Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

No wonder the people of the neighborhood hate and fear all established institutions, even their own schools.

“Goodnight, sir,” the school guard said with a most congenial smile. “You be leaving soon, Mrs. Johnson?”

“Pretty soon,” she said. “You can go home if you want to, Lionel. I have my Uzi inside.”

Lionel laughed at her joke. She had very good delivery, good timing. I'll bet she could have done some stand-up work if she'd wanted.

“Goodnight, Mrs. Johnson,” I said. I couldn't help adding, “Please be careful until this case is over.”

She stood just inside the heavy wooden door. She looked so wise, and she was attractive, in my way of viewing the world. “It's 'Christine,'” she said, “and I will be careful. I promise. Thank you for stopping by.”

Christine! Jesus! It was the same name I'd made up for her.

Probably I'd heard it somewhere before, from Damon or Nana, but it seemed so strange. Kind of magical, actually. Would have made James Redfield happy as hell.

I went home that evening thinking about the two child murders, and Jack and Jill, but also about the principal of the Sojourner Truth School. She was wise, funny, and pretty, too. She could take care of herself-- even handle a gun.

Mrs. Johnson.

Christine.

Shoop. Shoop. Shoop. Shoop.

IN THIS DANGEROUS AGE, everybody needs to think, It won't happen to me. Not to me. What are the odds of it actually happening to me?

The motion picture actor Michael Robinson thought it was absurd and more than a little self-absorbed for him to be concerned or afraid of the maniac killers on the loose in Washington.

What did the malicious Jack and Jill threats have to do with him, anyway? The answer, it seemed clear to him, was nothing at all.

Still, he was a trifle skittish and jumpy, so he tried to enjoy the adrenaline rush, to go with the nasty flow of the moment, of the times we live in.

A little before midnight, the Hollywood star finally got up his nerve and called for a date from the VIP escort service. A “snack” before bedtime. He had used the service many times before while visiting D.C. The discreet, toney, very expensive sex-for-hire service had his requirements down pat. M.R. was in its file, compliments of the star's full-service business agent in Los Angeles.

After he made the phone call, the forty-nine-year-old actor tried to read an expensive adventure-romance script he'd commissioned, but then got up and walked to the window of his penthouse suite at the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

He knew his fans would find it scandalous that he was paying for a lover, but that was their hang-up, not his.

The truth was, he found it far less complicated, and far easier on the psyche, to pay a thousand or fifteen hundred than to get involved in wooing, and then painfully separating from, lovers while on the road.

Actually, he was in a good mood tonight, feeling very level and grounded, he thought as he stared out on the street. He just needed some company, a little TLC, and some uncomplicated sex. All three of his requirements would be met shortly, he hoped.

In a way, he was still time-warped back in his hometown of Wichita, circa 1963, when he was a high school senior. The fantasies and desires he'd had then were still unresolved and operating full-tilt boogie inside him. There was one difference: he knew what he wanted tonight and he would get it without much trouble, guilt, or the gnashing of teeth.

He glanced around the hotel suite and decided to tidy it up before the escort arrived. The neurotic tidying-up made him smile.

How incredibly bourgeois he still was. You can take the boy out of Kansas, Michael Robinson thought.

He heard two quick raps on the door, and the noise caught him by surprise. The service had said the escort would be there within the hour, which usually meant at least that long, sometimes longer.

“Just a minute,” he called out. “Be right there. One minute.”

Michael Robinson glanced at his watch. The “date” had arrived in about thirty minutes. Well, fine. He was ready for some quick nookie and then a night of blessed sleep. He was having breakfast with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee early the next morning. He'd been asked to do a fund-raiser for the Democrats. The chairman was a starfucker of another variety They all were, really Everybody wanted what he thought he couldn't have, and everybody couldn't have Michael Robinson. Well, almost everybody He peeked through the hotel-door spyhole. Well, well, well.

He definitely liked what he saw in the hallway; even through a fish-eye lens, the escort looked good. He felt a spike of adrenaline kick in. He opened the door and his fifteen-million-dollar-per-picture smile was automatically engaged.

“Hi, I'm Jasper,” the handsome escort said. “It's very nice to meet you, sir.”

Michael Robinson doubted that the escort was “Jasper.” He thought that a name like Jake or Cliff would fit the escort better.

He was a tad older than Robinson had expected, possibly in his mid-thirties, but he was more than acceptable. He was near perfect, actually. Michael Robinson was already hard, and he was lubricated. Armed and dangerous, he called the ready state.

“How are you doing tonight?” The actor put out his hand and lightly touched the other man's arm. He wanted “Jasper” to know that he was down-to-earth, unaffected, and most of all, a warm person. He truly was all of that. USA Today had recently published a list of the “nicest” stars in Hollywood. He was on it, courtesy of his business agent and lawyer, who spoke exceedingly well of him.

Jack unleashed his best smile as he entered Michael Robinson's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous hotel suite. He shut the door behind him. He figured he had about half an hour before the real escort arrived from the service. That would be enough time.

At any rate, Jill was watching the lobby of the Willard, just in case the male prostitute arrived early. She would take care of things downstairs. Jill was excellent with the details, all the loose ends. Jill was excellent, period.

“I'm a real fan,” Jack said to the big Hollywood star. “I've been following your career closely, actually”

Michael Robinson spoke in a near-whisper that would have shocked male and female fans of his action-romance films. “Oh, really, Jasper? That's always so nice for me to hear. It's kind of you to say, anyway”

“I swear to God, it's true.” Sam Harrison continued his act.

“My name is Jack, by the way Jill is down in the lobby Maybe you've heard of us?”

Jack pulled out a Beretta with a silencer and aimed it between the actor's startled deep-blue eyes. He fired. It fit the pattern of Jack and Jill. People in high places. Execution-style murder.

Kinky touches and poem to follow.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill To kill, to kill, to kill.

ONE SPECIFIC, and particularly fascinating, detail about the murders was weighing heavily on my mind, troubling the hell out of me. I thought about it as I turned onto crowded Pennsylvania Avenue and double-parked in front of the Willard Hotel -- the latest helter-skelter murder scene.

I thought about the troubling detail as I marched inside and headed up to Michael Robinson's suite.

I thought about it as the smooth-riding elevator whooshed open on the seventh floor, where half a dozen uniforms were standing around, and rolls of crime-scene tape ribboned the hallway like a tangle of distasteful Christmas wrapping.

There wasn't much evidence of passion in the first two killings, I was thinking. Especially the second murder. The murders were so cold-blooded and efficient. The arrangement of the bodies of the victims seemed to have been art-directed. The kinkiness of the scenes seemed too directed and orderly. This is the exact opposite of the Sojourner Truth School murders, which were violent explosions of pent-up anger and pure rage.