Jack and Jill

PART 3

THE PHOTOJOURNALIST

THE PHOTOJOURNALIST was the last piece in the complex puzzle. He was the final player. He was working in San Francisco on December 8. Actually, the photojournalist was playing the game in San Francisco. Or rather, he was playing around the outer edges of the game.

Kevin Hawkins sat in a scooped-out, gray plastic chair at Gate 31. He contentedly played chess with himself on a PowerBook. He was winning; he was losing. He enjoyed it either way Hawkins loved games, loved chess, and he was close to being one of the better players in the world. It had been that way ever since he'd been a bright, lonely, underachieving boy in Hudson, New York. At quarter to eleven he got up from his seat to go play another kind of game. This was his favorite game in the world.

He was in San Francisco to kill someone.

As he walked through the busy airport, Kevin Hawkins snapped off photograph after photograph -- all in his mind.

The prizewinning photojournalist was outfitted in his usual studied-casual manner: tight black cord jeans with a black T-shirt, tribal bracelets from several trips to Zambia, a diamond stud earring. A Lcica camera was looped around his neck on a leather strap decorated with engravings.

The photojournalist slipped into a crowded bathroom in Corridor C. He observed a ragged line of men slouched at the urinals.

They are like pigs at a through, he thought. Like water buffalo, or oxen, taught to stand on their hind legs.

His eye composed the shot and snapped it off. A beauty of order and sly wit. The Boys at the Bowl.

The urinal scene reminded him of a clever pickpocket he had once seen operate in Bangkok. The thief, a keen student of human nature, would snatch wallets while gents were in midstream at a urinal and were reluctant, or unable, to go after him.

The photojournalist couldn't forget the comical image whenever he entered an airport men's room. He rarely forgot any image, actually. His mind was a well-run archive, a rival to Kodak's vast storehouses of pictures in Rochester.

He peered at his own image, a rather haggard and pasty-white face, in one of the cloudy bathroom mirrors. Unimpressive in every way, he couldn't help but think. His eyes were war-weary, an almost washed-out blue. Gazing at his eyes depressed him -- so much so that he sighed involuntarily.

He saw no other mind pictures to take in the mirror. Never, ever, a picture of himself.

He started to cough and couldn't stop. He finally brought up a thick packet of despicable, yellowish paste. His inner core, he thought. His animus was slowly leaking out.

Kevin Hawkins was only forty-three, but he felt like a hundred.

He had lived too hard, especially the last fourteen years. His life and times had been so very intense, often flamboyant and occasionally absurd. He had been burned, he often imagined, from every conceivable angle. He had played the game of life and death too hard, too well, too often.

He started to cough again and popped a Halls into his mouth.

Kevin Hawkins checked the time on his Seiko Kinetic wristwatch.

He quickly finger-combed his lank, grayish blond hair and then left the public bathroom.

He merged smoothly with the thick corridor traffic rolling past on the killing floor. It was almost time, and he was feeling a nice out-of-body buzz. He hummed an old, absolutely ridiculous song called “Rock the Casbah.” He was pulling a dark Delsey suitcase hinged on one of those cheap roller contraptions that were so popular. The “walking” suitcase made him look like a tourist, like a nobody of the first order.

The red-on-black digital clock over the airport passageway read 11:40. A Northwest Airlines jet from Tokyo had landed just a few minutes earlier. It had come into Gate 41, right on schedule.

Somepeople just know how to fly. Wasn't that Northwest's tag line?

The gods were smiling down on him; Kevin Hawkins felt a grim, humorless smile of his own. The gods loved the game, too.

Life and death. It was their game, actually.

He heard the first strains of a noisy commotion coming from the connecting Corridor B. The photojournalist kept walking ahead, until he was past the point where the two wide corridors connected.

That was when he saw the phalanx of bodyguards and wellwishers He saw no other mind pictures to take in the mirror. Never, ever, a picture of himself.

He started to cough and couldn't stop. He finally brought up a thick packet of despicable, yellowish paste. His inner core, he thought. His animus was slowly leaking out.

Kevin Hawkins was only forty-three, but he felt like a hundred.

He had lived too hard, especially the last fourteen years. His life and times had been so very intense, often flamboyant and occasionally absurd. He had been burned, he often imagined, from every conceivable angle. He had played the game of life and death too hard, too well, too often.

He started to cough again and popped a Halls into his mouth.

Kevin Hawkins checked the time on his Seiko Kinetic wristwatch.

He quickly finger-combed his lank, grayish blond hair and then left the public bathroom.

He merged smoothly with the thick corridor traffic rolling past on the killing floor. It was almost time, and he was feeling a nice out-of-body buzz. He hummed an old, absolutely ridiculous song called “Rock the Casbah.” He was pulling a dark Delsey suitcase hinged on one of those cheap roller contraptions that were so popular. The “walking” suitcase made him look like a tourist, like a nobody of the first order.

The red-on-black digital clock over the airport passageway read 11:40. A Northwest Airlines jet from Tokyo had landed just a few minutes earlier. It had come into Gate 41, right on schedule.

Somepeople just know how to fly. Wasn't that Northwest's tag line?

The gods were smiling down on him; Kevin Hawkins felt a grim, humorless smile of his own. The gods loved the game, too.

Life and death. It was their game, actually.

He heard the first strains of a noisy commotion coming from the connecting Corridor B. The photojournalist kept walking ahead, until he was past the point where the two wide corridors connected.

That was when he saw the phalanx of bodyguards and wellwishers.

He clicked off a shot in his mind. He got a peek at Mr. Tanaka of the Nipray Corporation. He clicked another shot.

His adrenaline was flowing like lava from Kilauea in Hawaii, where he'd once shot for Newsweek. Adrenaline. Nothing like it.

He was addicted to the stuff.

Any second now.

Any second.

Any nanosecond -- which, he knew, is to a second as a second is to about thirty years.

There was no X-marks-the-spot on the terminal floor, but Kevin Hawkins knew this was the place. He had it all visualized, every critical angle was vivid as hell in his mind's eye. All the intersect points were clear to him.

Any second. Life and death.

There might as well have been a big black X painted on the airport floor.

Kevin Hawkins felt like a god.

Here we go. Cameras loaded and at the ready. Lock and load!

Someone going to die here.

WHEN THE SEMIOFFICIAL ENTOURAGE was approximately twelve feet from the busy corridor-crossing, a small bomb detonated.

The explosion sent a cloud of gray-black smoke into Corridor A. Screams pierced the air like whining sirens.

The bomb had been inside a dark blue suitcase left next to the news and magazine kiosk. Kevin Hawkins had placed the innocent-looking suitcase directly in front of a sign that advised travelers to WATCH YOUR LUGGAGE AT ALL TIMES.

The deafening, booming noise and sudden chaos startled the bodyguards surrounding Mr. Tanaka. It made them erratic, and therefore predictable. Security teams, even the best of them, could be fooled if you forced them to improvise. Travelers and airport personnel were screaming, seeking cover where there was none to be had. Men, women, and children pressed themselves to the floor, faces hard against cold marble.

People haven't seen real panic until they've witnessed it in a large airport, where everyone is already close to the edge of primal fears.

Two of the bodyguards covered the corporate chairman, doing a half-way-decent job, Hawkins saw.

He clicked another mind photo. Stored it in his photo file for future reference.

This was good stuff, valuable as hell. How an excellent security team reacted under stress during an actual attack.

Then the efficient, if uninspired, bodyguards began to hurriedly move their “protected person” out of danger, out of harm's way. They obviously couldn't go forward into the smoky, bombed-out corridor. The security team chose to go back- their only choice, the one Kevin Hawkins knew they would make under duress.

They pulled along Mr. Tanaka as if he were a large, ungainly puppet or doll, which he pretty much was. They almost physically carried the important businessman, holding him under his arms so that both his feet left the floor at times.

Mind photo of that: expensive black tasseled loafers skipping across the marble floor.

The trained bodyguards had one goal: get the “protected person” out of there. The photojournalist let them proceed about thirty feet before he pushed the detonator in the shoulder bag housing his camera gear. It was that easy The best plans were one-button simple. Like a camera. Like a camera suitable for a child.

A second suitcase he had left alongside the corridor near the men's room exploded with double the thunder and lightning of the first, causing more than twice the damage. It was as if an invisible missile had been guided directly into the center of the airport.

The destruction was instantaneous, and it was brutal. Bodies, and even body parts, flew in every imaginable direction. Tanaka didn't survive. Neither did any of the four diligent and highly underpaid bodyguards.

The photojournalist was tightly wedged in amidst the rushing wall of men and women trying to escape toward the airport exits.

His was just another terrified face in the stormy human sea.

And, yes, he could look very terrified. He knew more than any of them what fear looked like. He had photographed uncontrolled fear on so many faces. He often saw those awful looks of terror, those silent screams, in his dreams.

He held back a tight, grim smile as he turned onto Corridor D and headed toward his own plane. He was going to Washington, D.C., that evening and hoped the delays caused by the murder wouldn't be massively long.

The risk had been a necessary one, actually. This had been a rehearsal, the last rehearsal.

Now, on to far more important things. The photojournalist had a very big job in D.C. The code name was easy enough for him to remember.

Jack and Jill.

“THE EIGHTEEN-ACRE ESTATE around the White House includes many diversions: a private movie theater, gym, wine cellar, tennis courts, bowling lanes, rooftop greenhouse, and a golf range on the South Lawn. The house and property are currently assessed at three hundred forty million by the District of Columbia.” I could almost do the spiel myself.

I showed my temporary pass, then carefully drove down into the parking garage under the White House. On the way in I had noticed some renovation to the main building and also extensive groundwork, but overall the White House looked just fine to me.

My head was not so fine. It was uneasy Filled with chaotic thoughts. I had slept only a couple of hours the night before, and that was becoming a pattern. The morning's Washington Post and New York Times lay folded on the car seat beside me.

The Post headline asked Who's NEXT FOR JACK AND JILL? It seemed like a question directed right at me. who's NEXT?

I thought about a possible attempt on the life of President Thomas Byrnes, as I walked from the small parking garage to the elevator. A lot of people were extremely high on the President and his programs. Americans had clamored for change for a long time, and President Byrnes was delivering it in large doses. Of course, what most people want “change” to mean is more money in their pockets, instantly, without any sacrifice on their part.

So who might be angry and crazed enough at the President to want him murdered? I knew that was why I was at the White House. I was here to conduct a homicide investigation. In the White House. A search for a couple of killers who could be planning to murder the President.

I met Don Hamerman in the West Wing Entrance Hall. He was still acting extremely high strung and anxious, but that seemed to be his persona. It also fit the times. The chief of staff and I talked for a few minutes in the hallway He went out of his way to tell me that I had been handpicked for the investigation because of my expertise with high-profile killers, especially psychopaths.

He seemed to know an awful lot about me. As he talked, I imagined that he'd probably gotten the coveted brownnoser award in his senior year at Yale or Harvard, where he had also learned to talk with a whiny, upper-class drawl.

I had absolutely no idea what to expect that morning.

Hamerman said he was going to line up some “interviews” for me. I sensed some of his frustration in trying to organize an investigation like this inside the White House. A murder investigation.

He left me alone inside the Map Room on the ground floor.

