Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

Sampson finally spoke up. “You going to talk about what's really going down here, Alex, or you want me to?”

I smiled at what Sampson had said, the cranky way he'd said it. “No, I thought I'd leave the real dirty work to you.”

“As usual,” he said. "Here's what Alex hasn't said so far. Just to get it out on the dance floor. The real reason one team of detectives is assigned to these murders goes something like this.

One, it happened in the area of the projects, and we know all the shit flows downhill in D.C. and eventually ends up here. Two, Jack and Jill is sucking up everybody's time in the department.

Rich white people are being killed. They're scared shitless up on Capitol Hill and such. So of course we drop everything else. Two little black kids don't matter much, not in the greater scheme, not in the big picture."

“Sampson and I have been working on the Truth School murders.”

I picked up his thread, just lowered the volume a touch.

“Strictly off the books. We have to do our own surveillance,” I added, so that everybody knew the deal. “We need some help now. This is a major homicide case. Unfortunately, there are two major cases in Washington at this time.”

“Only one case on my mind,” Rakeem Powell said. “One guess which case it is.”

“You know you've got the Fatman on board.” Jerome Thurman raised his high-pitched voice and punched his stubby club of an arm into the air. “I'm in. I'm on your nonpayroll with all its nonbenefits and risks for forced early retirement. Sounds great.”

“My boy goes to the Sojourner Truth School, Alex,” Shawn Moore said. “I'll make the time for this. Hope I can fit in Jack and Jill.”

We laughed at the jokes. It was our hardass approach to the difficult problems at hand. The five of us were in. We just didn't have any idea what we were in for.

There were definitely two major murder cases in Washington and now there were two task forces to try and solve them. One and a half task forces, anyway.

“Cocktails, anyone?” Jerome Thurman asked in the softest, most cultivated voice. You'd have thought we were at the old Cotton Club in Harlem as he passed around his beat-up Washington Redskins game flask.

We all took a hit; more like two or three.

We were blood brothers.

I WORKED the Jack and Jill case from five in the morning until three o'clock in the afternoon. Me and about ten thousand other harried law officers around D.C. I was checking for a possible link between Senator Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan. We even looked at news photos taken of them in the past months.

Maybe somebody interesting would show up in the background of a shot. Or even better, show up twice. I had a detective visiting all of the kinky sex shops around D.C. He called the assignment the ultimate Jack-off.

I met Sampson at the Boston Market restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue at three-thirty It was time for our second job. Our other homicide case, the “back burner” case. This arrangement was definitely much better -- not great, but a significant improvement over the past few days of frustration and utter madness for me.

“I think you might be right on the button about one thing, Alex,” Sampson told me over a lunch of double-glazed meat loaf and mashed potatoes made from scratch. “The Truth School killer is an amateur. He's sloppy Maybe a first-timer at this. He left prints all over the second crime scene, too. The techies got his prints, some hair, threads off his clothing. Based on the prints, the killer is a small man -- or possibly a woman. If this squirrel isn't careful, he or she is going to get their squirrel ass caught.”

“Maybe the killer wants to,” I said between bites of a meat loaf sandwich spiced with decent tomato sauce. “Or maybe the killer just wants us to think he's a first-timer. That could be the act. Someone might play it like that.”

Sampson grinned broadly It was his best killer smile. “Do you have to double- and triple-think everything, Sugar?”

“Of course I do. That's my job description. That's Alex's cross,” I said and offered my own killer smile.

“Oh, ho !” said Man Mountain and grinned again. Man, I loved being with him, loved to make him laugh.

“Anything in from the rest of the team?” I asked him. "Jerome?

Rakeem?"

"They're all working the case, but still no tangible results.

Nothing yet from the go-team."

“We need surveillance at the boy's funeral and at Shanelle's gravesite. The killer might not be able to stay away A lot of them can't.”

Sampson rolled his eyes. "We'll do what we can. Do our best.

Surveillance at a child's gravesite. Shee-it."

At quarter past four, the two of us split. I headed over to the Sojourner Truth School.

The principal's car was sitting in the small, fenced-in parking lot. I remembered that Mrs. Johnson sometimes worked late after classes. That was good for me. I wanted to talk to her about Shanelie Green and Vernon Wheatley What connection was there between the Truth School and the killer? What could it be?

I knew approximately where the principal's office was located in the annexed building, so I walked directly there. It was a very nice school, for just about any area of the city Outside, near the street, a chain-link fence with razor wire ran the perimeter of the school yard, but the inside was festive, very bright, imaginatively decorated.

I read several hand-lettered posters and banners as I walked.

CHILDREN FIRST. GROW WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED. SUCCESS COMES IN CANS, Comball, but nice. Inspiring for the children, and for me as well.

That particular week the hallway display cases were filled with “animal shelters,” which were made by the kids, each one illustrating an animal and its habitat. It struck me that the Sojoumer Truth School was a terrific habitat itself. Under normal circumstances, it was a sweet place for Damon to grow and learn.

Unfortunately, two little babies from this school had been murdered in the last week.

That made me furiously angry, and it also frightened me more than I wanted to admit. When I was growing up, tough as it was supposed to have been in D.C., kids seldom if ever died at our school. Now, for a lot of reasons, it happened all the time in schools. Not only in Washington but in L.A."s schools. New York's. Chicago's. Maybe even Sioux City's.

What the hell was going on from sea to shining sea?

The heavy wooden door to the inner administrative office was open, but the assistant appeared to have left. On her desk was a collection of Caucasian, African-American, and Asian play dolls.

A sign read: Barbara Breckenridge, I can really tap-dance.

I felt like a housebreaker, a neighborhood break-and-enter artist', a bad character of some sort or other. Suddenly, I was concerned about the principal working late by herself in the school.

Anyone could walk in here, just as I had done. The Sojoumer Truth School killer could walk in here some night. It would be so easy This easy.

I turned the corner into the main office and was about to announce my presence when I saw Mrs. Johnson. I thought of my made-up name for her -- Christine.

She was busy at work at an old-fashioned rolltop desk that looked at least a hundred years old. She was lost in the work, actually I watched her for a couple of seconds. She wore gold-wire glasses to do her paperwork. She was humming the “Shoop Shoop” song from Waiting to Exhale. Sounded nice.

There was something enormously right, even touching, about the scene -- the dedicated teacher, the educator, at work. A smile passed across my lips. She's even tougher than you are, Daddy.

I still wondered about that. She didn't look tough at the moment.

She looked serene, happy in her work. She looked at peace, and I envied her that.