Jack and Jill

PART 6

NOBODY IS SAFE ANYMORE-NOBODY

THE THICK DOCUMENT in my hands was entitled Visit of the President of the United States. New York City, December 16 and 17. It ran to eighty-nine pages and included virtually every moment from when the President would step off Air Force One at La Guardia until he reboarded at approximately two in the afternoon and traveled back to Washington.

Included among the pages were sketches, literally of everywhere the President would be: La Guardia Airport, the Waldorf, the Felt Forum inside Madison Square Garden, the motorcade routes, alternate routes.

The Secret Service document stated:

10:55 A.t The President and Mrs. Byrnes board motorcade Note: The President and Mrs. Byrnes proceed through a cordon of NYPD officers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel

11:00 A.M. Motorcade departs Waldorf via route (code C) to Madison Square Garden, the Felt Forum Closed arrival.

No press pool coverage.

I occupied my mind with the puzzle of Jack and Jill as the time approached for the President to leave the Waldorf and then travel downtown with the motorcade of limousines, police radio cars, and motorcycles. For the past three days, the FBI, Secret Service, and New York police had been cooperating on a massive plan to try and capture Jack and Jill if they actually came to Madison Square Garden. Nearly a thousand plainclothes agents and detectives would be inside for the President's speech. We all had doubts that it would be enough protection.

A disturbing mania had been running through my head all morning: No one ever stops an assassin bullet. No one stops a bullet except the victim.

What would Jack and Jill do? How would it go down? I believed they would be at Madison Square Garden. I suspected that they planned to do the job up close. And somehow, they planned to escape.

The President and Mrs. Byrnes were escorted to their car at precisely five minutes to eleven. A phalanx of a dozen Secret Service agents shadowed them from the tower suite to an armor-plated limousine waiting in the hotel's underground garage.

I walked closely behind the main escort group. My role here wasn't to physically protect the President. I had already told Jay Grayer how I believed the attempt would be made. It would be close in. It would be showy. But they would have a plan to escape.

There had already been a change in plans that morning. No cordon of high-ranking policemen at the hotel rear entrance. No photo opportunities. The President had been convinced not to go through the open Waldorf lobby a second time.

I watched as Mrs. Byrnes and the President walked into the limousine for the two-mile ride. The two of them held hands. It was a touching moment to witness. It fit with everything I knew about Thomas and Sally Byrnes.

No regrets.

The motorcade began to move right on time. It was what the Secret Service called “the formal package motorcade.” There were twenty-eight cars. Six held counterassault teams. One Car, “Intelligence,” held computers to keep contact with surveillance on known threats to the President. I wondered if Jack and Jill had the schedule, even the number of cars.

The motorcade's limos and town cars rode at almost perpendicular angles out of the steep hotel garage. Manhole covers clattered loudly under our tires. The route to the auditorium began on Park Avenue, then jogged west along Forty-seventh Street to Fifth.

I rode with Don Hamerman, two cars behind the President.

Even Hamerman was subdued and distant that morning. Nothing had happened yet. Could Jack and Jill possibly have changed their plan? Was this part of covering their trail? Would they surface when we began to doubt that they would? Would they surprise me and attack the motorcade?

I watched everything out the car window. The morning was an eerie, out-of-body experience. The people lining the street were enthusiastic, clapping and cheering as the motorcade passed by. That was one reason why President Byrnes had decided he couldn't hide in the White House any longer. The people, even New Yorkers, wanted a piece of him. He was a good president so far, a popular one, a courageous one, too.

Who wanted to kill Thomas Byrnes, and why? There were so many potential enemies, but I kept returning to the President's own list. Senator Glass, Vice President Mahoney, a few reactionaries in Congress, powerful men connected to Wall Street. He had said that he was trying to change the system, and the system fiercely resented change.

The system fiercely resented change!

Police sirens wailed and seemed to be everywhere around us.

It was a screaming wall of noise that was just right for the occasion.

My eyes drifted back and forth between the cheering crowds and the quickly moving line of cars, the presidential motorcade.

I was a part of it, and yet I also felt disconnected. I couldn't help thinking of Dallas, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Dr. King. The past tragedies of our country. Our sorrowful history.

I couldn't take my eyes off Stagecoach.

It struck me as almost impossible, as unthinkable, that two of the three major assassinations remained mysterious and unsolved in most people's minds. Two of the three major murder cases of our century had never been satisfactorily cleared.

The VIP garage underneath Madison Square Garden was a concrete bunker, which was painted bright white. There must have been a hundred Secret Service and New York police gathered there to meet us. The Secret Service agents all wore earphones that plugged them into the Service's cellular net.

I watched Thomas and Sally Byrnes slowly get out of their armored car. I watched the President's eyes. He seemed steady and confident and focused. Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing; maybe his way was the only way for this to go.

I was less than a dozen feet away from the President and his wife. Every second they were out in the open seemed an eternity There were too many people there in the parking garage. Any of them could be a killer.

The President and Sally Byrnes were smiling, talking smoothly and easily to important well-wishers from New York. They were both very skilled at this. They understood the tremendously important ceremonial role of the office. The symbolism and the absolute power. That was why they were here. I very much liked their sense of duty and responsibility Nana was wrong about them. I was convinced they were decent people trying to do their best. I understood how difficult their jobs were. I hadn't realized this before I came to the White House.

Nothing must happen to President Byrnes or Sally Byrnes, I thought -- as if an act of will could stop an assassin's bullet, stop terrible things from happening there in the garage or upstairs in the packed Felt Forum.

Any one of these people could be Jack or Jill, I kept thinking as I watched the crowd.

Get the President and his wife out of here. Do it now! Let go, let go.

The Kennedy Center in D.C. The shooting of the law student, Charlotte Kinsey, in a public place, just like this! My mind kept going back to that particular killing.

Something had happened there, something revealing about Jack and Jill. The pattern had been broken! What was the real pattern?

We began to walk upstairs to the jam-packed auditorium.

If Jack and Jill are willing to die, they can succeed here. Easily!

And yet it seemed to me that they planned to get away with this. That was the one pattern of theirs that was consistent. I didn't see how that could happen in the middle of Madison Square Garden -- not if they chose to attack here.

The real Jack and Jill -- the President and the First Lady of the United States had arrived. On time.

A DROP OF SWEATslowly rolled off the tip of my nose.

A tractor-trailer was sitting on my chest.

The thunderous noise coming from inside the concrete-and-steel auditorium added to the escalating confusion and chaos.

It was decibels beyond deafening once we were inside. Nearly ten thousand people had filled the auditorium by the time we arrived.

I moved toward the main auditorium stage with the rest of the security entourage. Secret Service agents, FBI, U.S. marshals, and New York police were posted everywhere around the President.

I searched everywhere for Kevin Hawkins. Hopefully, at his side, Jill.

President Byrnes never let his smile or his step falter as he entered the auditorium. I remembered his words: “A threat by a couple of kooks can't be permitted to disrupt the government of the United States. We can't allow that to happen.”

It was warm in the building, but I was in a cold sweat -- as cold as the winds blowing off the Hudson River. We were less than thirty yards from the massive stage that was filled with celebrities and well-known politicians, including both the governor and the city's popular mayor.

Cameras flashed blinding light everywhere, from every imaginable angle. Awhine of feedback lashed out from one of the stage microphones. I adjusted a five-pointed star on the left lapel of my suit jacket. The star was color-coded for the day. It identified me as part of the Secret Service team. The day's color was green.

For hope?

Jack and Jill had kept all their.promises so far. They could have found a way to get weapons inside. There were at least a thousand handguns, but also rifles and shotguns inside the huge amphitheater. The police and other security guards had them.

Any one of them could be Jack or Jill.

Any one of them certainly could be Kevin Hawkins.

Don Hamerman was at my side, but it was too loud for us to talk in anything approaching normal tones. Occasionally, we leaned close and shouted into each other's ear.

Even then, it was difficult to hear more than an isolated word or phrase.

“He's taking too long to walk to the stage!” Hamerman said. I think that's what he said.

“I know it. Tell me about it,” I shouted back.

“Watch the crowd movement,” he yelled at me. “They'll stampede if they see a gun pulled. President's spending too much time out in the crowd. Is he taunting the killers? What does he think that he has to prove?”

The chief of staff was right, of course. The President seemed to be daring Jack and Jill. Still, we might get lucky with the trap inside the crowded hall.

Suddenly, the crowd did start to stampede! The crowd began to part.

“Kill the son of a bitch! Kill him!” I heard the shouts a row or two ahead. I moved quickly, pushing, clawing my way forward in a hurry.

“Watch it, you bastard !” a woman turned and yelled in my face.

“Kill him now!” I heard up ahead.

"Let me through? I shouted as loud as I could.

The man who was causing the scene up ahead had shoulder-length blond hair. He wore a baggy black parka with a black backpack attached.

I grabbed him at the same time as someone else from the other side of the aisle. We brought the blond man down hard and fast.

His skull crunched against the cement floor.

“New York police!” the other guy holding the blond man yelled.

“D.C. police, White House detail,” I yelled back. I was already patting down the suspect. The New York cop had his gun in the suspect's face.

I didn't recognize the blond as Kevin Hawkins, but there was no way to tell for sure, and absolutely no way for us to take a chance on him. We had to take him down. There was no choice about that.

“Kill the bastard! Kill the President!” the blond man continued to scream.

He was absolutely crazy, everything was, not just this asshole on the floor.

“You hurt me!” he started to yell at me and the New York cop.

“You hurt my head!”

Madman ? I wondered.

Copycat?

Diversion ?

KAMIKAZE ATTACK! It was coming any second now. A killer willing to commit suicide. That was why this couldn't be stopped. It was also why President Byrnes was the walking dead.

Kevin Hawkins hadn't experienced any problems getting into a prime position in the noisy, crowded auditorium. He had used his imagination and visual skills to create an unusual identity for himself.

Hawkins was now a tall brunette woman dressed in a dark blue pantsuit. He wasn't a very good-looking woman, he had to admit, but he was much less likely to draw attention because of it.

Hawkins also had a Federal Bureau of Investigation ID, which was authentic down to the stamp and thickness of the paper. It identified him as Lynda Cole, a special agent from New York. The photojournalist stood at Lynda Cole's seat in the sixth row and calmly observed the crowd.

Snapshot.

Snapshot.

He took several mind photos, one after the other, mostly of his competition. The FBI, the Secret Service, the NYPD. Actually, he didn't believe that he had any real competition.

Kamikaze. Who could stop that ? No one could. Maybe God could.

And maybe not even God.

