Very professional!
"Don't move. Don't even breathe too hard. Don't move a millimeter," I said to him. "I don't want to have Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
an excuse. So don't give me one."
He hadn't been expecting us. I could tell that by the shock spread across his face. He thought he'd gotten away clean with the murders. Thought he was home free.
Well, he had it all wrong for once.
Jack had finally made his first mistake.
"Secret Service. You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, and that's a real good idea!"
one of the agents barked at Jack. The agent's face was bright red with anger, with outrage at this man who had murdered President Thomas Byrnes.
Jack looked at the Secret Service agent, and then back at me.
He recognized me. He knew who I was. What else did he know?
At first he'd been startled, but now he became calm. It was astonishing to see the calmness and cool take hold. He's calm as death, I thought.
I shouldn't have been surprised. This was the real Jack. This was the President killer.
"Very good," he finally said, commending us for doing a good job, for our professionalism. The son of a bitch nodded his approval.
"I'm proud of you. You did your jobs extremely well." It made my blood boil, but I knew the order of the day: we take him real easy. The gentle beartrap.
He slowly got out of the spit-shined red vehicle. Both his hands were held up high. He offered no resistance; he didn't want to be shot.
Suddenly, one of the Secret Service agents sucker punched him. The agent threw a hard roundhouse right that connected with the killer's jaw. I couldn't believe he'd done it, but I was glad.
Jack's head snapped back and he dropped like a stone. Jack was smart. He stayed down. There was no provocation for the agent's punch, no excuse whatsoever--except that the freak sprawled on the ground had murdered the President in cold blood.
Jack shook his head and worked his jaw as he looked up at us from the pavement. "How much do you know?" he asked.
We didn't answer him. None of us said a goddamn word. It was our turn to play games. Now we had a few surprises for Jack.
JACK WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING. We knew he was only part of the puzzle we were attempting to solve. We had decided to take him down first, but now came the second crucial stop.
As we rode back to his house on Oxford Street, I felt distant from the scene, almost as if I were watching myself in a dream. I remembered the few meetings I'd had with Thomas Byrnes. He'd told us all to have no regrets, but that advice didn't work out in the real world. The President was dead, and I would always feel partly responsible, even if I wasn't responsible at all.
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I wasn't thinking only about the President's murder. There was thirteen-year-old Danny Boudreaux. I felt an unsettling connection between the two cases. I had from the very beginning. The murders and unprecedented violence were everywhere. It was as if a strange, crippling disease were spreading across much of the world, but especially right here in America. I had already witnessed too much of it. I didn't know how to make the nightmare stop. No one did.
It wasn't over.
We were finally at the beginning of the awful mystery.
This was where it had started.
At this house just coming into view.
Jay Grayer spoke into the car's hand mike. "Dr. Cross and I will go the front-door route. Everyone cover us like a blanket.
No shooting. Not even return fire, if you can help it. Everybody clear on that?"
All the other agents were clear on the procedure and knew the stakes. Beartrap wasn't over yet.
Grayer pulled the black sedan up beside the front walk to the house. "You ready for one more shitstorm?" he asked me. "You okay with how this is going down, Alex?"
"I'm as okay as I'm going to be," I told him. "Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I needed to be here."
"We wouldn't even be here without you. Let's go do it."
The two of us got out of his unmarked car and hurried up the red-brick front walkway together. We matched each other, step for step.
This was where it had all started.
The big house, the whole street, seemed so innocent and appealing.
A beautiful, white Colonial stood before us. The house had a big old porch supported by column pedestals. Children's bikes were neatly stacked on the porch. Everything out here was so neat. Was it all a disguise? Of course it was.
Jay Grayer rang the doorbell and it sounded like the "Avon calling" bell. Jack and Jill came to The Hill But Jack and Jill started right here, didn't it? In this very house.
The door was answered by a woman wearing a red plaid robe that looked as if it came straight out of the J. Crew catalog.
