convince myself that everything that could be done to catch Pierce was being done. I passed a Fralinger’s, and a James Candy store. And the old Peanut Shoppe, where a costumed Mr. Peanut was stumbling about in the mid-ninety-degree heat.

I had to smile as I saw the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum up ahead, where you could see a lock of George Washington’s hair, and a roulette table made of jelly beans. No, I could not believe it. I didn’t think anyone on the crisis team could, but here we were.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by the beeper vibrating against my leg. I ran to a nearby phone and called in.

Pierce had left another message. Kyle and Sampson were already out on the boardwalk. Pierce was near the Steel Pier. He claimed that Inez was with him! He said we could still save them!

Pierce specifically said them.

I shouldn’t have been running around like this. My side began to throb and hurt like hell. I’d never been out of shape like this, not in my life, and I didn’t like the feeling. I hadn’t felt so vulnerable and relatively helpless before.

Finally, I realized: I’m actually afraid of Pierce, and of Mr. Smith.

By the time I got near the Steel Pier, my clothes were dripping wet and I was breathing hard. I pulled off my sport shirt and waded out into the crowd barechested. I pushed my way past old-style jitneys and newer step vans, past tandem bikes and joggers.

I was taped and bandage and I must have looked like an escapee from a local ER. Even so, it was hard to stand out on a beach like the one at Atlantic City. An ice-cream man hauling a box on his shoulder cried out, “Hitch your tongue to a sleigh ride! Get your Fudgie Wudgies here!”

Was Thomas Pierce watching us and laughing? He could be the ice-cream man, or anyone else in this frenetic mob scene.

I cupped my hands over my eyes and looked up and down the beach. I spotted policeman and FBI agents moving into the crowd. There must have been at least fifty thousand sunbathers on the beach. I could faintly hear electronic bells from the slot machines in one of the nearby hotels.

Inez. Atlantic City. Jesus!

A madman on the loose near the famous Steel Pier.

I looked for Sampson or Kyle, but I didn’t see either of them. I searched for pierce, and for Inez, and for Mr. Smith.

I heard a loud voice, and it stopped me in my tracks. “This is the FBI.”

Chapter 118

THE VOICE boomed over a loudspeaker. Probably from one of the hotels, or maybe a police hookup. “This is the FBI,” Kyle Craig announced.

“Some of our agents are on the beach now. Cooperate with them and also with the Atlantic City police. Do whatever they ask. There’s no reason for undue concern. Please cooperate with police officers.”

The huge crowd became strangely quiet. Everyone was staring around, looking for the FBI. No, there was no reason for undue concern-not unless we actually found Pierce. Not unless we discovered Mr. Smith operating on somebody in the middle of this beach crowd.

I made my way toward the famous amusement pier, where as a young boy I had actually seen the famous diving horse. People were standing out in the low surf, just looking in toward shore. It reminded me of the movie Jaws.

Thomas Pierce was in control here.

A black Bell Jet Ranger hovered less than seventy yards from shore. A second helicopter came into view from the northeast. It swept in close to the first, then fluttered away in the direction of the Taj Mahal Hotel complex. I could make out sharpshooters positioned in the helicopters.

So could Pierce, and so could the people on the beach. I knew there were FBI marksmen in the nearby hotels. Pierce would know that. Pierce was FBI. He knew everything we did. That was his edge and he was using it against us. He was winning.

There was a disturbance up closer to the pier. People were pushing forward to see, while others were moving away as fast as they could. I moved forward.

The beach crowd’s noise level was building again. En Vogue played from somebody’s blaster. The smell of cotton candy and beer and hot dogs was thick in the air. I began to run toward the Steel Pier, remembering the diving horse and Lucy the Elephant from Margate, better times a long time ago.

I saw Sampson and Kyle up ahead.

They were bending over something. Oh God, Oh God, no. Inez, Atlantic City! My pulse raced out of control.

This was not good.

A dark-haired teenage girl was sobbing against an older man’s chest. Others gawked at the dead body, which had been clumsily wrapped in beach blankets. I couldn’t imagine how it had gotten here-but there it was.

Inez, Atlantic City. It had to be her.

The murdered woman had long bleach blond hair and looked to be in her early twenties. It was hard to tell now. Her skin was purplish and waxy. The eyes had flattened because of a loss of fluid. Her lips and nail beds were pale. He had operated on Inez: The ribs and cartilage had been cut away, exposing her lungs, esophagus, trachea, and heart.

Inez sounds like Isabella.

Pierce knew that.

He hadn’t taken out Inez’s heart.

The ovaries and fallopian tubes were neatly laid out beside the body. The tubes looked like a set of earrings and a necklace.

Suddenly, sunbathers were pointing to something out over the ocean.

I turned and I looked up, shading my eyes with one hand.

A prop plane was lazily making its way down the shoreline from the north. It was the kind of plane you rented for commercial messages. Most of the messages on forty-foot banners hyped the hotels, local bars, area restaurants, and casinos.

A banner waved behind the sputtering plane, which was getting closer and closer. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was another message.

Mr. Smith is gone for now! Wave good-bye.

Chapter 119

EARLY THE next morning, I headed home to Washington. I needed to see the kids, needed to sleep in my own bed, to be far, far away from Thomas Pierce and his monstrous creation-Mr. Smith.

Inez had turned out to be an escort from a local service. Pierce had called her to his room at Bally’s Park Place. I was starting to believe that Pierce could find intimacy only with his victims now, but what else was driving him to commit these horrifying murders? Why Inez? Why the Jersey Shore?

