He flared at me again. Pointed his gun. "Don't f*cking try to shrink-wrap me! Don't you dare."
"I wouldn't do that." I shook my head. "Nobody likes lies, or people trying to pull cheap tricks. I don't."
Suddenly, he swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine.
"I have to kill people because... that's what I do." He laughed again, cackled, and wheezed like a fiend.
Christine Johnson sensed what was coming. She knew something had to be done before Danny Boudreaux exploded.
The boy turned to me again. He swiveled his hips and almost seemed to be preening. He watching himself act like this, I realized. He's loving this.
"You've been trying to trick me," he said. "That's why the calm Mr. Rogers voice. Backing off from me, so you're not so almighty big and threatening. I see right through you."
"You're right," I said, "but not completely right. I've been talking like this... real softly... to distract you from what I'm really doing. You blew your own game. You just lost! You little chump.
You weasly little son of a bitch."
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"YOU CAN'T SHOOT both of us," I told Danny Boudreaux.
I spoke in a clear, firm voice. At the same time, I angled my body sideways. Gave him less of a target.
I took another step toward my side of the large living room. I widened the distance between Christine Johnson and me.
"What the hell do you mean? What are you talking about, Cross? TALK TO ME, CROSS! I DEMAND IT!"
I didn't answer him. Let him figure it out. I knew that he would.
He was a smart bad boy Daniel Boudreaux stared at me, then quickly back at Christine.
He got the message. He finally saw the trap, subtle as it was.
His eyes bore deeply into my skull. He knew what I'd done.
One of us would get to him if he shot at the other. He couldn't have his final blaze of glory.
"You dumb piece of shit," he growled at me. His voice was low and threatening. "You're the one who gets it first then!"
He raised the Smith & Wesson. I was staring down the barrel at him. "TALK TO ME, YOU
BASTARD!"
"That's enough!" Christine shouted from the other side of the room. She was unbelievable under the pressure, the circumstances.
"You've killed enough," she said to Boudreaux.
Danny Boudreaux was starting to panic. Wild eyes stared out from a head that seemed to be on a swivel.
"No, I haven't killed enough f*cking useless robots. I'm just getting started!" His skin was stretched tight against the bones of his face.
He swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine. His arms were stretched ramrod straight. His whole body was shaking and canted to the left.
"Danny? I yelled his name and started to move on him.
He hesitated for an instant. Then he jerked the gun and fired.
A deafening muzzle blast in close quarters.
He fired at Christine!
She tried to spin out of the way I couldn't tell if she had.
I kept coming, then I was in the air.
Danny Boudreaux swung the semiautomatic back at me. His eyes were filled with terror and intense Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
hatred. His body shook with rage, fear, desperation. Maybe he could get us both.
I moved a lot faster than he thought I could. I was inside the radius of his arm and the outstretched gun.
I crashed into Danny Boudreaux as if he were a full-grown man, an armed and dangerous one. I crushed him with a full body-blow. I relished the contact.
Danny Boudreaux and I were down in a sprawling heap. We were tangled up, a mass of flying arms and twitching, kicking legs. The revolver went off again. I didn't feel any blinding pain yet, but I tasted blood.
The boy screamed in his high-pitched wall. He wailed! I wrenched the gun out of his hand. He tried to bite me, to rip into my flesh. Then the boy growled.
He began to have a seizure, possibly from the drug withdrawal.
A major surge of brain activity was being discharged in his body He was thrashing his arms and his legs.
His pelvis thrust forward as if he were dry-humping my leg.
His eyes rolled back, and his body suddenly went limp. Foam spewed from his mouth. His arms and legs continued to flail and twitch. He might have lost consciousness for a second or two.
He continued to drool, to make choking and gurgling SOUnds.
I flipped him on his side. His lips were dusky blue. His eyes finally rolled back into place. They started to blink rapidly. The seizure had ended as quickly as it had come. He lay limp on the floor, a pool of wild bad boy.
The police had heard the shots. They were all over the living room. Riot shotguns, drawn pistols. Lots of shouting and squawking radio-receivers. Christine Johnson went to her husband.
So did two of the EMS medics.
The next time I looked, Christine was kneeling beside me. She didn't seem to be hurt. "Are you all right, Alex?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.
I was still holding down Danny Boudreaux. He seemed unaware of his surroundings. He was streaming with cold, oily sweat. The Sojourner Truth School killer now looked sad, lost, and unbearably confused.
