Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

“No real leads, no clues, no support,” I said, agreeing with Sampson's judgment of the current state of affairs. “We take the assignment, anyway?”

“We always do,” he said. His eyes were suddenly hard and dull and almost scary to me. “Watch out, Chucky, watch your back. We're right on your sorry mythical ass.”

“Your chimera ass.”

“Exactly so, Sugar. Exactly so.”

IT WAS REAL GOOD to be working the streets of Southeast with Sampson again. It always is, even on a horror-show murder case that can make my blood boil over. Our last big case had taken place in North Carolina and California, but Sampson had been around only for the beginning and end of it. The two of us have been fast friends since we were nine or ten, and growing up in this same neighborhood. We get closer every year it seems. No, we do get closer.

“What's our primary goal here, Sugar?” Sampson asked as we walked along G Street. He had on the black leather car coat, nasty Wayfarer sunglasses, a slick black bandanna. It worked for him.

“How do we know that we did good today?” he asked.

“We get the word out that we're personally looking for the Truth School killer,” I said. "We show our pretty faces around.

Make the families here feel as safe as we can."

“Yeah, and then we catch Chop-It-Off-Chucky and chop his off,” Sampson said and grinned like the big bad wolf that he can be. “I'm not kidding.”

I didn't doubt it for a minute.

When I finally got home that night, it was past ten. Nana Mama was waiting up for me. She had already put Damon and Jannie to bed. The concerned look on her face told me that she couldn't get to sleep, which is unusual for her. Nana could sleep in the eye of a hurricane. Sometimes, she is the eye of a hurricane.

“Hello, sweetheart,” she said to me. “Bad day for you? I can see that it was.” Sometimes she can be unbelievably sympathetic and kind and sweet, too. I like that she goes both ways equally well, and I can never predict which way is coming at me next.

As we sat together on the living room couch, my eighty-one-year-old grandmother held my hand in both of hers. I told her what I knew so far. She was shaking slightly and that wasn't like her, either. She is not a weak person, not in any way She rarely shows her fear to anyone, even me. Nana Mama does not seem to be losing anything of herself; instead, she is becoming more luminous and concentrated.

“I feel so bad about this killing at the Sojourner Truth School,” Nana said, and her head lowered.

“I know. It's all I've thought about today I'm working every angle I can.”

“You know much about Sojourner Truth, Alex?”

“I know she was a powerful abolitionist, an ex-slave.”

"Sojourner Truth should be talked about when they mention Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alex. She couldn't read, so she memorized most of the Bible for her teaching. She actually helped stop segregation of the transportation system here in Washington. And now we have this abomination at the school named in her honor.

“Catch him, Alex,” Nana suddenly whispered in a low, almost desperate, voice. “Please catch this terrible man. I can't even say the name they call him -- this Chucky. He's real, Alex. He's not a made-up bogeyman.”

I would definitely try my damnedest. I was on the murder case.

I was chasing down the chimera as best I could.

My mind was working overtime already. A child molester? Boys and girls. Now a child killer? Chop-It-Off-Chucky? Was he real, or had he been made up by frightened children ? Was he a chimera ? Had he murdered Shanelle Green ?

I needed to pound the piano on our porch for a little while after Nana went up to bed. I played “Jazz Baby” and “The Man I Love,” but the piano wasn't the ticket that night.

Just before I fell off to sleep, I remembered something. Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick had been murdered in Georgetown. What a day it had been. What a nightmare.

Two of them.

Sam and Sara.

Whoever they really were, the two of them lay on their stomachs on a tasteful, knock-off Persian rug in the small living room of her Washington pied-hid-terre. It was a kind of safe house. A fire blazed and crackled; fragrant apple logs were being crisped. They were playing a board game on the rug, which covered a hatched parquet floor. It was a special game. Unique in every way. The game of life and death, they called it.

“I feel like a damn Washington, D.C., Georgetown University white liberal yuppie,” Sam Harrison said and smiled at the unlikely image created in his mind.

“Hey, I resemble that remark.” Sara Rosen made a pouting face. She was kidding. She and Sam weren't yuppies. Sam certainly wasn't.

And yet a guinea hen was roasting in the kitchen, the aroma sweetening the air. They were playing a parlor game on the living room rug.

The game wasn't anything like Monopoly or Risk, though.

Actually, they were playing a game to choose their next murder target. In turn, they calmly rolled the dice, then moved a marker around a rectangle of photos. The photos were of very famous people.

The board game was important to Jack and Jill. It was a game of chance. It made it impossible for the police or FBI to predict their movements or their motive.

If there was a motive. But of course there was a motive.

Sam rolled the dice again. Then he moved the marker. Sara watched him in the warm, flickering glow of the fire. Her eyes glazed over slightly She was remembering their very first meeting, the initial contact between them. The beginning of every thing that was happening now.

This was how the complex and beautiful and very mysterious game had begun. They had agreed to meet at a coffee shop inside a bookstore in downtown D.C. Sara had arrived first, her heart trapped in her throat. Everything about the meeting was insane, maybe dangerously insane, and insanely irresistible to her. She couldn't pass up this chance, this opportunity, or especially this cause. The cause was everything to her.

At the time of their first meeting, she had no idea what Sam Harrison would look like, and she was surprised and delighted when he sat at her table. He excited her.

She had seen him enter the coffeehouse area, watched him order espresso and a scone. She hadn't imagined that the dreamy-looking man at the counter would turn out to be Harrison, though.

So this was The Soldier. This was her potential partner. He kind of fit in at the bookstore. He would fit in anywhere. He didn't look like a killer, but then again, neither did she. He looks a little like an airline pilot, Sara thought as she sized him up. A successful Washington lawyer? He was over six feet tall, trim and fit.

He had a strong, confident face. And he also had the brightest, clearest blue eyes. He had a sensitive, gentle look about him.

Not at all what she had expected. She liked him immediately She knew that they agreed on the important things in life, that they shared a vision.

“You're looking at me as if I'm supposed to be a bad person, and you're surprised that I'm not,” he'd said as he sat across from her at the cafe “I'm not a bad person, Sara. You can call me Sam, by the way I'm a pretty good guy, actually”

No, Sam was much better than that. He was amazing -- extremely smart, strong, and yet always considerate of her feelings, and committed to their cause. Sara Rosen had fallen in love with him within a week of their meeting. She knew that she shouldn't, but she had; and now here they were. Living this secret life.

Playing the game of life and death as a guinea hen slowly spun on the spit. Sitting before a cozy fire. Thinking about making love -- at least, she was. She thought about being with Sam, with Jack, all the time. She loved it when he was inside her.