Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

by Patterson, James

  “POW,” he screamed at the top of his voice.

  “POW,” he screamed the word again.

  "?OW.

  "?OW.

  "POW.

  "POW.

  "POW.

  “POW ”POW.

  "POW.

  "POW.

  “POW.”

  And with every bloodcurdling yell, he pulled the trigger of the Smith & Wesson. He put another 9mm bullet into the two sleeping figures. Twelve shots, if he was counting correctly, and he was counting everything very correctly Twelve shots, just like Jose and Kitty Menendez got.

  The Roosevelt military education finally came in handy, he couldn't help thinking. His teachers had been right, after all.

  Colonel Wilson at the school would have been proud of the marksmanship- but most of all, the firm resolve, the very simple and clear plan, the extraordinary courage he had shown tonight.

  His foster parents were annihilated, completely vanquished, almost disintegrated by all the firepower he'd brought to the task.

  He felt nothing -- except maybe pride in what he had done, in his fine workmanship.

  Nobody was here. Nobody did this, man.

  He wrote it in their blood.

  Then he ran outside to play in the snow. He got blood all over the yard, all over everything. He could, you know. He could do anything he wanted to now. There was no one to stop Nobody ANOTHER MURDERED CHILD has been discovered.

  A male. Less than an hour ago.

  John Sampson got the news about seven o'clock in the evening.

  He couldn't believe it. Could not, would not, accept what he had just been told. Friday the thirteenth. Was the date deliberate?

  Another child murdered in Garfield Park. At least, the body was left there. He wanted Sumner Moore bad, and he wanted him now.

  Sampson parked on Sixth Street and began the short walk into the desolate and dreary park. This is getting worse, he thought as he walked toward the red and yellow emergency lights flashing brightly up ahead.

  “Detective Sampson. Let me through,” he said as he pushed his way inside a circle of police uniforms.

  One of the uniforms was helding a gray-and-white yapping mutt on a leash. It was a weird touch at a weird scene. Sampson addressed the patrolman. “What's with the dog? Whose dog?”

  “Dog uncovered the victim's body Owner let it loose for a run after she got home from work. Somebody covered up the dead kid with tree branches. Not much else. Like he wanted somebody to find it.”

  Sampson nodded at what he'd heard so far. Then he moved on, stepped closer to the body The victim was clearly older than either Vernon Wheatley or Shanelle Green. Sumner Moore had graduated from murdering very small children. The creepy little ghoul was on a full rampage now.

  A police photographer was taking pictures of the body, the camera's harsh flashes dramatic against the blanket of snow covering the park.

  The boy's mouth and nose were wrapped with silver duct tape.

  Sampson took a deep breath before he stooped down low next to the medical examiner, a woman he knew named Esther Lee.

  “How long you think he's been dead?” Sampson asked the M.E.

  “Hard to say Maybe thirty-six hours. Decomposition is slowed a lot in this cold weather. I'll know more after the autopsy The boy took a brutal beating. Lead pipe, wrench, something nasty and heavy like that. He tried to fight the killer off. You can see defensive bruises on both hands, on his arms. I feel so bad for this boy”

  “I know, Esther. Me, too.”

  What John Sampson could see of the boy's neck was discolored and badly bloated. Tiny black bugs crawled along the hairline. A thin line of maggots spilled from a split in the scalp above the right ear.

  Sampson sucked it up, grimaced, and forced himself to move around to the other side of the boy's body Nobody knew it, not even Alex, but this was the part of homicide that he just couldn't handle. DOAs. Bodies in decomposition.

  “You won't like it,” Esther Lee told him before he looked. “I'm warning you.”

  “I know I won't,” he muttered. He blew warmth on his hands, but it didn't help much.

  He could see the boy's face now. He could see it- but he couldn't believe it. And he certainly didn't like it. Esther kee was right about that.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said out loud. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Make this terrible thing stop.”