Thirteen years old. Five homicides.
Maybe more.
"Grand mal?" Christine asked.
I nodded. "I think so. Maybe just too much excitement."
Danny Boudreaux was trying to say something, but I couldn't hear what it was. He sputtered, still drooling the bubbling white foam.
"What did you say? What is it?" I asked. My voice was hoarse and my throat hurt. I was shaking and covered with sweat myself.
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He spoke in a tiny whisper, almost as if there were no one inside him anymore. "I'm afraid," he told me. "I don't know where I am. I'm always so afraid."
I nodded at the small, horrifying face looking up at me. "I know," I said to the young killer. "I know what you're feeling."
That was the scariest thing of all.
THE DRAGONSLAYER lives, but how many lives do I have left?
Why was I taking chances with my life? Physician, heal thyself.
I stayed at the Johnson house for more than an hour, until the Boudreaux boy and the body of George Johnson were taken away There were questions I had to ask Christine Johnson for my report.
Then I called home and spoke to Nana. I told her to please go to bed. I was safe and basically sound.
For tonight, anyway
"I love you, Alex," she whispered over the phone. Nana sounded almost as tired and beat-up as I was.
"! love you, too, old woman," I told her.
That night, miracle of miracles, she actually let me get in the last word.
The crowd of ambulance-chasers on Summer Street finally broke up. Even the most persistent reporters and photographers left. One of Christine Johnson's sisters had arrived to be with her in this terrible time. I hugged Christine hard before I left.
She was still trembling. She had suffered a horrible, unspeakable loss. We had both spent a night in hell.
"I can't feel anything. Everything is so unreal," she told me. "I know this isn't a nightmare, and yet I keep thinking that it has to be one."
Sampson drove me home at one in the morning. My eyes felt lidless. My brain was still going at a million miles an hour, still buzzing loudly, still overheated.
What was our world coming to? Gary Soneji? Bundy? The Hillside Strangler? Koresh? McVeigh? On and on and on. Gandhi was asked once what he thought of Western civilization. He replied, "I think it could be a good idea."
I don't cry too much. I can't. The same is true for a lot of police officers I know. I wish I could cry sometimes, let it all out, release the fear and the venom, but it isn't that easy Something has gotten blocked up inside.
I sat on the stairs inside our house. I had been on my way to my bedroom, but I hadn't made it. I was trying to cry, but I couldn't.
I thought about my wife, Maria, who was killed in a drive-by shooting a few years back. Maria and I had fit together beautifully That wasn't just selective memory on my part. I knew how good love could be -- I knew it was the best thing I'd ever done in my life -- and yet here I was alone. I was taking chances with my life. I kept telling everybody that I was all right, but I wasn't.
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I don't know how long I stayed there in the darkness with my thoughts. Maybe ten minutes, maybe it was much more than that. The house was quiet in a familiar, almost comfortable way, but I couldn't be soothed that night.
I listened to sounds that I had been hearing for years. I remembered being a small boy there, growing up with Nana, wondering what I would become someday Now I knew the answer to that question. I was a multiple-homicide expert who got to work the biggest, nastiest cases. I was the dragonslayer.
I finally climbed the rest of the stairs and stopped in at Damon and Jannie's room. The two of them were fast asleep in the bedroom they share in our small house.
I love the way Damon andJannie sleep, the trusting, innocent ways of my young son and daughter. I can watch them for long stretches, even on a howling-bad night like this one. I can't count how many times have peeked in and just stood in the doorway.
They keep me going, keep me from flying apart some nights.
They'd gone to sleep wearing funky, heart-shaped sunglasses like the ones the kids wear in the singing group called Innocence.
It was cute as hell. Precious, too. I sat on the edge of Jannie's bed.
I quietly took off my boots and carefully lay them on the floor without making any noise.
Then I stretched myself out across the bottom of both their beds. I listened to my bones crack. I wanted to be near my kids, to be with them, for all of us to be safe. It didn't seem too much to ask out of life, too much reward for the day I had just lived through.
I gently kissed the rubber-soled slipper-sock of Jannie's pajamas.
I lay my hand very lightly against Damon's cool bare leg.
I finally closed my eyes, and I tried to push the rushing scenes of murder and chaos out of my mind. I couldn't do it. The monsters were everywhere that night. They truly were all around me.