He was impressed by the sheer numbers of the opposition, though. They were serious about trying to derail Jack and Jill this morning. And who knew? Maybe they would succeed with their superior numbers and firepower. Stranger things had happened.

Hawkins just didn't believe that they could. Their last real chance had been before he'd gotten inside the building -- not now. The photojournalist versus the FBI, the Secret Service, the U.S. marshals, and the NYPD. That seemed reasonable enough to him. It seemed like a pretty fair game.

Their elaborate preparations struck him as being ironic. He waited for the target to appear. Their game plan was an essential part of his. Everything they were doing now, every step, had been anticipated and was necessary for kamikaze to work.

“She's a Grand Old Flag” began to play from the loudspeakers, and Hawkins clapped along with the others. He was a patriot, after all. No one might believe it after today, but he knew that it was so.

Kevin Hawkins was one of the last true patriots.

NO ONE stops an assassin bullet.

There was a fire burning inside my chest. I was moving quickly through the crowd -- searching for Kevin Hawkins everywhere.

Every nerve in my body was stretched tight and burning. My right hand rested on the hard butt of my Glock. I kept thinking that any one of these people could be Jack or Jill. The handgun seemed insubstantial in the huge, noisy crowd.

I had made it to the second row, just to the right of the ten- to twelve-foot-high stage. The light in the hall seemed to be fading, but maybe it was the light inside my head. The light inside my soul?

The President was just stepping onto the gray metal stairs.

He clasped the hand of a well-wisher. The President patted the shoulder of another. He seemed to have forced the idea of danger out of his mind.

Sally Byrnes climbed the stairs in front of her husband. I could see her features clearly I held the thought that maybe Jack and Jill could, too. Secret Service agents seemed to take up all the available space around the stage.

I was there when it finally happened. I was so close.

Jack and Jill struck with a terrible vengeance.

A bomb went off. The loudest imaginable clap of thunder struck near the stage- maybe even on the stage itself. The explosion was completely unexpected by the bodyguards surrounding the President. It detonated inside the defense perimeter.

Chaos! A bomb instead of gunfire! Even though the auditorium had been swept for bombs just that morning, I was thinking as I rushed forward. I noticed that my hand was bleeding -- probably from the earlier tussle with the nutcase, but maybe from the bomb.

The worst imaginable sequence of actions began to unfold, and in very fast motion. Pistols and riot-control shotguns were pulled out everywhere in the crowd. No one seemed to know where the bomb had hit yet, or how, or the actual calculations of damage done. Or what purpose the explosion was meant to serve?

Everyone dropped to the floor in the first twenty rows and up on the stage.

Thick black smoke billowed toward the ceiling, the glass roof, and overhanging steel girders.

The air smelled like human hair burning. People were screaming everywhere. I couldn't tell how many were hurt. I couldn't see the President anymore.

The bomb had detonated close to the stage. Very close to where President Byrnes had been standing, shaking hands and chatting, just a few seconds before. The ringing was still vibrating in my ears.

I frantically pushed my way toward the stage. There was no way to tell how many people had been injured, or maybe even killed, by the blast. I still couldn't locate the President or Mrs. Byrnes because of the smoke and the bodies suddenly in frenzied motion. TV cameramen were wading in toward the disaster scene.

I finally spotted a cluster of Secret Service agents huddled tightly around the President. They had him up on his feet.

Thomas Byrnes was alive; he was safe. The agents were starting to move him out of harm's way The Secret Service bodyguards acted as a human shield for the President, who didn't appear to be hurt.

I had my Glock out, pointed up at the rafters for safety I shouted, “Police!”

Several other Secret Service agents and NYPD detectives were doing the same thing. We were identifying ourselves to one another.

Trying not to get shot, trying not to shoot anybody else during the terrifying confusion. Several people in the crowd were crying hysterically I kept pushing and pulling my way toward the southwest side exit that the Secret Service had used to bring the President in.

The escape route had been established beforehand.

Beyond the glowing red EXIT sign, a long concrete tunnel led to a special visitors' parking area on the river side of the building.

Bulletproof, armor-plated cars were waiting there. What else might be waiting? I wondered. A voice in my head shouted for attention as I moved forward as fast as I could. Jack and Jill have always been a step ahead of us. They missed him Why did they miss ?

They don't make mistakes.

I was less than a dozen yards from the President and his Secret Service guards when it hit me, when finally I understood what no one else did yet.

“Change the route out!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “Change the escape route!”

NO ONE heard me shouting. I could barely hear my own voice in the melee. There was too much noise and confusion inside Madison Square Garden.

I pushed ahead anyway, desperately following the phalanx that looked like the rabble at a prizefight from my vantage point.

The smoke from the bomb had created a kind of strobe-light effect.

“Change the escape route! Change the escape route!” I shouted over and over.

We finally entered the whitewashed concrete tunnel. Every sound echoed bizarrely off the walls. I was right behind the last of the Secret Service agents.

“Don't go this way! Stop the President!” I continued to.yell in vain.

The tunnel was full of late-arriving special guests and even more security guards. We were pushing forward against a strong tide coming the other way It was too late to change the route now. I pushed and shoved my way closer and closer to President and Mrs. Byrnes. I desperately searched the crowd for the face of Kevin Hawkins. There was still a chance to stop him.

Every face I encountered registered shock. The eyes I saw were wide with fear, and they were searching my face. Suddenly, there were several loud pops in the heart of the tunnel. Gunshots!

Five shots seemed to explode inside the tight phalanx of people around the President. Someone had gotten inside the defense perimeter. My body sagged as if I'd been shot myself.

Five shots. Three quick -- then two more.

I couldn't see what had happened up ahead, but suddenly I heard the eeriest sound. It was a high-pitched wall, a keening.

Five shots!

Three -- then two more.

The keening sound was coming from where I had last seen fleeting glimpses of President Byrnes, where the shots had exploded just a few seconds before.

I shoved my body, all my weight, against the crowd and forced myself toward the epicenter of the madness.

It felt as if I were trying to swim out of quicksand, to pull myself free. It was almost impossible to walk, to push, to shove.

Five shots. What had happened up ahead?

Then I could see. I saw everything at once.

My mouth felt incredibly dry. My eyes were watering. The bunkerlike tunnel had become strangely quiet. President Thomas Byrnes was down on the gray cement floor. A lot of blood was flowing in rivulets, spreading down his white shirt. Bright red blood drained from the right side of his face, or maybe the wound was high in his neck. I couldn't tell from where I was.

Gunshots. Execution-style.

A professional hit.

Jack and Jill, those bastards!

It was their pattern, or close to it.

I waded forward, roughly, shoving people out of my way, I saw Don Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and then Sally Byrnes. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

Sally Byrnes was trying to get to her husband. The First Lady didn't appear to be hurt. Still, I wondered if she was a target, too. Maybe Jill's target? Secret Service agents were holding Mrs. Byrnes back, trying to protect her. They wanted to keep her away from the bloodshed, from her husband, from any possible danger.

I saw a second body then. The shock was like a low hard punch to my stomach. No one could have anticipated this terrible scene.

A woman was down near the President. She'd been shot in her right eye socket. There was a second wound in her throat.

She appeared to be dead. A semiautomatic lay near her sprawled body.

The assassin ?

Jill?

Who else could it possibly be?

My eyes were drawn back to the motionless figure of Thomas Byrnes. I was afraid that he was already dead. I couldn't be sure, but I believed he'd been hit at least three times. I saw Sally Byrnes finally reach her husband's body. She was weeping uncontrollably, and she wasn't the only one.

JACK SAT STILL and calmly watched the maze of bumper-to-bumper cars and tractor-trailers stalled on West Street near the entrance to New York's Holland Tunnel.

He could hear radios blaring on each side of his black Jeep.

He observed the troubled and confused faces inside the cars.

A middle-aged woman in a forest-green Lexus was in tears. A thousand sirens screamed like banshees on the loose in midtown.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill. Now everyone knew why, or at least they thought they did.

Now everyone understood the seriousness of the game.

Turn off your news reports, he wanted to tell all these well-meaning people approaching the tunnel out of New York. What's happened has nothing to do with any of you. It really and truly doesn't. You'll never know the truth. No one ever will. You can't handle the truth, anyway. You wouldn't understand if I stopped and explained it to you right here.

He tried not to think about Sara Rosen as he finally rode into the long, claustrophobic tunnel that snaked beneath the Hudson.

Beyond the tunnel, he drove south on the New Jersey Turnpike, then on 1-95 into Delaware and points farther south.

Sara was the past, and the past didn't matter. The past didn't exist, except as a lesson for the future. Sara was gone. He did think about poor Sara as he ate at the Country Cupboard near the Talleyville exit on the turnpike. It was important to grieve.

For Jill, not for President Byrnes. She was worth a dozen Thomas Byrneses. She had done a good job, a nearly perfect job, even if she had been used right from the start. And Sara Rosen had definitely been used. She had been his eyes and ears inside the White House. She had been his mistress. Poor Monkey Face.

As he approached Washington about seven that night, he made a vow: he wouldn't sentimentalize about Sara again. He knew he could do that. He could control his own thoughts.

He was better than Kevin Hawkins, who had been a very good soldier indeed.

He had been Jack.

But he was no longer Jack.

Jack no longer existed.

He was no longer Sam Harrison, either. Sam Harrison had been a facade, a necessary safeguard, a part of the complex plan. Sam Harrison no longer existed.

Now his life could be simple and mostly good again. He was almost home. He had completed his Mission: Impossible, and it was a success. Everything had gone almost perfectly Then he was home, pulling into the familiar rounded driveway that was filled with colorful seashells and tiny pebbles and a few children's toys.

He saw his little girl come running out of the house, her blond hair streaming. He saw his wife close behind her, also running.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and down his own. He wasn't afraid to cry. He wasn't afraid of anything anymore.

Jesus God, mercy, the war was finally ended. The enemy, the evil one, was dead. The good guys had won, and the most precious way of life on earth was safe for a little while longer--for the lives of his children, anyway.

No one would ever know how and why it had happened, or who was really responsible.

Just as it had been with JFK in Dallas.

And RFK in Los Angeles.

And Watergate and Whitewater and most every other significant event in our recent history. In truth, our history was not knowing; it was being carefully shielded from the truth. That was the American way

“I love you so much,” his wife whispered breathlessly against the side of his face. “You are my hero. You did such a good, brave thing.”

He believed it, too. He knew it deep within his heart.

He wasn't Jack anymore. Jack no longer existed.

IT WASN'T OVER!

At a little past noon, the Secret Service received news from the NYPD of another homicide. They had strong reason to believe it was related to the shooting of President Byrnes.