I paced around the famous room, absently checking out the' elaborately carved Chippendale furniture, an oil portrait of Ben Franklin, a landscape painting titled Tending Cows and Sheep. I already had a busy day ahead. I had appointments set up at the city morgue and with Benjamin Levitsky, the number two at the FBI's intelligence unit.

I continued to be frustrated about the Truth School child murders.

For the moment, that was Sampson's concern. Sampson's and our part-time posse of detectives'. But I couldn't keep it off my mind.

Suddenly, someone entered the Map Room along with the national security advisor. I was taken by surprise. I was blown away, actually. No words could possibly describe the feeling.

Don Hamerman stiffly announced, “President Byrnes will see you now.”

“GOOD MORNING. Is it Doctor or Detective Cross?” President Thomas Byrnes asked me.

I had a sneaking suspicion that Dr. Cross would serve me much better at the White House. Like Dr. Bunche, Dr. Kissinger, or even Doc Savage. “I guess that I prefer Alex,” I said to him.

The President's face lit up in a broad smile, and it was the same charismatic one I had seen many times on television and on the front pages of newspapers.

“And I prefer Tom,” the President said. He extended his hand and the two of us shook off our surnames. His grip was firm and steady. He held eye contact with me for several seconds.

The President of the United States managed to sound both cordial and appropriately serious at the same time. He was about six feet tall, and he was trim and fit at fifty. His hair was light brown, trimmed with silver-gray He looked a little like a fighter pilot. His eyes were very sensitive and warm. He was already known as our most personable president in many years, and also our most dynamic.

I had read and heard a lot about the man I was meeting for the first time. He had been the successful and much-admired head of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit before he decided to go for an even higher executive office. He had run for the presidency as an Independent, and true to the polls of the past few years, the people had voted for fresh, independent thinking -- or maybe they were just voting against the Republican and Democratic Parties, as some pundits believed. So far, he had shown himself to be a contemporary thinker, but a bit contrarian, a genuine maverick in high office. As an independent mover and shaker, the President had made few friends in Washington, but lots of enemies.

“The director of the FBI highly recommended you,” he said.

"I think Stephen Bowen's a pretty good man. What do you think?

Any opinion of him?"

“I agree with you. The Bureau has changed a lot in the past couple of years under Bowen. We work well with them now. That didn't used to be the case.”

The President nodded. “Is this a real threat, Alex, or are we just taking wise precautions?” he asked me. It was a tough, blunt question. I also thought it was the right question to ask.

“I think the concern of the Secret Service is definitely a wise precaution,” I said. “The coincidence of the names Jack and Jill being the same as your code names with the Secret Service, that's very disturbing. So is the killers' pattern of going after famous people here in Washington.”

“I guess I fit that damn description. Sad but true,” President Byrnes said and frowned. I had read that he was an intensely private man and down-to-earth as well. He seemed that way to me. Midwestern in the best sense. I guess what surprised me the most was the warmth that came from the man.

“As you have admitted yourself, you're 'shaking up the toy box.” You've already disturbed a lot of people."

"Stay tuned, there are a lot more major disturbances to come.

This government badly needs to be reengineered. It was designed for life in the eighteen hundreds. Alex, I'm going to cooperate in any way I can with the police investigation. I don't want anyone else to be hurt, let alone die. I've certainly thought about it, but I'm not ready to die yet. I think Sally and I are decent people. I hope you'll feel that way the more you're around us. We're far from perfect, but we are decent. We're trying to do the right thing."

I was already feeling that way about the President. He had quickly struck a good chord with me. At the same time, I wondered how much of what he'd said I could believe. He was, after all, a politician. The best in the land.

“Every year, several people try to break into the White House, Alex. One man succeeded by tagging onto the end of the marine marching band. Quite a few have tried to ram the front gates with cars. In ninety-four, Frank Eugene Corder flew a single-engine Cessna in here.”

“But so far, nothing like this,” I said.

The President asked the real question on his mind. “What's your bottom line on Jack and Jill?”

“No bottom line yet. Maybe a morning line,” I told him.

"I disagree with the FBI. I don't see them as pattern killers.

They're highly organized, but the pattern seems artificial to me.

I'll bet they're both attractive, white, with well above normal IQ. They have to be articulate and persuasive to get into the places that they did. They want to accomplish something even more spectacular. What they've done so far is only groundwork.

They enjoy the power of manipulating both us and the media.

That's what I have so far. It's what I'm prepared to talk about, anyway."

The President nodded solemnly. “I have a good feeling about you, Alex,” he said. “I'm glad we met for a couple of minutes here. I was told that you have two children,” he said. He reached into his jacket and handed me a presidential tie clasp and a pin especially designed for kids. "Keepsakes are important, I think.

You see, I believe in tradition as well as in change."

President Byrnes shook my hand again, looked me directly in the eye for a moment, and then left the room.

I understood that I had just been welcomed to the team, and the sole purpose of the team was to protect the President's life. I found that I was powerfully motivated to do just that. I looked down at the tie clasp and pin for Damon and Jannie and was strangely moved.

“SO DID YOU get to meet the royal couple yet?” Nana Mama asked when I entered her kitchen about four that afternoon.

She was making something in a big gray stewpot that smelled like the proverbial ambrosia. It was white bean soup, one of my favorites. Rosie the cat was prowling around on the counters, purring contentedly Rosie in the kitchen.

At the same time Nana cooked at the counter, she was doing the crossword puzzle in the Washington Post. A book of her word jumbles was also out in view. So was No Stone Unturned -- The Life and Times of Maggie Kuhn. Complicated woman, my grandmother.

“Did I meet who?” I pretended not to understand her crystal-.

clear and very pointed question to me. I was playing the game that the two of us have had going for many years, and probably will until death do us part somehow, sometime, someway.

“Meet whom, Dr. Cross. The President and Mrs. President, of course. The well-to-do white folks who live in the White House, looking down on the rest of us. Tom and Sally up in Camelot for the nineties.”

I smiled at her usual high-spirited and occasionally bittersweet banter. I looked in the fridgc. “I didn't come home for the third and fourth degree, you know. I'm going to make a sandwich from this brisket. It looks moist and tender. Or are looks deceiving?”

"Of course they are, but this brisket is moist and you could cut it with a soup spoon. Seems as if they work very short hours over at the White House, considering all that they have to do.

Somehow, I suspected as much. But I could never prove it until now. So who did you meet?"

I couldn't resist. I had been going to tell her this much anyway.

“I met and talked with the President this morning.”

“You met Tom?”

Nana pretended to take a punch in the manner of the heavyweight boxer George Foreman. She did a stumbling stutter-step back from the counter. She even cracked a tiny smile. “Well, tell me all about Tom, for heaven's sake. And Sally. Does Sally wear a black pillbox hat inside the White House in the daytime?”

“I think that was Jacqueline Kennedy. Actually, I liked President Byrnes,” I said as I commenced making a thick brisket sandwich on fresh rye with bib lettuce, tomatoes, and a dab of mayonnaise, lots of pepper, a whisk of salt.

“You would. You like everybody unless they kill somebody,” Nana said as she began to slice up some more tomatoes. “Now that you've met Mr. President, you can get back on the Sojourner Truth School case. That's very important to the people in this house. The Gray House. No black people care very much about the President and his problems anymore. Nor should they.”

“Is that a fact, Mrs. Farrakhan?” I said as I bit into my sandwich.

Delicious, as promised. Cut it with a soup spoon, melts in the mouth.

“Should be a fact, if it isn't. It's close to a fact, anyway. I'll admit that it's a sad state of affairs, but it's the sad state we all live in. Don't you agree? You must.”

“You ever hear of mellowing with age?” I asked her. “Your brisket is terrific, by the way.”

“You ever hear of getting better, not getting older? You ever hear of taking care of one's own kind? You ever hear about teeny-tiny, darling black children being murdered in our neighborhood, Alex, and nobody doing enough to make it stop? Of course the brisket is excellent. You see, I am getting better.”

I reached into my trouser pocket and took out the clasp and pin that the President had given me. “The President knew I had two children. He gave me these keepsakes for them.” I handed them over to Nana. She took them, and for once in her life, she was speechless.

“Tell them that these are from Tom and that he's a fine man trying to do the right thing.”

I finished half of my overstuffed sandwich and took the remaining half With me out of the kitchen. If you can't stand the heat and all that. “Thanks for the delicious sandwich, and the advice. In that order.”

“Where are you going now?” Nana called after me. She was winding up again. "We were talking about an important matter.

Genocide against black people right here in Washington, our nation's capital. They don't care what happens in these neighborhoods, Alex. They is them, and them is white, and you're collaborating with the enemy."

“Actually, I'm going out to put in a few hours on the Truth School murder case,” I called back as I continued toward the front door, and blessed escape from the tirade. I couldn't see Nana Mama anymore, but I could hear her voice trailing behind me like a banshee cry, or maybe the caw of a field crow.

“Alex has finally found his senses!” she exclaimed in a loud, shrill voice. “There's hope after all. There's hope. Oh, thank you, Black Lord in Heaven.”

The old goat can still get my goat, and I love her for it. I just don't want to listen to her annoying rap sometimes.

I beeped the car horn of my old Porsche on the way out of the driveway. It's our signal that everything is all right between us. From inside the house, I heard Nana call out: “Beep back at you!”

I WAS BACK on the mean streets of inner Washington, the underside of the capital. I was a homicide detective again. I loved it with a strange passion, but there were times when I hated it with all my heart.

We were doing all that could humanly be done on both cases.

I had set up surveillance on the Truth School during the day and also had day and night surveillance on Shanelie Green's gravesite.

Often psycho killers showed up at victims' graves. They were ghouls, after all.

The circus was definitely in town.

Two of them.

Two completely different kinds of murder pattern. I had never seen anything like it, nothing even close to this chaos.

I didn't need Nana Mama to remind me that I wanted to be out on the street right now. As she had said, Someone is killing our children.

I was certain that the unspeakable monster was going to kill again. In contrast to Jack and Jill, there was rage and passion in his work. There was a raw, scary craziness, the kind I could almost taste. The killer's probable amateur status wasn't reassuring, either.

Think like the killer. Walk in the killer's shoes, I reminded myself.

laborating with the enemy."

“Actually, I'm going out to put in a few hours on the Truth School murder case,” I called back as I continued toward the front door, and blessed escape from the tirade. I couldn't see Nana Mama anymore, but I could hear her voice trailing behind me like a banshee cry, or maybe the caw of a field crow.

“Alex has finally found his senses!” she exclaimed in a loud, shrill voice. “There's hope after all. There's hope. Oh, thank you, Black Lord in Heaven.”

The old goat can still get my goat, and I love her for it. I just don't want to listen to her annoying rap sometimes.

I beeped the car horn of my old Porsche on the way out of the driveway. It's our signal that everything is all right between us. From inside the house, I heard Nana call out: “Beep back at you!”

I WAS BACK on the mean streets of inner Washington, the underside of the capital. I was a homicide detective again. I loved it with a strange passion, but there were times when I hated it with all my heart.

We were doing all that could humanly be done on both cases.

I had set up surveillance on the Truth School during the day and also had day and night surveillance on Shanelie Green's gravesite.

Often psycho killers showed up at victims' graves. They were ghouls, after all.

