Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

She was the only child of an Army colonel and a high school English teacher. She had grown up in Aberdeen, Maryland, then gone to Hollins College in Virginia. She had majored in history and English, graduating with honors. She'd come to Washington sixteen years ago, when she was twenty-one. She had never married, though she'd had several boyfriends over the years. Some of the staff at the White House press and communications offices called her “the sexy spinster.”

Her apartment was on the fifth floor of the ten-story building.

It was bright, with a view of an interior courtyard. The FBI was already at work inside. Chopin came softly from a stereo. It was a relaxed atmosphere, almost pleasant, devil-may-care. The case was, after all, closed.

Sampson and I spent the next few hours with the Feebie technicians who were searching the apartment for anything that might give the Bureau a clue about Sara Rosen.

Jill had lived right there.

Who the hell were you, Jill? How did this happen to you? What happened, Jill? Talk to us. You know you want to talk, lonely girl.

Her apartment was a one-bedroom with a small den, and we would examine every square inch of it. The woman who had lived here had helped to murder President Thomas Byrnes. The den had been used as an editing room for their film. The apartment had historical importance now. For as long as this building stood, people would point at it and say, “That's where Jill lived.”

She had bought anonymous-looking furniture in a country-club style. They were middle-class trappings. A sofa and armchair made of brushed cotton twill. Local furniture store tags: Mastercraft Interiors, Colony House in Arlington. Cool, cold colors in every room. Lots of ivory-colored things at Jill's place.

An ice-blue, patterned area rug. A pale, distressed pine armoire.

Several frames on the wall contained matted Christmas cards and letters from White House notables: the current press secretary, the chief of staff, even a brief note from Nancy Reagan.

There were no pictures of any of the “enemies” mentioned to me by President Byrnes. Sara Rosen was a secret starfucker, wasn't she? Had Jack been a star for her? Was Jack really Kevin Hawkins?

Talk to us, Jill. I know you want to talk. Tell us what really happened. Give us a clue.

Sitting out on a small rolltop desk were mailings from the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, both conservative organizations. There were several copies of U.S. News & World Report, Southern Living, Gourmet.

Also flyers about future poetry readings at Chapters on K Street, and Politics and Prose, bookstores in the Washington area. Was Jill the poet?

A poem had been cut from a book and taped to the wall above the desk.

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!

How public -- like a Frog -To tell one's name -- the live-long June -To an admiring Bog! -- Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson apparently had the same opinion of celebrities as Jack and Jill.

The walls of the den and bedroom were covered with books.

The walls were bookcases. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. High- and low-brow stuff. Jill the reader. Jill the loner. Jill the sexy spinster.

Who are you, Jill? Who are you, Sara Rosen ?

There was even one bit of evidence that showed a sense of humor. A sign was framed in the front hallway: use an accordion, go to jail. That's the law.

Who are you, Sara-Jill?

Did anybody really care about you before now ? Why did you help to commit this horrible crime? Was it worth it? To die like this, a lonely spinster? Who killed you, Jill ? Was it Jack?

If I found one indisputable piece of truth, just one, all the rest would follow, and we would finally understand. I wanted to believe that it could go like that.

I looked through Jill's clothes closets. I found conservative business suits mostly in dark colors. Labels that told me Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor. Low pumps, running shoes, casual flats. There were several sweatsuits for running and exercise.

Not many evening dresses for parties, for fun.

Who were you, Sara?

I searched for false walls, false bottoms, anywhere that she might have kept private notes, something that might help us to close this case forever, or open it wide.

C'mon, Sara, let us in on your secret life. Tell us who you really were.

What kept you going, Jill ? Who were you, Sara? Sexy spinster?

You want us to know. I know you do. You're still in this apartment.

I can feel it. I can feel your loneliness everywhere I look.

You want us to know something. What is it, Sara? Give us one more rhyme. Just one.

Sampson came up behind me while I was standing at a bedroom window overlooking the courtyard. I was thinking about all the possibilities the case held.

“You got it solved yet? Got it all figured out, Sweets?”

“Not yet. There's something more, though. Give me another couple of days here.”

Sampson groaned at the thought. And so did I. But I knew I would come back here. Sara Rosen had left something for us to remember her by. I was almost sure of it.

Jill the poet.

MAYBE I WAS a glutton for crime and punishment, but I came back alone to her apartment very early the following morning.

I was there by eight, long before anyone else. I wandered back and forth in the small apartment, nibbling from an open box of Nutri-Grain.

Something was still bothering me about the sexy spinster and her hideaway in Foggy Bottom. Detective's hunch. Psychologist's intuition.

For nearly an hour, I sat crouched at a window seat that looked out on K Street. I fixated on a bus shelter poster for a Calvin Klein perfume called Escape. The model in the poster looked unbearably sad and forlorn. Like Jill? Someone had written a thought balloon above the model's head. It read: “Someone feed me, please.”

What gave Sara Rosen sustenance? I wondered as I peered out into the D.C. ether. What was her secret? What drove her to the madness of celebrity stalking--or whatever she had been doing before she was killed in the Peninsula Hotel? She had been murdered in New York. What was her connection to Jack?

What was the whole story? What was the real story? What secret still hadn't been unlocked?

I started in on the massive collection of books that dominated every room in the apartment, even the kitchen. Sara had been a voracious reader. Mostly literature and history, nearly all of it American. Sara the intellectual; Sara the real smart cookie.

Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger. Special Trust by Robert McFarland. Caveat by Alexander Haig. Kissinger by Walter Isaacson. On and on and on. Fiction by Anne Tyler, Robertson Davies, Annie Proulx, but also Robert Ludlum and John Grisham. Poetry by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.

A volume entitled Woman Alone.

I opened each book, then carefully shook it out. There were well over a thousand volumes in the apartment. Maybe a couple of thousand. Lots of books to look through.

There were handwritten pages of notes stuffed into some of the books. Jottings Sara had made. I read every loose scrap. The hours went by. Meals were skipped. I didn't much care.

Inside a biography of Napoleon and Josephine, Sara Rosen had written “N. considered high intelligence an aberration in women. Stroked J.”s breasts in public. Cur. But J. got her just deserts. Cunt."

Jill the poet. Jill the book lover. The mystery, the fantasy woman, the enigma. The killer.

There were several videotapes of movies in the den, and I began to open each of the containers.

Sara Rosen's film collection featured well-known romances, mystery thrillers, and romantic thrillers. The Prince of Tides, No Way Out, Disclosure, The Godfather trilogy, Gone With the Wind, An Officer and a Gentleman.

She also seemed to like older movies, especially noir mysteries: Raymond Chandler, James Cain, Hitchcock.