There are so goddamn many of them. Wave upon wave, it seems, Young and old, and everything in between. Where are these monsters coming from in America? What has created them?
Lying there alongside my two children, I finally was able to sleep somehow. For a few hours, was able to forget the most horrifying thing of all, the reason for my extreme sorrow and upset.
I had heard the news before I left the Johnson house. President Thomas Byrnes had died early that morning.
I WAS HOLDING and gently petting Rosie the cat. I had the kitchen door open and peered outside, squinted at Sampson.
He stood in a freezing-cold rain. He looked like a big, dark boulder in the teeming rainstorm, or maybe it was hail that he was weathering so stoically
"The nightmare continues," he said to me. A simple declarative sentence. Devastating.
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"Year, doesn't it, though? But maybe I don't care about it anymore."
"Uh-huh. And maybe this is the year the Bullets win the NBA championship, the Orioles win the World Series, and the raggedyass Redskins go to the Super Bowl. You just never know."
A day had passed since the long night at the Johnson house, since the even longer morning in New York City. Not nearly enough time for any kind of healing, or even proper grieving.
President Edward Mahoney had been sworn in the day before.
It was necessary according to law, but it almost seemed indecent to me.
I had on dungarees and a white T-shirt. Bare feet on a cold linoleum floor. Steaming coffee mug in hand.
I was convalescing nicely. I hadn't washed off my whiskers, as Jannie calls the act of shaving. I was almost feeling human again.
I hadn't asked Sampson in yet, either.
"Morning, Sugar," Sampson persisted. Then he rolled back his upper lip and showed off some teeth. His smile was brutally joyful. I finally had to smile back at my friend and nemesis.
It was a little past nine o'clock and I had just gotten up. This was late for me. It was shameful behavior by Nana's standards. I was still sleep-deprived, trauma-shocked, in danger of losing the rest of my mind, throwing up, something shitty and unexpected.
But I was also much better. I looked good; I looked fine.
"Aren't you even going to say good morning?" Sampson asked, pretending to be hurt.
"Morning, John. I don't even want to know about it," I said to him. "Whatever it is that brings you here this cold and bleak morning."
"First intelligent thing I've heard out of your mouth in years," Sampson said, "but I'm afraid I don't believe it. You want to know everything. You need to know everything, Alex. That's why you read four newspapers every damn morning."
"I don't want to know, either," Nana contributed from behind me in the kitchen. She had been up for hours, of course. "I don't need to know. Shoo, fly Go fry some ice. Take a long walk off a short dock, Johnnyboy"
"We got time for breakfast?" I finally asked him.
"Not really," he said, careful to keep his smile turned on, "but let's eat, anyway Who could resist?"
"He invited you, not me," Nana warned from over by her hot stove.
She Was kidding Sampson. She loves him as if he were her own son, as if he were my physically bigger brother. She made the two of us scrambled eggs, homemade sausage, home fries, toast. She knows how to cook and could easily feed the entire Washington Redskins team at training camp. That would be no problem for Nana.
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Sampson waited until we had finished eating before he got back into it, whatever it was, whatever had happened now. His dark little secret. It may seem odd--but when your life is filled with homicides and other tragedies, you have to learn to take time for yourself. The homicides will still be there. The homicides are always there.
"Your Mister Grayer called me a little while ago," Sampson said as he poured his third cup of coffee. "He said to let you have a couple days off, that they could handle this. Them, like the great old horror flick that used to scare the hell out of us."
"That, what you just said, makes me suspicious and fearful right away. Handle what?" I asked.
I was finishing the last of half a loaf of cinnamon toast made from thick homemade bread. It was, honestly, quite seriously, a taste of heaven. Nana claims that she's been there, stolen several recipes. I tend to believe her. I've seen and tasted the proof of her tale.
Sampson glanced at his wristwatch, an ancient Bulova given to him by his father when he was fourteen.
"They're looking over Jill's office in the White House right about now. Then they're going to her apartment on Twenty-fourth Street. You want to go? As my guest? Got you a guest pass, just in case."
Of course I wanted to be there. I had to go. I needed to know everything about Jill, just as Sampson had said I did.
"You are the devil," Nana hissed at Sampson.
"Thank you, Nana." He beamed bright eyes and a thousand and one teeth. "High praise, indeed."
WE DROVE to Sara Rosen's apartment in Sampson's slippery-quick black Nissan. Nana's hot breakfast had brought me back to the real world at least. I was feeling partially revived. Physically, if not emotionally.