The circus was definitely in town.

Two of them.

Two completely different kinds of murder pattern. I had never seen anything like it, nothing even close to this chaos.

I didn't need Nana Mama to remind me that I wanted to be out on the street right now. As she had said, Someone is killing our children.

I was certain that the unspeakable monster was going to kill again. In contrast to Jack and Jill, there was rage and passion in his work. There was a raw, scary craziness, the kind I could almost taste. The killer's probable amateur status wasn't reassuring, either.

Think like the killer. Walk in the killer's shoes, I reminded myself.

That's how it all starts, but it's a lot tougher than it sounds. I was gathering as much information and data as I possibly could.

I spent part of the afternoon ambushing several of the local hangarounds who might have picked up something on the murders: convivial street people, swooning pipeheads, young runners for the rock and weed dealers, a few low-level rollers themselves, store owners, snitches, Muslims selling newspapers.

I gave some of them a tough time, but nobody had anything useful for me.

I kept at The Job anyway. That's the way it goes most days. You just keep at it, keep your head down and screwed on straight.

About quarter past five, I found myself talking to a seventeen-year-old homeless youth I knew from working the soup kitchen at St. Anthony's. His name was Loy McCoy, and he was a low-level crack runner now. He had helped me once or twice in the past.

Loy had stopped coming by for free food once he had started moving nickel and dime bags of crack and speed around the neighborhood. It's hard to blame kids like Loy, as much as I would like to some days. Their lives are unbelievably brutal and hopeless.

Then one day someone comes along and offers them fifteen or twenty bucks an hour to do what's going to happen anyway The more powerful emotional hook is that their dope bosses believe in them, and in many cases nobody has believed in any of these lost kids before.

I called Loy over, away from the posse of fools he was hanging with on L Street. They all wore black, machine-knit wool caps pulled low over their eyes and ears. Gold toothcaps, hoop earrings, baggy trousers, the works. His gang was talking about the movie based on the old Flintstones cartoon, or maybe about the actual cartoons. Yabba dabbas was one of the catchphrases used to describe police patrolmen and detectives in the 'hood. Here comes the yabba dabba. Or, he's a yabba dabba doo motherfucker. I had recently read a sad statistic that seventy percent of Americans got nearly one hundred percent of their information from television and the movies.

Loy smirked as he slow-shuffled up to me at the street corner.

He was maybe six one, but about only a hundred and forty pounds. He had on baggy, layered winter clothes, artfully torn, and he was “grittin” me today, trying to stare me down, put me down.

“Yo, you say c'mon over, I got to come?” Loy asked in a defiant tone that I found both irritating and monumentally sad.

“Whyzat? I pay my taxes,” he rapped on. “I aren't holdin'. Ain't none of us holdin'.”

“None of your bullshit attitude works on me,” I told him.

“You better lose it right now.” I knew that his mother was a heroin addict and that he had three little sisters. All of them lived at the Greater Southeast Community Hospital shelter, which was like having the tunnels under Union Station as your home address.

“Say your business, an' I get back to my business,” Loy said, remaining defiant. “My time's money, unnerstand? Axt me what you got to axt.”

“Just one question for you, Loy. Then you can go back to your big money business dealings.”

He kept “grittin” me, which can get you shot in this neighborhood. “Why I have to answer any questions? What's in it for me? What you have to deal?”

I finally smiled at Loy and he cracked a half-smile himself, showing off his shiny gold caps. “You give me something, maybe I'll remember. Then maybe I'll owe you one sometime,” I said.

“Yo,” he came right back at me. “Wanna know a big fat secret, Detective? I don't need your markers. And I don't much care about these murdered kids' homo-cides you lookin' into.” He shrugged as if it were no big deal on the street. I already knew that.

I waited for him to finish his little speech, and also to process my offer. The sad thing was that he was bright. Crazy smart. That was why the crack boss had hired him. Loy was smart enough, and he probably even had a decent work ethic.

“I can't talk to you! Don't have to, neither!” he finally did a little exasperated spin and threw up both his skinny arms. “You think I owe you 'cause once upon a time you fed us Manhandler soup-slop at the po'boy kitchen? Think I owe you? I don't owe you shit!”

Loy started to strut away. Then he looked back at me, as if he had just one more irritating wisecrack to hurl my way. His dark eyes narrowed, caught mine, and held on for a second. Contact.

Liftoff.

“Somebody saw an old man where that little girl got kilt,” Loy blurted out. It'was the biggest news we had so far on the Truth School case. It was the only news, and it was what I had been looking for all these days working the street.

He had no idea how fast I was, or how strong. I reached out and pulled him close to me. I pulled Loy McCoy very close. So close I could smell the sweet peppermint on his breath, the scent of pomade in his hair, the mustiness of his badly wrinkled winter clothes.

I held him to my chest as if he were a son of mine, a prodigal son, a young fool who needed to understand that I wasn't going to allow him to be this way with me. I held him real tight and I wanted to save him somehow. I wanted to save all of them, but I couldn't, and it was one of the big hurts and frustrations of my life.

"I'm not fooling around here, now. Who told you that, Loy?

You talk to me. Don't fuck with me on this. Talk to me, and talk to me now."

His face was inches from mine. My mouth was almost pressed against his cheek. All of his street swagger and the attitude had disappeared. I didn't like being a tough guy with him, but this was important as hell.

My hands are large and scarred, like a boxer's, and I let him see them. “I'm waiting for an answer,” I whispered. “I will take you in. I will ruin your day and night.”

“Don't know who,” he said between wheezing breaths. "Some people in the shelter be sayin' it. I just heard it, you know.

Old homeless dude. Somebody saw'm hangin' in Garfield. White dude in the park."

“A white man? On the southeast side of the park? You sure about that?”

"That's right. What I said. What I heard. Now, let me go.

C'mon, man, let go!"

I let him pull away from me, walk away a few steps.

Loy regained his composure and cool as soon as he realized that I wasn't going to hurt him,. or even take him in for questioning.

“That's the story. You oweme,” he said. “I'm gonna collect, too.”

I don't believe Loy saw the irony in what he was saying.

“I owe you,” I said. “Thanks, Loy.” I hope you don't ever have to collect.

He winked at me. “Be all you can be, all-riii!” he said and laughed and laughed as he walked back to the other crack runners.

AN OLD HOMELESS MAN near the muzzler scene. In Garfield Park. That was something solid to work with, finally. I had paid some dues and gotten a return on investment.

A white man. A white suspect.

That was even more promising. There weren't too many white males hanging out in the Garfield Park area. That was for sure.

I called Sampson and told him what I'd found out. He'd just come on duty for the night shift. I asked John how it was going on his end. He said that it wasn't going, but maybe now it would.

He would let the others in our group know.

At a little past five, I stopped by the Sojourner Truth School again. There were several forces strongly pulling me in the direction of the school. The new information about the homeles white man and the constant feeling that just maybe my nemesis Gary Soneji might be involved. That was part of it. Then there was Christine johnson. Mrs. Johnson.

Once again, nobody was sitting at the desk in the outer office.

The multiracial dolls on the desk looked abandoned. So did some “face doodles” and a couple of Goosebump books. The hea/ wooden door into the main office was shut tight.

I couldn't hear anyone inside, but I knocked anyway I heard a drawer bang shut, then footsteps. The door opened. It wasn't locked.

Christine Johnson had on a cashmere jacket and long wool skirt. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a yellow bow.

She was wearing her glasses. Working barefoot. I thought of a line- from Dorothy Parker, I think- Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses.

Seeing her lifted my spirits, brought me up immediately I didn't know exactly why, but it did.

It occurred to me that she worked late at the school a lot. That was her business, but I wondered why she spent so much time here.

“Yes, I'm working late again. You caught me in the act. Red-handed, guilty as charged. A friend of yours dropped by the school this morning,” she said. “A detective John Sampson.”

“He's in charge of the case,” I said.

“He seems very dedicated and concerned. Surprising in a lot of ways. He's reading Camus,” she said.

I wondered how he had worked that into their conversation.

Among other noble pursuits, Sampson is dedicated to meeting interesting and attractive women, like Christine Johnson. It wouldn't bother him that she was married, unless it bothered her.

Sampson can be chivalrous to a fault, but only if it's appreciated.

“Sampson reads a lot, always has since I've known him. My grandmother taught him in school, before I met him, actually He's the original Pagemaster.”

Christine Johnson smiled, showed me all those beautiful teeth of hers. “You're familiar with the movie Pagemaster? I guess you must see them all.”

“I do see them all. Anything the kids 'have to, have to see, Daddy!” We gave Pagemaster a six. But we're not as down on Master Macauley Culkin as some people seem to be."

She continued to smile and seemed to be an extremely nice person. Smart enough to do many things- patient and concerned enough to do this difficult job in the city. I envied her students.

I got right down to the business I had at the school. “The reason I stopped by is that there's a possible ID on the killer -- a start, anyway. I heard about it this afternoon, not too long ago.”

Christine Johnson listened closely to what I had to say. Her brow furrowed deeply Her brown eyes were intense. She was a good listener, which, if I remembered correctly, was unusual for a school principal.

“An older man, a white man, was seen in the vicinity of where Shanelle Green was originally abducted in Garfield Park. He was described as a street person. Possibly a homeless man. Not very big, with a full white beard, wearing a brown or black poncho.”

“Should I tell that to the teachers? What about the children?” she asked as I finished the description.

“I'd like to have someone stop by here tomorrow morning to talk to the teachers again,” I said. “We don't know if this lead is anything, but it could be important. It's the best thing we have so far.”

“An ounce of prevention,” she said, then smiled. Actually, she laughed at herself. “That's what is known, derogatively, as 'teacher talk.” You can catch a dose of it if you hang around here too much. Too many clichs. You sometimes find yourself talking to other adults as if they were five or six years old. It drives my husband crazy."

“Is your husband a teacher, too?” I asked. It just came out. Shit.

She shook her head and seemed amused for some reason.

“No, no. George is a lawyer. He'S a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, actually Fortunately, he's only trying to push the interests of energy businesses. Occidental Petroleum, Pepco Energy Company, the Edison Electric Institute. I can live with that.” She laughed.

“Well, most of the time I can.” Her look was innocent, but not naive. Maybe just a little conspiratorial.

“Well, I wanted to pass on the news about our suspect. Maybe we have a real suspect this time,” I said. “I've got to run.”

“Don't,” Christine Johnson said, and I stopped short, startled a little.

Then she smiled that knowing smile of hers. Quietly dazzling and appealing as could be.

“Absolutely no running in the halls,” she winked at me.

“Gotcha!” Cute.

I laughed and was on my merry way, back to work after a brief moment of sweetness and light. I did like her quite a lot. Who wouldn't? Maybe we could be friends somehow, someway, but probably not.

Nothing was coming out right; nothing was working very well.

An old homeless white man was the best we could do. It wasn't bad police work, but it wasn't enough. Not even close. Two impossible cases. Jesus!

I pulled my car way down the street and watched the Truth School for a couple of hours that night. My son's school. Maybe a homeless white man would come by -- but one didn't.

I left the stakeout about half an hour after Christine Johnson left hers.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK of our magic carpet ride so far? On a scale of one to eleven?” Jack asked Jill, Sam asked Sara. They were floating high over the Maryland countryside.

