Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

“I wouldn't do that.” I shook my head. “Nobody likes lies, or people trying to pull cheap tricks. I don't.”

Suddenly, he swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine.

“I have to kill people because... that's what I do.” He laughed again, cackled, and wheezed like a fiend.

Christine Johnson sensed what was coming. She knew something had to be done before Danny Boudreaux exploded.

The boy turned to me again. He swiveled his hips and almost seemed to be preening. He watching himself act like this, I realized. He's loving this.

“You've been trying to trick me,” he said. “That's why the calm Mr. Rogers voice. Backing off from me, so you're not so almighty big and threatening. I see right through you.”

“You're right,” I said, "but not completely right. I've been talking like this... real softly... to distract you from what I'm really doing. You blew your own game. You just lost! You little chump.

You weasly little son of a bitch."

“YOU CAN'T SHOOT both of us,” I told Danny Boudreaux.

I spoke in a clear, firm voice. At the same time, I angled my body sideways. Gave him less of a target.

I took another step toward my side of the large living room. I widened the distance between Christine Johnson and me.

“What the hell do you mean? What are you talking about, Cross? TALK TO ME, CROSS! I DEMAND IT!”

I didn't answer him. Let him figure it out. I knew that he would.

He was a smart bad boy Daniel Boudreaux stared at me, then quickly back at Christine.

He got the message. He finally saw the trap, subtle as it was.

His eyes bore deeply into my skull. He knew what I'd done.

One of us would get to him if he shot at the other. He couldn't have his final blaze of glory.

“You dumb piece of shit,” he growled at me. His voice was low and threatening. “You're the one who gets it first then!”

He raised the Smith & Wesson. I was staring down the barrel at him. “TALK TO ME, YOU BASTARD!”

“That's enough!” Christine shouted from the other side of the room. She was unbelievable under the pressure, the circumstances.

“You've killed enough,” she said to Boudreaux.

Danny Boudreaux was starting to panic. Wild eyes stared out from a head that seemed to be on a swivel. “No, I haven't killed enough fucking useless robots. I'm just getting started!” His skin was stretched tight against the bones of his face.

He swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine. His arms were stretched ramrod straight. His whole body was shaking and canted to the left.

"Danny? I yelled his name and started to move on him.

He hesitated for an instant. Then he jerked the gun and fired.

A deafening muzzle blast in close quarters.

He fired at Christine!

She tried to spin out of the way I couldn't tell if she had.

I kept coming, then I was in the air.

Danny Boudreaux swung the semiautomatic back at me. His eyes were filled with terror and intense hatred. His body shook with rage, fear, desperation. Maybe he could get us both.

I moved a lot faster than he thought I could. I was inside the radius of his arm and the outstretched gun.

I crashed into Danny Boudreaux as if he were a full-grown man, an armed and dangerous one. I crushed him with a full body-blow. I relished the contact.

Danny Boudreaux and I were down in a sprawling heap. We were tangled up, a mass of flying arms and twitching, kicking legs. The revolver went off again. I didn't feel any blinding pain yet, but I tasted blood.

The boy screamed in his high-pitched wall. He wailed! I wrenched the gun out of his hand. He tried to bite me, to rip into my flesh. Then the boy growled.

He began to have a seizure, possibly from the drug withdrawal.

A major surge of brain activity was being discharged in his body He was thrashing his arms and his legs. His pelvis thrust forward as if he were dry-humping my leg.

His eyes rolled back, and his body suddenly went limp. Foam spewed from his mouth. His arms and legs continued to flail and twitch. He might have lost consciousness for a second or two.

He continued to drool, to make choking and gurgling SOUnds.

I flipped him on his side. His lips were dusky blue. His eyes finally rolled back into place. They started to blink rapidly. The seizure had ended as quickly as it had come. He lay limp on the floor, a pool of wild bad boy.

The police had heard the shots. They were all over the living room. Riot shotguns, drawn pistols. Lots of shouting and squawking radio-receivers. Christine Johnson went to her husband.

So did two of the EMS medics.

The next time I looked, Christine was kneeling beside me. She didn't seem to be hurt. “Are you all right, Alex?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

I was still holding down Danny Boudreaux. He seemed unaware of his surroundings. He was streaming with cold, oily sweat. The Sojourner Truth School killer now looked sad, lost, and unbearably confused. Thirteen years old. Five homicides.

Maybe more.

“Grand mal?” Christine asked.

I nodded. “I think so. Maybe just too much excitement.”

Danny Boudreaux was trying to say something, but I couldn't hear what it was. He sputtered, still drooling the bubbling white foam.

“What did you say? What is it?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and my throat hurt. I was shaking and covered with sweat myself.

He spoke in a tiny whisper, almost as if there were no one inside him anymore. “I'm afraid,” he told me. “I don't know where I am. I'm always so afraid.”

I nodded at the small, horrifying face looking up at me. “I know,” I said to the young killer. “I know what you're feeling.”

That was the scariest thing of all.

THE DRAGONSLAYER lives, but how many lives do I have left?

Why was I taking chances with my life? Physician, heal thyself.

I stayed at the Johnson house for more than an hour, until the Boudreaux boy and the body of George Johnson were taken away There were questions I had to ask Christine Johnson for my report.

Then I called home and spoke to Nana. I told her to please go to bed. I was safe and basically sound. For tonight, anyway

“I love you, Alex,” she whispered over the phone. Nana sounded almost as tired and beat-up as I was.

“! love you, too, old woman,” I told her.

That night, miracle of miracles, she actually let me get in the last word.

The crowd of ambulance-chasers on Summer Street finally broke up. Even the most persistent reporters and photographers left. One of Christine Johnson's sisters had arrived to be with her in this terrible time. I hugged Christine hard before I left.

She was still trembling. She had suffered a horrible, unspeakable loss. We had both spent a night in hell. “I can't feel anything. Everything is so unreal,” she told me. “I know this isn't a nightmare, and yet I keep thinking that it has to be one.”

Sampson drove me home at one in the morning. My eyes felt lidless. My brain was still going at a million miles an hour, still buzzing loudly, still overheated.

What was our world coming to? Gary Soneji? Bundy? The Hillside Strangler? Koresh? McVeigh? On and on and on. Gandhi was asked once what he thought of Western civilization. He replied, “I think it could be a good idea.”

I don't cry too much. I can't. The same is true for a lot of police officers I know. I wish I could cry sometimes, let it all out, release the fear and the venom, but it isn't that easy Something has gotten blocked up inside.

I sat on the stairs inside our house. I had been on my way to my bedroom, but I hadn't made it. I was trying to cry, but I couldn't.

I thought about my wife, Maria, who was killed in a drive-by shooting a few years back. Maria and I had fit together beautifully That wasn't just selective memory on my part. I knew how good love could be -- I knew it was the best thing I'd ever done in my life -- and yet here I was alone. I was taking chances with my life. I kept telling everybody that I was all right, but I wasn't.