I was already highly intrigued about visiting Jill's home. I wanted to see her office at the White House, too, but figured that could wait a day or two. But her house. That was irresistible for the detective, and for the psychologist.
Sara Rosen lived in a ten-story building on Twenty-fourth and K. The building had an officious front-desk "captain" who studied our police IDs and then reluctantly let us proceed. The lobby was cheery otherwise. Carpeted, lots of large potted plants.
Not the kind of building where anyone would expect to find an assassin.
But Jill had lived right here, hadn't she?
Actually, the apartment fit the profile we had of Sara Rosen.
She was the only child of an Army colonel and a high school English teacher. She had grown up in Aberdeen, Maryland, then gone to Hollins College in Virginia. She had majored in history and English, graduating with honors. She'd come to Washington sixteen years ago, when she was twenty-one. She had never married, though she'd had several boyfriends over the years. Some of the staff at the White House press and communications offices called her "the sexy spinster."
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Her apartment was on the fifth floor of the ten-story building.
It was bright, with a view of an interior courtyard. The FBI was already at work inside. Chopin came softly from a stereo. It was a relaxed atmosphere, almost pleasant, devil-may-care. The case was, after all, closed.
Sampson and I spent the next few hours with the Feebie technicians who were searching the apartment for anything that might give the Bureau a clue about Sara Rosen.
Jill had lived right there.
Who the hell were you, Jill? How did this happen to you? What happened, Jill? Talk to us. You know you want to talk, lonely girl.
Her apartment was a one-bedroom with a small den, and we would examine every square inch of it. The woman who had lived here had helped to murder President Thomas Byrnes. The den had been used as an editing room for their film. The apartment had historical importance now. For as long as this building stood, people would point at it and say, "That's where Jill lived."
She had bought anonymous-looking furniture in a country-club style. They were middle-class trappings.
A sofa and armchair made of brushed cotton twill. Local furniture store tags: Mastercraft Interiors, Colony House in Arlington. Cool, cold colors in every room. Lots of ivory-colored things at Jill's place.
An ice-blue, patterned area rug. A pale, distressed pine armoire.
Several frames on the wall contained matted Christmas cards and letters from White House notables: the current press secretary, the chief of staff, even a brief note from Nancy Reagan.
There were no pictures of any of the "enemies" mentioned to me by President Byrnes. Sara Rosen was a secret starf*cker, wasn't she? Had Jack been a star for her? Was Jack really Kevin Hawkins?
Talk to us, Jill. I know you want to talk. Tell us what really happened. Give us a clue.
Sitting out on a small rolltop desk were mailings from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, both conservative organizations. There were several copies of U.S. News & World Report, Southern Living, Gourmet.
Also flyers about future poetry readings at Chapters on K Street, and Politics and Prose, bookstores in the Washington area. Was Jill the poet?
A poem had been cut from a book and taped to the wall above the desk.
How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
How public -- like a Frog -To tell one's name -- the live-long June -To an admiring Bog! -- Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson apparently had the same opinion of celebrities as Jack and Jill.
The walls of the den and bedroom were covered with books.
The walls were bookcases. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. High- and low-brow stuff. Jill the reader. Jill the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
loner. Jill the sexy spinster.
Who are you, Jill? Who are you, Sara Rosen ?
There was even one bit of evidence that showed a sense of humor. A sign was framed in the front hallway: use an accordion, go to jail. That's the law.
Who are you, Sara-Jill?
Did anybody really care about you before now ? Why did you help to commit this horrible crime? Was it worth it? To die like this, a lonely spinster? Who killed you, Jill ? Was it Jack?
If I found one indisputable piece of truth, just one, all the rest would follow, and we would finally understand. I wanted to believe that it could go like that.
I looked through Jill's clothes closets. I found conservative business suits mostly in dark colors. Labels that told me Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor. Low pumps, running shoes, casual flats. There were several sweatsuits for running and exercise.
Not many evening dresses for parties, for fun.
Who were you, Sara?
I searched for false walls, false bottoms, anywhere that she might have kept private notes, something that might help us to close this case forever, or open it wide.
C'mon, Sara, let us in on your secret life. Tell us who you really were.
What kept you going, Jill ? Who were you, Sara? Sexy spinster?
You want us to know. I know you do. You're still in this apartment.