"It's absolutely beautiful. It's as thrilling as can be. Unbelievable.

The simple joy of flying like a bird."

"Hard to imagine that this is work. But it is, Monkey Face.

This could be important for us, for everything we're doing, for the game."

“I know that, Sam. I'm paying attention.”

“I know you are. Always so diligent.”

The two of them were sitting close together inside the tiny cockpit of a Blanik L-23 sailplane. They had flown the sailplane out of Frederick Municipal Airport in Maryland, about an hour from downtown Washington. It was the perfect treat for herl Sara couldn't help thinking. The perfect metaphor. The gimp was flying. Unbelievable. Her entire life was that way now.

Down below, she could see Frederick, with its many examples of German Colonial architecture. She could actually make out several of the cutesy-pie shops on Antique Walk in town. The sky was filled with cumulus, like cotton balls moving lightly over a calm sea. Sara had told Sam that she'd gone up in a sail-plane once, and it was “just about the best thing I've ever done.”

He'd said, “We'll go tomorrow afternoon. I know just the place, Monkey Face. Perfect! I want to fly over Camp David, where the President goes to stay I want to look down on President Byrnes's retreat. I want to drop an imaginary bomb on his ass.”

Sam Harrison already knew a great deal about Camp David, but the view from the air could be useful anyhow. An attack on the presidential retreat was a very real possibility in the future -- especially if the Secret Service continued to keep President Byrnes tightly under wraps, as they had for the past few days.

Everything about Jack and Jill was so much harder now, but he had expected that. It was why they had several plans, not just one. The President of the United States was going to die -- it was just a matter of when and where. The how had already been decided. Soon the when and where would be taken care of as well.

“Isn't this risky, flying so close to Camp David?” Sara asked.

He smiled at the question. He knew that she had been biting her tongue as they floated north from Frederick, inching closer and closer to the presidential outpost, closer and closer to danger, maybe even disaster.

"So far, it's not too risky. Sailplanes and hot-air balloons do it all the time. Catch a distant peek at where the President stays.

He's not here right now, so they're not as paranoid on the ground.

We can't get too close, though. Ever since that plane landed at the White House, this airspace is protected with missiles. I doubt they'd shoot down a sailplane, but who knows?"

They could see the buildings at Fort David below, just a little to the northeast in Catoctin Mountain Park. There were three Army Jeeps left in the open. No one seemed to be out on the well-wooded grounds today, though. Camp David itself looked rather odd: a strange cross between Army barracks and a rustic vacation place. Not too formidable. Nothing they couldn't work with, if need be, if the final plan demanded it.

“Camp David. Named after Eisenhower's grandson,”Jack said.

“Pretty good president, Ike. Generals usually are.”

Jack touched the holstered Beretta on his ankle. The gun was reassuring. But nothing was going to happen to the President right now, or to Jack and Jill. No, the game was about to go off in another direction. That was the beauty of it -- no one could predict where it would go. It was a game, designed as one, played as one.

He felt Sara's hand lightly touch his cheek. “How much longer do we have?” she asked. He suspected that she didn't want the sailplane ride to end.

“They'll never catch us,” he said and smiled.

“No, the ride, silly,” she laughed and patted his arm. “How much longer do we have up here?”

“You're not bored already? We're nowhere near the world's altitude record -- about forty-nine thousand feet, if I recall. Need a hell of a wave lift for that.” Suddenly, he seemed concerned that she might not be having a good time. That was just like Sam.

“No, no,” she laughed and put her arm around his neck. Sara held him tightly “I love it up here, love flying, love being with you. Thank you -- for everything.”

“You're welcome, Monkey Face,” he whispered against her cheek.

Two incredible killers.

Jack and Jill.

Flying over the President's famous retreat at Camp David.

See you soon, Mr. President. There nothing you can do to stop this from happening. Nowhere you can hide from us. Trust us on that.

Haven't we kept all of our promises so far?

ON THE HOUR-LONG DRIVE back to Washington, Sam seemed distracted and distant. Sara cautiously watched him out of the corner of her eye. It was as if he were still up in the sail-plane.

His brow was furrowed, his deep-blue eyes set on the road ahead.

He could get like this sometimes; but then again, so could she.

Sara the worrier. Sara the drudge.

They both understood and mostly accepted the good and the bad points about each other. The game of Jack and Jill was getting much tougher now for both of them. Every move was chancy and fraught with danger. They could be caught before the mission was completed. The hunters were all over the place.

One of the largest manhunts in history was under way. Not only in Washington, D.C., but everywhere around the world.

“I was just thinking about the game and how it's going, an honest evaluation. I was considering- a game inside our game,” Sam finally said. “Something more sophisticated. Completely unexpected by our trackers.”

Sara watched him detaching from his reverie, coming away from it, coming back to her.

“Yes, I could see that you were somewhere other than here on the beltway with me and all of these commuters. That much was pretty obvious.”

Sam grinned. “Sorry. You probably smelled the wood burning, too.” He was incredibly self-effacing -- something else she enjoyed about him. He didn't seem to realize that he was something special; or if he did, he kept it to himself. God, it was so easy when they were together, so hard when they were apart.

Sara wondered how she had survived before she met Sam. The answer was, Basically, she hadn't. She had been alive, but she didn't have a life. Now, she did.

“You're concerned about the progress of the game from here on, the exact sequence,” she said. “It's furrowed your brow. Poor dear Sam. What's your idea?”

He smiled and shook his head. He often told her how perceptive and intelligent she was. Not many men had ever said that to Sara Rosen -- practically none, in fact. Her intelligence scared most men. Even worse, she was verbal. So men usually needed to keep her down, to put her down constantly, to belittle anything she said that they we road ahead.

He could get like this sometimes; but then again, so could she.

Sara the worrier. Sara the drudge.

They both understood and mostly accepted the good and the bad points about each other. The game of Jack and Jill was getting much tougher now for both of them. Every move was chancy and fraught with danger. They could be caught before the mission was completed. The hunters were all over the place.

One of the largest manhunts in history was under way. Not only in Washington, D.C., but everywhere around the world.

“I was just thinking about the game and how it's going, an honest evaluation. I was considering- a game inside our game,” Sam finally said. “Something more sophisticated. Completely unexpected by our trackers.”

Sara watched him detaching from his reverie, coming away from it, coming back to her.

“Yes, I could see that you were somewhere other than here on the beltway with me and all of these commuters. That much was pretty obvious.”

Sam grinned. “Sorry. You probably smelled the wood burning, too.” He was incredibly self-effacing -- something else she enjoyed about him. He didn't seem to realize that he was something special; or if he did, he kept it to himself. God, it was so easy when they were together, so hard when they were apart.

Sara wondered how she had survived before she met Sam. The answer was, Basically, she hadn't. She had been alive, but she didn't have a life. Now, she did.

“You're concerned about the progress of the game from here on, the exact sequence,” she said. “It's furrowed your brow. Poor dear Sam. What's your idea?”

He smiled and shook his head. He often told her how perceptive and intelligent she was. Not many men had ever said that to Sara Rosen -- practically none, in fact. Her intelligence scared most men. Even worse, she was verbal. So men usually needed to keep her down, to put her down constantly, to belittle anything she said that they weren't entirely one hundred percent comfortable with.

Sam wasn't that way. He seemed to understand exactly what she needed. Is that part of the game, too? she wondered. Part of his game?

“There's going to be tremendous heat from the police and FBI coming our way soon,” he said, staring straight ahead at the gray ribbons of roadway. “What's gone before was nothing, Sara, absolutely nothing. The manhunt will increase exponentially from here on. They want to capture us badly. The FBI is assembling the best team possible, and make no mistake, it will be an impressive group. Sooner or later, they'll find something on us. It's inevitable that they will.”

Sara nodded in agreement. Still, he had frightened her. “I know that. i'm ready for it; at least, think I am. You have an idea how to deal with this blistering heat that's coming our way?”

"Yes, I think I do. It's something I've been thinking about for a while, but I believe I've solved it. Let me try this one out on you.

Tell me what you think."

See? He did want her opinions. Always. He was so different from the others.

He looked over at her, made eye contact. "It's so simple, really.

We need perfect alibis. I have an idea how to accomplish that. It involves a slight change in our game plan, but I think it's worth it."

She tried to keep the concern out of her voice. “What kind of change? You don't want to go after the target we already agreed on?”

“I want to change the next target, yes, but I want to change something else as well. I want to get someone else to do the next kill. That way, we'll both have airtight alibis. I think it's a powerful twist. I think it could be the clincher for us. If anyone is onto either of us, this will throw them off completely.”

They were coming down Wisconsin Avenue and into Washington. The city looked like aJ. M. W. Turner painting, Sara decided. Hazy light, caught just right. "I like your thinking a lot.

It's a good plan. Who would you get?" she asked.

“I've already made a contact,” Sam said. “I think I have the perfect person for this little twist. He thinks the way we do, believes in the cause. He happens to be right here in Washington.”

A SECRET SERVICE AGENT named James McLean, one of Jay Grayer's lieutenants, walked me around the White House. More than a million visitors come here every year, but this was the show none of them got. This was the real deal.

Instead of the usual tour of Library, East, Blue, Green, and Red Rooms, I got to see the private family quarters on the second and third floors. I requested a viewing of the President's offices in the West Wing, as well as Vice President Mahoney's in the Executive Office Building.

As the two of us wandered through the impressive Center Hall, with its bright yellow color scheme, I half expected either “Ruffles and Flourishes” or “Hail to the Chief” to suddenly ring out.

Agent McLean was filling me in on details about security at the White House. The grounds were covered by audio and pressure sensors, electronic eyes, and infrared. A SWAT team was on the roof at all times now. Helicopters were less than two and a half minutes away. Somehow, I wasn't comforted by the tight security

“What do you think of all this?” McLean asked as he led me into the Cabinet Room. It was dominated by serious-looking leather chairs, each bearing a brass plaque with the cabinet member's title. A very impressive place to visit.

“What I'm thinking is that every person working here has to be checked out,” I said.

“They've all been checked, Alex.”

"I know that. They haven't been checked by me, though.

We need to check them all over again. I'd like each of them run against an interest in poetry or literature, even college degrees in literature; any kind of filmmaking experience; painting, sculpting, any endeavor requiring creativity. I'd like to know what magazines they subscribe to. Also their charitable contributions."

If McLean had an opinion on all that, he kept it to himself.

“Anything else?” he asked.

We were looking out over the Rose Garden. I could see office buildings off in the distance, so I assumed they could see us. I didn't like that too much.

“Year, I'm afraid so,” I went on. "While we're doing those background checks, we need to look at everyone in the crisis group.

You can start with me."

Agent James McLean stared at me for a long moment.

“You're shitting me, aren't you?” he finally spoke his mind.

I spoke my mind, too. “I shit you not. This is a murder investigation. This is how it's done.”

The dragonslayer had come to the White House.

THE PHOTOJOURNALIST had chosen a conservative dark gray suit and a striped rep's tie for the sold-out performance of Miss Saigon at the Kennedy Center.

He had cut his grayish blond hair short; the ponytail was long gone. He no longer wore a diamond stud earring. It was doubtful whether anyone he knew would have recognized him. Just as it should be, as it had to be from now until the end of the game.