  Sampson stood up straight. He was six nine again, only it wasn't tall enough, wasn't big enough. He couldn't believe what he had just seen -- the boy face.

  This killing was too much even for him, and he had seen so much in D.C. during the past few years.

  The murdered boy was Sumner Moore.

  NO RULES.

  Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

  PART 5

  NO REGRETS, NOTHING EVER BEGINS at the time we believe it does. Still, this is what I think of as the beginning.

  Jannie and I sat in the kitchen and we talked the talk, our own special talk. The words didn't matter much, just the sentiments.

  “You know, this is an anniversary for us,” I said to her. “Specialanniversary.”

  I touched her cheek. So soft. Soft as a butterflys belly.

  “Oh, really ?” Jannie said and gave me her most skeptical Nana Mama look. “And what anniversary might that be?”

  “Well, I'll tell you. This just happens to be the five-hundredth time that I've read you The Stinky Cheese Man.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said and smiled in spite of herself, “so read the story already! I love the way you read it.” I read the story again.

  After we were done with our Stinky Cheese, I spent some time with Damon, and then with Nana. Then I went upstairs to pack.

  When I came back down, I talked out on the porch with Rakeem Powell. Rakeem was waiting to be relieved. Sampson was coming over for the night. Man Mountain was late as usual, and we hadn't heard from him yet, which was a little unusual, but I knew he would be there.

  “You okay?” I asked Rakeem.

  “I'm fine, Alex. Sampson will get here eventually. You take care of yourself.”

  I went out to my car. I stepped inside and put in a tape that felt right for the moment at hand -- for my mood, anyway. It was the finale to Saint-Sans's second piano concerto. I had always dreamed of being able to play the piece on the porch piano.

  Dream on, dream on.

  I listened to the blazing music as I drove out to Andrews airfield, where Air Force One was being prepared.

  President Byrnes was going to New York City, and I was going with him.

  No regrets.

  THERE HAVE BEEN many conflicting accounts, but this is what happened and how it happened. I know, because I was there.

  On Monday evening, nine days before Christmas, we landed in a grayish blue fog and light rain at La Guardia Airport on Long Island. No specific information about President Byrnes's travel plans had been announced to the press, but the President was keeping his commitment to speak in New York the following morning. Thomas Byrnes was known for keeping his commitments, keeping his word.

  It had been decided to go from La Guardia into Manhattan by car, rather than by helicopter. The President wasn't hiding anymore.

  Had Jack and Jill counted on just that kind of courage, or arrogance, from him? I wondered. Would Jack and Jill follow the President to New York? I was almost sure that they would. It fit everything we knew about them so far.

  “Ride with us, Alex,” Don Hamerman said as we hurried across the tarmac, a cold December rain blowing hard in our faces.

  Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and I had gotten off Air Force One together.

  During the plane ride we sat together, planning how to protect President Byrnes from an assassination attempt in New of the ride.

  “We're traveling in the car directly behind the President. We can continue our little chat on the way into Manhattan,” Hamerman said to me.

  We climbed into a somber, blue Lincoln Town Car that was parked less than fifty yar
ds from the jet. It was close to ten in the evening, and that part of the airfield had been secured.

  There were Secret Service men, FBI agents, and New York City policemen milling around everywhere.

  Surrounding the five limousines of the presidential motorcade were at least three dozen NYPD blue-and-white squad cars, not to mention a few Harley motorcycles. The Secret Service agents stared into the foggy night as if Jack and Jill might suddenly appear on the runway at La Guardia.

  I had learned that the NYPD would have a minimum of five thousand uniformed officers on the special-service detail for the length of the President's visit. More than a hundred detectives would also be assigned. The Secret Service had tried to convince the President to stay at the Coast Guard base on Governors Island, or at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. The President had insisted on making a statement by staying in Manhattan. No regrets.

  His words in the Oval Office played over and over in my head.

