Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

by Patterson, James

  “Every single call to the White House goes through a private switchboard. Then the call is monitored by a second operator in White House Communications, which is actually part of our Intelligence Division. Every call except this one. The call completely bypassed the control system. Nobody knows how the hell it happened. But it happened.”

  “This phone call that couldn't have happened- was it recorded?” I asked Grayer.

  “Yes, of course it was. It's already being processed at FBI headquarters and also at Bell Atlantic out in White Oak. Jill used another filtering device to modify her voice, but there might be ways to get around that. We've got half the Baby Bell's high-tech lab on it.”

  I shook my head again. I'd heard it, but I couldn't believe any of this. “What did Jill have to say?”

  “She began by identifying herself. She said, 'Hi, this is Jill speaking.” I'm sure that got the President's attention better than his usual cup of joe in the morning. Then she said, 'Mr. President, are you ready to die?“”

  I NEEDED TO SEE the house. I needed to be inside the place where General Cornwall and his son had been murdered. I needed to feel everything about the killers, their modus operandi.

  I got my wish. I reached McLean before nine that morning.

  The December day was very gray and overcast. The Cornwall house looked surreal, stark and cold, as I approached and then entered through the front door. It was cold on the inside, too.

  Either the Cornwall family was denying that winter was coming or they were saving money on heat.

  The double murders had been committed on the second floor.

  General Aiden Cornwall and his nine-year-old son still lay on their backs in the upstairs hallway It was a cold, calculated, very professional killing. The grisly murder scene looked like something from a casebook, maybe even one of my notebooks. It was forensic textbook stuff, almost too much so.

  FBI technicians and medical examiners were all over the house. There were probably twenty people inside.

  It began raining hard just after I arrived at the house. The cars and TV news trucks that came after me all had their headlights on. It was eerie as hell.

  Jeanne Sterling found me in the upstairs hallway. For the first time, the CIA inspector general seemed rattled. The severe, constant pressure was getting to all of us. Some people were after the President of the United States, and they were very good at this. They were extremely brutal as well.

  “What's your gut reaction, Alex?” asked Jeanne.

  “My reaction won't make any of our jobs easier,” I said. "The only truly sustaining pattern I've seen is that Jack and Jill really don't have a pattern. Other than the notes, the poems. There certainly doesn't seem to be any sexual angle to these two murders.

  Also, from what I understand, Aiden Cornwall was a conservative, not a liberal like the other victims. That's a shift that might knock down a whole lot of theories about Jack and Jill."

  As I was talking to Jeanne Sterling, I had another insight into the notes Jack and Jill had left. The poetry might be telling us something important. The FBI linguistic agents hadn't found anything yet, but I didn't care. Whoever was writing the rhymes, probably Jill, wanted us to know something.... Was there a definite order to what they were doing? The desire to create instead of destroy? The poetry had to mean something. I was almost sure of it.

  “How about on your end, Jeanne? Anything?”

  Jeanne shook her head and bit her lower lip with her big teeth.

  “Not a thing.”

  IT HAD BEEN a very long day and it was still going strong and hard. At ten o'clock that night, I arrived at the FBI offices on Pennsylvania Avenue. My mind was running way too fast as I rode the elevator up to twelve. The lights in the building were blazing like tiny campfires above D.C. I figured that Jack and Jill had a lot of people staying up late that night. I was only one of them.

  I'd come to the FBI offices to listen to the phone message Jill had sent to the President early that morning. All the important evidence was being made available to me. I was being let inside. I was even being allowed to make waves inside the White House.

  I knew all about horrible multiple killers; most of the rest of the team hadn't had that pleasure.

  No rules.

  I was brought by Security to an audio/electronics office on twelve. An NEC tape machine was waiting for me. A copy of Jill's voice tape was already in. The tape machine was on. Running hot.