“Seems like old times,” Kevin Hawkins sang softly as he crossed a parking lot facing USA Today headquarters across the river in Rosslyn.

“Keep those big presses running,” he muttered under his breath. “Might have something for you later. Might just have a big, late-breaking story tonight at the Kennedy Center. Quien sabe?”

He was so glad to be back in Washington, where he'd lived at various times in the past. He was happy to be back in the game as well. The game of games, he couldn't help thinking, and believing it in his heart. Code name: Jack and Jill. Intrigue just didn't get any better than this. It couldn't.

There were two essential parts to his psychological buildup as he approached the difficult evening ahead. The first part was to make himself as cautious, as suspicious, as paranoid, as he possibly could. The second part, equally important, was to pump himself up with a full megadose of confidence so that he would succeed.

He could not fail. He would not fail, he told himself. His job was to murder someone -- often a well-known someone, sometimes in public view -- and not get caught.

In public view.

And not get caught.

So far, he had never been caught in the act.

He found it curious, though not particularly disturbing anymore, that he had little or no conscience, no guilt about the killings; and yet he could be perfectly normal in many other areas of his life. His sister, Eileen, for example, called him the “last believer” and the “last patriot.” Her children thought he was the nicest, kindest Uncle Kevin imaginable. His parents back in Hudson adored him. He had plenty of nice, normal, close friends all around the globe. And yet here he was, ready for another cold-blooded kill. Looking forward to it, actually. Craving it.

His adrenaline was pumping, but he felt less than nothing about the intended victim tonight. There were billions of people on the earth, far too many of them. What did one less human mean? Not a whole lot, any goddamn way you looked at it. If you took a logical view of the world.

At the same time, he was extremely cautious as he entered the glittery Kennedy Center, with its gleaming crystal chandeliers and Matisse tapestries. He glanced up at the chandeliers in the Grand Foyer. With their hundreds of different prisms and lamps, they probably weighed a ton apiece.

He was going to murder in public view, under the bright lights, under all these prisms and lamps.

And not get caught!

What an incredible magic trick. How good he was at this.

His seat had been purchased for him, the theater ticket left in a locker at Union Station. The seat was in the back of the orchestra.

It was almost underneath the “President's Box.” Very nice.

Just about perfect. He purposely arrived just as the houselights dimmed.

He was actually surprised when the intermission came. So fast !

The time had really flown. The melodramatic stage play really moved along.

He glanced at his wristwatch: 9:15. The intermission was right on schedule. The houselights came up and Hawkins idly observed that the crowd was highly enthused about the hit musical.

This was good news for him: genuine excitement, ebullience, lots of noisy Small talk filling the air. He slowly rose from his cushy seat. Now for the night real drama, he was thinking.

He entered the Grand Foyer with the huge chandeliers that resembled stalactites. The carpeting was a plush red sea beneath his feet. Up ahead was the proud bronze bust of John Kennedy.

Very fitting and appropriate.

Just so. Just right.

Jack and Jill would be the biggest thing since Kennedy, and that was more than thirty years ago. He was happy to be a part of it. Thrilled, actually. He felt honored.

For tonight performance, the part of Jack will be played by Kevin Hawkins.

Watch closely now, theater fans. This act will be unforgettable.

THE GRAND FOYER of the Kennedy Center was mobbed with uppity Washingtonian assholes. Theater people, Jesus. It was mostly an older crowd -- season subscribers. Tables were set up sellingjunky T-shirts and high-priced programs. A woman with a gaudy red umbrella was guiding a tour of high school kids through the intermission crowd.

There was a very nasty and difficult trick to this killing, Kevin Hawkins knew.

He had to get unbelievably close to the victim, physically close, before he actually committed the murder.

That bothered him a lot, but there was no way around it. He had to get right on top of the target, and he could not fail at this part of the job.

The photojournalist was thinking about it as he successfully blended into the noisily buzzing theater crowd.

He eventually spotted Supreme Court Justice Thomas Henry, Franklin. Franklin was the youngest member of the current Court. He was an African-American. He looked haughty, which fitted his reputation around Washington. He was not a likable man. Not that it mattered.

Snapshot Kevin Hawkins took a mind photo of Thomas Henry Franklin.

On the justice's left arm was a twenty-three-year-old woman.

Snapshot. Snapshot.

Hawkins had done his homework on Charlotte Kinsey, too. He knew her name, of course. He knew that she was a second-year law student at Georgetown. He knew other dark secrets about Charlotte Kinsey and Justice Franklin as well. He had watched the two of them together in bed.

He took another moment to observe Thomas Franklin and the college girl as they talked in the Grand Foyer. They were as animated and bubbly as any of the other couples there. Even more so. What great fun the theater could be!

He took several more mind photos. He would never forget the image of the two of them talking together like that. 5napshot. And that. Snapshot.

They laughed very naturally and spontaneously, and appeared to like each other's company Hawkins found himself frowning.

He had two nieces in Silver Spring. The thought of the young law student with this middle-aged phony irked the hell out of him!

The irony of his harsh judgment brought a sudden smile to his lips. The morality of a stone-cold killer -- how droll! How insane.

How very cool.

He watched the two of them move onto the large terrace off the lobby He followed several paces behind. The Potomac stretched out before them and was black as night. A dinner-cruise boat from Alexandria -- the Dandy -- was floating by The sheer curtains between the lobby and terrace flapped dramatically in the crisp river wind. Kevin Hawkins carefully moved toward the Supreme Court justice and his beautiful date. He took more mind photos of the two of them.

He noted that Justice Franklin's white shirt was a size too small, grabbing at his neck. The yellow silk tie was too loud for his subdued gray suit. Charlotte Kinsey had a quick, sweet smile that was irresistible. She had lovely rounded breasts. Her long black hair swirled in the river breeze.

He physically brushed against the two of them. Begot that close to Charlotte and Thomas. He actually touched the law student's long shiny hair. He could smell her perfume. Opium or Shalimar.

Snapshot.

He was right there. So close. He was practically on top of them, in every sense of the phrase.

His mind's eye continued to snap off photo after photo of the two of them. He would never forget any of this, not a single frame of the intimate murder scene.

He could see, hear, touch, smell; and yet he couldn't feel a thing.

Kevin Hawkins resisted all human impulses now. No pity No guilt. No shame. And no mercy The law student carried a leather bag on her left shoulder. It was slightly open, just a sliver, just enough. Ah, carefree, casual, careless youth.

The photojournalist was good with his hands. Still good. Still steady. Still very quick. Still one of the best.

He slid something into her bag. C'est ca. That was it! Success.

The first of the night.

Neither she nor Justice Franklin noticed the fleeting movement, or him, as he passed by in the crowd. He was the river breeze, the night, the light of the moon.

He felt incredible exhilaration at that special moment. There was nothing in the world like this. The power in taking, stealing, another human life was like nothing else in the full palette of human experiences.

The hard part was over, he knew. The close work. Now the simple act of murder.

To murder in public view.

And not get caught.

His heart suddenly jumped, bucked horribly Something was going wrong. Very wrong. As wrong as could be. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Jesus, Charlotte Kinsey was reaching into her bag.

Snapshot.

She'd found the note he'd left there -- the note from Jack and Jill!

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Snapshot.

She was looking at it curiously, wondering what it was, wondering how it had gotten in her handbag.

She began to unfold the note, and he could feel his temples pounding horribly She had gotten the justice's attention. He glanced down at the note as well.

Nooooo! Jesus, nooo, he wanted to scream.

Kevin Hawkins operated on pure instinct. The purest. No time to second-guess himself now.

He moved forward very quickly and surely His Luger was out, dangling below his waist. The gun was concealed because of the closeness of the crowd, the forest of legs and arms, pleated trousers, fluffed dresses.

He raised and fired the Luger just once. Tricky angle, too. Far from ideal. He saw the sudden blossom of crimson red. The body jolted, then crumbled and fell to the marble floor.

A heartshot! Certainly a miracle, or close to it. God was on his side, no?

Snapshot!

Snapshot!

His heart almost couldn't take it. He wasn't used to this sudden improvising.

He thought about getting caught, after all of these years, and on such an unbelievably important job. He had a vision of total failure. He felt... he felt something.

He dropped the Luger into the jumble of legs, trousers, satin and taffeta gowns, high-heeled slippers, highly polished dark cordovans.

“Was that a gunshot?” a woman shrieked. "Oh, God, Phillip.

Someone been shot."

He backed away from the spectacle as just about everyone else did. The Grand Foyer looked as if it were ablaze.

He was part of them, part of the fearful, bolting crowd. He had nothing to do with the terrifying disturbance, the murder, the loud gunshot.

His face was a convincing mask of shock and disbelief. God, he knew this look so well. He had seen it so many times before in his lifetime.

In another tense few moments, he was outside the Kennedy Center. He was heading toward New Hampshire Avenue at a steady pace. He was one with the crowd.

“Seems Like Old Times” raced through his head, playing much too fast, at double or triple speed. He remembered humming the tune on his walk in. And as the photojournalist knew, the old times were definitely the best.

The old times were coming back now, weren't they?

Jack and Jill had come to The Hill.

The game was so beautiful, so delicate and exquisite.

Now for the greatest shocker of them all.

AGENT JAY GRAYER called me at home from his car phone. I was in the middle of reading approximately two hundred background security checks done on White House personnel by the Secret Service uniformed division. The deputy director was speeding downtown to the Kennedy Center complex, doing ninety on the beltway. I could hear the siren blaring from his car.

“They struck again. Jesus, they made a hit at the Kennedy Center tonight. Right under our noses. It's another real bad acid trip, Alex. Just come.” He definitely sounded out of control.

Just come.

“They hit during intermission of Miss Saigon. I'll meet you there, Alex. I'm seven to ten minutes away”

“Who was it this time?” I asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. I almost didn't want to hear the answer. No, not almost.

I didn't want to hear the victim's name.

“That's part of the problem. This whole thing is nuts. It wasn't really anybody, Alex.”

“What do you mean, 'it wasn't really anybody'? That doesn't make sense to me, Jay.”

“It was a law student from Georgetown University A young woman named Charlotte Kinsey. She was only twenty-three years old. They left one of their notes again. It's them for sure.”

“I don't get it. I do not get this,” I muttered over the phone.

“Goddamnit.”

"Neither do I. The girl might have caught a bullet meant for somebody else. She was out with a Supreme Court justice, Alex.

Thomas Henry Franklin. Maybe the bullet was meant for him.

That would fit the celebrity pattern. Maybe they've finally made a mistake."

“I'm on my way,” I told Jay GraTer. “I'll meet you inside the Kennedy Center.”

Maybe they finally made a mistake.

I didn't think so.

IT WASN'TREALLYANYBODY, ALEX. How the hell could that be?

A twenty-three-year-old law student from Georgetown was dead. Christ. It didn't make sense to me, didn't track at all. It changed everything. It seemed to blow the pattern.

I drove from our home to the Kennedy Center in record time.

Jay Grayer wasn't the only one partly out of control. I stuck a flasher on the roof of my car and rode like hell on wheels.

The second half of Miss Saigon had been canceled. The murder had taken place less than an hour before, and there were still hundreds of onlookers at the crime scene.