I had to escape for a couple of days, or even a few hours, if that was all I could get. At least we hadn’t already gotten another name, another location to rush off to.

I called Christine from Atlantic City and asked her if she wanted to have dinner with my family that night. She said yes, she’d like that a lot. She said she’d “be there with bells on.” That sounded unbelievably good to me. The best medicine I could imagine for what ailed me.

I kept the sound of her voice in my head all the way home to Washington. She would be there with bells on.

Damon, Jannie, and I spent a hectic morning getting ready for the party. We shopped for groceries at Citronella, and then at the Giant. Veni, vidi, Visa.

I had almost put Pierce-Mr. Smith out of my mind, but I still had my Glock in an ankle holster to go grocery shopping.

At the Giant, Damon scouted on ahead to find some RC Cola and tortilla chips. Jannie and I had a chance to talk the talk. I knew she was dying to bzzz-bzzz-bzzz. I can always tell. She has a fine, overactive imagination, and I couldn’t wait to hear what was on her little mind.

Jannie was in charge of pushing the shopping cart, and the metal handle of the cart was just above her eye level. She stared at the immense array of cereals in our aisle, looking for the best deals. Nana Mama had taught her the fine art of grocery shopping, and she can do most of the math in her head.

“Talk to me,” I said. “My time is your time. Daddy’s home.”

“For today.” She sent a hummer right past my ear, brushed me right back from home plate with a high, hard one.

“It’s not easy being green,” I said. It was an old favorite line between us, compliments of Kermit the Frog. She shrugged it off today. No sale. No easy deals.

“You and Damon mad at me?” I asked in my most soothing tones. “Tell me the truth, girlfriend.”

She softened a little. “Oh, it’s not so much that, Daddy. You’re doing the best you can,” she said, and finally looked my way. “You’re trying, right? It’s just hard when you go away from home. I get lonely for you. It’s not the same when you’re away.”

I shook my head, smiled, and wondered where she got much of her thinking from. Nana Mama swears that Jannie has a mind of her own.

“You okay with our dinner plans?” I asked, treading carefully.

“Oh ab-solutely.” She suddenly beamed. “That’s not a problem at all. I love dinner parties.”

“Damon? Is he okay with Christine coming over tonight?” I asked my confidante.

“He’s a little scared ’cause she’s the principal of our school. But he’s cool, too. You know Damon. He’s the man.”

I nodded. “He is cool. So dinner’s not a problem? You’re not even a little scared?”

Jannie shook her head. “Nope. Not because of that. Dinners can’t scare me. Dinner is dinner.”

Man, she was smart, and so subtle for her age. It was like talking to a very wise adult. She was already a poet, and a philsopher, too. She was going to be competition for Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison one day. I loved that about her.

“Do you have to keep going after him? After this bum Mr. Smith?” Jannie finally asked me. “I guess you do.” She answered her own question.

I echoed her earlier line. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Jannie stood up on her tippy-toes. I bent low to her, but not as far as I used to. She kissed me on the cheek, a nice smacker, as she calls the kisses.

“You’re the bee’s knees,” she said. It was one of Nana’s favorite things to say and she’d adopted it.

“Boo!” Damon peeked around the soda-pop aisle at the two of us. His head was framed against a red, white, and blue sea of Pepsi bottles and cans. I pulled Damon close, and I kissed him on the cheek, too. I kissed the top of his head, held him in a way I would have liked my father to have held me a long time ago. We made a little spectacle of ourselves in the grocery-store aisle. Nice spectacle.

God, I loved the two of them, and what a continued dilemma it presented. The Glock on my ankle weighed a ton and felt as hot as a poker from a fire. I wanted to take it off and never put the weapon on again.

I knew I wouldn’t, though. Thomas Pierce was still out there somewhere, and Mr. Smith, and all the rest of them. For some reason I felt it was my responsibility to make them all go away, to make things a little safer for everyone.

“Earth to Daddy,” Jannie said. She had a small frown on her face. “See? You went away again. You were with Mr. Smith, weren’t you?”

Chapter 120

CHRISTINE can save you. If anyone can, if it’s possible for you to be salvaged at this point in your life.

I got to her place around six-thirty that night. I’d told her I would pick her up out in Mitchellville. My side was hurting again, and I definitely felt like damaged goods, but I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.

She came to the front door in a bright tangerine sundress and heeled espadrilles. She looked slightly beyond great. She wore a bar pin with tiny silver bells. She did have bells on.

“Bells.” I smiled.

“You bet. You thought I was kidding.”

I took her in my arms right there on the red-brick front stoop, with blooming red and white impatiens and climbing roses all around us. I hugged Christine tightly against my chest and we started to kiss.

I was lost in her sweet, soft mouth, in her arms. My hands flew up to her face, lightly tracing her cheekbones, her nose, her eyelids.

The shock of intimacy was rare and overwhelming. So good, so fine, and missing for such a long time.

I opened my eyes and saw that she was looking at me. She had the most expressive eyes I’d ever seen. “I love the way you hold me, Alex,” she whispered, but her eyes said much more. “I love your touch.”

We backed into the house, kissing again.

“Do we have time?” She laughed.

“Shhh. Only a crazy person wouldn’t. We’re not crazy.”

“Of course we are.”

The bright tangerine sundress fell away to the floor. I liked the feel of shantung, but Christine’s bare skin felt even better. She was wearing Shalimar and I liked that, too. I had the feeling that I had been here before with her, maybe in a dream. It was as if I had been imagining this moment for a long time and now it was here.

