James Patterson - Cat & Mouse

She was helpless now, but she could see what was happening. Isabella was aware of her crimes and the punishment to come.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he finally said. “It’s as if I’m outside myself, watching. And yet…I can’t tell you how alive I feel right now.”

Every newspaper, the news magazines, TV, and radio reported what happened in gruesome detail, but nothing like what really happened, what it was like in the bedroom, staring into Isabella’s eyes as he murdered her.

He cut out Isabella’s heart.

He held her heart in his hands, still pumping, still alive, and watched it die.

Then he impaled her heart on a spear from his scuba equipment.

He “pierced” her heart. That was the clue he left. The very first clue.

He had the feeling, the sixth sense, that he actually watched Isabella’s spirit leave her body. Then he thought he felt his own soul depart. He believed that he died that night, too.

Smith was born from death that night in Cambridge.

Thomas Pierce was Mr. Smith.

THOMAS PIERCE is Mr. Smith,” I said to the agents gathered at Quantico. “If any of you still doubt that, even a little bit, please don’t. It could be dangerous to you and everyone else on this team. Pierce is Smith, and he’s murdered nineteen people so far. He will murder again.”

I had been speaking for several moments, but now I stopped. There was a question from the group. Actually, there were several questions. I couldn’t blame them-I was full of questions myself.

“Can I backtrack for just a second here? Your family was attacked?” A young crew-cut agent asked. “You did sustain injuries?”

“There was an attack at my house. For reasons that we don’t understand yet, the intruder stopped short of murder. My family is all right. Believe me, I want to understand about the attack, and the intruder, more than anyone does. I want that bastard, whoever he is.”

I held up my cast for all of them to see. “One bullet clipped my wrist. A second entered my abdomen, but passed through. The hepatic artery was not nicked, as was reported. I was definitely banged up, but my EKG never showed ‘a pattern of decreased activity.’ That was for Pierce’s benefit. Kyle? You want to fill in some more of the holes you helped create?”

This was Kyle Craig’s master plan, and he spoke to the agents.

“Alex is right about Pierce. He is a cold-blooded killer and what we hope to do tonight is dangerous. It’s unusual, but this situation warrants it. For the past several weeks, Interpol and the Bureau have been trying to set a foolproof trap for the elusive Mr. Smith, who we believe to be Thomas Pierce,” Kyle repeated. “We haven’t been able to catch him at anything conclusive, and we don’t want to do something that might spook him, make him run.”

“He’s one scary, spooky son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that much,” John Sampson said from his place alongside me. I could tell he was holding back, keeping his anger inside. “And the bastard is very careful. I never caught him in anything close to a slipup while I was working with him. Pierce played his part perfectly.”

“So did you, John.” Kyle offered a compliment. “Detective Sampson has been in on the ruse, too,” he explained.

A few hours earlier, Sampson had been with Pierce in New Jersey. He knew him better than I did, though not as well as Kyle or Sondra Greenberg of Interpol, who had originally profiled Pierce, and was with us now at Quantico.

“How is he acting, Sondra?” Kyle asked Greenberg. “What have you noticed?”

The Interpol inspector was a tall, impressive-looking woman. She’d been working the case for nearly two years in Europe. “Thomas Pierce is an arrogant bastard. Believe me, he’s laughing at all of us. He’s one hundred percent sure of himself. He’s also high-strung. He never stops looking over his shoulder. Sometimes, I don’t think he’s human either. I do believe he’s going to blow soon. The pressure we’ve applied is working.”

“That’s becoming more evident,” said Kyle, picking up the thread. “Pierce was very cool in the beginning. He had everyone fooled. He was as professional as any agent we’ve ever had. Early on, no one in the Cambridge police believed he had murdered Isabella Calais. He never made a mistake. His grief over her death was astonishing.”

“He’s for real, ladies and gents.” Sampson spoke up again. “He’s smart as hell. Pretty good investigator, too. His instincts are sharp and he’s disciplined. He did his homework, and he went right to Simon Conklin. I think he’s competing with Alex.”

“So do I,” said Kyle, nodding at Sampson. “He’s very complex. We probably don’t know the half of it yet. That’s what scares me.”

Kyle had come to me about Mr. Smith before the Soneji shooting spree had started. We had talked again when I’d taken Rosie to Quantico for tests. I worked with him on an unofficial basis. I helped with the profile on Thomas Pierce, along with Sondra Greenberg. When I was shot at my house, Kyle rushed to Washington out of concern. But the attack was nowhere near as bad as everyone thought, or as we led them to believe.

It was Kyle who decided to take a big chance. So far, Pierce was running free. Maybe if he brought him in on the case, on my case? It would be a way to watch him, to put pressure on Pierce. Kyle believed that Pierce wouldn’t be able to resist. Big ego, tremendous confidence. Kyle was right.

“Pierce is going to blow,” Sondra Greenberg said again. “I’m telling you. I don’t know everything that’s going on in his head, but he’s close to the limit.”

I agreed with Greenberg. “I’ll tell you what could happen next. The two personas are starting to fuse. Mr. Smith and Thomas Pierce could merge soon. Actually, it’s the Thomas Pierce part of his personality that seems to be diminishing. I think he just might have Mr. Smith take out Simon Conklin.”

Sampson leaned into me and whispered, “I think it’s time that you met Mr. Pierce and Mr. Smith.”

THIS WAS it. The end. It had to be.

Everything we could think of was tightly in place by seven o’clock that night in Princeton. Thomas Pierce had proven to be elusive in the past, almost illusory. He kept mysteriously slipping in and out of his role as “Mr. Smith.” But he was clearly about to blow.

How he accomplished his black magic, no one knew. There were never any witnesses. No one was left alive.

Kyle Craig’s fear was that we would never catch Pierce in the act, never be able to hold him for more than forty-eight hours. Kyle was convinced that Pierce was smarter than Gary Soneji, cleverer than any of us.

Kyle had objected to Thomas Pierce’s assignment to the Mr. Smith case, but he’d been overruled. He had watched Pierce, listened to him, and became more and more convinced that Pierce was involved-at least with the death of Isabella Calais.

Pierce never seemed to make a mistake, though. He covered all of his tracks. Then a break came. Pierce was seen in Frankfurt, Germany, on the same day a victim disappeared there. Pierce was supposed to be in Rome.

It was enough for Kyle to approve a search of Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Nothing was found. Kyle brought in computer experts. They suspected that Pierce might be sending himself messages, supposedly from Smith, but there was no proof. Then Pierce was seen in Paris on the day Dr. Abel Sante disappeared. His logs stated that he was in London all day. It was circumstantial, but Kyle knew he had his killer.

So did I.

Now we needed concrete proof.

Nearly fifty FBI agents were in the Princeton area, which seemed like the last place in the world where a shocking crime ought to occur, or a notorious murder spree end.