Jay Grayer and I rushed to the Peninsula Hotel, which is just off Fifth Avenue in midtown. We were completely numb from the horror of the morning and still couldn't believe the President had been shot. Even so, we had all the details of the latest murder.

A chambermaid at the hotel had discovered a body in a suite on the twelfth floor. There was also a poem from Jack and Jill in the room. A final poem?

“What is the NYPD saying?” I asked Jay during the ride uptown. “What are the details?”

“According to the initial report, the dead woman might be Jill. Jill could have been murdered -- or maybe she committed suicide. They're reasonably certain the note is authentic.”

The mysteries inside horrific mysteries continued. Was this death part of the Jack and Jill scheme, too? I thought that probably it was, and that there were even more layers to unravel -- layers upon layers -- before getting to the core of the horror.

Grayer and I emerged from a gold-plated elevator onto the crime-scene floor. New York police were everywhere. I saw emergency medics, SWAT team members in helmets with Plexiglas face masks, uniforms, homicide detectives. The scene was instant bedlam. I was worried about evidence contamination, leaks to the press.

“The President?” one of the New York detectives asked us as we arrived. “Any word? Any hope?”

“He's still hanging in there. Sure; there's hope,” Jay Grayer said; then we moved on, away from the cluster of detectives.

At least a dozen New York police and FBI agents were crowded into the hotel suite. The ominous sounds of police sirens rose from the streets below. Church bells pealed loudly, probably at nearby St. Patrick's Cathedral, just south on Fifth Avenue.

A blond woman's body lay on the plush gray carpet next to an unmade double bed. Her face, neck, and chest were covered with blood. She was wearing a silver-and-blue jogging suit.

A pair of wire-rim eyeglasses were on the rug near her Nike sneakers.

She had been shot execution-style -- as the early victims of Jack and Jill had been.

One shot, close to the head.

Very professional. Very cold.

No passion.

“Was she ever on any of our suspect lists?” I asked Grayer. We knew that the dead woman's name was Sara Rosen. She had been cleared as part of the White House staff. She'd escaped detection during two “thorough” investigations of the staff, and that was the scariest piece of evidence yet.

"Not that we know of. She was something of a fixture at the White House communications office. Everybody liked her efficiency, her professionalism. She was trusted. Jesus, what a mess.

What a disaster. She was trusted, Alex."

Part of the left side of her face was gone, ripped away as if by an animal. Jill looked as if she had been caught by surprise. Her eyebrows were arched. There was no fear in her eyes.

She had trusted her killer. Was it Jack who had pulled the trigger?

I noticed the smudging around the wound, the gray ring. It was a close-range discharge. It must have been Jack. Professional.

No passion. Another execution.

But is this really Jill? I wondered as I bent over the body The contract killer Kevin Hawkins had died at St. Vincent's Hospital downtown. We knew that Hawkins had disguised himself as a female FBI agent to get into Madison Square Garden. He had used the concussion bomb to get his target where he wanted, when he wanted. He'd been waiting in the exit tunnel, dressed as a woman. It had worked. What was Kevin Hawkins's relationship to this woman? What in hell was going on?

“He left a poem. Somebody did. Looks like the others,” Jay Grayer said to me. The note was in a plastic evidence bag. He handed it to me. “The last will and testament of Jack and Jill,” he said.

“The perfect assassination,” I muttered, more to myself than to Grayer. “Jack and Jill both dead in New York. Case closed, right?”

The Secret Service agent stared at me and then slowly shook his head. “This case will never be closed. Not in our lifetime, anyway”

“I was just being ironic,” I said.

I read the final note.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill Where Jill did what she must.

Her reason drove her The game is over Though dead Jill's cause was just.

“Fuck you Jill,” I whispered over the dead body “I hope you burn in hell for what you've done today I hope there's a hell just for you and Jack.”

NOWHERE was the news of the shooting taken any harder than in Washington. Thomas Byrnes was loved and he was hated, but he was one of the city's own, especially now.

Christine Johnson was in shock, as were her closest friends and most everyone that she knew. The teachers at Sojourner Truth and the children were completely destroyed by what had happened to the President in New York City. It was so horrifying and stark, but also so unbearably sad and unreal.

Because of the shooting, all D.C. schools had canceled classes for the afternoon. She had been watching the nightmarish TV coverage of the assassination attempt from the first moment she got home from school. She still couldn't believe what had happened.

No one could believe it. The President was still alive. No other bulletins were being released.

Christine didn't know whether Alex Cross had been at Madison Square Garden, but she imagined that he had been there. She worried about Alex, too. She liked the detective's sincerity and his tuner strength, but especially his compassion and his vulnerability She liked the way he looked, talked, acted. She also liked the way Alex was bringing up his son, Damon. It made her want children even more herself. She and George had to talk about that. She and George had to talk.

He arrived home before seven that night, which was an hour or two early for him. George Johnson was a hard worker in his corporate law job. He was thirty-seven years old and had a smooth, attractive baby face. He was a good man, although way too self-centered and, truthfully, a little bit of a buppie at times.

Christine loved him, though; she accepted the good and the bad. She was thinking that as she fiercely hugged him at the front door. There was no doubt of it in her mind. She and George had met at Howard University and been together ever since. That was the way she believed it ought to be, and would be as far as she was concerned.

“People are still out there crying in the streets,” George said.

After the hug, he shucked off his wool Brooks Brothers suit jacket and loosened his tie, but he didn't go upstairs to change. He was breaking all his usual patterns tonight. Well, good for George.

“I didn't vote for President Byrnes, but this has really gotten to me anyway, Chris. What a damn shame.” There were tears in his eyes, and that started her up again, too.

George usually kept his feelings to himself, everything all bottled up. Christine was touched by her husband's emotion.

She was touched a great deal.

“I've cried a couple of times,” she confided to George. "You know me. I did vote for the President, but that's not it. It just seems as though we're losing respect for every institution, everything permanent. We're losing respect for human life at a very fast rate. I even see it in the eyes of six-year-old schoolchildren.

I see it every day at the Truth School."

George Johnson held his wife again, held her tight. At five eleven, he was exactly her height. Christine rested her head softly against the side of his. She smelled of light citrus fragrance. She'd worn it to school. He loved her so much. She was like no other woman, no other person he'd ever met. He felt incredibly lucky to have her, to be loved by her, to hold her like this.

“Do you know what I'm saying?” she asked, wanting to talk with George tonight, not willing to let him disappear on her, as he so often did.

“Sure I do,” he said. “Everybody feels it, Chrissie. Nobody knows how to begin to make it stop, though.”

“I'll fix us something to eat. We can watch the dregs on CNN,” she finally said. “Part of me doesn't want to watch the news, but part of me has to watch this.”

“I'll help with the grub,” George offered, which was rare. She wished that he could be like this more often and that it didn't take a national tragedy to get him in touch with his emotions. Well, a lot of men were like that, she knew. There were worse things in a marriage.

They made a vegetarian gumbo together and opened a bottle of Chardonnay. They had barely finished supper in front of the TV when the front doorbell rang. It was a little before nine, and they weren't expecting anyone, but sometimes neighbors dropped in.

CNN was covering the scene at New York University Hospital, where the President had been rushed after the shooting.

Alex Cross had appeared with various other officers who had been at the scene of the shooting, but he wouldn't say much to the media. Alex looked upset, spent, but also, well-noble.

Christine didn't mention to George that she knew him.

She wondered why. She hadn't told George about Alex's visit to their house late one night. He had slept right through it; but that was George.

Before he could get up off the couch, the doorbell rang a second time. Then, a third ring. Whoever it was wouldn't go away.

“I'll get it, Chrissie,” he said. “Don't know who in hell that could be, this time of night. Do you?”

“I don't, either.”

“All right, already,” he snapped. Christine found herself smiling.

George the Impatient was back.

"I'm coming for Christmas' sake. I'm coming, I'm coming.

Hold your water, I'm coming," he said as he hobbled toward the door in his stockinged feet.

He peered through the peephole, then turned to look at Christine with a questioning scowl on his face.

“It's some white kid.”

DANNY BOUDREAUX stood on the shiny, white-painted porch of the schoolteacher's house. He was dressed in an oversized army-green rain poncho that made him look bigger than he actually was, somewhat more impressive. The Sojourner Truth School killer in the flesh! He was in his glory now. But even in his megahyper mood, he sensed that something was wrong with him now.

He didn't feel good, and he was getting sad- kind of depressed as hell, actually. The machine was breaking down. The doctors couldn't figure whether he was a bipolar disorder or conduct disorder. If they couldn't, how the hell was he supposed to?

So what if he was a little impulsive, had huge mood swings, was a social misfit? The fuse was litHe was ready to blow. kike, who cared?

He had stopped his dosages ofDepakote. Just say no, right? He was humming the “Mmm mm mm” song over and over. Crash Test Dummies. Sad, angry music that just wouldn't stop playing in his head like MTV Muzak.

His “mad button” seemed to be stuck -- permanently.

He was mad at Jack and Jill. Real mad at Alex Cross. Mad at the principal of the Truth School. Mad at just about everybody on the planet. He was even mad at himself now. He was such a goddamn screwup. Always had been, always would be.

I'm a loser, baby.

So why don't you kill me?

He snapped back to semireality when a black fucker wearing a blue pinstriped shirt, suit trousers, and mellow-yellow suspenders answered the door. Hey, welcome to the Cyburbs!

At first, Danny Boudreaux didn't understand who the hell the round-faced black dude was. He'd been expecting the big-deal school principal Mrs. Johnson, or maybe even Alex Cross, if Cross hadn't gone to New York. He had seen Cross and the principal together on three different occasions. He guessed they were getting it on.

He didn't know why that made him mad, but it did. Cross was just like his goddamn father, his real father. Another fuck-up cop who had deserted him, who didn't think he was worth dogshit.

And now Cross was humping this teacher on the side.

Wait, wait, hold on, Danny Boudreaux suddenly got something clear. A flash. This self-righteous Kunta Kinte dude has to be her husband, right ? Of course he was.

“Yes? Can I help you with something?” George Johnson asked the strange-looking and disheveled young man on the porch.

He didn't know the paper-delivery boy in the neighborhood, but maybe this was he. For some strange reason, the white boy reminded him of a disturbing movie called Kids that he'd watched with Christine. The boy looked as if he had some trouble in his life right now.

In Danny Boudreaux's humble opinion, the black guy seemed real unfriendly and uppity as hell. Especially for the nobody husband of some nobody schoolteacher. That pissed him off even more. Made him see about twelve different shades of red. Put him over the edge.

He felt one of the worst rages coming on. Hurricane Daniel was about to strike in Mitchellville.