She helped me with her white-lace demibra. We slid down the matching panties, two pairs of hands working together. Then we were naked, except for the fine rope necklace with a fire opal around her neck. I remembered a poem, something magical about the nakedness of lovers, but with just a touch of jewelry to set it off. Baudelaire? I bit gently into her shoulder. She bit back.

I was so hard it hurt, but the pain was exquisite, the pain had its own raw power. I loved this woman completely, and I was also turned on by her, every inch of her being.

“You know,” I whispered, “you’re driving me a little crazy.”

“Oh. Just a little?”

I let my lips trail down along her breasts, her stomach. She was lightly scented with perfume. I kissed between her legs and she began to gently call my name, then not so gently. I entered Christine as we stood against the cream living room wall, as we seemed to push our bodies into the wall.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I love you, Alex.”

She was strong and gentle and graceful, all at the same time. We danced, but not in the metaphorical sense. We really danced.

I loved the sound of her voice, the softest cry, the song she sang when she was with me like this.

Then I was singing, too. I had found my voice again, for the first time in many years. I don’t know how long we were like that. Time wasn’t part of this. Something in it was eternal, and something was so very real and right now in the present.

Christine and I were soaking wet. Even the wall behind me was slippery and wet. The wild ride at the beginning, the rocking and rolling, had transformed itself into a slower rhythm that was even stronger. I knew that no life was right without this kind of passion.

I was barely moving inside her. She tightened around me and I thought I could feel the edges of her. I surged deeper and Christine seemed to swell around me. We began to move into each other, trying to get closer. We shuddered, and got closer still.

Christine climaxed, and then the two of us came together. We danced and we sang. I felt myself melting into Christine and we were both whispering yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No one could touch us here, not Thomas Pierce, no one.

“Hey, did I tell you I loved you?”

“Yes, but tell me again.”

Chapter 121

KIDS ARE so damn much smarter than we usually give them credit for. Kids know just about everything, and they often know it before we do.

“You two are late! You have a flat tire-or were you just smooching?” Jannie wanted to know as we came in the front door. She can say some outrageous things and get away with them. She knows it, and pushes the envelope every chance she gets.

“We were smooching,” I said. “Satisfied?”

“Yes I am,” Jannie smiled. “Actually, you’re not even late. You’re right on time. Perfect timing.”

Dinner with Nana and the children wasn’t an anticlimax. It was such a sweet, funny time. It was what being home is all about. We all pitched in and set the table, served the food, then ate with reckless abandon. The meal was swordfish steaks, scalloped potatoes, summer peas, buttermilk biscuits. Everything was served piping hot, expertly prepared by Nana, Jannie, and Damon. Dessert was Nana’s world-famous lemon meringue pie. She made it specially for Christine.

I believe the simple yet complex word that I’m searching for is joy.

It was so obvious around the dinner table. I could see it in the bright and lively eyes of Nana and Damon and Jannie. I had already seen it in Christine’s eyes. I watched her at dinner and I had the thought that she could have been somebody famous in Washington, anything she wanted to be. She chose to be a teacher, and I loved that about her.

We repeated stories that had been in the family for years, and are always repeated at such occasions. Nana was lively and funny all through the night. She gave us her best advice on aging: “If you can’t recall it, forget it.”

Later on, I played the piano and sang rhythm-and-blues songs. Jannie showed off and did the cakewalk to a jazzy version of “Blueberry Hill.” Even Nana did a minute of jitterbugging, protesting, “I really can’t dance, I never could dance,” as she did just beautifully.

One moment, one picture, sticks out in my mind, and I’m sure it will be there until the day I die. It was just after we’d finished dinner and were cleaning up the kitchen.

I was washing dishes in the sink, and as I reached to get another plate I stopped in midturn, frozen in the moment.

Jannie was in Christine’s arms, and the two of them looked just beautiful together. I had no idea how she had gotten there, but they were both laughing and it was so natural and real. As I never had before, I knew and understood that Jannie and Damon were missing so much without a mother.

Joy-that’s the word. So easy to say, so hard to find in life sometimes.

In the morning, I had to go back to work.

I was still the dragonslayer.

Chapter 122

I SHUT MYSELF AWAY to think, to quietly obsess about Thomas Pierce and Mr. Smith.

I made suggestions to Kyle Craig about moves that Pierce might make and precautions he should think about taking. Agents were dispatched to watch Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Agents camped out at his parents’ house outside Laguna Beach, and even at the gravesite of Isabella Calais.

Pierce had been passionately in love with Isabella Calais! She had been the only one for him! Isabella and Thomas Pierce! That was the key-Pierce’s obsessive love for her.

He’s suffering from unbearable guilt, I wrote in my notepad.

If my hypothesis is right, then what clues are missing?

Back at Quantico, a team of FBI profilers was trying to solve the problem on paper. They had all worked closely with Pierce in the BSU. Absolutely nothing in Pierce’s background was consistent with the psychopathic killers they had dealt with before. Pierce had never been abused, either physically or sexually. There was no violence of any kind in his background. At least not as far as anyone knew. There was no warning, no hint of madness, no sign until he blew sky-high. He was an original. There had never been a monster anything like him. There were no precedents.

I wrote: Thomas Pierce was deeply in love. You are in love, too.

What would it mean to murder the only person in the world whom you loved?

Chapter 123

I COULDN’T MANAGE any sympathy, or even a modicum of clinical empathy, for Pierce. I despised him, and his cruel, cold-blooded murders, more than any of the other killers I had taken down-even Soneji. Kyle Craig and Sampson felt the same, and so did most of the Bureau, especially the good folks in Behavioral Science. We were the ones in a rage state now. We were obsessed with stopping Pierce. Was he using that to beat our brains in?

