James Patterson - Cat & Mouse

“You two are…smart!” I exclaimed in a loud, playful voice. “You’re both smarty-pants, smartalecks, smarties of the highest order!”

“What’s going on in there? What am I missing out on?” Nana finally called from the kitchen, which was overflowing with good smells from her cooking. She doesn’t like to miss anything. Ever. To my knowledge, she just about never has.

“ G.E. College Bowl,” I called out to her.

“You will lose your shirt, Alex, if you play against those two young scholars,” she warned. “Their hunger for knowledge knows no bounds. Their knowledge is fast becoming encyclopedic.”

“En-cy-clo-pedic!” Jannie grinned.

“Cakewalk!” she said then, and did the lively old dance that had originated back in plantation times. I’d taught it to her one day at the piano. The cakewalk music form was actually a forerunner of modern jazz. It had fused polyrhythms from West Africa with classical melodies and also marches from Europe.

Back in plantation days, whoever did the dance best on a given night won a cake. Thus the phrase “that takes the cake.”

All of this Jannie knew, and also how to actually do the damn dance in high style, and with a contemporary twist or two. She can also do James Brown’s famous Elephant Walk and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk.

After dinner, we did the dishes and then we had our biweekly boxing lesson in the basement. Damon and Jannie are not only smart, they’re tough little weasels. Nobody in school picks on those two. “Brains and a wicked left hook!” Jannie brags to me sometimes. “Hard combination to beat.”

We finally retired to the living room after the Wednesday-night fights. Rosie the cat was curled up on Jannie’s lap. We were watching a little of the Orioles baseball game on television when Soneji slid into my head again.

Of all the killers I had ever gone up against, he was the scariest. Soneji was single-minded, obsessive, but he was also completely whacked-out, and that’s the proper medical term I learned years ago at Johns Hopkins. He had a powerful imagination fueled by anger, and he acted on his fantasies.

Months back, Soneji had called to tell me that he’d left a cat at our house, a little present. He knew that we had adopted her, and loved little Rosie very much. He said that every time I saw Rosie the cat, I should think: Gary ’s in the house, Gary is right there.

I had figured that Gary had seen the stray cat at our house, and just made up a nasty story. Gary loved to lie, especially when his lies hurt people. That night, though, with Soneji running out of control again, I had a bad thought about Rosie. It frightened the hell out of me.

Gary is in the house. Gary is right here.

I nearly threw the cat out of the house, but that wasn’t an option, so I waited until morning to do what had to be done with Rosie. Goddamn Soneji. What in hell did he want from me? What did he want from my family?

What could he have done to Rosie before he left her at our house?

I FELT like a traitor to my kids and also to poor little Rosie. I was feeling subhuman as I drove thirty-six miles to Quantico the next morning. I was betraying the kids’ trust and possibly doing a terrible thing, but I didn’t see that I had any other choice.

At the start of our trip, I had Rosie trapped in one of those despicable, metal-wire pet carriers. The poor thing cried and meowed and scratched so hard at the cage and at me that I finally had to let her out.

“You be good now,” I gave her a mild warning. Then I said, “Oh, go ahead and raise hell if you want to.”

Rosie proceeded to lay a huge guilt trip on me, to make me feel miserable. Obviously, she’d learned this lesson well from Damon and Jannie. Of course, she had no idea how angry she ought to be at me. But maybe she did. Cats are intuitive.

I was fearful that the beautiful red-and-brown Abyssinian would have to be destroyed, possibly this morning. I didn’t know how I could ever explain it to the kids.

“Don’t scratch up the car seats. And don’t you dare jump on top of my head!” I warned Rosie, but in a pleasant, conciliatory voice.

She meowed a few times, and we had a more or less peaceful and pleasant ride to the FBI quarters in Quantico. I had already spoken to Chet Elliott in the Bureau’s SAS, or Scientific Analysis Section. He was waiting for Rosie and me. I was carrying the cat in one arm, with her cage dangling from the other.

Now things were going to get very hard. To make things worse, Rosie got up on her hind legs and nuzzled my face. I looked into her beautiful green eyes and I could hardly stand it.

Chet was outfitted in protective gear: a white lab coat, white plastic gloves, even gold-tinted goggles. He looked like the king of the geeks. He peered at Rosie, then at me and said, “Weird science.”

“Now what happens?” I asked Chet. My heart had sunk to the floorboards when I’d spotted him in his protective gear. He was taking this seriously.

“You go over to Admin,” he said. “Kyle Craig wants to see you. Says it’s important. Of course, everything with Kyle is important as hell and can’t wait another second. I know he’s crazed about Mr. Smith. We all are. Smith is the craziest fucker yet, Alex.”

“What happens to Rosie?” I asked.

“First step, some X rays. Hopefully, little Red here isn’t a walking bomb, compliments of our friend Soneji. If she isn’t, we’ll pursue toxicology. Examine her for the presence of drugs or poison in the tissues and fluids. You run along. Go see Uncle Kyle. Red and I will be just fine. I’ll try to do right by her, Alex. We’re all cat people in my family. I’m a cat person, can’t you tell? I understand about these things.”

He nodded his head and then flipped down his swimmer-style goggles. Rosie rubbed up against him, so I figured she knew he was okay. So far, anyway.

It was later that worried me, and almost brought tears to my eyes.

I WENT to see what Kyle had on his mind, though I thought I knew what it was. I dreaded the confrontation, the war of the wills that the two of us sometimes get into. Kyle wanted to talk about his Mr. Smith case. Smith was a violent killer who had murdered more than a dozen people in America and Europe. Kyle said it was the ugliest, most chilling spree he had ever seen, and Kyle isn’t known for hyperbole.

His office was on the top floor of the Academy Building, but he was working out of a crisis room in the basement of Admin. From what he’d told me, Kyle was practically camping out inside the war room, with its huge Big Board, state-of-the-art computers, phones, and a whole lot of FBI personnel, none of whom looked to happy on the morning of my visit.

The Big Board read: MR. SMITH 19-GOOD GUYS 0, in bright red letters.

“Looks like you’re in your glory again. Nowhere to go but up,” I said. Kyle was sitting at a big walnut desk, lost in study of the evidence board, at least he seemed to be.

I already knew about the case-more than I wanted to. “Smith” had started his string of gory murders in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had then moved on to Europe, Where he was currently blazing a bewildering trail. The latest victim was a policeman in London, a well-known inspector who had just been assigned to the Mr. Smith case.

Smith’s work was so strange and kinky and unhinged that it was seriously discussed in the media that he might be an alien, as in a visitor from outer space. At any rate, “Smith” definitely seemed inhuman. No human could have committed the monstrosities that he had. That was the working theory.

“I thought you’d never get here,” Kyle said when he saw me.

I raised my hands defensively, “Can’t help. Won’t do it, Kyle. First, because I’m already overloaded with Soneji. Second, because I’m losing my family on account of my work habits.”