“Noooooo!” he nearly yelled at the man. “You can't even help yourself. You sure as shit can't help me!”

Danny Boudreaux suddenly yanked out his semiautomatic.

George Johnson looked at the gun in disbelief. He stepped back quickly from the door. He threw up both his arms in self-defense.

“Without any hesitation, Boudreaux fired twice. ”Take that, you silly black rabbit!" he yelled, letting the voices come as they may The two bullets hit George Johnson 4n the chest.

He flew back through the open door as if he'd been struck with a sledgehammer. He bounced once off the cream marble floor.

The cat was DOA for sure. Blood was surging from the two holes in his chest.

The Sojourner Truth School killer then walked right into the teacher's house. He stepped over the fallen body as if it were worth nothing. He was feeling nothing.

“I'll just go ahead in, thanks,” he said to the dead man on the floor. “You've been most helpful.”

Christine Johnson had risen from the couch in the living room when she heard the shots. He had forgotten how goddamn tall she was. Danny Boudreaux could see her from the front hallway She could see him and her husband's body as well.

She didn't look so almighty-in-charge anymore. He had knocked her ass down a peg real quick. She deserved it, too. She'd hurt his feelings the first time they met. She probably didn't even remember the incident.

“Remember me?” he called to her. “Remember hassling me, bitch? At the Truth School? You remember me, don't you?”

“Oh, my God. Oh, George. Oh, God, George,” she moaned the words. A dry sob was shaking her body She looked as if she might collapse. He saw that fucking Jack and Jill was on the tube.

Goddamnit. They were always trying to one-up him. Even here, even now Danny Boudreaux could tell that the schoolteacher wanted to run real bad. There was nowhere to go, though. Not unless she went right through the picture window and out onto her lawn.

She had her hand up to her mouth. Her hand looked as if it were stuck there with Velcro. Probably in shock.

“Don't yell anymore,” he warned her in a high-pitched scream of his own. “Don't scream again or I'll shoot you, too. I can and I will. I'll shoot you dead as the doorman.”

He closed in on her now. He kept the Smith & Wesson pointed out in front of him. He wanted her to see that he was very comfortable with the weapon, very expert with firearms -- which he was, thanks to the Teddy Roosevelt School His hand was shaking some, but so what? He wouldn't miss her at this distance.

“Hi there, Mrs. Johnson,” he said and gave her his best spooky-guy grin. "I'm the one who killed Shanelie Green and Vernon Wheatley. Everybody's been looking all over for me.

Well, I guess you found me,“ he told her. ”Congratulations, babe.

Nice work."

Danny Boudreaux was crying now, and he couldn't remember why he was so sad. All he knew for sure was that he was furiously angry. With everybody. Everybody had fucked up real bad this time. This was about the worst so far.

No happy, happy. No joy, joy.

“I'm the Truth School killer,” he repeated. "You believe that?

You got it? It's a true tale. Tale of heartbreak and woe. Don't you even remember me? Am I that forgettable? I sure remember you."

I RUSHED BACK to the Washington, D.C., area that night about eleven o'clock. The Sojourner Truth School killer was rampaging. I had predicted he was going to go off, but being right held no rewards for me. Stopping the explosion might.

Maybe it was no accident that he was blowing the same night as Jack and Jill. He wanted to be better than them, didn't he? He wanted to be important, famous, in the brightest spotlight. He couldn't bear being Nobody.

I tried to put my mind somewhere else for the short time I was on the military jet. I was feeling so low, I could have jumped off a dime. I scanned the late papers, which carried front-page stories about President Byrnes and the shooting in New York. The President was in extremely critical condition at New York University Hospital on East Thirty-third Street in Manhattan. Jack and Jill were both reported dead. Doctors at University Hospital didn't know if the President would survive the night.

I was numb, disoriented, overloaded, on the slippery borderline of shock trauma myself. Now it was getting worse. I didn't know for certain if I could handle this, but I hadn't been given a choice.

The killer had demanded to see me. He claimed that I was his detective and that he'd been calling my house for the past few days.

A police cruiser was scheduled to meet me at Andrews Air Force Base. From there I'd be taken to nearby Mitchellville, where Danny Boudreaux was holding Christine Johnson hostage. So far, Boudreaux had murdered two small children, a classmate of his named Sumner Moore, and his own foster parents. It was an extraordinary rampage, and the case deserved more resources than it had received from the Metro police.

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

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

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

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

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

Another monster. A very young, horrifying monster.

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

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

“Yeah, nice to see you, too,” I said.

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

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

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

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

A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD MURDERER.

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

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

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

In suburbia this time.

A thirteen-year-old boy named Daniel Boudreaux.

Just another stone killer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BANG!... SHE'S DEAD!"

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

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

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

Then Danny Boudreaux screamed out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nobody would do that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The policeman father who had deserted him and his mother.

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

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

I believe you.

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

How do I get your gun?

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

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

Nickelodeon. Childrenk TV. Damon and Jannie loved it. In a way, so did I. Nickelodeon was about families, and it probably infuriated Danny Boudreaux.

He grinned at me! He had such a fiendish, madhouse look.

Then he spoke quietly, as I just had. He expertly mimicked my concern for him. His instincts were sharp and cruel. It scared me again. It also made me want to rush him and punch his lights out.

“You don't have to whisper. Nobody's sleeping in here. Well, nobody except George the Doorman.”

He laughed, reveling in his crazy, creepy inappropriateness.

Here was the real psychopathic deal. Danny was a thrill killer in the flesh, even at thirteen.

“Are you all right?” I asked Christine again.

“No. Not really,” she whispered.

“Shut the hell up!” Boudreaux yelled at both of us. He pointed his gun at Christine, then back at me. “When I say something, I mean it.”

I realized I wasn't going to get the gun away from the boy. I had to try something else. He looked close to the breaking point, way too close.

I decided to make a move immediately.

I concentrated on the boy, trying to gauge his weaknesses. I watched him without seeming to watch.

I took a couple of slow, deliberate steps toward the living room window. An ancient African milking stool sat there. I glanced outside at the police lines staggered across the front lawn, keeping their distance. I could see riot shields and Plexiglas masks, battle dress uniforms, flak vests, guns everywhere. Jesus, what a scene. This mad boy had caused all this.

“Don't get any funny ideas,” he told me from across the room.

I already had afunny idea, Dannyboy. I already made my move.

It done! Can you figure it out? Are you as smart as you think you are, creep?

“Why not?” I asked him. He didn't answer me. He was going to kill us. What more could he do?

There was a real good reason for me to be near the window. I was going to position myself and Christine Johnson on opposite sides of the living room.

I'd done it. I had already made the move.

Boudreaux didn't seem to notice.

“What do you think of me now?” he snarled. “How do I stack up against those assholes Jack and Jill? How about against the great Gary Soneji? You can tell me the truth. Won't hurt my feelings. Because I don't have any feelings.”

“I'm going to tell you the truth,” I said to him, “since that's what you want to hear. I haven't been impressed by any killers and I'm not impressed by you, either. Not in that way.”

His mouth twisted and he snarled, “Yeah? Well, I'm not impressed by you, either, Dr. Hotshit Cross. Who's got the gun, though?”

Danny Boudreaux stared at me for a long, intense moment.

His eyes looked crossed behind the lenses of his glasses. The pupils were pinpointed. He looked as if he were going to shoot me right then. My heart was racing. I looked across the room at Christine Johnson.

“I have to kill you. You know that,” he said as if it made all the sense in the world. Suddenly, he was speaking in a bored voice. It was disconcerting as hell. “You and Christine have to go down.”

He glanced around at her. His eyes were dark holes. “Black bitch! Sneaky, manipulative bitch, too. You dissed me bad at that stupid school of yours. How dare you disrespect me!” he flared again.

“That's not true,” Christine Johnson said. She spoke right up. “I was trying to protect those kids out in the yard. It had nothing to do with you. I had no idea who you were. How could I?”

He stamped one black-booted foot hard. He was petulant, impatient, unforgiving. He was a mean little prick in every way, “Don't tell me what the hell I know! You can't tell what I'm thinking! You can't get inside my head! Nobody can.”

' “Why do you think you have to kill anybody else?” I asked Boudreaux.

He flared at me again. Pointed his gun. “Don't fucking try to shrink-wrap me! Don't you dare.”

“I wouldn't do that.” I shook my head. “Nobody likes lies, or people trying to pull cheap tricks. I don't.”

Suddenly, he swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine.

“I have to kill people because... that's what I do.” He laughed again, cackled, and wheezed like a fiend.

Christine Johnson sensed what was coming. She knew something had to be done before Danny Boudreaux exploded.

The boy turned to me again. He swiveled his hips and almost seemed to be preening. He watching himself act like this, I realized. He's loving this.

“You've been trying to trick me,” he said. “That's why the calm Mr. Rogers voice. Backing off from me, so you're not so almighty big and threatening. I see right through you.”

“You're right,” I said, "but not completely right. I've been talking like this... real softly... to distract you from what I'm really doing. You blew your own game. You just lost! You little chump.

You weasly little son of a bitch."

“YOU CAN'T SHOOT both of us,” I told Danny Boudreaux.

I spoke in a clear, firm voice. At the same time, I angled my body sideways. Gave him less of a target.

I took another step toward my side of the large living room. I widened the distance between Christine Johnson and me.

“What the hell do you mean? What are you talking about, Cross? TALK TO ME, CROSS! I DEMAND IT!”

I didn't answer him. Let him figure it out. I knew that he would.

He was a smart bad boy Daniel Boudreaux stared at me, then quickly back at Christine.

He got the message. He finally saw the trap, subtle as it was.

His eyes bore deeply into my skull. He knew what I'd done.

One of us would get to him if he shot at the other. He couldn't have his final blaze of glory.

“You dumb piece of shit,” he growled at me. His voice was low and threatening. “You're the one who gets it first then!”

He raised the Smith & Wesson. I was staring down the barrel at him. “TALK TO ME, YOU BASTARD!”

“That's enough!” Christine shouted from the other side of the room. She was unbelievable under the pressure, the circumstances.

“You've killed enough,” she said to Boudreaux.

Danny Boudreaux was starting to panic. Wild eyes stared out from a head that seemed to be on a swivel. “No, I haven't killed enough fucking useless robots. I'm just getting started!” His skin was stretched tight against the bones of his face.

He swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine. His arms were stretched ramrod straight. His whole body was shaking and canted to the left.

"Danny? I yelled his name and started to move on him.

He hesitated for an instant. Then he jerked the gun and fired.

A deafening muzzle blast in close quarters.

He fired at Christine!

