James Patterson - Cat & Mouse

“That’s the worst part of it-he knows everything we would do. He anticipates our actions and procedures. He was one of us.”

“Maybe he is an alien,” I said to Kyle, who nodded wearily.

Kyle ate the remainder of his soft, runny eggs in silence. His face was bent low over his plate. He wasn’t aware of how comically depressed he looked.

“Those eggs must be real good.” I finally broke the silence with something other than the scraping sound of Kyle’s fork on the plate.

He looked up at me with his usual deadpan look. “I really messed this up, Alex. I should have taken Pierce in when I had the chance. We talked about it down in Quantico.”

“You would have had to let him go, release him in a few hours. Then what would you do? You couldn’t keep Pierce under surveillance forever.”

“Director Burns wanted to sanction Pierce, take him out, but I strongly disagreed. I thought I could get him. I told Burns I would.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. “The director of the FBI approved a sanction on Pierce? Jesus.”

Kyle ran his tongue back and forth over his teeth. “Yes, and not just Burns. This went all the way to the attorney general’s office. God knows where else. I had them convinced Pierce was Mr. Smith. Somehow the idea of an FBI field agent who’s also a multiple killer didn’t sit very well with them. We’ll never catch him now. There’s no real pattern, Alex, at least nothing to follow. No way to trace him. He’s laughing at us.”

“Yeah, he probably is,” I agreed. “He’s definitely competitive on some level. He likes to feel superior. There’s a whole lot more to this, though.”

I had been thinking about the possibility of some kind of abstract or artistic pattern since I’d first heard about the complicated case. I was well aware of the theory that each of the murders was different, and worse, seemed arbitrary. That would make Pierce almost impossible to catch. The more I thought about the series of murders, though, and especially about Thomas Pierce’s history, the more I suspected that there had to be pattern, a mission behind all of this. The FBI had simply missed it. Now I was missing it, too.

“What do you want to do, Alex?” Kyle finally asked. “I understand if you’re not going to work this one, if you’re not up to it.”

I thought about my family back home, about Christine Johnson and the things we’d talked over, but I didn’t see how I could step away from this awful case right now. I was also somewhat afraid of retribution from Pierce. There was no way to predict how he might react now.

“I’ll stay with you for a few days. I’ll be around, Kyle. No promises beyond that. Shit, I hate that I said that. Damn it!” I pounded that table and the plates and flatware jumped.

For the first time that morning, Kyle offered up half a smile. “So, what’s your plan? Tell me what you’re going to do.”

I shook my head back and forth. I still couldn’t believe I was doing this. “My plan is as follows. I’m going home to Washington, and that’s nonnegotiable. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll fly up to Boston. I want to see Pierce’s apartment. He wanted to see my house, didn’t he? Then, we’ll see, Kyle. Please keep your evidence gatherers on a leash before I get to his apartment. Look, photograph, but don’t move anything around. Mr. Smith is a very orderly man. I want to see how Pierce’s place looks, how he arranged it for us.”

Kyle was back to the deadpan look, superserious, which I actually prefer. “We’re not going to get him, Alex. He’s been given a warning. He’ll be more careful from now on. Maybe he’ll disappear like some killers do, just vanish off the face of the earth.”

“That would be nice,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s going to happen. There is a pattern, Kyle. We just haven’t found it.”

AS THEY say in the wild, Wild West, you have to get right back on the horse that threw you. I spent two days back in Washington, but it seemed more like a couple of hours. Everybody was mad at me for getting into the hunt. Nana, the kids, Christine. So be it.

I took the first flight into Boston and was at Thomas Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge by nine in the morning. Reluctantly, the dragon slayer was back in play.

Kyle Craig’s original plan to catch Pierce was one of the most audacious ever to come out of the usually conservative Bureau, but it probably had to be. The question now-had Thomas Pierce been able to get out of the Princeton area somehow? Or was he still down there?

Had he circled back to Boston? Fled to Europe? Nobody knew for sure. It was also possible that we might not hear from Pierce, or from Mr. Smith, for a long time.

There was a pattern. We just had to find it.

Pierce and Isabella Calais had lived together for three years in the second-floor apartment of a building in Cambridge. The front door of the place opened onto the foyer and kitchen. Then came a long railroad-style hallway. The apartment was a revelation. There were memories and reminders of Isabella Calais everywhere.

It was strange and overwhelming, as if she still lived here and might suddenly appear from one of the rooms.

There were photographs of her in every single room. I counted more than twenty pictures of Isabella on my first pass, a quick sight-seeing tour of the apartment.

How could Pierce bear to have this woman’s face everywhere, looking at him, staring silently, accusing him of the most unspeakable murder?

In the pictures, Isabella Calais has the most beautiful auburn hair, worn long and perfectly shaped. She has a lovely face and the sweetest, natural smile. It was easy to see how he could have loved her. But her eyes had a far-off look in some of the pictures, as if she weren’t quite there.

Everything about their apartment made my head spin, my insides, too. Was Pierce trying to tell us, or maybe tell himself, that he felt absolutely nothing-no guilt, no sadness, no love in his heart?

As I thought about it, I was overwhelmed with sadness myself. I could imagine the torture that must be his life every day-never to experience real love or deep feelings. In his crazed mind did Pierce think that by dissecting each of his victims he would find the answer to himself?

Maybe the opposite was true.

Was it possible that Pierce needed to feel her presence, to feel everything with the greatest intensity imaginable? Had Thomas Pierce loved Isabella Calais more than he’d thought he was capable of loving anyone? Had Pierce felt redeemed by their love? When he’d learned of her affair with a doctor named Martin Straw, had it driven him to madness and the most unspeakable of acts: the murder of the only person he had ever loved?

Why were her pictures still looming everywhere in the apartment? Why had Thomas Pierce been torturing himself with this constant reminder?

Isabella Calais was watching me as I moved through every room in the apartment. What was she trying to say?

“Who is he, Isabella?” I whispered. “What is he up to?”

I BEGAN a more detailed search of the apartment. I paid careful attention not just to Isabella’s things, but to Pierce’s, too. Since both had been students, I wasn’t surprised by the academic texts and papers lying about.

I found a curious test-tube rack of corked vials of sand. Each vial was labeled with the name of a different beach: Laguna, Montauk, Normandy, Parma, Virgin Gorda, Oahu. I thought about the curious notion that Pierce had bottled something so vast, infinite, and random to give it order and substance.

So what was his organizing principle for Mr. Smith’s murders? What would explain them?