Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

He shook his head in sadness and disbelief. “They killed Aiden's nine-year-old son, Alex.”

I found myself rocking back on my heels. The news from Jay Grayer didn't make sense to me; it didn't track with the Jack and Jill style to this point. Goddamn them! They kept changing the rules. They had to be doing it on purpose.

“I want to go there right now,” I told him. “I need to see the house. I need to be out there, not here.”

“I hear you, but wait a minute, Alex,” he said. “Hold on. Let me tell you the rest of what's going on. It gets worse.”

“How could it get any worse?” I asked him. “Jesus, Jay.”

“Trust me, it does. Just listen for a minute.”

Agent Grayer continued to talk in a subdued whisper in the White House hallway as we walked together toward the Emergency Command Center, where the others were gathering. He pulled me aside a few paces from the meeting room. His voice was still an urgent whisper.

“The President is always awakened at quarter to five by the agent in charge. Happens every morning. This morning, the President dressed and went down to the library, where he reads the early papers as well as an executive summary that's prepared for him before he rises.”

“What happened this morning?” I asked Jay. I was beginning to perspire. “What happened, Jay?”

He was very thorough and procedural. “At five o'clock the phone in the library rang. It was Jill on the private line. She was calling to talk with the President. She got through to him, and that just isn't possible.”

My head involuntarily shook back and forth. I agreed with Jay Grayer: this couldn't be happening. The idea, the concept, of the President as a murder target was a hugely disturbing one.

The fact that, so far, we were helpless to stop it was much, much worse.

“I think I understand why the call couldn't happen, but tell me anyway,” I said. I needed to hear it from him.

“Every single call to the White House goes through a private switchboard. Then the call is monitored by a second operator in White House Communications, which is actually part of our Intelligence Division. Every call except this one. The call completely bypassed the control system. Nobody knows how the hell it happened. But it happened.”

“This phone call that couldn't have happened- was it recorded?” I asked Grayer.

“Yes, of course it was. It's already being processed at FBI headquarters and also at Bell Atlantic out in White Oak. Jill used another filtering device to modify her voice, but there might be ways to get around that. We've got half the Baby Bell's high-tech lab on it.”

I shook my head again. I'd heard it, but I couldn't believe any of this. “What did Jill have to say?”

“She began by identifying herself. She said, 'Hi, this is Jill speaking.” I'm sure that got the President's attention better than his usual cup of joe in the morning. Then she said, 'Mr. President, are you ready to die?“”

I NEEDED TO SEE the house. I needed to be inside the place where General Cornwall and his son had been murdered. I needed to feel everything about the killers, their modus operandi.

I got my wish. I reached McLean before nine that morning.

The December day was very gray and overcast. The Cornwall house looked surreal, stark and cold, as I approached and then entered through the front door. It was cold on the inside, too.

Either the Cornwall family was denying that winter was coming or they were saving money on heat.

The double murders had been committed on the second floor.

General Aiden Cornwall and his nine-year-old son still lay on their backs in the upstairs hallway It was a cold, calculated, very professional killing. The grisly murder scene looked like something from a casebook, maybe even one of my notebooks. It was forensic textbook stuff, almost too much so.

FBI technicians and medical examiners were all over the house. There were probably twenty people inside.

It began raining hard just after I arrived at the house. The cars and TV news trucks that came after me all had their headlights on. It was eerie as hell.

Jeanne Sterling found me in the upstairs hallway. For the first time, the CIA inspector general seemed rattled. The severe, constant pressure was getting to all of us. Some people were after the President of the United States, and they were very good at this. They were extremely brutal as well.

“What's your gut reaction, Alex?” asked Jeanne.

“My reaction won't make any of our jobs easier,” I said. "The only truly sustaining pattern I've seen is that Jack and Jill really don't have a pattern. Other than the notes, the poems. There certainly doesn't seem to be any sexual angle to these two murders.

Also, from what I understand, Aiden Cornwall was a conservative, not a liberal like the other victims. That's a shift that might knock down a whole lot of theories about Jack and Jill."

As I was talking to Jeanne Sterling, I had another insight into the notes Jack and Jill had left. The poetry might be telling us something important. The FBI linguistic agents hadn't found anything yet, but I didn't care. Whoever was writing the rhymes, probably Jill, wanted us to know something.... Was there a definite order to what they were doing? The desire to create instead of destroy? The poetry had to mean something. I was almost sure of it.

“How about on your end, Jeanne? Anything?”

Jeanne shook her head and bit her lower lip with her big teeth.

“Not a thing.”

IT HAD BEEN a very long day and it was still going strong and hard. At ten o'clock that night, I arrived at the FBI offices on Pennsylvania Avenue. My mind was running way too fast as I rode the elevator up to twelve. The lights in the building were blazing like tiny campfires above D.C. I figured that Jack and Jill had a lot of people staying up late that night. I was only one of them.

I'd come to the FBI offices to listen to the phone message Jill had sent to the President early that morning. All the important evidence was being made available to me. I was being let inside. I was even being allowed to make waves inside the White House.

I knew all about horrible multiple killers; most of the rest of the team hadn't had that pleasure.

No rules.

I was brought by Security to an audio/electronics office on twelve. An NEC tape machine was waiting for me. A copy of Jill's voice tape was already in. The tape machine was on. Running hot.

“This is a dupe, Dr. Cross, but it's close enough for your listening purposes,” I was told. An FBI techie, long hair and all, went on to inform me they were certain that the voice on the tape had been altered or filtered electronically The FBI experts didn't believe the caller could possibly be identified from the tape. Once again, Jack and Jill had carefully covered their trail.

“I talked to a contact at Bell Labs,” I said. “He told me the same thing. Couple more experts confirm that and I'll believe it.”

The nonconformist-looking FBI technician finally left me alone with the taped phone call. I wanted it that way For a while I just sat in the office and stared out at the Justice Department across Pennsylvania Avenue.

Jill was right there with me.

She had something about herself to reveal, something she needed to tell us. Her deep, dark secret.

The tape had been cued up. Her voice startled me in the silent, lonely office.

Jill spoke.

“Good morning, Mr. President. It's December ten. Exactly five A.M. Please don't hang up on me. This is Jill. Yes, the Jill. I wanted to speak to you, to make this situation very personal for you. Are we okay so far?”

“It's way past 'personal.”“ President Byrnes spoke calmly to her. ”Why are you murdering innocent people? Why do you want to kill me Jill?"