She tried to spin out of the way I couldn't tell if she had.

I kept coming, then I was in the air.

Danny Boudreaux swung the semiautomatic back at me. His eyes were filled with terror and intense hatred. His body shook with rage, fear, desperation. Maybe he could get us both.

I moved a lot faster than he thought I could. I was inside the radius of his arm and the outstretched gun.

I crashed into Danny Boudreaux as if he were a full-grown man, an armed and dangerous one. I crushed him with a full body-blow. I relished the contact.

Danny Boudreaux and I were down in a sprawling heap. We were tangled up, a mass of flying arms and twitching, kicking legs. The revolver went off again. I didn't feel any blinding pain yet, but I tasted blood.

The boy screamed in his high-pitched wall. He wailed! I wrenched the gun out of his hand. He tried to bite me, to rip into my flesh. Then the boy growled.

He began to have a seizure, possibly from the drug withdrawal.

A major surge of brain activity was being discharged in his body He was thrashing his arms and his legs. His pelvis thrust forward as if he were dry-humping my leg.

His eyes rolled back, and his body suddenly went limp. Foam spewed from his mouth. His arms and legs continued to flail and twitch. He might have lost consciousness for a second or two.

He continued to drool, to make choking and gurgling SOUnds.

I flipped him on his side. His lips were dusky blue. His eyes finally rolled back into place. They started to blink rapidly. The seizure had ended as quickly as it had come. He lay limp on the floor, a pool of wild bad boy.

The police had heard the shots. They were all over the living room. Riot shotguns, drawn pistols. Lots of shouting and squawking radio-receivers. Christine Johnson went to her husband.

So did two of the EMS medics.

The next time I looked, Christine was kneeling beside me. She didn't seem to be hurt. “Are you all right, Alex?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

I was still holding down Danny Boudreaux. He seemed unaware of his surroundings. He was streaming with cold, oily sweat. The Sojourner Truth School killer now looked sad, lost, and unbearably confused. Thirteen years old. Five homicides.

Maybe more.

“Grand mal?” Christine asked.

I nodded. “I think so. Maybe just too much excitement.”

Danny Boudreaux was trying to say something, but I couldn't hear what it was. He sputtered, still drooling the bubbling white foam.

“What did you say? What is it?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and my throat hurt. I was shaking and covered with sweat myself.

He spoke in a tiny whisper, almost as if there were no one inside him anymore. “I'm afraid,” he told me. “I don't know where I am. I'm always so afraid.”

I nodded at the small, horrifying face looking up at me. “I know,” I said to the young killer. “I know what you're feeling.”

That was the scariest thing of all.

THE DRAGONSLAYER lives, but how many lives do I have left?

Why was I taking chances with my life? Physician, heal thyself.

I stayed at the Johnson house for more than an hour, until the Boudreaux boy and the body of George Johnson were taken away There were questions I had to ask Christine Johnson for my report.

Then I called home and spoke to Nana. I told her to please go to bed. I was safe and basically sound. For tonight, anyway

“I love you, Alex,” she whispered over the phone. Nana sounded almost as tired and beat-up as I was.

“! love you, too, old woman,” I told her.

That night, miracle of miracles, she actually let me get in the last word.

The crowd of ambulance-chasers on Summer Street finally broke up. Even the most persistent reporters and photographers left. One of Christine Johnson's sisters had arrived to be with her in this terrible time. I hugged Christine hard before I left.

She was still trembling. She had suffered a horrible, unspeakable loss. We had both spent a night in hell. “I can't feel anything. Everything is so unreal,” she told me. “I know this isn't a nightmare, and yet I keep thinking that it has to be one.”

Sampson drove me home at one in the morning. My eyes felt lidless. My brain was still going at a million miles an hour, still buzzing loudly, still overheated.

What was our world coming to? Gary Soneji? Bundy? The Hillside Strangler? Koresh? McVeigh? On and on and on. Gandhi was asked once what he thought of Western civilization. He replied, “I think it could be a good idea.”

I don't cry too much. I can't. The same is true for a lot of police officers I know. I wish I could cry sometimes, let it all out, release the fear and the venom, but it isn't that easy Something has gotten blocked up inside.

I sat on the stairs inside our house. I had been on my way to my bedroom, but I hadn't made it. I was trying to cry, but I couldn't.

I thought about my wife, Maria, who was killed in a drive-by shooting a few years back. Maria and I had fit together beautifully That wasn't just selective memory on my part. I knew how good love could be -- I knew it was the best thing I'd ever done in my life -- and yet here I was alone. I was taking chances with my life. I kept telling everybody that I was all right, but I wasn't.

I don't know how long I stayed there in the darkness with my thoughts. Maybe ten minutes, maybe it was much more than that. The house was quiet in a familiar, almost comfortable way, but I couldn't be soothed that night.

I listened to sounds that I had been hearing for years. I remembered being a small boy there, growing up with Nana, wondering what I would become someday Now I knew the answer to that question. I was a multiple-homicide expert who got to work the biggest, nastiest cases. I was the dragonslayer.

I finally climbed the rest of the stairs and stopped in at Damon and Jannie's room. The two of them were fast asleep in the bedroom they share in our small house.

I love the way Damon andJannie sleep, the trusting, innocent ways of my young son and daughter. I can watch them for long stretches, even on a howling-bad night like this one. I can't count how many times have peeked in and just stood in the doorway.

They keep me going, keep me from flying apart some nights.

They'd gone to sleep wearing funky, heart-shaped sunglasses like the ones the kids wear in the singing group called Innocence.

It was cute as hell. Precious, too. I sat on the edge of Jannie's bed.

I quietly took off my boots and carefully lay them on the floor without making any noise.

Then I stretched myself out across the bottom of both their beds. I listened to my bones crack. I wanted to be near my kids, to be with them, for all of us to be safe. It didn't seem too much to ask out of life, too much reward for the day I had just lived through.

I gently kissed the rubber-soled slipper-sock of Jannie's pajamas.

I lay my hand very lightly against Damon's cool bare leg.

I finally closed my eyes, and I tried to push the rushing scenes of murder and chaos out of my mind. I couldn't do it. The monsters were everywhere that night. They truly were all around me.

There are so goddamn many of them. Wave upon wave, it seems, Young and old, and everything in between. Where are these monsters coming from in America? What has created them?

Lying there alongside my two children, I finally was able to sleep somehow. For a few hours, was able to forget the most horrifying thing of all, the reason for my extreme sorrow and upset.

I had heard the news before I left the Johnson house. President Thomas Byrnes had died early that morning.

I WAS HOLDING and gently petting Rosie the cat. I had the kitchen door open and peered outside, squinted at Sampson.

He stood in a freezing-cold rain. He looked like a big, dark boulder in the teeming rainstorm, or maybe it was hail that he was weathering so stoically

“The nightmare continues,” he said to me. A simple declarative sentence. Devastating.

“Year, doesn't it, though? But maybe I don't care about it anymore.”

“Uh-huh. And maybe this is the year the Bullets win the NBA championship, the Orioles win the World Series, and the raggedyass Redskins go to the Super Bowl. You just never know.”

A day had passed since the long night at the Johnson house, since the even longer morning in New York City. Not nearly enough time for any kind of healing, or even proper grieving.

President Edward Mahoney had been sworn in the day before.

It was necessary according to law, but it almost seemed indecent to me.

I had on dungarees and a white T-shirt. Bare feet on a cold linoleum floor. Steaming coffee mug in hand. I was convalescing nicely. I hadn't washed off my whiskers, as Jannie calls the act of shaving. I was almost feeling human again.

I hadn't asked Sampson in yet, either.

“Morning, Sugar,” Sampson persisted. Then he rolled back his upper lip and showed off some teeth. His smile was brutally joyful. I finally had to smile back at my friend and nemesis.

It was a little past nine o'clock and I had just gotten up. This was late for me. It was shameful behavior by Nana's standards. I was still sleep-deprived, trauma-shocked, in danger of losing the rest of my mind, throwing up, something shitty and unexpected.

But I was also much better. I looked good; I looked fine.

“Aren't you even going to say good morning?” Sampson asked, pretending to be hurt.

“Morning, John. I don't even want to know about it,” I said to him. “Whatever it is that brings you here this cold and bleak morning.”

“First intelligent thing I've heard out of your mouth in years,” Sampson said, “but I'm afraid I don't believe it. You want to know everything. You need to know everything, Alex. That's why you read four newspapers every damn morning.”

“I don't want to know, either,” Nana contributed from behind me in the kitchen. She had been up for hours, of course. “I don't need to know. Shoo, fly Go fry some ice. Take a long walk off a short dock, Johnnyboy”

“We got time for breakfast?” I finally asked him.

“Not really,” he said, careful to keep his smile turned on, “but let's eat, anyway Who could resist?”

“He invited you, not me,” Nana warned from over by her hot stove.

She Was kidding Sampson. She loves him as if he were her own son, as if he were my physically bigger brother. She made the two of us scrambled eggs, homemade sausage, home fries, toast. She knows how to cook and could easily feed the entire Washington Redskins team at training camp. That would be no problem for Nana.

Sampson waited until we had finished eating before he got back into it, whatever it was, whatever had happened now. His dark little secret. It may seem odd--but when your life is filled with homicides and other tragedies, you have to learn to take time for yourself. The homicides will still be there. The homicides are always there.

“Your Mister Grayer called me a little while ago,” Sampson said as he poured his third cup of coffee. “He said to let you have a couple days off, that they could handle this. Them, like the great old horror flick that used to scare the hell out of us.”

“That, what you just said, makes me suspicious and fearful right away. Handle what?” I asked.

I was finishing the last of half a loaf of cinnamon toast made from thick homemade bread. It was, honestly, quite seriously, a taste of heaven. Nana claims that she's been there, stolen several recipes. I tend to believe her. I've seen and tasted the proof of her tale.

Sampson glanced at his wristwatch, an ancient Bulova given to him by his father when he was fourteen.

“They're looking over Jill's office in the White House right about now. Then they're going to her apartment on Twenty-fourth Street. You want to go? As my guest? Got you a guest pass, just in case.”

Of course I wanted to be there. I had to go. I needed to know everything about Jill, just as Sampson had said I did.

“You are the devil,” Nana hissed at Sampson.

“Thank you, Nana.” He beamed bright eyes and a thousand and one teeth. “High praise, indeed.”

WE DROVE to Sara Rosen's apartment in Sampson's slippery-quick black Nissan. Nana's hot breakfast had brought me back to the real world at least. I was feeling partially revived. Physically, if not emotionally.

I was already highly intrigued about visiting Jill's home. I wanted to see her office at the White House, too, but figured that could wait a day or two. But her house. That was irresistible for the detective, and for the psychologist.