A grapevine wreath, one of those peculiar, decorative affairs that looks. like Jesus' crown of thorns, was hung on the front door for the holidays. It had a big red bow tied around it. Here is Jill, I was thinking.
Finally, the real Jill.
"ALEX, JAY. My God, what is it? What's happened now? Don't tell me this is a social visit?"
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Jeanne Sterling stood just inside the front door of her house. I could see a polished oak stairway glistening behind her. A formal dining room was visible through pocket doors, which were also polished oak. A tall stack of gift-wrapped Christmas presents lay piled near a desk and a six-foot-high standing mirror in the foyer.
Jill's house. The inspector general of the CIA. Clean Jeanne.
"What's happened? I just made some coffee. Please, come in."
She sounded as if Jay Grayer and I were a couple of neighbors from just down the street. A social visit, right? She smiled and her prominent teeth made it look like a grimace.
What happened? Has someone in the neighborhood been involved in a fender bender? I just made fresh coffee. Good as the stuff at Starbucks. Let's chat.
"Coffee sounds fine,"Jay said, showing he could chat with the best of them.
We walked inside the house that she shared with her children and her husband. With Jack.
I noticed details -- everything seemed important, telling, evidence. The bright colors and exuberant style on the inside of the house said "American," but the accents communicated "world travel." French etchings. Flemish weavings. Chinese porcelain.
Jill the traveler. Jill the spymaster.
There's an old saying in classic mysteries, which I'd never felt made much sense -- cherchez la femme.
Look for the woman. I had my own catchphrase for solving many modern-day mysteries -- cherchez l'
argent. Look for the money.
I didn't believe that Jeanne Sterling and her husband had acted on their own. I didn't believe it any more than I had ever bought that Jack and Jill were celebrity stalkers. Aldrich Ames had supposedly received two and a half million for exposing a dozen American agents. How much had the Sterlings received for disposing of a troublesome United States president? A loose cannon who had gone against the system?
And who had given them the money? Cherchez l'argent. Maybe Jeanne would tell us if we twisted her arm a little, which I definitely planned to do.
Who would gain the most from the murder of President Thomas Byrnes? The vice president, now the president? Wall Street? Organized crime? The CIA? I would have to ask Jeanne about that. Maybe over steaming pewter mugs of coffee. Maybe that was what we could chat about.
She turned and led the way back to her kitchen. She was so calm and collected. I continued to notice the furnishings, the pristine decor, the neatness, even with three kids in the house.
I thought that I knew how Jeanne and her husband could afford such a terrific house out here in Chevy Chase. Cherchez l'argent.
"There's been some kind of a break, hasn't there?" she said and turned to look at us. "You have me completely baffled as to what it could be. What's happened? Tell me." She rubbed her hands together gleefully. Quite an act. Quite an actress.
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"There has been a break," I finally said. "We've found out some interesting things about Jack." We decided to take him down first. Now it's your turn.
"That's excellent news," Jeanne Sterling said. "Please, tell me everything. After all, Kevin Hawkins was one of ours."
We entered a large kitchen, which I remembered from my first visit there. The walls were covered with terra cotta tiles and expensive-looking wooden cabinets. Half a dozen windows looked out on a gazebo and a tennis court.
"We've arrested your husband, Brett, for the murder of the President,"Jay Grayer told her in a cold, flat voice. "We have him in custody right now. We're here to arrest you."
"It's so damn hard to control every single detail, isn't it? One little slipup was all it took," I said to Jeanne.
"Sara made a mistake.
I think she fell in love with your husband. Did you know that? You must have known about Sara and Brett's affair?"
"Alex, what are you saying? What areyou saying, Jay? Neither of you is making any sense."
"Oh, sure we are,Jeanne. Sara Rosen kept a dupe of the footage of Senator Fitzpatrick's murder at her apartment in D.C. Your husband is on the tape. She was in love with him, the poor spinster.