  I settled back into the cushy and comfortable leather seat of the town car. I could sense the power. What it was like to ride in a motorcade directly behind the President's car, which the Secret Service called “Stagecoach.”

  A couple of NYPD police cruisers pulled out in front of the pack. Their red and yellow roof lights began to revolve in quick kaleidoscopic circles. The presidential motorcade started to wind its way out of La Guardia Airport.

  Don Hamerman spoke as soon as we were moving. “No one has seen Kevin Hawkins in the past three days, right? Hawkins seems to have fallen off the face of the earth,” he said. His voice was full of frustration, anger, and the usual petulance. He enjoyed bullying people beneath him, but neither Grayer nor I would put up with it.

  “No one knows the route we're taking,” Hamerman said. “We didn't have a final route until a few minutes ago.”

  I couldn't keep quiet. “We know the route. People in the NYPD know it, or they will momentarily. Kevin Hawkins is good at uncovering secrets. Kevin Hawkins is good, period. He's one of our best.”

  Jay Grayer was peering out of the rain-streaked window into the fast lane of the New York highway we were traveling on. His voice sounded far away. “What's your instinct about Hawkins?” he asked me.

  "I think Kevin Hawkins is definitely involved somehow.

  He's extreme right-wing. He's associated with some groups that are opposed to the President's policies and plans. He's been in trouble before. He's suspected of a homicide inside the CIA. It all fits."

  “But something's bothering you about him?” Grayer asked.

  He'd learned how to read me pretty well already.

  “According to everything I've read, he's never worked closely with anyone before. Hawkins has always been a loner, at least until now. He seems to have problems relating to women, other than his sister in Silver Spring. I don't understand how Jill would fit in with him. I don't see Hawkins suddenly working with a woman.”

  “Maybe he finally found a soul mate. It happens,” Hamerman said. I doubted that Hamerman ever had.

  “What else pops out about Hawkins?” Jay Grayer continued to probe. He shut his eyes as he listened.

  "All his FBI psych profiles and workups suggest a potential loose cannon. I don't know how they justified keeping him active for all those years in Asia and South America. Here's the interesting part. Hawkins can get committed to causes that he believes in, though. He strongly believes in the importance of intelligence for our national defense. President Byrnes doesn't, and he's said so publicly several times. That could explain the Jack and Jill scenario.

  Could explain it. Hawkins is experienced and resourceful enough to pull off an assassination. He definitely could be Jack.

  If he is, he will be very hard to stop."

  We were starting to cross the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Manhattan. New York, New York. The presidential motorcade was a strange, eerie parade of wailing sirens and bright flashing lights. The island of Manhattan lay straight ahead of us.

  New York looked amazingly huge and imposing, capable of swallowing us whole. Anything can happen here, I was thinking, and I'm sure Don Hamerman and Jay Grayer were, too.

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bam!

  The three of us jumped forward in the backseat of the town car. I had my hand on my gun, ready for almost anything, ready for Jack and Jill.

  We all stared in horror at the President's car up ahead -- Stagecoach. There was total silence in our car. Awful silence. Then we began to laugh.

  The loud noises hadn't been gunshots. They just sounded like it. They were false alarms. But it was chilling all the same.

  We had passed over worn and warped metal gratings on the ramp coming off the bridge. Everyone in our car had experienced an instant heart attack at the sudden and unexpected noise. Undoubtedly, the same thing had happened in the President's car.

  “Jesus,” Hamerman moaned loudly “That's what it would be like. Oh, God Almighty”

  “I was there at the Washington Hilton when Hinckley shot Reagan and Brady,” Jay Grayer said with a tremor in his voice.

  I knew that he was back there once again, with Reagan and James Brady Experiencing a flashback, the kind no one wanted to have.

  I wondered about Grayer's personal stake in this. I wondered about everybody on our team.

  I watched the President's car as it swept down onto the crowded, brightly lit streets of New York City. The American flags on the fenders were flapping wildly in the river breeze.

