James Patterson: Cat & Mouse

Actually, I was preoccupied at twenty to eight in the morning. Not a good way to start the day.

The night before, a thirteen-year-old girl from Ballou High School had been found in the Anacostia River. She had been shot, and then drowned. The gunshot had been to her mouth. What the coroners call a “hole in one.”

A bizarre statistic was creating havoc with my stomach and central nervous system. There were now more than a hundred unsolved murders of young, inner-city women committed in just the past three years. No one had called for a major investigation. No one in power seemed to care about dead black and Hispanic girls.

As we drove up in front of the Sojourner Truth School, I saw Christine Johnson welcoming kids and their parents as they arrived, reminding everyone that this was a community with good, caring people. She was certainly one of them.

I remembered the very first time we met. It was the previous fall and the circumstances couldn’t have been any worse for either of us.

We had been thrown together-smashed together someone said to me once-at the homicide scene of a sweet baby girl named Shanelle Green. Christine was the principal of the school that Shanelle attended, and where I was now delivering my own kids. Jannie was new to the Truth School this semester. Damon was a grizzled veteran, a fourth grader.

“What are you mischief makers gawking at?” I turned to the kids, who were looking back and forth from my face to Christine’s as if they were watching a championship tennis match.

“We’re gawking at you, Daddy, and you’re gawking at Christine!” Jannie said and laughed like the wicked child-witch of the North that she can be sometimes.

“She’s Mrs. Johnson to you,” I said as I gave Jannie my best squinting evil eye.

Jannie shrugged off my baleful look and frowned at me as only she can. “I know that, Daddy. She’s the principal of my school. I know exactly who she is.”

My daughter already understood many of life’s important connections and mysteries. I was hoping that maybe someday she would explain them to me.

“Damon, do you have a point of view we should hear?” I asked. “Anything you’d like to add? Care to share some good fellowship and wit with us this morning?”

My son shook his head no, but he was smiling, too. He liked Christine Johnson just fine. Everybody did. Even Nana Mama approved, which is unheard of, and actually worried me some. Nana and I never seemed to agree about anything, and it’s getting worse with age.

The kids were already climbing out of the car, and Jannie gave me a kiss good-bye. Christine waved and walked over.

“What a fine, upstanding father you are,” she said. Her brown eyes twinkled. “You’re going to make some lady in the neighborhood very happy one of these days. Very good with children, reasonably handsome, driving a classy sports car. My, my, my.”

“My, my, back at you,” I said. To top everything off, it was a beautiful morning in the early June. Shimmering blue skies, temperature in the low seventies, the air crisp and relatively clean. Christine was wearing a soft beige suit with a blue shirt, and beige flat-heeled shoes. Be still my heart.

A smile slid across my face. There was no way to stop it, to hold it back, and besides I didn’t want to. It fit with the fine day I was starting to have.

“I hope you’re not teaching my kids that kind of cynicism and irony inside that fancy school of yours.”

“Of course I am, and so are all my teachers. We speak Educanto with the best of them. We’re trained in cynicism, and we’re all experts in irony. More important, we’re excellent skeptics. I have to get inside now, so we don’t miss a precious moment of indoctrination time.”

“It’s too late for Damon and Jannie. I’ve already programmed them. A child is fed with milk and praise. They have the sunniest dispositions in the neighborhood, probably in all of Southeast, maybe in the entire city of Washington.”

“Oh we’ve noticed that, and we accept the challenge. Got to run. Young minds to shape and change.”

“I’ll see you tonight?” I said as Christine was about to turn away and head toward the Sojourner Truth School.

“Handsome as sin, driving a nice Porsche, of course you’ll see me tonight,” she said. Then she turned away and headed toward the school.

We were about to have our first “official” date that night. Her husband, George, had died the previous winter, and now Christine felt she was ready to have dinner with me. I hadn’t pushed her in any way, but I couldn’t wait. Half a dozen years after the death of my wife, Maria, I felt as if I were coming out of a deep rut, maybe even a clinical depression. Life was looking as good as it had in a long, long time.

But as Nana Mama has often cautioned, “Don’t mistake the edge of a rut for the horizon.”

ALEX CROSS is a dead man. Failure isn’t an option.

Gary Soneji squinted through a telescopic sight he’d removed from a Browning automatic rifle. The scope was a rare beauty. He watched the oh-so-touching affair of the heart. He saw Alex Cross drop off his two brats and then chat with his pretty lady friend in front of the Sojourner Truth School.

Think the unthinkable, he prodded himself.

Soneji ground his front teeth as he scrunched low in the front seat of a black Jeep Cherokee. He watched Damon and Janelle scamper into the schoolyard, where they greeted their playmates with high and low fives. Years before he’d almost become famous for kidnapping two school brats right here in Washington. Those were the days, my friend! Those were the days.

For a while he’d been the dark star of television and newspapers all over the country. Now it was going to happen again. He was sure that it was. After all, it was only fair that he be recognized as the best.

He let the aiming post of the rifle sight gently come to rest on Christine Johnson’s forehead. There, there, isn’t that nice.

She had very expressive brown eyes and a wide smile that seemed genuine from this distance. She was tall, attractive, and had a commanding presence. The school principal. A few loose hairs lay curled on her cheek. It was easy to see what Cross saw in her.

What a handsome couple they made, and what a tragedy this was going to be, what a damn shame. Even with all the wear and tear, Cross still looked good, impressive, a little like Muhammad Ali in his prime. His smile was dazzling.

As Christine Johnson walked away and headed toward the red-brick school building, Alex Cross suddenly glanced in the direction of Soneji’s Jeep.

The tall detective seemed to be looking right into the driver’s side of the windshield. Right into Soneji’s eyes.

That was okay. Nothing to worry about, nothing to fear. He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t taking any risks. Not here, not yet.

It was all set to start in a couple of minutes, but in his mind it had already happened. It had happened a hundred times. He knew every single move from this point until the end.

Gary Soneji started the Jeep and headed toward Union Station. The scene of the crime-to-be, the scene of his masterpiece theater.

“Think the unthinkable,” he muttered under his breath, “then do the unthinkable.”

AFTER THE last bell had rung and most of the kids were safe and sound in their classrooms, Christine Johnson took a slow walk down the long deserted corridors of the Sojourner Truth School. She did this almost every morning, and considered it one of her special treats to herself. You had to have treats sometimes, and this beat a trip to Starbucks for cafi latte.

The hallways were empty and pleasantly quiet-and always sparkling clean, as she felt a good school ought to be.