Maybe you planned on that. You must have at least suspected it. We even have a partial fingerprint of his at Sara Rosen's apartment in Foggy Bottom. We'll probably find more now that we know what to look for."
Her look darkened, her eyes narrowed into slits. I sensed she might not have known everything about her husband's close "relationship" with Sara Rosen.
She knew about Sara, of course. In the last few days, we had discovered that Sara Rosen had been an Agency spy inside the White House. She had been the Agency's mole there for eight years. That was how Jack had found her, and knew she would be loyal. Sara Rosen had been the perfect Jill. Sara had believed in "the cause," at least as much as she was told about it. She was extremely right-wing. Thomas Byrnes wanted massive changes at the Pentagon and CIA. A powerful group felt the changes could destroy the country, would destroy the country. They had decided to destroy President Byrnes instead.
Jack and Jill had been born.
Jay Grayer said, "This is going to be worse than Aldrich Ames, you know. Much, much worse."
Jeanne Sterling slowly nodded her head. "Yes, I suppose it will be. I suppose," she continued, her eyes trailing back and forth between Grayer and me, "that you're proud to be a part of the destruction of one of the few, the very few, advantages the United States holds over the rest of the world. Our intelligence network was second to none. It still is, in my opinion. The President was a foolish amateur who wanted to dismantle intelligence and the milita In the name of what? Populist change? What a mock-cry, what a sad, dangerous joke. Thomas Byrnes was a car salesman from Detroit! He had no business making the decisions he was entrusted With. Most presidents before him understood that.
I don't care what you believe about us. My husband and I are patriots. Are we clear on that? Are we Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
clear, gentlemen?"
Jay Grayer let her finish before he spoke again. "You and your husband are slimy traitors. You're both murderers. Are we clear?
You're right about one thing, though. I am proud about bringing you down. I feel great about that. I really do,Jeanne."
There was a sudden flare of bright white light in the kitchen!
A muzzle flash.
A deafening shot rang out in the most unexpected of places. Jay Grayer's body arched. He fell back against the kitchen counter, knocking over a row of tall wooden stools.
Jeanne Sterling had shot him point-blank. She had a gun hidden in her robe. She'd fired right- through the pocket. Maybe she had seen us approaching the house. Or maybe she always had a gun nearby. She was Jill, after all.
Jeanne shifted her feet and turned the gun on me. I was already diving down behind the kitchen counter.
She fired the semiautomatic anyway.
Another deafening blast in the kitchen. A flash of light. Then another shot.
She kept firing as she backed from the kitchen. Then she ran.
Her robe flew behind her like a cape.
I quickly moved to where Jay Grayer had gone down. He was wounded high in the chest, near the collarbone. His face was drained of color. Jay was conscious, though. "Just get her, Alex.
Get her alive," he gasped. "Get them. They know everything."
I moved carefully but quickly inside the Sterling house. Don't kill her. She knows the truth. We need to hear it from her just this once. She knows why the President was killed, and who ordered it.
She knows!
Suddenly, a Secret Service agent came rushing inside the front door. Another agent was close behind him.
Two more agents appeared from the direction of the kitchen.
All of them had their guns drawn. Looks of shocked concern were on their faces.
"What the hell happened in here?" one of the agents shouted.
"Jeanne Sterling has a gun. We take her alive, anyway We have to take her alive!"
I heard a noise in the direction of the front hallway Actually, two noises. I understood what was Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
happening, and my heart sank.
A car engine was being started.
An electric garage door was being raised.
Jill was getting away.
MY CHEST was thundering, ready to explode, but my heart had gone icy cold.
Take her alive, no matter what! She's even more important than Jack.
The door to the garage was down a narrow hallway that led past a large sun room. The sun room was awash in blinding morning light. I sucked in a breath. Then I opened the garage door carefully, as if it might explode. It just might, I knew. Anything could happen now. This was the house of dirty tricks.
There was a dark, narrow corridor between the house and the garage. The passageway was about four feet long. I moved down it in a low crouch.