Sara Rosen lived in a ten-story building on Twenty-fourth and K. The building had an officious front-desk “captain” who studied our police IDs and then reluctantly let us proceed. The lobby was cheery otherwise. Carpeted, lots of large potted plants.

Not the kind of building where anyone would expect to find an assassin.

But Jill had lived right here, hadn't she?

Actually, the apartment fit the profile we had of Sara Rosen.

She was the only child of an Army colonel and a high school English teacher. She had grown up in Aberdeen, Maryland, then gone to Hollins College in Virginia. She had majored in history and English, graduating with honors. She'd come to Washington sixteen years ago, when she was twenty-one. She had never married, though she'd had several boyfriends over the years. Some of the staff at the White House press and communications offices called her “the sexy spinster.”

Her apartment was on the fifth floor of the ten-story building.

It was bright, with a view of an interior courtyard. The FBI was already at work inside. Chopin came softly from a stereo. It was a relaxed atmosphere, almost pleasant, devil-may-care. The case was, after all, closed.

Sampson and I spent the next few hours with the Feebie technicians who were searching the apartment for anything that might give the Bureau a clue about Sara Rosen.

Jill had lived right there.

Who the hell were you, Jill? How did this happen to you? What happened, Jill? Talk to us. You know you want to talk, lonely girl.

Her apartment was a one-bedroom with a small den, and we would examine every square inch of it. The woman who had lived here had helped to murder President Thomas Byrnes. The den had been used as an editing room for their film. The apartment had historical importance now. For as long as this building stood, people would point at it and say, “That's where Jill lived.”

She had bought anonymous-looking furniture in a country-club style. They were middle-class trappings. A sofa and armchair made of brushed cotton twill. Local furniture store tags: Mastercraft Interiors, Colony House in Arlington. Cool, cold colors in every room. Lots of ivory-colored things at Jill's place.

An ice-blue, patterned area rug. A pale, distressed pine armoire.

Several frames on the wall contained matted Christmas cards and letters from White House notables: the current press secretary, the chief of staff, even a brief note from Nancy Reagan.

There were no pictures of any of the “enemies” mentioned to me by President Byrnes. Sara Rosen was a secret starfucker, wasn't she? Had Jack been a star for her? Was Jack really Kevin Hawkins?

Talk to us, Jill. I know you want to talk. Tell us what really happened. Give us a clue.

Sitting out on a small rolltop desk were mailings from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, both conservative organizations. There were several copies of U.S. News & World Report, Southern Living, Gourmet.

Also flyers about future poetry readings at Chapters on K Street, and Politics and Prose, bookstores in the Washington area. Was Jill the poet?

A poem had been cut from a book and taped to the wall above the desk.

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!

How public -- like a Frog -To tell one's name -- the live-long June -To an admiring Bog! -- Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson apparently had the same opinion of celebrities as Jack and Jill.

The walls of the den and bedroom were covered with books.

The walls were bookcases. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. High- and low-brow stuff. Jill the reader. Jill the loner. Jill the sexy spinster.

Who are you, Jill? Who are you, Sara Rosen ?

There was even one bit of evidence that showed a sense of humor. A sign was framed in the front hallway: use an accordion, go to jail. That's the law.

Who are you, Sara-Jill?

Did anybody really care about you before now ? Why did you help to commit this horrible crime? Was it worth it? To die like this, a lonely spinster? Who killed you, Jill ? Was it Jack?

If I found one indisputable piece of truth, just one, all the rest would follow, and we would finally understand. I wanted to believe that it could go like that.

I looked through Jill's clothes closets. I found conservative business suits mostly in dark colors. Labels that told me Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor. Low pumps, running shoes, casual flats. There were several sweatsuits for running and exercise.

Not many evening dresses for parties, for fun.

Who were you, Sara?

I searched for false walls, false bottoms, anywhere that she might have kept private notes, something that might help us to close this case forever, or open it wide.

C'mon, Sara, let us in on your secret life. Tell us who you really were.

What kept you going, Jill ? Who were you, Sara? Sexy spinster?

You want us to know. I know you do. You're still in this apartment.

I can feel it. I can feel your loneliness everywhere I look.

You want us to know something. What is it, Sara? Give us one more rhyme. Just one.

Sampson came up behind me while I was standing at a bedroom window overlooking the courtyard. I was thinking about all the possibilities the case held.

“You got it solved yet? Got it all figured out, Sweets?”

“Not yet. There's something more, though. Give me another couple of days here.”

Sampson groaned at the thought. And so did I. But I knew I would come back here. Sara Rosen had left something for us to remember her by. I was almost sure of it.

Jill the poet.

MAYBE I WAS a glutton for crime and punishment, but I came back alone to her apartment very early the following morning.

I was there by eight, long before anyone else. I wandered back and forth in the small apartment, nibbling from an open box of Nutri-Grain.

Something was still bothering me about the sexy spinster and her hideaway in Foggy Bottom. Detective's hunch. Psychologist's intuition.

For nearly an hour, I sat crouched at a window seat that looked out on K Street. I fixated on a bus shelter poster for a Calvin Klein perfume called Escape. The model in the poster looked unbearably sad and forlorn. Like Jill? Someone had written a thought balloon above the model's head. It read: “Someone feed me, please.”

What gave Sara Rosen sustenance? I wondered as I peered out into the D.C. ether. What was her secret? What drove her to the madness of celebrity stalking--or whatever she had been doing before she was killed in the Peninsula Hotel? She had been murdered in New York. What was her connection to Jack?

What was the whole story? What was the real story? What secret still hadn't been unlocked?

I started in on the massive collection of books that dominated every room in the apartment, even the kitchen. Sara had been a voracious reader. Mostly literature and history, nearly all of it American. Sara the intellectual; Sara the real smart cookie.

Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger. Special Trust by Robert McFarland. Caveat by Alexander Haig. Kissinger by Walter Isaacson. On and on and on. Fiction by Anne Tyler, Robertson Davies, Annie Proulx, but also Robert Ludlum and John Grisham. Poetry by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.

A volume entitled Woman Alone.

I opened each book, then carefully shook it out. There were well over a thousand volumes in the apartment. Maybe a couple of thousand. Lots of books to look through.

There were handwritten pages of notes stuffed into some of the books. Jottings Sara had made. I read every loose scrap. The hours went by. Meals were skipped. I didn't much care.

Inside a biography of Napoleon and Josephine, Sara Rosen had written “N. considered high intelligence an aberration in women. Stroked J.”s breasts in public. Cur. But J. got her just deserts. Cunt."

Jill the poet. Jill the book lover. The mystery, the fantasy woman, the enigma. The killer.

There were several videotapes of movies in the den, and I began to open each of the containers.

Sara Rosen's film collection featured well-known romances, mystery thrillers, and romantic thrillers. The Prince of Tides, No Way Out, Disclosure, The Godfather trilogy, Gone With the Wind, An Officer and a Gentleman.

She also seemed to like older movies, especially noir mysteries: Raymond Chandler, James Cain, Hitchcock.

I opened every single cassette, row by row, every box. I thought it was important, especially with someone as orderly as Sara. If Sampson had been around, I wouldn't have heard the end of it. He would have called me crazier than Jack or Jill.

I opened a cassette box for Hitchcock's Notorious. I didn't remember ever seeing the film myself, but one of Hitchcock's favorite male leads, Cary Grant, was featured on the box cover.

I found an unmarked cassette inside the box. It didn't look like a movie. Curious, I popped the cassette into the VCR. It was the fourth or fifth unmarked cassette that I had viewed so far.

The film wasn't Notorious.

I found myself looking at footage of the murder of Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick.

This was apparently the uncut version, which ran considerably longer than the film that had been sent to CNN.

The extra footage was even more disturbing and graphic than what had been viewed on the TV news network. The fear in Senator Fitzpatrick's voice was terrible to hear. He begged the killers for his life, then he began to cry, to sob loudly That part had been carefully edited from the CNN tape. It was too strong. It was brutal beyond belief. It put Jack and Jill in the worst possible light.

They were merciless killers. No pity, no passion, no humanity I jabbed at the PAUSE button. Jackpot! The next shot in the film had started tight on Senator Fitzpatrick, then pulled out to a wide angle, maybe wider than intended.

The tape showed Jack as he fired the second shot.

The killer wasn't Kevin Hawkins!

I suddenly wondered if Jill had left the tape here for someone to find. Had she suspected that she might be betrayed? Was this Jill's payback? I thought that maybe it was: Jill had fucked Jack, straight from hell.

I studied the frozen frame revealing the real Jack. He had short, sandy-blond hair. He was a handsome-looking man in his late thirties. There was no emotion on his face as he pulled the trigger.

“Jack,” I whispered. “We've finally found you, Jack.”

THE FBI, Secret Service, and Washington police cooperated and worked closely together on a massive and important manhunt.

They all badly wanted a piece of this one. It was the ultimate homicide case: a president had been murdered. The real killer was still out there. Jack was still alive; at least, I hoped that he was.

And he was!

Early on the morning of December 20, I watched Jack through a pair of binoculars. I couldn't take my eyes off the killer and mastermind.

I wanted to take him down. I wanted him for myself. We had to wait, though. This was Jay Grayer's plan. It was his day, his show, his plan of action.

Jack was just walking out of a three-story Colonial house. He went to a bright red Ford Bronco that sat in a circular driveway.

By then, we knew who he was, where he lived, nearly everything about him. Now we understood a lot more about Jack and Jill.

Our eyes had been opened very, very wide.

“There's Jack. There's our boy,” Jay Grayer said to me.

“Doesn't look like a killer, does he?” I said. “But he got the job done. He did it. He's the executioner of all those people, including Jill.”

Jack was herding along a small boy and a girl. Very cute kids. I knew that their names were Alix and Artie. Also coming along for the ride were the two family dogs: Shepherd and Wise Man, a ten-year-old black retriever and a frisky young collie.

Jack's kids.

Jack's dogs.

Jacks nice house in suburbia.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill... to kill the President. And then Jack murdered his partner and lover, Jill. He executed Sara Rosen in cold blood Jack thought he got away with the murders, clear and free. Jack had an almost great plan. But now we had Jack in our sights. I was watching Jack. We all were.

He looked like the perfect suburban Washington dad in just about every way. He had on a navy hooded parka that was unzipped in spite of the cold weather. The open jacket exposed a blue plaid flannel shirt and stonewashed dungarees. He wore floppy, tannish brown Topsiders, gray woolen socks.

His hair was cut short, military-style. His hair was dark brown now. He was a ruggedly handsome man. Thirty-nine years old.