I can feel it. I can feel your loneliness everywhere I look.
You want us to know something. What is it, Sara? Give us one more rhyme. Just one.
Sampson came up behind me while I was standing at a bedroom window overlooking the courtyard. I was thinking about all the possibilities the case held.
"You got it solved yet? Got it all figured out, Sweets?"
"Not yet. There's something more, though. Give me another couple of days here."
Sampson groaned at the thought. And so did I. But I knew I would come back here. Sara Rosen had left something for us to remember her by. I was almost sure of it.
Jill the poet.
MAYBE I WAS a glutton for crime and punishment, but I came back alone to her apartment very early the following morning.
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I was there by eight, long before anyone else. I wandered back and forth in the small apartment, nibbling from an open box of Nutri-Grain.
Something was still bothering me about the sexy spinster and her hideaway in Foggy Bottom. Detective's hunch. Psychologist's intuition.
For nearly an hour, I sat crouched at a window seat that looked out on K Street. I fixated on a bus shelter poster for a Calvin Klein perfume called Escape. The model in the poster looked unbearably sad and forlorn. Like Jill? Someone had written a thought balloon above the model's head. It read: "Someone feed me, please."
What gave Sara Rosen sustenance? I wondered as I peered out into the D.C. ether. What was her secret? What drove her to the madness of celebrity stalking--or whatever she had been doing before she was killed in the Peninsula Hotel? She had been murdered in New York. What was her connection to Jack?
What was the whole story? What was the real story? What secret still hadn't been unlocked?
I started in on the massive collection of books that dominated every room in the apartment, even the kitchen. Sara had been a voracious reader. Mostly literature and history, nearly all of it American. Sara the intellectual; Sara the real smart cookie.
Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger. Special Trust by Robert McFarland. Caveat by Alexander Haig.
Kissinger by Walter Isaacson. On and on and on. Fiction by Anne Tyler, Robertson Davies, Annie Proulx, but also Robert Ludlum and John Grisham. Poetry by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.
A volume entitled Woman Alone.
I opened each book, then carefully shook it out. There were well over a thousand volumes in the apartment. Maybe a couple of thousand. Lots of books to look through.
There were handwritten pages of notes stuffed into some of the books. Jottings Sara had made. I read every loose scrap. The hours went by. Meals were skipped. I didn't much care.
Inside a biography of Napoleon and Josephine, Sara Rosen had written "N. considered high intelligence an aberration in women. Stroked J."s breasts in public. Cur. But J. got her just deserts. Cunt."
Jill the poet. Jill the book lover. The mystery, the fantasy woman, the enigma. The killer.
There were several videotapes of movies in the den, and I began to open each of the containers.
Sara Rosen's film collection featured well-known romances, mystery thrillers, and romantic thrillers. The Prince of Tides, No Way Out, Disclosure, The Godfather trilogy, Gone With the Wind, An Officer and a Gentleman.
She also seemed to like older movies, especially noir mysteries: Raymond Chandler, James Cain, Hitchcock.
I opened every single cassette, row by row, every box. I thought it was important, especially with someone as orderly as Sara. If Sampson had been around, I wouldn't have heard the end of it. He would Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
have called me crazier than Jack or Jill.
I opened a cassette box for Hitchcock's Notorious. I didn't remember ever seeing the film myself, but one of Hitchcock's favorite male leads, Cary Grant, was featured on the box cover.
I found an unmarked cassette inside the box. It didn't look like a movie. Curious, I popped the cassette into the VCR. It was the fourth or fifth unmarked cassette that I had viewed so far.
The film wasn't Notorious.
I found myself looking at footage of the murder of Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick.
This was apparently the uncut version, which ran considerably longer than the film that had been sent to CNN.
The extra footage was even more disturbing and graphic than what had been viewed on the TV news network. The fear in Senator Fitzpatrick's voice was terrible to hear. He begged the killers for his life, then he began to cry, to sob loudly That part had been carefully edited from the CNN tape. It was too strong. It was brutal beyond belief. It put Jack and Jill in the worst possible light.
They were merciless killers. No pity, no passion, no humanity I jabbed at the PAUSE button. Jackpot!
The next shot in the film had started tight on Senator Fitzpatrick, then pulled out to a wide angle, maybe wider than intended.
The tape showed Jack as he fired the second shot.
The killer wasn't Kevin Hawkins!
