Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

I didn't answer her question. “I may need to talk to you about the murders later,” I said. “We might have to talk to some of the children at school again. I won't do that unless we have to, though. They've been through enough. Thank you for your concern. I'm sorry about Vernon Wheatley.”

Mrs. Johnson nodded and kept looking at me with incredibly penetrating eyes. Who exactly are you? they seemed to ask.

You've been at both murder scenes, too.

“How can you do this kind of work?” she suddenly blurted out.

It was an unexpected and startling question. It should have seemed tactless, but somehow it didn't. It happened to be my own personal mantra. How do you do this work, Alex? Why are you the dragonslayer? Who exactly are you? What have you become?

“I don't really know.” I told her the truth.

Why had I admitted the weakness to her? I rarely did that with anyone, not even with Sampson. It was something about her eyes. They demanded the truth.

I lowered my eyes and turned away from her. I had to. I went back to my note taking. My head was thick with questions, bad questions, bad thoughts, and worse feelings about the murder.

The two murders. The two cases.

Why does he hate children so much? I kept asking myself. Who could possibly hate these little children so much? He had to have been badly abused himself. Probably a male in his twenties. Not too organized or careful.

I had the thought that we would catch this one -- but would we catch him soon enough?

I WAS WAITING for possible disciplinary action from the department, waiting for the whisper of the ax. It didn't come right away Chief Pittman was holding his sharp knife over my head.

The Jefe was playing with me. Cat and mouse.

Maybe the higher powers wouldn't let him act... on account of Jack and Jill. That was it. It had to be. They felt that they needed me on the celebrity stalkings and murders.

While I waited in limbo, there was plenty of work to do. I passed the hours checking and rechecking the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit data for anything that might possibly connect the two child murders to any others in Washington--or anywhere else, for that matter. Then I repeated almost the same process on Jack and Jill. If you want to understand the killer, look at his work.

Jack and Jill were organized. The child killer was disorganized and sloppy The cases couldn't have been more different.

I continued to feel that I couldn't work two complex homicide cases like these at the same time. I believed it was time for my so-called deal with the department to start working both ways.

I made some phone calls late in the afternoon. I called in a few chips, favors I was owed inside the department. What did I have to lose?

That night four homicide detectives from the 1st District met me in the deserted parking lot behind the Sojourner Truth School. pounds was a genuine badass in the department. All in all, four troublemakers. Four very good cops, though. Probably the best I knew in Washington.

The detectives I'd chosen all lived right in Southeast. They each took the child murders personally and wanted the gruesome case solved quickly -- no matter what their other priority assignments were.

Sampson was the last one to arrive, but he was only a few minutes past the ten o'clock starting time. The secret get-together would definitely have been shut down by the chief of detectives.

I was about to set up an off-duty unit to help find the killer of Shanelle Green and Vernon Wheatley. We weren't vigilantes, but we were close.

“The late John Sampson,” Jerome Thurman quipped and let out a high-pitched laugh when Sampson finally entered the tight circle of homicide detectives. Thurman was close to two hundred seventy pounds, not much of it soft. He and Sampson liked to go at each other, but they were good friends. It had been that way since we all played roundball in the D.C. high school leagues a thousand or so years ago.

"My watch says ten on the dot,,' Sampson said, without peeking at his ancient Bulova.

“Then ten o'clock it is,” contributed Shawn Moore. Moore was a hard-driving, young detective with three kids of his own. His family lived less than a mile from the Truth School, as it's usually called in the neighborhood. One of his boys went there with Damon.

“I'm glad you all could come out to play on this chilly night,” I said after the ribbing and small talk had settled down. I knew that these detectives got along and had respect for one another. I also knew this meeting would never get back to TheJefe through any of them.

"Sorry to get you out here so late. Best we don't be seen together.

Thanks for coming, though. This school yard seemed like the right place for what we have to talk about. I'll make it as short as possible," I said, looking around at all the faces.

“You'd better, Alex,” Jerome warned me. “Freezin' my fat ass off.”

“You've all heard about the Seven-year-old boy found in Garfield Park this morning?” I asked the detectives. “Boy by the name of Vernon Wheatley.”

Heads nodded solemnly around the circle. Bad homicide news always travels quickly.

"Well, I've been thinking about these child murders a lot.

I've run the evidence we have through the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and also the Behavioral Science Unit databanks. Nothing comes up that's a match. I have a preliminary psych profile working. I hope that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid there's a pattern killer working in this neighborhood. This is probably a serial killer of children. I'm almost sure of it."

“How bad a situation are we talking, Alex?” Rakeem Powell leaned in and asked me.

I knew what Rakeem was getting at. He and I had worked on a tough pattern-killer case a few years back. “I think this one is already in heat, Rakeem. The two murders came within days. There was a high level of violence. He seems to be in a rage, or damn close to it. I say he, though it might be a she.”

“Violent for a female,” Sampson said. He cleared his throat.

“Too much... blood... crushed skulls... little kids.” He shook his head no. “Doesn't feel like a woman to me.”

“I tend to agree,” I said, “but you never know these days. Look at Jill.”

“How many detectives assigned to the child murders? ”Jerome Thurman asked through thick lips that were pursed and stuck way out from his face, like those candy lips kids wear and then eat when they tire of having fat lips.

“Two teams.” I told them the bad news. “Only one is full-time, though. That's the reason I wanted us to meet. The chief of detectives is resisting any theory that the same person killed both children. Emmanuel Perez is stilll on the books as the killer of the girl.”

“That dumb motherfuck asshole,” Jerome Thurman growled angrily. “That bastard's as useless as titties on a bull.”

The other detectives cursed and grumbled. I had expected a negative reaction to anything The Jefe said or did. Still, I wasn't into cheap shots. Much as I was tempted.

“How sure are you about this being the same killer, Alex?” Rakeem asked. “You said your profile is preliminary. I know this shit takes time.”

I sniffed in the cold, then went on. “The second child, the little boy, had his face badly smashed in, Rakeem. Only one side of the face, though. It was exactly like the murdered little girl's face. Same side, the right. No significant variation that I could find. The medical examiner corroborates that. The ”unsub" probably feels that he has a good and a bad side. The bad side gets punished--destroyed, is more like it.

“The final thing, and this is just a best guess at this point, I think he's a beginner at this. But devious and clever just the same... a risk taker. He'll make a mistake. I think we can get him soon, if we work together. But it has to be soon. I think we can nail this one!”