The President's assassin. The stone-cold killer of several political enemies.

A conspirator.

A world-class traitor.

A real heartless bastard, too.

He is just about the perfect American killer, I thought as I watched him in command of his obedient troop of children and pets. He was a near-perfect assassin. He was a daddy, a husband, clean-cut as could be. He looked absolutely beyond suspicion.

He even had alibis, though none of them would hold up because of the film footage of his shooting Senator Fitzpatrick. A Jackal for our age, for our country, for our naive and very dangerous way of life.

I wondered if he had watched the President's burial ceremony on TV, or maybe even attended it, as I had.

"He's such a devil-may-care fucker, isn't he?Jay Grayer said.

He was sitting beside me in the front seat of the unmarked car. I hadn't heard Jay Grayer curse much before today. He wanted to take down Jack real bad, real hard.

That's what we were going to do. This was going to be a famous morning for all of us.

It was all about to go down.

“Get ready to follow Jack,” Grayer spoke into a handheld mike in our car. "You lose him, anybody, and you can just keep going.

In whatever direction you're headed."

“We won't lose him. I don't think he'll even run,” I said.

“He's a homebody, our Jack. He's a daddy. He has roots in the community.”

What a strange country we lived in. So many murderers. So many monsters. So many decent people for them to prey on.

“I think you're probably right, Alex. Spot on. I don't get it yet, I don't fully understand him, but I think you're right. We've got him nailed. Only what exactly do we have here? What makes Jack run? Why did he do it?”

“Money,” I told him a theory I had about Jack. “Look for the money. It cuts through and simplifies all the other stuff. A little politics, a little cause, and a lot of money. Ideology and financial gain. Hard to beat in this venal day and age.”

“You think so?”

“I think so. Yes. I'd bet a lot on it. He has some strongly held beliefs, and one of them is that he and his family deserve to live well. So, yes, I think money is a part of this. I think he's probably acquainted with some people with a lot of money and power, but not as much power as they would like to have.”

The Bronco took off and we followed it at a comfortable distance. Jack was a careful driver of his valuable cargo. He must have been impressive to his kids, maybe even to the dogs, undoubtedly to his neighbors.

Jack the Jackal. I wondered if that was another of Sara Rosen's word games.

I wondered what Jill's very last thought was when her lover betrayed her in New York. Had she expected it? Had she known he would betray her? Was that why she left the cassette in her apartment?

Jay wanted to talk, maybe he needed to keep his mind busy right now. “He's taking them to the day school down yonder. His life is back to normal now. Nothing happened to change that. He just planned the murder and helped execute a president. That's all. No biggie. Life goes on.”

“From what I can gather in his military records, he was a first-class soldier. He left the Army as a full colonel. Honorable discharge. Participated in Desert Storm,” I said to Jay.

“Jack a war hero. I'm impressed as hell. I'm so goddamn impressed with this guy that I can't begin to tell you. Maybe I'll tell him.”

Jack was a war hero, officially.

Jack was a patriot, unofficially.

As we rode along, I remembered the inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown at Arlington National Cemetery. Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God. Somehow, I thought that was how Jack probably thought about himself.

A soldier-hero known only to God.

He probably believed he'd gotten away with several murders -- in a just war.

Well, he hadn't. He was about to go down.

He dropped the two children off at the Bayard-Wellington School. It was a beautiful place: fieldstone walls and rolling, frost-slicked lawns; the sort of school I would have loved to send Damon andJannie to; the kind of school where Christine Johnson ought to teach.

You could move out of D.C., you know, I told myself as I watched Jack kiss each of his children good-bye.

So why don't you? Why don't you take Damon and Jannie away from Fifth Street? Why don't you do what this rotten piece of shit son of a bitch does for his kids?

Jay Grayer spoke into the hand mike again. “He's leaving the Bayard-Wellington School now. He's turning back onto the main road. God, it's pretty out here in Jackville, isn't it? We'll take him down at the stoplight up ahead! Just one imperative: we take him alive! We'll have four cars at the light with him. Four of us to get Jack. We take him alive.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” I said.

“What the hell are you saying?” Jay Grayer turned to me and asked.

“Just getting it out of the way He doesn't have any rights. He's going down.”

Grayer offered up a crooked smile. We both understood why The good part was coming now. The only good part in this whole affair. “Famous stuff, huh? Here we go. Let's get this son of a bitch.”

“Absolutely I want to have a nice long talk with Jack, too.”

I want to kick his ass from this stoplight, all the way back to Washington.

I want to meet the real Jack.

NOBODY had figured out the assassination plot until now. Not one of us had even been close. No one had been able to solve the mystery of Jack and Jill until it was too late. Maybe we could unravel the whole mess now. A retrospective on Jack and Jill.

We were less than a hundred yards away from capturing Jack.

He was heading down a steep, rolling hill toward a stoplight.

It was a very picturesque scene. Long lens, like in expensively made movies. The light turned red and Jack stopped like a law-abiding citizen. Unconcerned about anything.

A free man.

Jay Grayer and I eased up right behind his trendy, off-road vehicle.

I could read the sticker on the rear bumper of the Bronco: D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs.

Beartrap was the code for our operation. We had four mainline vehicles. Another half-dozen cars and two helicopters for backup. I didn't see how Jack could escape. I was thinking ahead to the massive ramifications of the assassin's capture, and the even more shocking surprise still to come.

This was going to get worse, much worse.

“We take him down on three,” Jay Grayer said into his hand mike. He was extremely cool now, the consummate professional, as he had been from the beginning. I liked working with him enormously. He wasn't an egomaniac; he was just good at his job.

“We take him real easy,” I said.

The beartrap was sprung.

I was one of the six who jumped out of the intercept cars stopped at the innocent-looking country-road light. It was an honor.

There were two civilian cars waiting at the light as well. A gray Honda and a Saab.

It must have looked like utter madness to them. That's because it was, and much worse than it looked. The man in the Bronco had killed the President. This was like arresting Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan,John Wilkes Booth. An ordinary stoplight in northern Maryland.

I was there] I was glad I was there. I would have paid a huge admission price to be there for this.

I got to the passenger door of his vehicle as a Secret Service agent yanked open the driver's door. The two of us happened to be the quickest on our feet. Or maybe we were the ones who wanted Jack the most.

Jack turned toward me -- and he got to look right into the wide-eyed barrel of my Glock.

He got a real good look at death in an instant.

Execution-style!

Very professional!

“Don't move. Don't even breathe too hard. Don't move a millimeter,” I said to him. “I don't want to have an excuse. So don't give me one.”

He hadn't been expecting us. I could tell that by the shock spread across his face. He thought he'd gotten away clean with the murders. Thought he was home free.

Well, he had it all wrong for once.

Jack had finally made his first mistake.

“Secret Service. You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, and that's a real good idea!” one of the agents barked at Jack. The agent's face was bright red with anger, with outrage at this man who had murdered President Thomas Byrnes.

Jack looked at the Secret Service agent, and then back at me.

He recognized me. He knew who I was. What else did he know?

At first he'd been startled, but now he became calm. It was astonishing to see the calmness and cool take hold. He's calm as death, I thought.

I shouldn't have been surprised. This was the real Jack. This was the President killer.

“Very good,” he finally said, commending us for doing a good job, for our professionalism. The son of a bitch nodded his approval.

“I'm proud of you. You did your jobs extremely well.” It made my blood boil, but I knew the order of the day: we take him real easy. The gentle beartrap.

He slowly got out of the spit-shined red vehicle. Both his hands were held up high. He offered no resistance; he didn't want to be shot.

Suddenly, one of the Secret Service agents sucker punched him. The agent threw a hard roundhouse right that connected with the killer's jaw. I couldn't believe he'd done it, but I was glad.

Jack's head snapped back and he dropped like a stone. Jack was smart. He stayed down. There was no provocation for the agent's punch, no excuse whatsoever--except that the freak sprawled on the ground had murdered the President in cold blood.

Jack shook his head and worked his jaw as he looked up at us from the pavement. “How much do you know?” he asked.

We didn't answer him. None of us said a goddamn word. It was our turn to play games. Now we had a few surprises for Jack.

JACK WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING. We knew he was only part of the puzzle we were attempting to solve. We had decided to take him down first, but now came the second crucial stop.

As we rode back to his house on Oxford Street, I felt distant from the scene, almost as if I were watching myself in a dream. I remembered the few meetings I'd had with Thomas Byrnes. He'd told us all to have no regrets, but that advice didn't work out in the real world. The President was dead, and I would always feel partly responsible, even if I wasn't responsible at all.

I wasn't thinking only about the President's murder. There was thirteen-year-old Danny Boudreaux. I felt an unsettling connection between the two cases. I had from the very beginning. The murders and unprecedented violence were everywhere. It was as if a strange, crippling disease were spreading across much of the world, but especially right here in America. I had already witnessed too much of it. I didn't know how to make the nightmare stop. No one did.

It wasn't over.

We were finally at the beginning of the awful mystery.

This was where it had started.

At this house just coming into view.

Jay Grayer spoke into the car's hand mike. "Dr. Cross and I will go the front-door route. Everyone cover us like a blanket.

No shooting. Not even return fire, if you can help it. Everybody clear on that?"

All the other agents were clear on the procedure and knew the stakes. Beartrap wasn't over yet.

Grayer pulled the black sedan up beside the front walk to the house. “You ready for one more shitstorm?” he asked me. “You okay with how this is going down, Alex?”

“I'm as okay as I'm going to be,” I told him. “Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I needed to be here.”

“We wouldn't even be here without you. Let's go do it.”

The two of us got out of his unmarked car and hurried up the red-brick front walkway together. We matched each other, step for step.

This was where it had all started.

The big house, the whole street, seemed so innocent and appealing.

A beautiful, white Colonial stood before us. The house had a big old porch supported by column pedestals. Children's bikes were neatly stacked on the porch. Everything out here was so neat. Was it all a disguise? Of course it was.

Jay Grayer rang the doorbell and it sounded like the “Avon calling” bell. Jack and Jill came to The Hill But Jack and Jill started right here, didn't it? In this very house.

The door was answered by a woman wearing a red plaid robe that looked as if it came straight out of the J. Crew catalog.

A grapevine wreath, one of those peculiar, decorative affairs that looks. like Jesus' crown of thorns, was hung on the front door for the holidays. It had a big red bow tied around it. Here is Jill, I was thinking. Finally, the real Jill.

“ALEX, JAY. My God, what is it? What's happened now? Don't tell me this is a social visit?”