I suddenly wondered if Jill had left the tape here for someone to find. Had she suspected that she might be betrayed? Was this Jill's payback? I thought that maybe it was: Jill had f*cked Jack, straight from hell.
I studied the frozen frame revealing the real Jack. He had short, sandy-blond hair. He was a handsome-looking man in his late thirties. There was no emotion on his face as he pulled the trigger.
"Jack," I whispered. "We've finally found you, Jack."
THE FBI, Secret Service, and Washington police cooperated and worked closely together on a massive and important manhunt.
They all badly wanted a piece of this one. It was the ultimate homicide case: a president had been murdered. The real killer was still out there. Jack was still alive; at least, I hoped that he was.
And he was!
Early on the morning of December 20, I watched Jack through a pair of binoculars. I couldn't take my eyes off the killer and mastermind.
I wanted to take him down. I wanted him for myself. We had to wait, though. This was Jay Grayer's plan. It was his day, his show, his plan of action.
Jack was just walking out of a three-story Colonial house. He went to a bright red Ford Bronco that sat Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
in a circular driveway.
By then, we knew who he was, where he lived, nearly everything about him. Now we understood a lot more about Jack and Jill.
Our eyes had been opened very, very wide.
"There's Jack. There's our boy," Jay Grayer said to me.
"Doesn't look like a killer, does he?" I said. "But he got the job done. He did it. He's the executioner of all those people, including Jill."
Jack was herding along a small boy and a girl. Very cute kids. I knew that their names were Alix and Artie. Also coming along for the ride were the two family dogs: Shepherd and Wise Man, a ten-year-old black retriever and a frisky young collie.
Jack's kids.
Jack's dogs.
Jacks nice house in suburbia.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill... to kill the President. And then Jack murdered his partner and lover, Jill.
He executed Sara Rosen in cold blood Jack thought he got away with the murders, clear and free. Jack had an almost great plan. But now we had Jack in our sights. I was watching Jack. We all were.
He looked like the perfect suburban Washington dad in just about every way. He had on a navy hooded parka that was unzipped in spite of the cold weather. The open jacket exposed a blue plaid flannel shirt and stonewashed dungarees. He wore floppy, tannish brown Topsiders, gray woolen socks.
His hair was cut short, military-style. His hair was dark brown now. He was a ruggedly handsome man.
Thirty-nine years old.
The President's assassin. The stone-cold killer of several political enemies.
A conspirator.
A world-class traitor.
A real heartless bastard, too.
He is just about the perfect American killer, I thought as I watched him in command of his obedient troop of children and pets. He was a near-perfect assassin. He was a daddy, a husband, clean-cut as could be.
He looked absolutely beyond suspicion.
He even had alibis, though none of them would hold up because of the film footage of his shooting Senator Fitzpatrick. A Jackal for our age, for our country, for our naive and very dangerous way of life.
I wondered if he had watched the President's burial ceremony on TV, or maybe even attended it, as I had.
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"He's such a devil-may-care f*cker, isn't he?Jay Grayer said.
He was sitting beside me in the front seat of the unmarked car. I hadn't heard Jay Grayer curse much before today. He wanted to take down Jack real bad, real hard.
That's what we were going to do. This was going to be a famous morning for all of us.
It was all about to go down.
"Get ready to follow Jack," Grayer spoke into a handheld mike in our car. "You lose him, anybody, and you can just keep going.
In whatever direction you're headed."
"We won't lose him. I don't think he'll even run," I said.
"He's a homebody, our Jack. He's a daddy. He has roots in the community."
What a strange country we lived in. So many murderers. So many monsters. So many decent people for them to prey on.
"I think you're probably right, Alex. Spot on. I don't get it yet, I don't fully understand him, but I think you're right. We've got him nailed. Only what exactly do we have here? What makes Jack run? Why did he do it?"
"Money," I told him a theory I had about Jack. "Look for the money. It cuts through and simplifies all the other stuff. A little politics, a little cause, and a lot of money. Ideology and financial gain. Hard to beat in this venal day and age."
"You think so?"
"I think so. Yes. I'd bet a lot on it. He has some strongly held beliefs, and one of them is that he and his family deserve to live well. So, yes, I think money is a part of this. I think he's probably acquainted with some people with a lot of money and power, but not as much power as they would like to have."
The Bronco took off and we followed it at a comfortable distance. Jack was a careful driver of his valuable cargo. He must have been impressive to his kids, maybe even to the dogs, undoubtedly to his neighbors.
