Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

A voice on a megaphone interrupted us. The Sojourner Truth School killer had decided to speak.

“Hey! Hey, out there! Hey, you dumb bastards! Did you forget something? Remember me?”

I got to hear Danny Boudreaux for the first time. He sounded like a boy. Nasal, high-pitched, ordinary as hell. Thirteen years old.

“You sons of bitches are screwing with my head, aren't you?”

he screeched. “I'll answer my ownquestion. Yeah, you are! You're fucking with the wrong falcon.”

Paul Losi blew once on his bullhorn. “Hold on. That's really not the case, Danny. You've been in control all the way so far. You know that, Danny Let's be fair about this.”

“Bullshit!” Danny Boudreaux answered back angrily. "That's so much bullshit, it makes me sick to the gills just to hear it.

You make me sick, Losi. You also make me super pissed-off, you know that, Losi?"

“Tell me what the problem is.” The negotiator maintained a cool head under fire. "Talk to me, Danny. I want to talk to you.

I know you might not believe that, but I do."

"I know you do, asshole. It's your job to keep me on the line.

Trouble is, you cheated, you lied, you said you loved me. You lied! So nowyou're off my team. Not one more word from you, or I'll murder Mrs. Johnson. It'll be your fault.

"I'll kill her now. I swear to God, I will. Even though she was nice enough to make me a fried egg sandwich before. BANG!...

BANG!... SHE'S DEAD!"

The police were everywhere outside the Johnson house. They began to lower their dark Plexiglas face masks. Riot shields were slowly raised. The forces were getting ready to rush the house. If they did, Christine Johnson would very likely die.

“What is your problem?” the negotiator cautiously asked the boy “Talk to me. We'll work it out, Danny. We can come to a solution that works for you. What's the problem?”

For a while it was eerily quiet on the front lawn and on the street. I could hear the wind rush through willow and evergreen trees.

Then Danny Boudreaux screamed out.

"What's my problem? What's my problem? You're such aphony asshole, is part of my problem.... The other part is that the man is here. Alex Cross is here, and you didn't tell me. I had to find out on the TV news]

“You have exactly thirty seconds, Detective Cross. Make that twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. I can't wait to meet you, sucker. I can't wait for this. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six. Twenty-five...”

The Sojourner Truth School killer was calling the shots. A thirteen-year-old boy A command performance.

“THIS IS ALEX CROSS,” I called out to the teenage murderer. I was standing on the outer edge of the Johnson's frostbitten lawn.

I didn't need a megaphone for Danny Boudreaux to hear me. Your detective is here. Everything is going just the way you want it to go.

“This is Detective Cross,” I called out again. "You're right, I'm here. I just arrived, though. I came because you asked for me.

We're taking this seriously Nobody's messing around with you.

Nobody would do that."

Not yet, anyway, Give me half a chance, though, and I'll mess with you good. I remembered poor little Shanelle Green. I remembered seven-year-old Vernon Wheatley, I thought about Christine Johnson trapped inside with the young killer who had shot her husband before her eyes. I wanted the chance to mess with Daniel Boudreaux.

Boudreaux suddenly laughed into his megaphone -- a high-pitched girlish giggle. Spooky as hell. A few people in the crowd of onlookers and ambulance-chasers laughed along with the boy, Nice to know you have friends out there.

"Well, it's about time, Detective Alex Cross. It's so nice that you can fit me into your busy schedule. Mrs. Johnson thinks so, too.

We're here waiting, waiting, waiting for you... so c'mon in the house. Let's have a party"

The boy was openly challenging me and my authority, He needed to be the one in charge. I was charting everything in my head, keeping track of his every move, but also the sequence.

Paranoid schizophrenic was a possible diagnosis. Bipolar or conduct disorder was a better guess. I needed to talk to him to find out the rest.

Danny Boudreaux seemed coherent, anyway, He appeared to be following actions in real time. I wondered if he might be taking his Depakote again.

A voice close behind me said, “Alex, come over here, goddammit. I want to talk to you. Alex, come here.”

I turned around and faced the music. Sampson was scowling from ear to ear. “We don't need another hostage in there,” he said in no uncertain terms. He was angry with me already His eyes were dark beads, his brow deeply furrowed. “You didn't hear him raving before, through most of last night. The bad boy is real crazy, The boy is crazy as shit, Alex. All he wants to do is kill somebody else.”

“I think I'll be all right with him,” I said. “He's my type of boy, Gary Soneji, Casanova, Danny Boudreaux. Besides, I don't have a choice.”

“You have a choice, Sugar. You just don't have any good sense.”

I looked back at the house. Christine Johnson was in there with the killer. If I didn't go in, he'd kill her. He'd said so, and I believed him. What choice did that leave me? Besides, no good deed goes unpunished, right?

Chief Pittman signaled that I had the go-ahead from him. It was up to me. Doctor-Detective Cross.

I sucked in a deep breath and began to walk across the wet, springy front lawn to the house. The news photographers took a flurry of flashshots in the few seconds it took me to move to the front door. Suddenly, all the TV cameras were aimed at me.

I was definitely concerned about Danny Boudreaux. He was incredibly dangerous right now. He'd been on a killing spree.

Five indiscriminate murders within the last few weeks. Now he was cornered. Even worse, he had cornered himself.

My hand reached out for the front doorknob. I was feeling numb and a little out of it. My vision was tunneled. I focused on the whitewashed door and nothing else.

“It's open.” A voice came from behind the door.

A boy's voice. A little raspy. Small and fragile without the megaphone to amplify it.

I pushed open the front door and finally saw the Truth School killer in all of his insane glory.

Danny Boudreaux wasn't much more than five three or four.

He had thin, squinty eyes like a rodent's, large ears, a bad buzz haircut. He was an odd-looking boy, clearly an outcast, a freak.

I sensed that other kids wouldn't like him much, that he was a loner, and had been for all of his life.

He had a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic aimed chest-high at me.

“Military school,” he reminded me. “I'm an expert marksman, Detective Cross. I have no difficulty with human targets.”

MY HEART was clanging around inside the tight metal cage that was supposed to be my chest. The loud buzzing sound in my head was still there, like irritating static on a radio. I didn't feel much like a police hero. I felt scared. It was worse than usual. Maybe because the killer was thirteen years old.

Danny Boudreaux knew how to use the semiautomatic clenched in his hand, and sooner or later, he would. The only thing in the universe that mattered to me right then was to get that Smith & Wesson away from him.

The image before me commanded all my attention: a thin, pimply thirteen-year-old boy with a powerful, deadly handgun.

A semiautomatic was pointed at my heart. Although Boudreaux's hand was steady enough, he appeared to be more mentally and physically out of it than I had thought. He was probably decompensating. His behavior was likely to become increasingly more bizarre. His instability was obvious and scary to confront.

It was in his eyes. His eyes darted about like birds caught in a glass bubble.