  “This is a dupe, Dr. Cross, but it's close enough for your listening purposes,” I was told. An FBI techie, long hair and all, went on to inform me they were certain that the voice on the tape had been altered or filtered electronically The FBI experts didn't believe the caller could possibly be identified from the tape. Once again, Jack and Jill had carefully covered their trail.

  “I talked to a contact at Bell Labs,” I said. “He told me the same thing. Couple more experts confirm that and I'll believe it.”

  The nonconformist-looking FBI technician finally left me alone with the taped phone call. I wanted it that way For a while I just sat in the office and stared out at the Justice Department across Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Jill was right there with me.

  She had something about herself to reveal, something she needed to tell us. Her deep, dark secret.

  The tape had been cued up. Her voice startled me in the silent, lonely office.

  Jill spoke.

  “Good morning, Mr. President. It's December ten. Exactly five A.M. Please don't hang up on me. This is Jill. Yes, the Jill. I wanted to speak to you, to make this situation very personal for you. Are we okay so far?”

  “It's way past 'personal.”“ President Byrnes spoke calmly to her. ”Why are you murdering innocent people? Why do you want to kill me Jill?"

  “Oh, there's a very good reason, a fully satisfactory explanation for all our actions. Maybe we just like the power trip of frightening the so-called most powerful people in the world. Maybe we like sending you a message from all the little people you've frightened with your command decisions and almighty mandates from on high. At any rate, no one who's been killed was innocent, Mr. President. They all deserved to die, for one reason or another.”

  Then Jill laughed. The sound of the electronically altered voice was almost childlike.

  I thought of Aiden Cornwall's young son. Why did a nine-year-old boy deserve to die? At that moment, I hated Jill -- whoever she was, whatever her motives.

  President Byrnes didn't back down. The President's voice was measured, calm. "Let me make one thing clear to you: you don't frighten me. Maybe you ought to be afraid, Jill. You and Jack.

  We're getting close to you now. There's nowhere on earth you can hide. There isn't one safe spot on the globe. Not anymore."

  “We'll certainly keep that in mind. Thanks so much for the warning. Very sporting of you. And you please keep this in mind -- you're a dead man, Mr. President. Your assassination is already a done deal.”

  That was the end of the tape. Jill's final words to President Byrnes, spoken so coolly, so brazenly.

  Jill the morning deejay. Jill the poet. Who are you Jill?

  Your assassination is already a done deal.

  I wanted to interview President Byrnes again. I wanted to talk with him right now. I needed him in this office, listening to the sick, threatening tape with me. Maybe the President knew things that he wasn't telling any of us. Someone must.

  I played the frightening taped message several more times.

  I don't know how long I sat in the FBI office, staring out over the becalmed lights of Washington, D.C. They were somewhere out there. Jack and Jill were out there. Possibly planning an assassination. But maybe not. Maybe that wasn't it at all.

  You're a dead man, Mr. President.

  Your assassination is already a done deal.

  Why were they warning us?

  Why warn us about what they planned to do?

  IT WAS PAST TEN-THIRTY, but I still had one more important stop I
wanted to make. I called Jay Grayer and told him I was on my way to the White House. I wanted to see President Byrnes again. Could he make it happen?

  “This can wait until the morning, Alex. It should wait.”

  "It shouldn't wait, Jay. I've got a couple of theories that are burning a hole in my brain. I need the President's input. If President Byrnes says that it waits until the morning, then it waits.

  But talk to Don Hamerman and whoever else needs to be talked to about it. This is a murder investigation. We're trying to prevent murders. At any rate, I'm on my way over there."

  I arrived at the White House, and Don Hamerman was waiting for me. So was John Fahey, the chief counsel, and James Dowd, the attorney general and a personal friend of President Byrnes.

  They all looked put out and also very tense. This apparently wasn't how things were done in the Big House.

  “What the hell is this all about?” Hamerman confronted me angrily I had been waiting to see what his bite was like. I'd seen worse, actually

  “If you want, I'll wait until tomorrow. But my instincts tell me not to,” I told him in a soft but firm voice.