Jack the Jackal. I wondered if that was another of Sara Rosen's word games.
I wondered what Jill's very last thought was when her lover betrayed her in New York. Had she expected it? Had she known he would betray her? Was that why she left the cassette in her apartment?
Jay wanted to talk, maybe he needed to keep his mind busy right now. "He's taking them to the day school down yonder. His life is back to normal now. Nothing happened to change that. He just planned the murder and helped execute a president. That's all. No biggie. Life goes on."
"From what I can gather in his military records, he was a first-class soldier. He left the Army as a full colonel. Honorable discharge. Participated in Desert Storm," I said to Jay.
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"Jack a war hero. I'm impressed as hell. I'm so goddamn impressed with this guy that I can't begin to tell you. Maybe I'll tell him."
Jack was a war hero, officially.
Jack was a patriot, unofficially.
As we rode along, I remembered the inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown at Arlington National Cemetery. Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God. Somehow, I thought that was how Jack probably thought about himself.
A soldier-hero known only to God.
He probably believed he'd gotten away with several murders -- in a just war.
Well, he hadn't. He was about to go down.
He dropped the two children off at the Bayard-Wellington School. It was a beautiful place: fieldstone walls and rolling, frost-slicked lawns; the sort of school I would have loved to send Damon andJannie to; the kind of school where Christine Johnson ought to teach.
You could move out of D.C., you know, I told myself as I watched Jack kiss each of his children good-bye.
So why don't you? Why don't you take Damon and Jannie away from Fifth Street? Why don't you do what this rotten piece of shit son of a bitch does for his kids?
Jay Grayer spoke into the hand mike again. "He's leaving the Bayard-Wellington School now. He's turning back onto the main road. God, it's pretty out here in Jackville, isn't it? We'll take him down at the stoplight up ahead! Just one imperative: we take him alive! We'll have four cars at the light with him. Four of us to get Jack. We take him alive."
"You have the right to remain silent," I said.
"What the hell are you saying?" Jay Grayer turned to me and asked.
"Just getting it out of the way He doesn't have any rights. He's going down."
Grayer offered up a crooked smile. We both understood why The good part was coming now. The only good part in this whole affair. "Famous stuff, huh? Here we go. Let's get this son of a bitch."
"Absolutely I want to have a nice long talk with Jack, too."
I want to kick his ass from this stoplight, all the way back to Washington.
I want to meet the real Jack.
NOBODY had figured out the assassination plot until now. Not one of us had even been close. No one had been able to solve the mystery of Jack and Jill until it was too late. Maybe we could unravel the whole mess now. A retrospective on Jack and Jill.
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We were less than a hundred yards away from capturing Jack.
He was heading down a steep, rolling hill toward a stoplight.
It was a very picturesque scene. Long lens, like in expensively made movies. The light turned red and Jack stopped like a law-abiding citizen. Unconcerned about anything.
A free man.
Jay Grayer and I eased up right behind his trendy, off-road vehicle.
I could read the sticker on the rear bumper of the Bronco: D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs.
Beartrap was the code for our operation. We had four mainline vehicles. Another half-dozen cars and two helicopters for backup. I didn't see how Jack could escape. I was thinking ahead to the massive ramifications of the assassin's capture, and the even more shocking surprise still to come.
This was going to get worse, much worse.
"We take him down on three," Jay Grayer said into his hand mike. He was extremely cool now, the consummate professional, as he had been from the beginning. I liked working with him enormously. He wasn't an egomaniac; he was just good at his job.
"We take him real easy," I said.
The beartrap was sprung.
I was one of the six who jumped out of the intercept cars stopped at the innocent-looking country-road light. It was an honor.
There were two civilian cars waiting at the light as well. A gray Honda and a Saab.
It must have looked like utter madness to them. That's because it was, and much worse than it looked.
The man in the Bronco had killed the President. This was like arresting Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan,John Wilkes Booth. An ordinary stoplight in northern Maryland.
I was there] I was glad I was there. I would have paid a huge admission price to be there for this.
I got to the passenger door of his vehicle as a Secret Service agent yanked open the driver's door. The two of us happened to be the quickest on our feet. Or maybe we were the ones who wanted Jack the most.
Jack turned toward me -- and he got to look right into the wide-eyed barrel of my Glock.
He got a real good look at death in an instant.
Execution-style!