  No regrets.

  THE PHOTOJOURNALIST had arrived early on Monday, December 16, for his work in New York.

  He had decided to drive from Washington. It was much safer that way. Now he walked along Park Avenue, where the presidential motorcade would travel tomorrow morning, only a few hours from now. He was relaxing before the historic day, taking in the sights and sounds of New York City in the holiday season.

  Kevin Hawkins had occasional flashes, mind photos of memorabilia he had studied on the JFK killing, the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, even the badly botched shooting of Ronald Reagan.

  He knew one thing for certain: this particular assassination wouldn't be botched. This was a done deal. There was no way out for Thomas Byrnes. No escape.

  He was closing in on the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where he knew the President and his wife would be staying. It was typical for this president to go against the advice of his security advisors.

  It fit his profile perfectly.

  Don't listen to the experts. Fix what isn't broken. Arrogant fool, useless bastard. Traitor to the American people.

  The night was cool and fine, the light rain having finally stopped. The air felt good against his skin. He was certain that he wasn't going to be spotted as Kevin Hawkins. He'd taken care of that. There were easily a couple of hundred NYPD uniforms around the hotel. It didn't matter. No one would recognize him now. Not even his own mother and father.

  The picturesque divided avenue outside the hotel was relatively crowded at this time of night. Some spectators had come in hopes of seeing the President shot. They didn't know when the President would be arriving, but they knew the likely hotels in midtown. The Waldorf was a good guess.

  The local tabloids, and even the New York Times, had run huge headlines about Jack and Jill and the ongoing drama. In typical fashion, the press had gotten it mostly wrong -- but that would be helpful to him soon.

  Kevin Hawkins joined in with the strangely noisy and almost festive crowd, several of whom had wandered over from holiday visits to the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. The unruly ambulance-chasers gathered outside the hotel told smugly ironic jokes, and he despised them for their big-city cynicism, their attitude.

  He despised them even more than the useless president he had come to this city to kill.

  He stayed at the outer edge of the crowd, just in case he suddenly had to move fast. He didn't want to be around there too late, but the presidential motorcade was running behind the schedule he had, the sc
hedule he had been given.

  Finally, he saw heads and necks in the crowd craning to the far left. He could hear the roar of cars coming up Park Avenue. The motorcade was approaching the hotel. It had to be the motorcade coming.

  The dozen or so cars stopped at the canopied entrance on Park Avenue. Then Kevin Hawkins almost couldn't believe what he was seeing.

  The arrogant bastard had chosen to walk inside from the street rather than use the underground garage. He wanted to be seen -to be photographed. He wanted to show his courage to all the world... to show that Thomas Byrnes wasn't afraid of Jack and Jill.

  The photojournalist watched the cocksure and vainglorious chief executive as he was ushered from his limousine. He could have taken out Thomas Byrnes right there! Once the hotshot, former automobile executive had made the decision to return the presidency to “business as usual,” the assassination was virtually guaranteed.

  Amateurs made such amateurish decisions, Hawkins knew. Always.

  It was a fact that he counted on in his work.

  I could do him right now. I could take out the President right here on Park Avenue.

  How does that make me feel? Excited--pumped. No guilt.

  What a strange man I have become, Kevin Hawkins thought.

  That was really why he was there that night- to test his emotional responses.

  This was his dress rehearsal for the big event. The only rehearsal he would need, or get.

  The Secret Service team smoothly and expertly got the President safely inside the hotel. Their coverage was excellent. Three tight rings around the PP, the protected person.

  The presidential detail was very good, but not good enough.

  No one could be. Not for what Kevin Hawkins had in mind.

  A kamikaze attack! A suicide attack. The President would not be able to escape from it. No one could. It was a done deal.

  He watched the rest of the shiny blue and black sedans unload, and he recognized nearly every face. He took his usual mind photos. Dozens of shots to remember -- all inside his head.