  “Tell us what you want to say to him,” James Dowd spoke up.

  “Then we'll decide.”

  “I'm afraid that it's only for the President to hear. I need to talk with him, alone, just like we did the first time we met.”

  Hamerman exploded. “Jesus Christ, you arrogant son of a bitch. We're the ones who let you in here in the first place.”

  “Then you're the ones to blame, I guess. I told you that I was here to conduct a murder investigation and that you wouldn't like some of my methods. I told the President the same thing.”

  Hamerman stormed away from us, but he returned in a couple of minutes. “He'll see you up on the third floor. This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes of his time. It won't take more than a few minutes.”

  “We'll see what the President has to say about that.”

  THE TWO OF US met in a solahum that is attached to the living quarters on the third floor. The room had been a favorite of Reagan's. Outside the windows, the lights of Washington were shining brightly. I felt as if I were living a chapter out of All the President's Men.

  “Good evening, Alex. You needed to see me,” the President said, and seemed calm and cheerful enough. Of course, there was no way for me to judge his true feelings. He was dressed casually in khakis and a blue sport shirt.

  “I apologize for coming in and causing a lot of upset and inconvenience,” I said to him.

  The President raised his hand to stop me from apologizing further. “Alex, you're here because we wanted you to do exactly what you're doing. We didn't think anybody on the inside would have the balls. Now, what's on your mind? How can I help you?”

  I relaxed a little bit. How could the President help me? That was a question most of us had always wanted to hear. “I spent the day thinking about this morning's phone call, and also the murders out in McLean. Mr. President, I don't think we have a lot of time left. Jack and Jill are making that pretty clear. They're impatient, very violent; they're taking more and more risks. They also have a psychological need to rub it in our face every time that they can.”

  “Are they just flattering their egos, Alex?”

  “Possibly, but maybe they want to diminish your power. Mr. President, I wanted to see you alone because what I have to say needs absolute confidentiality. As you know, we've been checking out everyone who works at the White House. The Secret Service has been cooperative. So has Don Hamerman.”

  The President smiled. “I'll bet Don has.”

  "In his own way, he has. A watchdog is a watchdog, though.

  Based on our findings so far, we've placed three members Of the current staff under surveillance by the Secret Service. We would rather watch than dismiss them. They've been added to the seventy-six others currently under surveillance around Washington."

  “The Secret Service always has a number of potential threats to the President under surveillance,” Thomas Byrnes said.

  "Yes, sir. We're just taking precautions. I don't have particularly high hopes for the three staff members. They're all males.

  Somehow I thought we might turn up Jill. But we didn't."

  The President's look darkened. “I would have liked to meet Jill and have a private chat with her. I'd have liked that a lot.”

  I nodded. Now came the really difficult part of our little talk.

  “I have to broach a tough subject, sir. We need to talk about some of the other people around you, the people closest to you.”

  Thomas Byrnes sat forward in his chair. I could tell that he didn't like this at all.

  “Mr. President, we have reason to suspect that someone with access into the White House, or possibly with power and influence here, might be involved in all of this. Jack and Jill are certainly getting into high places with the greatest of ease The people close to you have to be checked, and checked very closely”

  Both of us were suddenly quiet. I could almost visualize Don Hamerman waiting outside, chewing on his silk tie.

  I broke the awkward silence.

  “I know that we're talking about things you would rather not,” I said.

  The President sighed. “That's why you're here. That's why you're here.”

  “Thank you,” I told him. “Sir, you have no reason not to trust me on this. As you said yourself I'm an outsider. I have nothing to gain.”