Another closed door was at the end.
Take her alive. That the one imperative.
I yanled open the second door and jumped out into what I figured had to be the garage. It was.
Instantly, I heard three loud pops. I hit the concrete floor hard.
Gunshots!
Thunderous, scary noise in the confined space. No thud of a bullet to my chest or head, thank God.
I saw Jeanne Sterling leaning out of the window of her station wagon. She had a semiautomatic clutched in one hand. I pushed myself up again.
Take her alive! my brain screamed as I ducked out of sight.
I had seen something else in the car. She had her youngest daughter with her. Her three-year-old, Karon.
She was using Karon as a shield. She knew we wouldn't shoot with the girl in the way The little girl was screaming loudly. She was terrified.
How could Jeanne Sterling do this to a child?
I crouched behind the oil tank in the darkened, cramped space.
I was trying to think straight.
I shut my eyes for a beat. Half a second at most.
I drank in a huge breath of cold air and gasoline fumes. Tried to think in absolutely straight lines. I made a decision and hoped it was the right one.
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When I came up again, I fired. I carefully aimed away from the little girl. But I fired.
I went down in the crouch again, hidden behind the dark tank.
I knew I hadn't hit anybody My shot had only been a warning, a final one. Andrew Klauk had been right when we'd talked in the Sterlings' backyard. The CIA "ghost" was the one who told me all I needed to know right now -- the game is played with no rules.
"Jeanne, put the goddamn gun down!" I called to her. "Your little girl is in danger."
No answer came back, just terrifying silence.
Jeanne Sterling would do whatever it took to get away. She had murdered a president, ordered it done, helped plan every step.
Would Jeanne Sterling really sacrifice her own child, though?
For what? For money? A cause she and her husband believed in?
What cause could be worth the life of a president? Of your own child?
Take her alive. Even if she deserves to die here in this garage.
Execution-style.
I popped up again. I fired a second shot into the car windJack and shield -- the driver's side, far right.
Glass shattered all over the garage. Glass fragments sprayed against the ceiling, then rained back down again.
The noise was deafening in the closed space. Karon was sobbing and screeching.
I could see Jeanne Sterling through the mosaic of broken windshield glass. There was blood all over one side of her face.
She looked startled and shocked. It's one thing to plan a murder, quite another to be shot at. Io be wounded. To take a hit. Io feel that deadly thud in your own body I took three fast steps toward the Volvo station wagon.
I grabbed the car door and yanked it open. I kept my head down low, close to my chest. My teeth were gritted so hard that they hurt.
I grabbed a full handful of Jeanne Sterling's blond hair. Ihen I hit her. I popped Jeanne with a full, hard shot. Same as her husband got. The right side of her face crunched as it met my fist.
Jeanne Sterling sagged over the steering wheel. She must have had a glassjaw. Jeanne was a killer, but not much of a prizefighter.
She went out with the first good punch. We had her now. I had taken her down alive.
We finally had Jack and Jill.
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Her little girl was crying in the front seat, but she wasn't hurt.
Neither was the mother. I couldn't have done it any easier, any other way We had Jack, and now we had Jill. Maybe we would hear the truth. No -- we would hear the truth!
I grabbed the little girl and held her tight against me. I wanted to erase all this for her. I didn't want her to remember it. I kept repeating, "It's all right, it's all right. Everything is all right."
It wasn't, though. I doubted it ever would be again. Not for the Sterling children, not for my own kids.
Not for any of us.
There are no rules anymore.
THE NIGHT of the capture of Jeanne and Brett Sterling, the television networks were filled with the powerful, highly disturbing story. I did a brief interview with CNN, but mostly I declined the attention. I went home and stayed there.
President Edward Mahoney delivered a statement at nine.
Jack and Jill had wanted Edward Mahoney to be president, I couldn't help thinking as I watched him address hundreds of millions of people around the world. Maybe he was involved with the shooting; maybe not. But someone had wanted him to be president instead of Thomas Byrnes, and Byrnes had distrusted Mahoney.