The following day, I worked at home again. I looked myself away with my computer, several books, and my crime-scene notepads. The only time I took off was to walk Damon and Jannie to school, and then have a quick breakfast with Nana.

My mouth was full of poached egg and toast when she leaned across the kitchen table and launched one of her famous sneak attacks on me.

“Am I correct in saying that you don’t want to discuss your murder case with me?” she asked.

“I’d rather talk about the weather or just about anything else. Your garden looks beautiful. Your hair looks nice.”

“We all like Christine very much, Alex. She’s knocked our socks off. In case you wanted to know but forgot to ask. She’s the best thing that’s happened to you since Maria. So, what are you going to do about it? What are your plans?”

I rolled my eyes back, but I had to smile at Nana’s dawn offensive. “First, I’m going to finish this delicious breakfast you fixed. Then I have some dicey work to do upstairs. How’s that?”

“You mustn’t lose her, Alex. Don’t do that,” Nana advised and warned at the same time. “You won’t listen to a decrepit old woman, though. What do I know about anything? I just cook and clean around here.”

“And talk,” I said with my mouth full. “Don’t forget talk, old woman.”

“Not just talk, sonny boy. Pretty sound psychological analysis, necessary cheerleading at times, and expert guidance counseling.”

“I have a game plan,” I said, and left it at that.

“You better have a winning game plan.” Nana got the last word in. “Alex, if you lose her, you will never get over it.”

The walk with the kids and even talking with Nana revitalized me. I felt clear and alert as I worked at my old rolltop for the rest of the morning.

I had started to cover the bedroom walls with notes and theories, and the beginnings of even more theories about Thomas Pierce. The pushpin parade had taken control. From the looks of the room, it seemed as if I knew what I was doing, but contrary to popular opinion, looks are almost always deceiving. I had hundreds of clues, and yet I didn’t have a clue.

I remembered something Mr. Smith had written in one of his messages to Pierce, which Pierce had then passed on to the FBI. The god within us is the one that gives the laws and can change the laws. And God is within us.

The words had seemed familiar to me, and I finally tracked down the source. The quote was from Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist and folklorist who had taught at Harvard when Pierce was a student there.

I was trying different perspectives to the puzzle. Two entry points in particular interested me.

First, Pierce was curious about language. He had studied linguistics at Harvard. He admired Noam Chomsky. What about language and words, then?

Second, Pierce was extremely organized. He had created the false impression that Mr. Smith was disorganized. He had purposely misled the FBI and Interpol.

Pierce was leaving clues from the start. Some of them were obvious.

He wants to be caught. So why doesn’t he stop himself?

Murder. Punishment. Was Thomas Pierce punishing himself, or was he punishing everybody else? Right now, he was certainly punishing the hell out of me. Maybe I deserved it.

Around three o’clock, I took a stroll and picked up Damon and Jannie at the Sojourner Truth School. Not that they needed someone to walk them home. I just missed the hell out of them. I needed to see them, couldn’t keep myself away.

Besides, my head ached and I wanted to get out of the house, away from all of my thoughts.

I saw Christine in the schoolyard. She was surrounded by little children. I remembered that she wanted to have kids herself. She looked so happy, and I could see that the kids loved to be around her. Who in their right mind wouldn’t. She made it look so natural to be turning jump rope in a navy business suit.

She smiled when she saw me approaching across the schoolyard full of kids. The smile warmed the cockles of my heart, and all my other cockles as well.

“Look who’s taking a break for air,” she said, “three potato, four.”

“When I was in high school,” I told her as she continued to turn her end of a Day-Glo pink jump rope, “I had a girlfriend over at John Carroll. This was in my sophomore and junior years.”

“Mmm, hmmm. Nice Catholic girl? White blouse, plaid skirt, saddle shoes?”

“She was very nice. Actually, she’s a botanist now. See, nice? I used to walk all the way over to South Carolina Avenue just on the off chance I might see Jeanne for a couple of minutes after she finished school. I was seriously smitten.”

“Must have been the saddle shoes. Are you trying to tell me that you’re smitten again?” Christine laughed. The kids couldn’t quite hear us, but they were laughing anyway.

“I am way beyond smitten. I am smote.”

“Well that’s good,” she said and continued to turn the pink rope and smile at her kids, “because so am I. And when this case is over, Alex-”

“Anything you want, just say the word.”

Her eyes brightened even more than was usual. “A weekend away from everything. Maybe at a country inn, but anywhere remote will do just fine.”

I wanted to hold Christine so much. I wanted to kiss her right there, but that wasn’t going to happen in the crowded schoolyard.

“It’s a date,” I said. “It’s a promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it. Smote, that’s good. We can try that on our weekend away.”

Chapter 124

BACK HOME, I worked on the Pierce case until supper time. I ate a quick meal of hamburgers and summer squash with Nana and the kids. I took some more heavy heat for being an incurable and unrepentant workaholic. Nana cut me a slice of pie, and I retreated to my room again. Well fed, but deeply unsatisfied.

I couldn’t help it-I was worried. Thomas Pierce might already have grabbed another victim. He could be performing an “autopsy” tonight. He could send us a message at any time.

I reread the notes I had plastered on the bedroom wall. I felt as if the answer were on the tip of my tongue and it was driving me crazy. People’s lives hung in the balance.

He had “pierced” the heart of Isabella Calais.

His apartment in Cambridge was an obsessive shrine to her memory.

He had returned “home” when he went to Point Pleasant Beach. The opportunity to catch him was there-if we were smart enough, if we were as good as he was.

What were we missing, the FBI and me?

I played more word games with the assortment of clues.