  Thomas Byrnes sighed a second time. I sensed that I had reached him, at least for the moment. “I trust many of these people with my life. Don Hamerman is one of them, my bulldog, as you correctly surmised. Whom don't I trust ? I'm not completely comfortable with Sullivan or Thompson at the Joint Chiefs. I'm not even sure about Bowen at the FBI. I've made serious enemies on Wall Street already. Their reach inside Washington is very deep and very powerful. I understand that organized crime is none too pleased with my programs, and they are much more organized now than they've ever been. I'm challenging an old, powerful, very fucked-up system -- and the fucked-up system doesn't like it. The Kennedys did that -- especially Robert Kennedy”

  I was having trouble catching my breath all of a sudden. “Who else, Mr. President? I need to know all your enemies.”

  "Helene Glass in the Senate is an enemy... Some of the reactionary conservatives in the Senate and House are enemies.... I believe... that Vice President Mahoney is an enemy, or close to one. I made a compromise before the convention to put him on the ticket. Mahoney was supposed to deliver Florida and other parts of the South. He did deliver. I was supposed to deliver certain considerations to patrons of his. I haven't delivered.

  I'm screwing with the system, and that isn't done, Alex."

  I listened to Thomas Byrnes without moving a muscle. The effect of talking to the President like this was numbing and disturbing. I could see by the look on his face what it cost Thomas Byrnes to admit some of what he had to me.

  “We should put surveillance on these people,” I said.

  The President shook his head. “No, I can't allow it. Not at this time. I can't do that, Alex.” The President rose from his chair.

  “How did your kids like the keepsakes?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. I wouldn't be held off like that. “Think about the vice president, and about Senator Glass, too. This is a murder investigation. Please don't protect someone who might be involved. Please, Mr. President, help us... whoever it is.”

  “Goodnight, Alex,” the President said in a strong, clear voice.

  His eyes were unflinching.

  “Goodnight, Mr. President.”

  “Keep at it,” he said. Then he turned away from me and walked out of the solarium.

  Don Hamerman entered the room. “I'll see you out,” he said stiffly. He was cold -- unfriendly Perhaps I also had an enemy in the White House.

  NO WAY, JOSE! Couldn't be. Could not be. This just could not be happening. Welcome to the X-Files meets The Twilight Zon
e meets the Information Superhighway At five one and two hundred ten pounds, Maryann Maggio was a powerhouse. She thought of herself as a “censor of the obscene and dangerous” on the Prodigy interactive network. Her job with Prodigy was to protect travelers on the Information Superhighway An emergency was developing before her eyes right now. There was an intruder on the network.

  This couldn't be happening. She couldn't take her eyes off her IBM desktop screen. “This is the interactive age, all right. Well, people, get ready for it,” she muttered at the screen. “There's a train wreck a-comin'.”

  Maryann Maggio had been a censor with IBM-owned Prodigy for nearly six years. By far, the most popular service on Prodigy was the billboards. The billboards were used by members to broadcast personal messages for other members to react to, learn from, plan their vacations, find out about a new restaurant, that sort of thing.

  Usually the messages were pretty harmless, covering topical subjects, questions and answers on anything from welfare reform to the ongoing murder trial of the month.

  But not the messages that she was staring at right now. This called for Infante the Censor, the protector of young minds, as she sometimes thought of herself. “Big Sister,” according to her bearded, three-hundred-pound husband, Terry the Pirate.

  She had been monitoring messages from a particular subscriber in Washington, D.C., since around eleven that night. In the beginning, the quirky messages were borderline judgment calls for her to make. Should she censor or hold back? After all, Prodigy now had to compete with the Internet, which could get pretty damn wild and wacky She wondered if the sender knew this. Cranks sometimes knew the rules. They wanted to push the edge of the envelope.

  Sometimes they just seemed to need human contact, even contact with her. The censor of their thoughts and actions. Big Sister is watching.

  The first messages had asked other subscribers for their “sincere” point of view on a controversial subject. A child-murder case in Washington, D.C., was described. Then subscribers were asked whether the child murders or the Jack and Jill case deserved more attention from the police and from the press. Which case was more important, morally and ethically?