All I knew about Mahoney was that he and two Cuban partners had made a fortune in the cable business. Mahoney had then become a popular governor of Florida. I remembered that there had been a lot of money behind his campaign. Look for the money.
I watched the dramatic three-ring TV circus along with Nana and the kids. Damon andJanelle knew too much to be excluded from the big picture now. From their perspective, their daddy was a hero. I was someone to be proud of, and maybe even listen to and obey every now and again. But probably not.
Jannie and Rosie the cat cuddled with me on the couch as we watched the nonstop parade of news features on the assassination and the subsequent capture of the real Jack and Jill. Every time I appeared in a film sequence, Jannie gave me a kiss on the cheek. "You approve of your pop?" I asked her after one of her best, loudest smackers.
. "Yes, very much so," Jannie told me. "I love seeing you on TV.
So does Rosie. You're handsome, and you talk real nice. You're my hee-ro."
"What do you have to say, Damon?" I checked on his royal majesty's reaction to the strange goings-on.
Damon grinned ear to ear. He couldn't help himself. "Pretty good," he admitted. "I feel good inside."
"I hear you," I said to my young cub. "You want to give me a hug?"
He did, so I knew Damon was happy with me for the moment.
That was important to me.
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"Mater familias?" I asked for Nana's opinion last. She was propped up in her favorite armchair. She hugged herself tightly as she watched the traumatic news coverage with rapt attention and a snide commentary
"Not familias enough lately," Nana offered a quick complaint.
"Well, mostly I agree withJannie and Damon. I don't see why the white Secret Service man is taking most of the credit, though.
Seems to me that the President got shot on his watch."
"Maybe he got shot on all of our watches," I said to her.
Nana shrugged her deceptively frail-looking shoulders. "At any rate, as always, I am proud of you, Alex.
Has nothing to do with the heroics, though. I'm proud of you because of you."
"Thank you," I told Nana. "Nobody can say anything nicer.
Not to anybody."
"I know that," Nana got the last word in; then she finally grinned. "Why do you think I said it?"
I hadn't been home much during the past four weeks, and we were all hungry for one another's company.
We were starved, in fact. I couldn't walk anywhere in the house without one of the kids firmly attached to an arm or leg.
Even Rosie the cat got into the act. She was definitely family now, and we were all glad she'd somehow found her way to our house.
I didn't mind any of it. Not one minute of the attention. I was starved myself. I had a quick regret that my wife, Maria, wasn't around to enjoy the special moment, but the rest was okay. Pretty good, actually.
Our life was going to get back to normal again now. I vowed it would happen this time.
The next morning I was up to take Damon over to the Sojourner Truth School. The place was already bouncing back nicely. Innocence has a short memory. I stopped by Christine Johnson's office, but she wasn't back at work yet.
Nobody knew when she would return to the school, but they all missed her like a cure for the flu. So did I, so did i. There was something special about her. I hoped she was going to be all right.
I got home at quarter to nine that morning. The house on Fifth Street was incredibly quiet and peaceful.
Kind of nice, actually. I put on Billie Holiday: The Legacy 1933-1958. One of my all-time favorites.
The phone rang about nine. The damn infernal phone.
It was Jay Grayer. I couldn't imagine why he would be calling me at home. I almost didn't want to hear the reason for his call.
"Alex, you have to come out to Lorton Prison," he said in an urgent-sounding voice. "Please come, right now."
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I BROKE every posted speed limit traveling out to the federal prison in Virginia. My head was spinning, threatening to come right off, to smash through the car windshield. As a homicide detective, you need to think that you're strong and that you can take just about anything that's dished out, but sooner or later you find out you really can't. Nobody can.
I had been to Lorton Prison a few times before. The kidnapper and mass killer Gary Soneji had been kept in maximum security there once upon a time.