He always “pierces” his victims. I wondered if he was impotent or had become impotent, unable to have a sexual relationship with Isabella.

Mr. Smith operates like a doctor-which Pierce nearly was-which his father and his siblings are. He had failed as a doctor.

I went to bed early, around eleven, but I couldn’t sleep. I guess I’d just wanted to try and turn the case off. I finally called Christine and we talked for about an hour. As we talked and I listened to the music of her voice, I couldn’t help thinking about Pierce and Isabella Calais.

Pierce had loved her. Obsessive love. What would happen if I lost Christine now? What happened to Pierce after the murder? Had he gone mad?

After I got off the phone, I went back at the case again. For a while, I thought his pattern might have something to do with Homer’s Odyssey. He was heading home after a series of tragedies and misfortunes? No, that wasn’t it.

What the hell was the key to his code? If he wanted to drive all of us mad, it was working.

I began to play with the names of the victims, starting with Isabella and ending with Inez. I goes full circle to I? Full circle? Circles? I looked at the clock on the desk-it was almost one-thirty in the morning, but I kept at it.

I wrote-I.

I. Was that something? It could be a start. The personal pronoun I? I tried a few combinations with the letters of the names.

I-S-U…R

C-A-D…

I-A-D…

I stopped after the next three letters: IMU. I stared at the page. I remembered pierced, the obviousness of it. The simplest wordplay.

Isabella, Michaela, Ursula. Those were names of the first three victims-in order. Jesus Christ!

I looked at the names of all the victims-in order of the murders. I looked at the first, last, and middle names. I began mixing and matching the names. My heart was pounding. There was something here. Pierce had left us another clue, a series of clues, actually.

It was right there in front of us all the time. No one got it, because Smith’s crimes appeared to be without any pattern. But Pierce had started that theory himself.

I continued to write, using either the first or last or middle names of the victims. It started IMU. Then R, for Robert. D for Dwyer. Was there a subpattern for selecting the name? It could be an arithmetic sequence.

There was a pattern to Pierce-Smith, after all. His mission began that very first night in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was insane, but I had caught on to his pattern. It started with his love of wordplay.

Thomas Pierce wanted to be caught! But then something changed. He had become ambivalent about his capture. Why?

I looked at what I had assembled. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. “Isn’t this something. He has a ritual.”

I Isabella Calais.

M Stephanie Michaela Apt.

U Ursula Davies.

R Robert Michael Neel.

D Brigid Dwyer.

E Mary Ellen Klauk.

R Robin Anne Schwartz.

E Clark Daniel Ebel.

D David Hale.

I Isadore Morris.

S Theresa Anne Secrest.

A Elizabeth Allison Gragnano.

B Barbara Maddalena.

E Edwin Mueller.

L Laurie Garnier.

L Lewis Lavine.

A Andrew Klauk.

C Inspector Drew Cabot.

A Dr. Abel Sante.

L Simon Lewis Conklin.

A Anthony Bruno.

I Inez Marquez.

S ____________________?

It read: I MURDERED ISABELLA CALAIS.

He had made it so easy for us. He was taunting us from the very beginning. Pierce wanted to be stopped, wanted to be caught. So why the hell hadn’t he stopped himself? Why had the string of brutal murders gone on and on?

I MURDERED ISABELLA CALAIS.

The murders were a confession, and maybe Pierce was almost finished. Then what would happen? And who was S?

Was it Smith himself? Did S stand for Smith?

Would he symbolically murder Smith? Then Mr. Smith would disappear forever?

I called Kyle Craig and then Sampson, and I told them what I had found. It was past two in the morning, and neither of them was overjoyed to hear my voice or the news. They didn’t know what to do with the word jumble and neither did I.

“I’m not sure what it gives us,” Kyle said, “what it proves, Alex.”

“I don’t either. Not yet. It does tell us he’s going to kill someone with an S in his name.”

“George Steinbrenner,” Kyle mumbled. “Strom Thurmond. Sting.”

“Go back to sleep,” I said.

My head was doing loops. Sleep wasn’t an option for me. I half expected to get another message from Pierce, maybe even that night. He was mocking us. He had been from the beginning.

I wanted to get a message to him. Maybe I ought to communicate with Pierce through the newspapers or TV? We needed to get off the defensive and attack instead.

I lay in the darkness of my bedroom. Could S be Mr. Smith? I wondered. My head was throbbing. I was past being exhausted. I finally drifted off toward sleep. I was falling off the edge-when I grabbed hold.

I bolted up in bed. I was wide-awake now.

“S isn’t Smith.”

I knew who S was.

Chapter 125

THOMAS PIERCE was in Concord, Massachusetts.

Mr. Smith was here, too.

I was finally inside his head.

Sampson and I were ready on a cozy, picturesque side street near the house of Dr. Martin Straw, the man who had been Isabella’s lover. Martin Straw was S in the puzzle.

The FBI had a trap set for Pierce at the house. They didn’t bring huge numbers of agents this time. They were afraid of tipping off Pierce. Kyle Craig was gun-shy and he had every reason to be. Or maybe there was something else going on.

We waited for the better part of the morning and early afternoon. Concord was a self-contained, somewhat constrained town that seemed to be aging gracefully. The Thoreau and Alcott homes were here somewhere nearby. Every other house seemed to have a historical-looking plaque with a date on it.

We waited for Pierce. And then waited some more. The dreaded stakeout in Podunk dragged on and on. Maybe I was wrong about S.

A voice finally came over the radio in our car. It was Kyle. “We’ve spotted Pierce. He’s here. But something’s wrong, Alex. He’s headed back toward Route Two,” Kyle said. “He’s not going to Dr. Straw’s. He saw something he didn’t like.”