I heard “Jack and Jill” mumbled several times as I made my way to the Grand Foyer. Fear was a tangible, almost physical, presence in the crowd. A lot of elements of the murder at the Kennedy Center were torturing me when I arrived at the crime scene at quarter past ten. There were some similarities with the other Jack and Jill killings. A rhyming note had been left. The job had been done coldly and professionally. A single shot.

But there were huge differences this time. They seemed to have destroyed their pattern.

Copycat killer? Maybe. But I didn't think so. Yet nothing could, or should, be dismissed. Not by me, and not by anyone else on the case.

The new twists nagged at me as I pushed my way through the curious, horrified, even dumbstruck, crowd on New Hampshire Avenue. The law student hadn't been a national figure. So why had she been killed? Jay Grayer had called her a nobody. Grayer said she wasn't the daughter of anybody famous, either. She had been out to the theater with Supreme Court Justice Thomas Henry Franklin, but that didn't seem to count as a celebrity stalk-and-kill.

Charlotte Kinsey hadhat would fit the celebrity pattern. Maybe they've finally made a mistake."

“I'm on my way,” I told Jay GraTer. “I'll meet you inside the Kennedy Center.”

Maybe they finally made a mistake.

I didn't think so.

IT WASN'TREALLYANYBODY, ALEX. How the hell could that be?

A twenty-three-year-old law student from Georgetown was dead. Christ. It didn't make sense to me, didn't track at all. It changed everything. It seemed to blow the pattern.

I drove from our home to the Kennedy Center in record time.

Jay Grayer wasn't the only one partly out of control. I stuck a flasher on the roof of my car and rode like hell on wheels.

The second half of Miss Saigon had been canceled. The murder had taken place less than an hour before, and there were still hundreds of onlookers at the crime scene.

I heard “Jack and Jill” mumbled several times as I made my way to the Grand Foyer. Fear was a tangible, almost physical, presence in the crowd. A lot of elements of the murder at the Kennedy Center were torturing me when I arrived at the crime scene at quarter past ten. There were some similarities with the other Jack and Jill killings. A rhyming note had been left. The job had been done coldly and professionally. A single shot.

But there were huge differences this time. They seemed to have destroyed their pattern.

Copycat killer? Maybe. But I didn't think so. Yet nothing could, or should, be dismissed. Not by me, and not by anyone else on the case.

The new twists nagged at me as I pushed my way through the curious, horrified, even dumbstruck, crowd on New Hampshire Avenue. The law student hadn't been a national figure. So why had she been killed? Jay Grayer had called her a nobody. Grayer said she wasn't the daughter of anybody famous, either. She had been out to the theater with Supreme Court Justice Thomas Henry Franklin, but that didn't seem to count as a celebrity stalk-and-kill.

Charlotte Kinsey had been a nobody.

The killing just didn't fit the pattern. Jack and Jill had taken a huge risk committing the murder in such a public place. The other killings had been private affairs, safer and more controllable.

Shit, shit, shit. What were they up to now? Was this whole thing changing? Escalating? Why had they varied their pattern? Were the killers moving into another, more random phase?

Had I missed their original point? Had we all missed the real pattern they were creating? Or had they made a mistake at the Kennedy Center?

Maybe they finally made a mistake.

That was our best hope. It would show that they weren't invincible.

Let this be a goddamn mistake! Please let it be their first.

Just the same, whoever it was made a clever escape.

The six-hundred-foot-long lobby had been emptied of all but police officials, the medical examiner's staff, and the morgue crew. I saw Agent Grayer and walked over to him. Jay looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks, as if he might never be able to sleep again.

“Alex, thanks for getting down here so quickly,” the Secret Service agent said. I liked working with him so far. He was smart and usually even-tempered, with absolutely no bullshit about him. He had an old-fashioned dedication to his job, and especially to the President, both the office and the man.

“Anything worthwhile turn up yet?” I asked him. “Besides another corpse. The poem.”

Grayer rolled his eyes toward the glittering chandeliers hanging above us. "Oh yeah. Definitely, Alex. We found out some more about the murdered student. Charlotte Kinsey was just starting her second year at Georgetown Law. She was bright as hell, apparently. Did her undergraduate at New- York University.

However, she only had average grades as a Hoya, so she didn't make law Review:"

“How does a law student fit into the pattern? Unless they were shooting at Justice Franklin and actually missed. I've been trying to make some connection on the way over. Nothing comes to mind. Except that maybe Jack and Jill are playing with us?”

Grayer nodded. "They're definitely playing with us. For one thing, your illicit sex theory is still intact. We know why Charlotte Kinsey didn't excel at Georgetown. She was spending quality time with some very important men here in town. Very pretty girl, as you'll see in a second. Shiny black hair down to her waist.

Great shape. Questionable morals. She'd have made a terrific attorney."

The two of us walked over to the dead woman's body. The law student was lying facing away from us.

Beside the body was a bag she had been carrying. I couldn't see the bullet hole, and Charlotte Kinsey didn't even appear to be hurt. She looked as if she'd just decided to take a nap on the floor of the terrace at the Kennedy Center. Her mouth was open slightly, as if she wanted one last breath of the river air.

“Go ahead, tell me now,” I said to Jay Grayer. I knew that he had something more on the murder. “Who is she?”

“Oh, she's somebody, after alk The girl was President Byrnes's mistress,” he said. “She was seeing the President, too. He skipped out of the White House and saw her the other night. That's why they killed her. Bingo, Alex. Right in our face.”

My chest felt seriously constricted as I bent over the dead woman. Claustrophobia again. She was very pretty. Twenty-three years old. Prime of her life. One shot to the heart had ended that.

I read the note they had left in the law student's handbag.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill Your mistress had no clue, Sir.

She was a pawn But now she's gone And soon we'll get to you, Sir.

The poetry seemed to be getting a little better. Certainly it was bolder. And so were Jack and Jill. God help us all, but especially President Thomas Byrnes.

And soon we'll get to you, Sir.

THE MORNING after the murder, I drove eight miles down to Langley, Virginia. I wanted to spend some time with Jeanne Sterling, the CIKs inspector general and the Agency's representative on the crisis team. Don Hamerman had made it clear to me that the Agency was involved because there was the possibility a foreign power might be behind Jack and Jill. Even if it were a long shot, it had to be checked. Somehow, I suspected there might be more to the involvement than just that. This was my chance to find out.

Supposedly, the Agency had a lead that was worth checking out. Since the Aldrich Ames scandal, and the resulting Intelligence Authorization Act, the CIA had to share information with the rest of us. It was now the law.

I remembered the inspector general very well from our first meeting at the White House. Jeanne Sterling had listened mostly, but when she spoke, she was highly articulate and spotlight-bright.

Don Hamerman told me she had been a professor of law at the University of Virginia years before joining the Agency Now her job was to help clean up the Agency from the inside. It sounded like an impossible task to me, certainly a daunting one.

Hamerman told me she had been put on the crisis team for one reason: she was the Agency's best mind.

Her office was on the seventh floor of the modern gray building that was the hub of CIA headquarters. I checked out the Agency's interior design: lots of extremely narrow halls, green-hued fluorescent lighting everywhere, cipher locks on most of the office doors. Here it was in all its glory: the CIA, the avenging angel of U.S. foreign policy.

Jeanne Sterling met me in the gray-carpeted hallway outside her office. “Dr. Cross, thank you for coming down here. Next time, I promise we'll do it up in Washington. I thought it best if we meet here. I think you'll understand by the time we're finished this morning.”

“Actually, I enjoyed the drive down, needed the escape,” I admitted to her. 'Half an hour by myself. Cassandra Wilson on the tape deck. 'Blue Light 'Til Dawn.“ Not so bad.”

“I think I know exactly what you mean. Trust me, though, this won't be a trip in search of the wild goose. I have something interesting to discuss with you. The Agency was called in on this with good reason, Dr. Cross. You'll see in a moment.”

Jeanne Sterling was certainly far removed from the stereotypical CIA Brahmin of the fifties and sixties. She spoke with a folksy, enthusiastic, mid-Southern accent, but she sat on the Agency's Directorate of Operations. She was considered crucial to the CIAs turnaround; indeed, its very survival.

We entered her large office, which had a commanding view of woods on two sides and a planted courtyard on another. We sat at a low-slung glass table covered with official-looking papers and books. Photographs of her family were up on the walls.

Cute kids, I couldn't help noticing. Nice-looking husband, tall and lean. She herself was tall, blond, but a little heavier than she ought to be. She had a friendly smile with a slight overbite, and just a hint of the farmer's daughter about her.

“Something important has come up,” she said, “but before I get into it, I just heard that the gun used at the Kennedy Center wasn't the same one used for the previous murders. That raises a question or two; at least, in my mind it does. Could the Kennedy Center murder have been a copycat killing?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “Not unless the copycat and Jack or Jill happen to have the same handwriting. No, the latest rhyme was definitely from them. I also think it qualifies as a celebrity stalking.”

“One more question,” Jeanne Sterling said. “This one is completely off the beaten track, Alex. So bear with me. Our analysts have been searching, but we're not aware of any useful psychological study that's looked at professional assassins. I'm talking about studies on the contract killers used by the Army, the DEA, the Agency. Are you aware of anything? Even we don't have a comprehensive study on the subject.”

I had a feeling we were easing into what Jeanne Sterling wanted to discuss. Maybe that was also why the head of in-terual affairs for the Agency was involved with the crisis team.

Contract killers for the Army and CIA. I knew that they existed and that a few lived in the area surrounding Washington. I also knew they were registered somewhere, but not with the D.C. police.

Perhaps for that reason they were sometimes referred to as “ghosts.”

“There's not much written about homicide in any of the psych journals,” I told Jeanne Sterling. 'A few years back, a professor I know at Georgetown ran an interesting search. He found several thousand references to suicide, but less than fifty homicide ref: rences in the journals he sampled. I've read a couple of student papers written at John Jay and Quantico. There isn't very much on assassins. Not that I'm aware of. I guess it's hard to get subjects to interview."

“I could get a subject for you to interview,” Jeanne Sterling said. “I think it might be important to Jack and Jill.”

“Where are you going with this?” I had a lot of questions for her suddenly. Familiar alarms were sounding inside my head.

A soft, pained look drifted across her face. She inhaled very slowly before she spoke again. “We've done extensive psychological testing on our lethal agents, Alex. So has the Army, I've been assured. I've even read some of the test reports myself.”

My stomach continued to tighten. So did my neck and shoulders.

But I was definitely glad I'd taken the time to visit Langley.

"Since I've been in this job, about eleven months, I've had to open a number of dark, eerie closets here at Langley and !se-where.

I did over three hundred in-depth interviews on Aldrich Ames alone. You can imagine the cover-ups that we've had over the years. Well, you.probably can't. I couldn't have myself, and I was working here."

I still wasn't sure where Jeanne Sterling was going with this.

She had my full attention, though.

“We think one of our former contract killers might be out of control. Actually, we're pretty sure of it, Alex. That's why the CIA is on the crisis team. We think one of ours might be Jack.”

JEANNE STERLING and I went for a ride through the surrounding countryside. The CIA inspector general had a new station wagon, a dark blue Volvo that she drove like a race car. Brahms was playing softly on the radio as we headed for Chevy Chase, one of Washington's small, affluent bedroom communities. I was about to meet a “ghost.” A professional killer. One of ours.

