Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

Maybe it was no accident that he was blowing the same night as Jack and Jill. He wanted to be better than them, didn't he? He wanted to be important, famous, in the brightest spotlight. He couldn't bear being Nobody.

I tried to put my mind somewhere else for the short time I was on the military jet. I was feeling so low, I could have jumped off a dime. I scanned the late papers, which carried front-page stories about President Byrnes and the shooting in New York. The President was in extremely critical condition at New York University Hospital on East Thirty-third Street in Manhattan. Jack and Jill were both reported dead. Doctors at University Hospital didn't know if the President would survive the night.

I was numb, disoriented, overloaded, on the slippery borderline of shock trauma myself. Now it was getting worse. I didn't know for certain if I could handle this, but I hadn't been given a choice.

The killer had demanded to see me. He claimed that I was his detective and that he'd been calling my house for the past few days.

A police cruiser was scheduled to meet me at Andrews Air Force Base. From there I'd be taken to nearby Mitchellville, where Danny Boudreaux was holding Christine Johnson hostage. So far, Boudreaux had murdered two small children, a classmate of his named Sumner Moore, and his own foster parents. It was an extraordinary rampage, and the case deserved more resources than it had received from the Metro police.

A police cruiser was waiting at Andrews as promised. Somebody had put together material for me on Daniel Boudreaux. The boy had been under a psychiatrist's care since he was seven. He had been severely depressed. He'd apparently committed bizarre acts of animal torture as early as seven. Daniel Boudreaux's real mother had died during his infancy, and he blamed himself. His real father had committed suicide. The father had been a state trooper in Virginia. Another cop, I noted. Probably some kind of transference going on inside the boy's head.

I recognized Summer Street as soon as we branched off the John Hanson Highway. A detective from Prince Georges County sat with me in the backseat of the cruiser. His name was Henry Fornier. He tried to brief me on the hostage situation as best he could under the bizarre circumstances.

“As we understand it, Dr. Cross, George Johnson has been shot, and he may be dead in the house. The boy won't allow the body to be removed or to receive any medical attention,” Officer Fornier told me. “He's a nasty bastard, I'll tell you. A real little prick.”

“Boudreaux was being treated for his anger, his depression and rage cycles, with Depakote. I'll bet anything that he's off it now,” I said. I was thinking out loud, trying to prepare myself for whatever was coming just a few blocks up this peaceful-looking street.

It didn't matter that the Boudreaux boy was thirteen years old. He had already killed five times. That's what he did: he killed.

Another monster. A very young, horrifying monster.

I spotted Sampson, who was half a head taller than the other policemen stationed outside the Johnson house. I tried to take in everything. There were scores of police, but also soldiers in riot gear with military camouflage at the scene. Cars and trucks with government license plates were parked all over the street.

I walked right over to Sampson. He knew the things I needed to hear, and he would know how to-talk to me. “Hey there, Sugar,” he greeted me with a hint of his usual ironic smile. “Glad you could make it to the party.”

“Yeah, nice to see you, too,” I said.

“Friend of yours wants to see you. Wants to talk the talk with Dr. Cross. You've got the damnedest friends.”

“Yeah. I sure do,” I said to Sampson. He was one of them.

“They're holding back firepower because he's a kid? Is that what's going on so far?”

Sampson nodded. I had it right. “He's just another stone killer, Alex,” he said. “You remember that. He's just another killer.”

A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD MURDERER.

I began to pay very close attention to the staging area that had been set up around the perimeter of the Johnson house. Even relatively small, local police forces were getting good at this sort of thing. Terror was invading towns with names like Ruby Ridge and Waco, and now, Mitchellville.

A late-model, dark blue van with its back doors open held TV monitors, state-of-the-art sound equipment, phones, a desktop workstation. A techie was crouched near a windblown willow tree listening to the house with a microphone gun. The gun could pick up voices from well over a hundred yards.

Surveillance shots and also assorted photos of the boy were tacked to a board propped against a squad car. A helicopter was spraying high-intensity beams on the rooftops and trees. Here the hostage drama was unfolding as we know and love it.

In suburbia this time.

A thirteen-year-old boy named Daniel Boudreaux.

Just another stone killer.

“Who do they have talking to him?” I asked Sampson as we wandered closer to the house. I spotted a black Lexus parked in the driveway George Johnson's car? “Who's the negotiator on this?”

“They got Paul Losi down here as soon as they found out about the hostage situation, and how goddamn bad it was.”

I nodded and felt a little relief at the choice of a negotiator.

“That's good. Losi is tough. He's good under pressure, too. How is the boy communicating from the house?”

"At first, over the phone lines. Then he demanded a megaphone.

Threw a real tantrum. Threatened to shoot the teacher and himself on the spot. So the bad boy got his own blowhorn.

He uses that now. He and Paul Losi are not exactly what you call 'hitting it off.“”

“How about Christine Johnson? She still okay? What do you hear?”

“Appears to be all right, so far. She's been cool under fire. We think she's holding the bad boy in control somehow, but just barely She's tough.”

That much I knew already She's even tougher than you are, Daddy. I hoped Damon was one hundred percent right. I hoped she was tougher than all of us.

George Pittman wandered up beside Sampson and me while we were talking. The chief of detectives was the last person I wanted to see then, absolutely the last. I still suspected he was the one who had “volunteered” me to the White House. I swallowed any anger I was feeling; swallowed my pride, too.

“FBI has sharpshooters in place,” Pittman informed us.

“Trouble is, the powers won't let us use them. The little bastard's been out in the open a couple of times.”

I stayed even and calm with Pittman. He still had a gun to my head. We both knew it. "Trouble is, the killer is thirteen years old.

He's probably suicidal," I said. I was making an educated guess, but I was almost certain it was the right one. He had cornered himself in the Johnson house, then started screaming come and get me.

Pittman's face became a dark scowl. His face was tinged with red down to his bull neck. “He thinks the five murders he's committed are funny Little fucker told the negotiator that already He laughs about the murders. He's asking for you specifically Now how do you feel about the sharpshooters?” Pittman came back at me before he walked away.

Sampson shook his head. “Don't even think about going in there to play games with Dennis the Menace,” he said.

“I need to understand him better. I have to talk to him to do that,” I muttered and looked at the Johnson house. There were plenty of lights on downstairs. None up on the second floor.

“You understand him too goddamn much already, though you'd deny it. You understand so much about the crazies, you're going over the edge yourself. You hear me? You understand that?”

I did understand. I had a fair idea of my own strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time, anyway. Maybe not on a night like this one, though.