Jeanne Sterling stood just inside the front door of her house. I could see a polished oak stairway glistening behind her. A formal dining room was visible through pocket doors, which were also polished oak. A tall stack of gift-wrapped Christmas presents lay piled near a desk and a six-foot-high standing mirror in the foyer.

Jill's house. The inspector general of the CIA. Clean Jeanne.

“What's happened? I just made some coffee. Please, come in.”

She sounded as if Jay Grayer and I were a couple of neighbors from just down the street. A social visit, right? She smiled and her prominent teeth made it look like a grimace.

What happened? Has someone in the neighborhood been involved in a fender bender? I just made fresh coffee. Good as the stuff at Starbucks. Let's chat.

“Coffee sounds fine,”Jay said, showing he could chat with the best of them.

We walked inside the house that she shared with her children and her husband. With Jack.

I noticed details -- everything seemed important, telling, evidence. The bright colors and exuberant style on the inside of the house said “American,” but the accents communicated “world travel.” French etchings. Flemish weavings. Chinese porcelain.

Jill the traveler. Jill the spymaster.

There's an old saying in classic mysteries, which I'd never felt made much sense -- cherchez la femme. Look for the woman. I had my own catchphrase for solving many modern-day mysteries -- cherchez l' argent. Look for the money.

I didn't believe that Jeanne Sterling and her husband had acted on their own. I didn't believe it any more than I had ever bought that Jack and Jill were celebrity stalkers. Aldrich Ames had supposedly received two and a half million for exposing a dozen American agents. How much had the Sterlings received for disposing of a troublesome United States president? A loose cannon who had gone against the system?

And who had given them the money? Cherchez l'argent. Maybe Jeanne would tell us if we twisted her arm a little, which I definitely planned to do.

Who would gain the most from the murder of President Thomas Byrnes? The vice president, now the president? Wall Street? Organized crime? The CIA? I would have to ask Jeanne about that. Maybe over steaming pewter mugs of coffee. Maybe that was what we could chat about.

She turned and led the way back to her kitchen. She was so calm and collected. I continued to notice the furnishings, the pristine decor, the neatness, even with three kids in the house.

I thought that I knew how Jeanne and her husband could afford such a terrific house out here in Chevy Chase. Cherchez l'argent.

“There's been some kind of a break, hasn't there?” she said and turned to look at us. “You have me completely baffled as to what it could be. What's happened? Tell me.” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. Quite an act. Quite an actress.

“There has been a break,” I finally said. “We've found out some interesting things about Jack.” We decided to take him down first. Now it's your turn.

“That's excellent news,” Jeanne Sterling said. “Please, tell me everything. After all, Kevin Hawkins was one of ours.”

We entered a large kitchen, which I remembered from my first visit there. The walls were covered with terra cotta tiles and expensive-looking wooden cabinets. Half a dozen windows looked out on a gazebo and a tennis court.

“We've arrested your husband, Brett, for the murder of the President,”Jay Grayer told her in a cold, flat voice. “We have him in custody right now. We're here to arrest you.”

“It's so damn hard to control every single detail, isn't it? One little slipup was all it took,” I said to Jeanne. "Sara made a mistake.

I think she fell in love with your husband. Did you know that? You must have known about Sara and Brett's affair?"

“Alex, what are you saying? What areyou saying, Jay? Neither of you is making any sense.”

"Oh, sure we are,Jeanne. Sara Rosen kept a dupe of the footage of Senator Fitzpatrick's murder at her apartment in D.C. Your husband is on the tape. She was in love with him, the poor spinster.

Maybe you planned on that. You must have at least suspected it. We even have a partial fingerprint of his at Sara Rosen's apartment in Foggy Bottom. We'll probably find more now that we know what to look for."

Her look darkened, her eyes narrowed into slits. I sensed she might not have known everything about her husband's close “relationship” with Sara Rosen.

She knew about Sara, of course. In the last few days, we had discovered that Sara Rosen had been an Agency spy inside the White House. She had been the Agency's mole there for eight years. That was how Jack had found her, and knew she would be loyal. Sara Rosen had been the perfect Jill. Sara had believed in “the cause,” at least as much as she was told about it. She was extremely right-wing. Thomas Byrnes wanted massive changes at the Pentagon and CIA. A powerful group felt the changes could destroy the country, would destroy the country. They had decided to destroy President Byrnes instead. Jack and Jill had been born.

Jay Grayer said, “This is going to be worse than Aldrich Ames, you know. Much, much worse.”

Jeanne Sterling slowly nodded her head. “Yes, I suppose it will be. I suppose,” she continued, her eyes trailing back and forth between Grayer and me, "that you're proud to be a part of the destruction of one of the few, the very few, advantages the United States holds over the rest of the world. Our intelligence network was second to none. It still is, in my opinion. The President was a foolish amateur who wanted to dismantle intelligence and the milita In the name of what? Populist change? What a mock-cry, what a sad, dangerous joke. Thomas Byrnes was a car salesman from Detroit! He had no business making the decisions he was entrusted With. Most presidents before him understood that.

I don't care what you believe about us. My husband and I are patriots. Are we clear on that? Are we clear, gentlemen?"

Jay Grayer let her finish before he spoke again. "You and your husband are slimy traitors. You're both murderers. Are we clear?

You're right about one thing, though. I am proud about bringing you down. I feel great about that. I really do,Jeanne."

There was a sudden flare of bright white light in the kitchen!

A muzzle flash.

A deafening shot rang out in the most unexpected of places. Jay Grayer's body arched. He fell back against the kitchen counter, knocking over a row of tall wooden stools.

Jeanne Sterling had shot him point-blank. She had a gun hidden in her robe. She'd fired right- through the pocket. Maybe she had seen us approaching the house. Or maybe she always had a gun nearby. She was Jill, after all.

Jeanne shifted her feet and turned the gun on me. I was already diving down behind the kitchen counter.

She fired the semiautomatic anyway.

Another deafening blast in the kitchen. A flash of light. Then another shot.

She kept firing as she backed from the kitchen. Then she ran.

Her robe flew behind her like a cape.

I quickly moved to where Jay Grayer had gone down. He was wounded high in the chest, near the collarbone. His face was drained of color. Jay was conscious, though. "Just get her, Alex.

Get her alive,“ he gasped. ”Get them. They know everything."

I moved carefully but quickly inside the Sterling house. Don't kill her. She knows the truth. We need to hear it from her just this once. She knows why the President was killed, and who ordered it.

She knows!

Suddenly, a Secret Service agent came rushing inside the front door. Another agent was close behind him.

Two more agents appeared from the direction of the kitchen.

All of them had their guns drawn. Looks of shocked concern were on their faces.

“What the hell happened in here?” one of the agents shouted.

“Jeanne Sterling has a gun. We take her alive, anyway We have to take her alive!”

I heard a noise in the direction of the front hallway Actually, two noises. I understood what was happening, and my heart sank.

A car engine was being started.

An electric garage door was being raised.

Jill was getting away.

MY CHEST was thundering, ready to explode, but my heart had gone icy cold.

Take her alive, no matter what! She's even more important than Jack.

The door to the garage was down a narrow hallway that led past a large sun room. The sun room was awash in blinding morning light. I sucked in a breath. Then I opened the garage door carefully, as if it might explode. It just might, I knew. Anything could happen now. This was the house of dirty tricks.

There was a dark, narrow corridor between the house and the garage. The passageway was about four feet long. I moved down it in a low crouch.

Another closed door was at the end.

Take her alive. That the one imperative.

I yanled open the second door and jumped out into what I figured had to be the garage. It was.

Instantly, I heard three loud pops. I hit the concrete floor hard.

Gunshots!

Thunderous, scary noise in the confined space. No thud of a bullet to my chest or head, thank God.

I saw Jeanne Sterling leaning out of the window of her station wagon. She had a semiautomatic clutched in one hand. I pushed myself up again.

Take her alive! my brain screamed as I ducked out of sight.

I had seen something else in the car. She had her youngest daughter with her. Her three-year-old, Karon. She was using Karon as a shield. She knew we wouldn't shoot with the girl in the way The little girl was screaming loudly. She was terrified.

How could Jeanne Sterling do this to a child?

I crouched behind the oil tank in the darkened, cramped space.

I was trying to think straight.

I shut my eyes for a beat. Half a second at most.

I drank in a huge breath of cold air and gasoline fumes. Tried to think in absolutely straight lines. I made a decision and hoped it was the right one.

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

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

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

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

No answer came back, just terrifying silence.

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

Would Jeanne Sterling really sacrifice her own child, though?

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

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

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

Execution-style.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We finally had Jack and Jill.

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

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

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

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

There are no rules anymore.

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

President Edward Mahoney delivered a statement at nine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was important to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not to anybody."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The phone rang about nine. The damn infernal phone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeanne and Brett Sterling were dead.

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

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

Jack and Jill were dead.

Jack and Jill had been murdered inside a federal prison.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They had been executed. Professionally Without passion.

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

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

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

Not for some people, anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As opposed to?” she asked.

“Everyone else,” I said.

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

Home.

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

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

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

The damn telephone rang and I picked it up. Nat King Cole sang carols in the background. A fresh layer of snow glistened on the tiny patch of lawn outside.

“Hello,” I said.

“Why hello. If it isn't Doctor/Detective Cross himself. What a neat treat.”

I didn't have to ask who the caller was -- I recognized the voice. The sound of it had been in my nightmares for a while -- years.

“Long time, no talk,” Gary Soneji said. “I've missed you, Doctor Cross. Have you missed me?”

Gary Soneji had kidnapped two young children in Washington a few years back, then he'd led us on an incredible search that lasted for months. Of all the murderers I'd known, Soneji was the brightest. He had even fooled some of us into believing that he was a split personality He'd escaped from prison twice.

“I've thought of you,” I finally told him the truth, “often.”

“Well, I just called to wish you and yours a happy and holy holiday season. I've been born again, you see.”

I didn't say anything to Soneji. I waited. The kids had picked up that something was wrong about the phone call. They watched me, until I waved for them to finish up with the Christmas tree.

“Oh, there's one other thing, Doctor Cross,” Soneji whispered after a long pause.

I knew there was something. “What is it, Gary? What's the one other thing?”

“Are you enjoying her? I just had to ask. I have to know. Do you like her?”

I held my breath. He knew about Christine, goddamn him!

“You see, I was the one who left little Rosie the cat for your family Nice touch, don't you think? So whenever you see the little cutie, you just think- Gary in the house! Gary real close! I am, you know. Have a joyous and safe New Year. I'll be seeing you soon.”

Gary Soneji hung up the phone with a gentle click.

And then so did I. I went back to the beautiful tree andJannie and Damon and Nat King Cole.

Until next time.

The End