Sampson looked over at me. “I told you he was careful. Good instincts. He is a goddamn Martian, Alex.”

“He spotted something,” I said. “He’s as good as Kyle always said. He knows how the Bureau works, and he saw something.”

Kyle and his team had wanted to let Pierce enter the Straw house before they took him down. Dr. Straw, his wife, and children had been moved from the place. We needed solid evidence against Pierce, as much as we could get. We could lose the case if we got Thomas Pierce to court without it. We definitely could lose.

A message crackled over the shortwave. “He’s headed toward Route Two. Something spooked him. He’s on the run!”

“He has a shortwave! He’s intercepting us!” I grabbed the mike and warned Kyle. “No more talk on the radio. Pierce is listening. That’s how he spotted us.”

I started the engine and gunned the sedan away from the curb. I pushed the speed up to sixty on heavily populated Lowell Road. We were actually closer to Route 2 than the others. We still might be able to cut Pierce off.

A shiny, silver BMW passed us, coming from the opposite direction on the road. The driver sat on her horn as we sped by. I couldn’t blame her. Sixty was a dangerous speed on the narrow village street. Everything was going crazy again, caroming out of control at the whim of a madman.

“There he is!” Sampson yelled.

Pierce’s car was heading into Concord Center, the most congested area of town. He was moving way too fast.

We sped past Colonial-style houses, then upscale shops, and finally approached Monument Square. I caught glimpses of the Town House, Concord Inn, the Masons Hall-then a sign for Route 62-another for Route 2.

Our sedan whisked by car after car on the village streets. Brakes screeched around us. Other cars honked, justifiably angry and afraid of the car chase in progress.

Sampson was holding his breath and so was I. There’s a joke about black men being pulled over illegally in suburban areas. The DWB violation. Driving while black. We were up to seventy inside the city limits.

We made it in one piece out of the town center- Walden Street – Main -then back onto Lowell Road approaching the highway.

I whipped around onto Route 2 and nearly spun out of control. The pedal was down to the floor. This was our best chance to get Thomas Pierce, maybe our last chance. Up ahead, Pierce knew this was it, too.

I was doing close to ninety now on Route 2, passing cars as if they were standing still. Pierce’s Thunderbird must have been pushing eighty-five. He’d spotted us early in the chase.

“We’re catching this squirrelly bastard now!” Sampson hollered at me. “Pierce goes down!”

We hit a deep pothole and the car momentarily left the road. We landed with a jarring thud. The wound in my side screamed. My head hurt. Sampson kept hollering in my ear about Pierce going down.

I could see his dark Thunderbird bobbing and weaving up ahead. Just a couple of car lengths separated us.

He’s a planner, I warned myself. He knew this might happen.

I finally caught up to Pierce and pulled alongside him. Both cars were doing close to ninety. Pierce took a quick glance over at us.

I felt strangely exhilarated. Adrenaline powered through my body. Maybe we had him. For a second or two, I was as totally insane as Pierce.

Pierce saluted with his right hand. “Dr. Cross,” he called through the open window, “we finally meet!”

Chapter 126

“I KNOW about the FBI sanction!” Pierce yelled over the whistle and roar of the wind. He looked cool and collected, oblivious to reality. “Go ahead, Cross. I want you to do it. Take me out, Cross!”

“There’s no sanction order!” I yelled back. “Pull your car over! No one’s going to shoot you.”

Pierce grinned-his best killer smile. His blond hair was tied in a tight ponytail. He had on a black turtleneck. He looked successful-a local lawyer, shop owner, doctor. “Doc.”

“Why do you think the FBI brought such a small unit,” he yelled. “Terminate with prejudice. Ask your friend Kyle Craig. That’s why they wanted me inside Straw’s house!”

Was I talking to Thomas Pierce?

Or was this Mr. Smith?

Was there a difference anymore?

He threw his head back and roared with laughter. It was one of the oddest, craziest things I’ve ever seen. The look on his face, the body language, his calmness. He was daring us to shoot him at ninety miles an hour on Route 2 outside Concord, Massachusetts. He wanted to crash and burn.

We hit a stretch of highway with thick fir woods on either side. Two of the FBI cars caught up. They were pinned on Pierce’s tail, pushing, taunting him. Had the Bureau come here planning to kill Pierce?

If they were going to take him, this was a good place-a secluded pocket away from most commuter traffic and houses.

This was the place to terminate Thomas Pierce.

Now was the time.

“You know what we have to do,” Sampson said to me.

He’s killed more than twenty people that we know of, I was thinking, trying to rationalize. He’ll never give up.

“Pull over,” I yelled at Pierce again.

“I murdered Isabella Calais,” he screamed at me. His face was crimson. “I can’t stop myself. I don’t want to stop. I like it! I found out I like it, Cross!”

“Pull the hell over,” Sampson’s voice boomed. He had his Glock up and aimed at Pierce. “You butcher! You piece of shit!”

“I murdered Isabella Calais and I can’t stop the killing. You hear what I’m saying, Cross? I murdered Isabella Calais, and I can’t stop the killing.”

I understood the chilling message. I’d gotten it the first time.

He was adding more letters to his list of victims. Pierce was creating a new, longer code: I murdered Isabella Calais, and I can’t stop the killing. If he got away, he’d kill again and again. Maybe Thomas Pierce wasn’t human, after all. He’d already intimated that he was his own god.

Pierce had out an automatic. He fired at us.

I yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, trying desperately to get us out of the line of fire. Our car leaned hard on its left front and rear wheels. Everything was blurred and out of focus. Sampson grabbed at the wheel. Excruciating pain shot through my wrist. I thought we were going over.

Pierce’s Thunderbird shot off Route 2, rocketing down a side road. I don’t know how he made the turnoff at the speed he was traveling. Maybe he didn’t care whether he made it or not.

I managed to set our sedan back down on all four wheels. The FBI cars following Pierce shot past the turn. None of us could stop. Next, came a ragged ballet of skidding stops and U-turns, the screech and whine of tires and brakes. We’d lost sight of Pierce. He was behind us.

We raced back to the turnoff, then down a twisting, chevroned country road. We found the Thunderbird abandoned about two miles from Route 2.

My heart was thudding hard inside my chest. Pierce wasn’t in the car. Pierce wasn’t here.

The woods on both sides of the road were thick and offered lots of cover. Sampson and I climbed out of our car.

We hurried back into the dense thicket of fir trees, Glocks out. It was almost impossible to get through the underbrush. There was no sign of Thomas Pierce anywhere.

Pierce was gone.

Chapter 127

THOMAS PIERCE had vanished into thin air again. I was almost convinced he might actually live in a parallel world. Maybe he was an alien.

Sampson and I were headed to Logan International Airport. We were going home to Washington. Rush-hour traffic in Boston wasn’t cooperating with the plan.

We were still half a mile from the Callahan Tunnel, gridlocked in a line that was barely moving. Grunting and groaning cars and trucks surrounded us. Boston was rubbing our faces in our failure.

“Metaphor for our case. The whole goddamn manhunt for Pierce,” Sampson said about the traffic jumble, the mess. A good thing about Sampson-he gets either stoic or funny when things go really badly. He refuses to wallow in shit. He swims right out of it.

“I’m getting an idea,” I told him, giving him some warning.

“I knew you were flying around somewhere in your private universe. Knew you weren’t really here, sitting in this car with me, listening to what I’m saying.”

“We’d just be stuck here in tunnel traffic if we stayed put.”

Sampson nodded. “Uh-huh. We’re in Boston. Don’t want to have to come back tomorrow, follow up on one of your hunches then. Best to do it now. Chase those wild geese while the chasing is good.”

I pulled out of the tight lane of stalled traffic. “There’s just one wild goose that I can think to chase.”

“You going to tell me where we’re headed? I need to put my vest back on?”

“Depends on what you think of my hunches.”

I followed forest green signs toward Storrow Drive, heading out of Boston the way we came. Traffic was heavy in that direction, too. There were too many people everywhere you went these days, too much crowding, and too much chaos, too much stress on everybody.

“Better put your vest back on,” I told Sampson.

He didn’t argue with me. Sampson reached into the backseat and fished around for our vests.

I wiggled into my own vest as I drove. “I think Thomas Pierce wants this to end. I think he’s ready now. I saw it in his eyes.”

“So, he had his chance back there in Concord. ‘Pull off the road. Pull over, Pierce!’ You remember any of that? Sound familiar, Alex?”

I glanced at Sampson. “He needs to be in control. S was for Straw, but S is also for Smith. He has it figured out, John. He knows how he wants it to end. He always knew. It’s important to him that he finish this.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sampson staring. “And? So? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you know how it ends?”

“He wants to end on S. It’s magical for him. It’s the way he has it figured, the way it has to be. It’s his mind game, and he plays it obsessively. He can’t stop playing. He told us that. He’s still playing.”

Sampson was clearly having trouble with this. We had just missed capturing Pierce an hour ago. Would he put himself at risk again? “You think he’s that crazy?”

“I think he’s that crazy, John. I’m sure of it.”

Chapter 128

HALF A DOZEN police squad cars were gathered on Inman Street in Cambridge. The blue-and-white cruisers were outside the apartment where Thomas Pierce and Isabella Calais had once lived, where Isabella had been murdered four years before.

EMS ambulances were parked near the gray stone front stoop. Sirens bleated and wailed. If we hadn’t turned around at the Callahan Tunnel we would have missed it.

Sampson and I showed our detective shields and kept on moving forward in a hurry. Nobody stopped us. Nobody could have.

Pierce was upstairs.

So was Mr. Smith.

The game had come full circle.

“Somebody called in a homicide in progress,” one of the Cambridge uniforms told us on the way up the stone front stairs. “I hear they got the guy cornered upstairs. Wackadoo of the first order.”

“We know all about him,” Sampson said.

Sampson and I took the stairs to the second floor.

“You think Pierce called all this heat on himself?” Sampson asked as we hurried up the stairs. I was beyond being out of breath, beyond pain, beyond shock or surprise.

This is how he wants it to end.

I didn’t know what to make of Thomas Pierce. He had numbed me, and all the rest of us. I was drifting beyond thought, at least logical ideas. There had never been a killer like Pierce. Not even close. He was the most alienated human being I’d ever met. Not alien, alienated.

“You still with me, Alex?” I felt Sampson’s hand gripping my shoulder.

“Sorry,” I said. “At first, I thought Pierce couldn’t feel anything, that he was just another psychopath. Cold rage, arbitrary murders.”

“And now?”

I was inside Pierce’s head.

“Now I’m wondering whether Pierce maybe feels everything. I think that’s what drove him mad. This one can feel.”

The Cambridge police were gathered everywhere in the hallway. The local cops looked shell-shocked and wild-eyed. A photograph of Isabella stared out from the foyer. She looked beautiful, almost regal, and so very sad.

“Welcome to the wild, wacky world of Thomas Pierce,” Sampson said.