I arrived about ten in the morning. It was a crisp, blue-skied morning. A few reporters were in the parking lot and on the side lawns when I arrived.
"What do you know, Detective Cross?" one of them asked.
"Beautiful morning," I said. "You can quote me. Feel free."
This was where the Sterlings were being held in custody, where the government had decided to keep them until their trial for the murder of Thomas Byrnes.
Alex, you have to come out to Lorton Prison. Please come, right now.
I met Jay Grayer on the fourth floor of the prison building.
Warden Marion Campbell was there, too. The two of them looked as pale as the institution's stucco walls.
"Oh, goddamn, Alex," Dr. Campbell groaned when he saw me approaching. The two of us went back. I took his hand and shook it firmly. "Let's go upstairs," he said.
More police and prison personnel were posted outside an examination room on the fifth floor. Grayer and I filed inside behind the warden and his closest aides. My heart was in my throat.
We had to wear blue surgical masks and clear plastic gloves for the occasion. We were having trouble breathing, even without the masks.
"Oh, goddammit," I muttered as we entered the room.
Jeanne and Brett Sterling were dead.
The two bodies were laid out on matching stainless steel tables. Both Sterlings were stripped naked. The overhead lighting was bright and harsh. The glare was overpowering.
The whole scene was beyond my powers of comprehension, beyond anyone's.
Jack and Jill were dead.
Jack and Jill had been murdered inside a federal prison.
"Goddamnit. Goddamn them," I said into my surgical mask.
Brett Sterling was well-built and looked powerful even in death. I could imagine him as Sara Rosen's lover. I noticed that the bottoms of his feet were dirty Probably walking barefoot in his cell all night.
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Pacing? Waiting for someone to come for him?
Who had gotten inside Lorton and done this? Was he murdered?
What in the name of God had happened? How could it happen here?
Jeanne Sterling had pasty-white skin, and she wasn't in good physical shape. She looked much better in tailored gray and blue suits than in the nude.
Above her black pubic hair was a soft roll of paunch. Her legs were crisscrossed with varicose veins.
She'd had a nosebleed either before she died or while she was dying.
Neither of the Sterlings seemed to have suffered much. Was that a clue for us? They both had been found dead in their cells at the same 5:00 A.M. guard check.
They had died close to the same time. According to plan? Of course, according to plan. But whose plan was it?
Jack and Jill came to Lorton Prison... and what happened to them here? What the hell happened out here last night?... Who finally killed Jack and Jill?
"They both underwent extensive body searches when they were brought here," Warden Campbell said to Jay and me. "This may have been a joint suicide, but they had to have help, even for that. Someone got them the poison between six last night and early this morning. Somebody got inside their cells."
Dr. Marion Campbell looked directly at me. His eyes were bleary and wild and incredibly red-rimmed.
"There was a small amount of skin and blood under her right index finger. She fought someone. Jeanne Sterling tried to fight back. She was murdered; at least, I think so. She didn't want to die, Alex."
I closed my eyes for a second or two. It didn't help. Everything was the same when I opened them again.
Jeanne and Brett Sterling still lay naked and dead on the two stainless steel tables.
They had been executed. Professionally Without passion.
That was the eeriest part -- it was almost as if Jack and Jill had been visited and murdered by Jack and Jill.
Had a "ghost" murdered Jeanne and Brett Sterling? I was afraid we would never know. We weren't supposed to know. We weren't important enough to know the truth.
Except maybe one tenet, one principle: there are no rules.
Not for some people, anyway.
I ALWAYS WANT everything tied up nice and neat with a bright ribbon and bow on the package. I want to be the mastermind dragonslayer on every case. It just doesn't work out that way -- probably wouldn't be any fun if it did.
I spent the next two and a half days at the Sterling house, working side by side with the Secret Service and FBI. Jay Grayer and Kyle Craig both came out to the house in Chevy Chase. I had an idea in the back of my head that maybe Jeanne Sterling had left us a clue to go on -- something to get back at her Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
murderers.