Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

by Patterson, James

  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.”

  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 starfucker, 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 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.

  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 Ale
xander 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 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 fucked 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 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.

  "He's such a devil-may-care fucker, 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 im
pressive 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.

  “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.”