Oh brother, oh shit.

“Plot and counterplot, ruse and treachery, true agent, double agent, false agent... didn't Churchill describe your business something like that?”

Jeanne Sterling cracked a wide smile, her large teeth suddenly very prominent. She was a very serious person, but she had a quick sense of humor, too. The inspector general. "We're trying to change from the past, both the perception and the reality.

Either the Agency does that or somebody will pull the plug.

That's why I invited the FBI and the Washington police in on this.

I don't want the usual internal investigation, and then charges of a cover-up," she told me as she engineered her car underneath towering, ancient trees that evoked Richmond or Charlottesville.

“The CIA is no longer a 'cult,' as we've been called by several selfserving congressmen. We're changing everything. Fast. Maybe even too fast.”

“You disapprove?” I asked her.

"Not at all. It has to happen. I just don't like all the theater surrounding it. And I certainly don't appreciate the media coverage.

What an incredible assemblage of jerk-offs."

We had crossed inside the beltway and were entering Chevy Chase now. We were headed for a meeting with a man named Andrew Klauk. Klauk was a former contract killer for the Agency: the so-called killer elite, the “ghosts.”

Jeanne Sterling continued to drive the way she talked, without effort and rapidly. It was the way she seemed to do everything.

A very smart and impressive person. I guess she needed to be.

Internal affairs at the CIA had to be extremely demanding.

“So, what have you heard about us, Alex?” she finally asked me. “What's the scuttlebutt? The intelligence?”

“Don Hamerman says you're a straight arrow, and that's what the Agency needs right now. He believes Aldrich Ames hurt the CIA even more than we read. He also believes Moynihan's 'End of the Cold War' bill was an American tragedy He says they call you Clean Jeanne out here at Langley Your own people do. He's a big fan of yours.”

Jeanne Sterling smiled, but the smile was controlled. She was a woman very much in control of herself: intellectually, emotionally, and even physically She was substantial and sturdy, and her striking amber eyes always seemed to want to dig a little deeper into you. She wasn't satisfied with surface appearances or answers: the mark of a good investigator.

“I'm not really such a goody-goody” She made a pouty face.

"I was a pretty fair caseworker in Budapest my first two years.

Caseworker is our sobriquet for 'spy,' Alex. I was a spy in Europe.

Harmless stuff, information-gathering mostly

"After that I was at the War College. Fort McBain. My father is career Army. Lives with my mother in Arlington. They both voted for Oliver North. I fervently believe in our form of government.

I'm also hooked on making it work better somehow. I think we actually can. I'm convinced of it."

“That sounds pretty good to me,” I told her. It did. All except the Oliver North part.

We were just pulling up to a house that was very close to Connecticut Avenue and the Circle. The place was Colonial revival, three stories, very homey and nice. Beautiful. Attractive moss crawled over the hipped roof and down the north side.

“This is where you live?” I smiled at Jeanne. “But you're not Miss Goody Two-shoes? You're not Clean Jeanne?”

“Right. It's all a clever facade, Alex. Like Disneyland, or Williamsburg, or the White House. To prove it to you, there a trained killer waiting for us inside,” Jeanne Sterling said, and winked.

“There's one in your car, too.” I winked back at her.

THE LATE-DECEMBER AFTERNOON was unusually bright and sunny The temperature was in the high fifties, so Andrew Klauk and I sat in the backyard at Jeanne Sterling's lovely home in Chevy Chase.

A simple, wrought-iron fence surrounded the property. The gate was forest green, recently painted, slightly ajar. A breech in security.

CIA hitmen. Killer elite. Ghosts. They do exist. More than two hundred of them, according to Jeanne Sterling. A freelance list. A weird, scary notion for the 1990s in America. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

And yet here I was with one of them.

It was past three when Andrew Klauk and I began our talk.

A bright yellow school bus stopped by the fence, dropping off kids on the quiet suburban street. A small towheaded boy of ten or eleven came running up the driveway and into the house. I thought that I recognized the boy from the photos at her office.

Jeanne Sterling had a boy and a little girl. Just like me. She brought her casework home, just like me. Scary.

Andrew Klauk was a whale of a man who looked as if he could move very well, anyway. A whale who dreamed of dane-in.

He was probably about forty-five years old. He was calm and extremely self-assured. Piercing brown eyes that grabbed and wouldn't let go. Penetrated deeply. He wore a shapeless gray suit with an open-neck white shirt that was wrinkled and dingy.

Brown Italian leather shoes. Another kind of killer, but a killer all the same, I was thinking.

Jeanne Sterlin had raised a very provocative question for me on our drive: What was the difference between the serial killers I had pursued in the past and the contract killers used by the CIA and Army? Did I think one of these sanctioned killers could actually be Jack of Jack and Jill?

She did. She was certain that it was a possibility that needed to be checked out, and not just by her own people.

I studied Klauk as the two of us talked in a casual, sometimes even lighthearted, manner. It wasn't the first time I'd conversed like that with a man who murdered for a living, with a mass murderer, so to speak. This killer, however, was allowed to go home nights to his family in Falls Church, and lead what he described as a “normal, rather guilt-free life.”

As Andrew Klauk told me at one point: “I've never committed a crime in my life, Dr. Cross. Never got a speeding ticket.” Then he laughed -- a bit inappropriately, I thought. He laughed a little too hard.

“What's so funny?” I asked him. “Did I miss something?”

“You're what, two hundred pounds, six foot four? That about right?”

“Pretty close,” I told him. "Six three. A little under two hundred.

But who's counting?"

“Obviously, I am, Detective. I'm grossly overweight and look out of shape, but I could take you out right here on the patio,” he informed me. It was a disturbing observation on his part, provocatively stated.

Whether or not he could do it, he needed to tell me. That was the way his mind worked. Good to know. He'd succeeded in shaking me up a little just the same, in making me extra cautious.

“You might be surprised,” I said to him, “but I'm not sure if I get the point you're trying to make.”

He laughed again, a tiny, unpleasant nose snort. Scary guy to drink lemonade with. “That's the point. I could and I would, if it was asked of me by our country. That's what you don't get about the Agency, and especially about men and women in my position,” he said.

“Help me to get it,” I said. “I don't mean you should try to kill me here in the Sterlings' backyard, but keep talking.”

His tight smile turned to a wide-open grin. “Not try. Trust me on that one.”

He was a truly scary man. He reminded me a little of a psychopathic killer named Gary Soneji. I had talked to Soneji just like this. Neither of them had much affect in their faces. Just this cold fixed glare that wouldn't go away. Then sudden bursts of laughter.

My skin was crawling. I wanted to get up from the table and leave.

Klauk stared at me for a long moment before he went on. I could hear Jeanne Sterling's kids inside the house. The refrigerator door opening and closing. Ice tinkling against glass. Birds whooping and twittering in background trees. It was a strange, strange scene. Indescribably eerie for me.

“There is one basic proposition in covert action. In subversion, sabotage, being better at it than the other guy. We can do anything we want.” Klauk said it very, very slowly, word by word.

“And we often do. You're a psychologist and a homicide detective, right? What's your objective take on this? What are you hearing from me?”

“No rules,” I said to him. "That's what you're telling me. You live, you work, in a closed world that virtually isn't governed.

You could say that your world is completely antisocial."

He snorted a laugh again. I was a decent student, I guess. “Not a fucking one of them. Once we're commissioned for a job -- there are no rules. Not a one. Think about it.”

I definitely would think about it. I started right then and there.

I considered the idea of Klauk trying to kill me -- if our country asked him to. No rules. A world peopled by ghosts. And even scarier was that I could sense he believed every word he'd said.

After I finished with Klauk, for that afternoon at least, I talked with Jeanne Sterling for a while more. We sat in an idyllic, multiwindowed sunroom that looke said. “I don't mean you should try to kill me here in the Sterlings' backyard, but keep talking.”

His tight smile turned to a wide-open grin. “Not try. Trust me on that one.”

He was a truly scary man. He reminded me a little of a psychopathic killer named Gary Soneji. I had talked to Soneji just like this. Neither of them had much affect in their faces. Just this cold fixed glare that wouldn't go away. Then sudden bursts of laughter.

My skin was crawling. I wanted to get up from the table and leave.

Klauk stared at me for a long moment before he went on. I could hear Jeanne Sterling's kids inside the house. The refrigerator door opening and closing. Ice tinkling against glass. Birds whooping and twittering in background trees. It was a strange, strange scene. Indescribably eerie for me.

“There is one basic proposition in covert action. In subversion, sabotage, being better at it than the other guy. We can do anything we want.” Klauk said it very, very slowly, word by word.

“And we often do. You're a psychologist and a homicide detective, right? What's your objective take on this? What are you hearing from me?”

“No rules,” I said to him. "That's what you're telling me. You live, you work, in a closed world that virtually isn't governed.

You could say that your world is completely antisocial."

He snorted a laugh again. I was a decent student, I guess. “Not a fucking one of them. Once we're commissioned for a job -- there are no rules. Not a one. Think about it.”

I definitely would think about it. I started right then and there.

I considered the idea of Klauk trying to kill me -- if our country asked him to. No rules. A world peopled by ghosts. And even scarier was that I could sense he believed every word he'd said.

After I finished with Klauk, for that afternoon at least, I talked with Jeanne Sterling for a while more. We sat in an idyllic, multiwindowed sunroom that looked out on the idyllic backyard. The subject of conversation continued to be murder. I hadn't come down yet from my talk with the assassin. The ghost.

“What did you think of our Mr. Klauk?” Jeanne asked me.

“Disturbed me. Irritated me. Scared the hell out of me,” I admitted to her. "He's really unpleasant. Not nice. He's a jerk,

“An incredible asshole,” she agreed. Then she didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. “Alex, somebody inside the Agency has killed at least three of our agents. That's one of the skeletons I've dug up so far in my time as inspector. It's an 'unsolved crime.” The killer isn't Klauk, though. Andrew is actually under control.

He isn't dangerous. Somebody else is. To tell you the complete truth, the Directorate of Operations has demanded that we bring in somebody from the outside on this. We definitely think one of our contract killers could be Jack. Who knows, maybe Jill is one of ours, too."

I didn't talk for a moment, just listened to what Jeanne Sterling had to say. Jack and Jill came to The Hill. Could Jack be a trained assassin? What about Jill? And then, why were they killing celebrities in Washington? Why had they threatened President Byrnes?

My mind whirled around in great looping circles. I thought about all the possibilities, the connections, and also the disconnects.

Two renegade contract killers on the loose. It made as much sense as anything else I had heard so far. It explained some things about Jack and Jill for me, especially the absence of passion or rage in the murders. Why were they killing politicians and celebrities, though? Had they been commissioned to do the job? If so, by whom? To what end? What was their cause?

“Let me ask you a burning question, Jeanne. Something else has been bothering me since we got here.”

"Go ahead, Alex. I want to try and answer a]l your questions.

If I can, that is."

“Why did you bring him here to talk? Why take Andrew Klauk right into your own house?”

“It was a safe place for the meeting,” she said without any hesitation.

She sounded so unbelievably certain when she said it. I felt a chill ease up my spine. Then Jeanne Sterling sighed loudly.