A Cambridge detective explained the situation to us. He had silver-blond hair, an ageless hatchet face. He spoke in a low, confidential tone, almost a whisper. “Pierce is in the bedroom at the far end of the hall. Barricaded himself in there.”

“The master bedroom, his and Isabella’s room,” I said.

The detective nodded. “Right, the master bedroom. I worked the original murder. I hate the prick. I saw what he did to her.”

“What’s he doing in the bedroom?” I asked.

The detective shook his head. “We think he’s going to kill himself. He doesn’t care to explain himself to us peons. He’s got a gun. The powers that be are trying to decide whether to go in.”

“He hurt anybody?” Sampson spoke up.

The Cambridge detective shook his head. “No, not that we know of. Not yet.”

Sampson’s eyes narrowed. “Then maybe we shouldn’t interfere.”

We walked down the narrow hallway to where several more detectives were talking among themselves. A couple of them were arguing and pointing toward the bedroom.

This is how he wants it. He’s still in control.

“I’m Alex Cross,” I told the detective-lieutenant on the scene. He knew who I was. “What has he said so far?”

The lieutenant was sweating. He was a bruiser, and a good thirty pounds over his fighting weight. “Told us that he killed Isabella Calais, confessed. I think we knew that already. Said he was going to kill himself.” He rubbed his chin with his left hand. “We’re trying to decide if we care. The FBI is on the way.”

I pulled away from the lieutenant.

“Pierce,” I called down the hallway. The talking going on outside the bedroom suddenly stopped. “Pierce! It’s Alex Cross,” I called again. “I want to come in, Pierce!”

I felt a chill. It was too quiet. Not a sound. Then I heard Pierce from the bedroom. He sounded tired and weak. Maybe it was an act. Who knew what he would pull next?

“Come in if you want. Just you, Cross.”

“Let him go,” Sampson whispered from behind. “Alex, let it go for once.”

I turned to him. “I wish I could.”

I pushed through the group of policemen at the end of the hallway. I remembered the poster that hung there: Without God, We Are Condemned to Be Free. Was that what this was about?

I took out my gun and slowly inched open the bedroom door. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

Thomas Pierce was sprawled on the bed he had once shared with Isabella Calais.

He held a gleaming, razor-sharp scalpel in his hand.

Chapter 129

THOMAS PIERCE’S CHEST was cut wide open. He had ripped himself apart as he would a corpse at an autopsy. He was still alive, but barely. It was incredible that he was conscious and alert.

Pierce spoke to me. I don’t know how, but he did. “You’ve never seen Mr. Smith’s handiwork before?”

I shook my head in disbelief. I had never seen anything like this, not in all my years in Violent Crimes or Homicide. Flaps of skin hung over Pierce’s rib cage, exposing translucent muscle and tendons. I was afraid, repulsed, shocked-all at the same time.

Thomas Pierce was Mr. Smith’s victim. His last?

“Don’t come any closer. Just stay there,” he said. It was a command.

“Who am I talking to? Thomas Pierce, or Mr. Smith?”

Pierce shrugged. “Don’t play shrink games with me. I’m smarter than you are.”

I nodded. Why argue with him-with Pierce, or was it Mr. Smith?

“I murdered Isabella Calais,” he said slowly. His eyes became hooded. He almost looked in a trance. “I murdered Isabella Calais.”

He pressed the scalpel to his chest, ready to stab himself again, to pierce. I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t.

This man wants to cut into his own heart, I thought to myself. Everything has come full circle to this. Is Mr. Smith S? Of course he is.

“You never got rid of any of Isabella’s things,” I said. “You kept her pictures up.”

Pierce nodded. “Yes, Dr. Cross. I was mourning her, wasn’t I?”

“That’s what I thought at first. It’s what the people at the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico believed. But then I finally got it.”

“What did you get? Tell me all about myself.” Pierce mocked. He was lucid. His mind still worked quickly.

“The other murders-you didn’t want to kill any of them, did you?”

Thomas Pierce glared. He focused on me with a sheer act of will. His arrogance reminded me of Soneji. “So why did I?”

“You were punishing yourself. Each murder was a reenactment of Isabella’s death. You repeated the ritual over and over. You suffered her death each time you killed.”

Thomas Pierce moaned. “Ohhh, ohhh. I murdered her here. In this bed!…Can you imagine? Of course you can’t. No one can.”

He raised the scalpel above his body.

“Pierce, don’t!”

I had to do something. I rushed him. I threw myself at him, and the scalpel jammed into my right palm. I screamed in pain as Pierce pulled it out.

I grabbed at the folded yellow-and-white-flowered comforter and pressed it against Pierce’s chest. He was fighting me, flopping around like a man having a seizure.

“Alex, no. Alex, look out!” I heard Sampson call out from behind me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was moving fast toward the bed. “Alex, the scalpel!” he yelled.

Pierce was still struggling beneath me. He screamed obscenities. His strength was amazing. I didn’t know where the scalpel was, or if he still had it.

“Let Smith kill Pierce!” he screeched.

“No,” I yelled back. “I want you alive.”

Then the unthinkable-again.

Sampson fired from point-blank range. The explosion was deafening in the small bedroom. Thomas Pierce’s body convulsed on the bed. Both his legs kicked high in the air. He screeched like a badly wounded animal. He sounded inhuman-like an alien.

Sampson fired a second time. A strange guttural sound came from Pierce’s throat. His eyes rolled way back in his head. The whites showed. The scalpel dropped from his hand.

I shook my head. “No, John. No more. Pierce is dead. Mr. Smith is dead, too. May he rest in hell.”