She knew what I was getting at, what I was feeling, as I sat inside her home.

“Alex, he knows where I live. Andrew Klauk could come here if he wanted to. Any of them can.”

I nodded and left it at that. I knew the feeling exactly; I lived with it. It was my single greatest fear as an investigator. My worst nightmare.

They know where we live.

They can come to our houses if they want to... anytime they want to.

Nobody was safe anymore.

There are no rules.

There are “ghosts” and human monsters, and they are very real in our lives. Especially in my life.

There was Jack and Jill.

There was the Sojourner Truth School killer.

AT A LITTLE PAST SEVEN the next morning, I sat across from Adele Finaly and unloaded everything that I possibly could on her. I unloaded -- period. Dr. Adele Finaly has been my analyst for a half-dozen years, and I see her on an irregular basis. As needed. Like right now. She's also a good friend.

I was ranting and raving a little bit. This was the place for it, though. "Maybe I want to leave the force. Maybe I don't want to be part of any more vile homicide investigations. Maybe I want to get out of Washington, or at least out of Southeast. Or maybe I want to trot down and see Kate McTiernan in West Virginia.

Take a sabbatical at just about the worst possible time for one."

“Do you really want to do any of those things?” Adele asked when I had finished, or at least had quieted down for a moment.

“Or are you just venting?”

“I don't know, Adele. Probably venting. There's also a woman I met whom i could become interested in. She's married,” I said and smiled. “I'd never do anything with a married woman, so she's perfectly safe for me. She couldn't be safer. I think I'm regressing.”

"You want an opinion on that, Alex? Well, I can't give you one.

You certainly have a lot on your plate, though."

"I'm right smack in the middle of a very bad homicide investigation.

Two of them, actually. I just came off another particularly disturbing one. I think I can sort that part out for myself.

But, you know, it's funny. I suspect that I still want to please my mother and father, and it can't be done. i can't get over the feeling of abandonment. Can't intellectualize it. Sometimes I feel that both my parents died of a kind of terminal sadness, and that my brothers and I were part of their sorrow. I'm afraid that I have it, too. I think that my mother and father were probably as smart as I am, and that they must have suffered because of it." My mother and father had died in North Carolina, at a very young age. My father had killed himself with liquor, and I hadn't really gotten over it. My mom died of lung cancer the year before my father.

Nana Mama had taken me in when I was nine years old.

“You think sadness can be in the genes, Alex? I don't know what to think about that myself. Did you see that New Yorker piece on twins by any chance? There's some evidence for the genes theory. Scary note for our profession.”

“Detective work?” I asked her.

Adele didn't comment on my little joke.

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, sorry.”

“You don't have to be sorry. You know how happy it makes me when you get any of your anger out.”

She laughed. We both did. I like talking to her because our sessions can bounce around like that, laughter to tears, serious to absurd, truth to lies, just about anything and everything that's bothering me. Adele Finaly is three years younger than I am, but she's wise beyond her years, and maybe my years as well. Seeing her for a skull session works even better than playing the blues on my front porch.

I talked some more, let my tongue wag, let my mind run free, and it felt pretty good. It's a wonderful thing to have somebody in your life whom you can say absolutely anything to. Not to have that is almost unthinkable to me.

“Here's a connection I've made recently,” I told Adele. “Maria is murdered. I grieve and I grieve, but I never come close to getting over the loss. Just luck I've never gotten past the loss of my mother and father.”

Adele nods. “It's incredibly hard to find a soul mate.” She knows. She's never been able to find one herself, which is sad.

“And it's hard to lose one -- a soul mate. So, of course, now I'm petrified about losing anyone else whom I care deeply for. I shy away from relationships -- because they might end in loss. I don't leave my job with the police -- because that would be a kind of loss, too.”

“But you're thinking about these things a lot now.”

“All the time, Adele. Something's going to happen.”

“Something has. We've run way over our time,” Adele finally said.

“Good,” I said and laughed again. Some people turn on Comedy Central for a good laugh. I go to my shrink.

“Lots of hostility How nice for you. I don't think you're regressing, Alex. I think you're doing beautifully”

“God, I love talking to you,” I told her. “Let's do this in a month or so, when I'm really screwed up again.”

“I can't wait,” Adele said and rubbed her small, thin hands together greedily “In the meantime, as Bart Simpson has said many times, 'Don't have a cow, man.”"

DETECTIVE JOHN SAMPSON couldn't remember working so many brutal, absolutely shitty days in a row. He couldn't remember it ever being so godawful, goddamn bad. He had an overload of really bad homicides and he had the Sojourner Truth School killer case, which didn't seem to be going anywhere.

On the morning after the Kennedy Center killing, Sampson worked the upscale side of Garfield Park, the “west bank.” He was keeping his eyes out for Alex's homeless suspect, who'd been spotted the afternoon of Shanelie Green's murder, though not since, so even that lead was growing cold. Alex had a simple formula for thinking about complex cases like this one. First, you had to answer the question that everybody had: What kind of person would do something like this? What kind of nutcase?

He had decided to visit the Theodore Roosevelt School on his street canvass. The exclusive military academy used Garfield Park for its athletics and some paramilitary maneuvers. There was a slim possibility that a sharp-eyed cadet had seen something.

A white-haired homeless motherfucker, Sampson thought as he climbed the military school's front graystone steps. A sloppy and disorganized thrill killer who left fingerprints and other clues at both crime scenes, and still nobody could nail his candyass to the wall.

Every single clue leads to a dead end.

Why was that? What were we getting all wrong here? What were they messing up on? Not just him. Alex and the rest of the posse, too.

Sampson went looking for the commandant at the school, The Man In Charge. The detective had served four years in the Army, two of them in Vietnam, and the pristine school brought to mind ROTC lieutenants in the war. Most of them had been white. Several had died needlessly, in his opinion -- a couple of them, his friends.

The Theodore Roosevelt School consisted of four extremely well-kept, red-brick buildings with steep, slate-shingle roofs.

Two of the roofs had chimneys spouting soft curls of gray smoke.

Everything about the place shouted “structure,”

“order,” and “dead, white louies” to him.

Imagine something like this school, only in Southeast around the projects, he thought as he continued his solitary walk around the school. The image made him smile. He could almost see five hundred or so homies resplendent in their royal blue dress uniforms, their spit-shined boots, their plumed dress hats. Really something to contemplate. Might even do some good.

“Sir, can I help you?” A scrawny towheaded cadet came up to him as he started down what looked to be an academic hall in one of the buildings.

“You on guard here?” Sampson asked in a soft drawl that was the last vestige of a mother who'd grown up in Alabama.

The toy soldier shook his head. “No, sir. But can I help you anyway?”

“Washington police,” Sampson said. “I need to speak with whoever's in charge. Can You arrange that, soldier?”

“Yes, sir!”

The cadet saluted him, of all people, and Sampson had to fight back the day's first, and maybe only, smile.

MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED scrubbed and steampressed cadets from the middle school and the academy's high school were crammed into Lee Hall at nine o'clock in the morning.

The cadets wore their regular school uniform: loose-fitting gray pants, black shirt and tie, gray waist-jacket.

From his stiff wooden seat in the school auditorium, the Sojourner Truth School killer saw the towering black man entering Lee Hall. He recognized him instantly That sucker was Detective John Sampson. He was Alex Cross's friend and partner.

This was not a good thing. This was very bad, in fact. The killer immediately began to panic, to experience the outer edges of fear.

He wondered if the Metro police were coming for him right now.

Did they know who he was?

He wanted to run -- but there was no way out of here now.

He had to sit this one out, to gut it out.

The killer's initial reaction was to feel shame. He thought he was going to be sick. Throw up or something. He wanted to put his head between his legs. He felt like such a chump to get caught like this.

He was seated about twenty yards from where that stuffed shirt Colonel Wilson and the detective were standing around as if something incredibly fucking important were about to happen.

Every passing cadet saluted the adults, like the robotic morons that they were. A buzz of apprehension began to fill the room.

Was something earth-shattering going to happen? The thought screaming inside the killer's head. Were the police about to arrest him in front of the entire school? Had he been caught?

How could they have traced anything to him, though? It didn't make sense. That thought calmed him somewhat.

A false calm? A false sense of security? he wondered and lowered himself slightly in the stiff wooden seat, wishing that somehow he could disappear.

Then he sat straight up in his seat again. Oh, shit. Here we go!

He watched closely as the homicide detective slowly walked toward the podium with Colonel Wilson. His heartbeat was like the rhythm section in a White Zombie song.

The assembly began with the usual, dumb cadet resolutions, “honesty, integrity in thought and deed,” all that crap. Then Colonel Wilson began to talk about the “cowardly murders of two children in Garfield Park.” Wilson went on: “The Metro police are canvassing the park and surrounding environs. Maybe a cadet at Theodore Roosevelt has unwittingly seen something that might help the police with their investigation. Maybe one of you can help the police in some way.”

So that was why the imposing homicide detective was here. A goddamn fishing expedition. The ongoing frigging investigation of the two murders.

The killer was still holding his breath, though. His eyes were very large and riveted to the stage as Sampson went over to the podium mike. The tall black man really stood out in the room of nothing but uniforms and short haircuts and mostly pink faces.

He was huge. He was also kind of cool-looking in his black leather car coat, gray shirt, black necktie. He towered over the podium, which had seemed just the right height for Colonel Wilson.

“I served in Vietnam, under a couple of lieutenantswho looked about your age,” the detective said into the mike. His voice was calm and very deep. He laughed then, and so did most of the cadets.

He had a lot of presence, a whole world of presence. He definitely seemed like the real deal. The killer thought that Sampson was laughing down at the cadets, but he couldn't be sure.

“The reason I'm here at your school this morning,” the detective went on, “is that we're canvassing Garfield Park and everything that it touches. Two little kids were savagely killed there, both within the past week. The skulls of the children were crushed. The killer is a fiend, in no uncertain terms.”

The killer wanted to give Sampson the finger. The killer isn't a fiend. You're the fiend, mojoman. The killer is a lot cooler than you think.

"As I understand it from Colonel Wilson, many of you go home from school through the park. Others run cross-country, and you also play soccer and lacrosse in the park. I'm going to leave my number at the precinct with the office here at school.

You can contact me at any time, day or night, at the number if you've seen anything that could be helpful to us."

The Sojourner Truth School killer couldn't take his eyes off the towering homicide detective who spoke so very calmly and confidently. He wondered if he could possibly be a match for this one. Not to mention motherhumping Detective Alex Cross, who reminded him of his own real father -- a cop.

He thought that he could be a match for them.

“Does anybody have any questions?” Sampson asked from the stage. “Any questions at all? This is the time for it. This is the place. Speak up, young men.”

The killer wanted to shout from his seat. He had an overwhelming impulse to throw his right arm high in the air and volunteer some real help. He finally sat on his hands, right on his fingers.

I unwittingly saw something in Garfield Park, sir. I might just know who killed those two kids with an eighteen-inch, tape-reinforced baseball bat.

Actually, to be truthful, I killed them, sir. I'm the child killer, you feeble asshole! Catch me if you can.

You're bigger. You're much bigger. But I'm so much smarter than you could ever be.

I'm only thirteen years old. I'm already this good!Just wait until I get a little older. Chew on that, you dumb bastards.