Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

. “Yes, very much so,” Jannie told me. "I love seeing you on TV.

So does Rosie. You're handsome, and you talk real nice. You're my hee-ro."

“What do you have to say, Damon?” I checked on his royal majesty's reaction to the strange goings-on.

Damon grinned ear to ear. He couldn't help himself. “Pretty good,” he admitted. “I feel good inside.”

“I hear you,” I said to my young cub. “You want to give me a hug?”

He did, so I knew Damon was happy with me for the moment.

That was important to me.

“Mater familias?” I asked for Nana's opinion last. She was propped up in her favorite armchair. She hugged herself tightly as she watched the traumatic news coverage with rapt attention and a snide commentary

“Not familias enough lately,” Nana offered a quick complaint.

"Well, mostly I agree withJannie and Damon. I don't see why the white Secret Service man is taking most of the credit, though.

Seems to me that the President got shot on his watch."

“Maybe he got shot on all of our watches,” I said to her.

Nana shrugged her deceptively frail-looking shoulders. “At any rate, as always, I am proud of you, Alex. Has nothing to do with the heroics, though. I'm proud of you because of you.”

“Thank you,” I told Nana. "Nobody can say anything nicer.

Not to anybody."

“I know that,” Nana got the last word in; then she finally grinned. “Why do you think I said it?”

I hadn't been home much during the past four weeks, and we were all hungry for one another's company. We were starved, in fact. I couldn't walk anywhere in the house without one of the kids firmly attached to an arm or leg.

Even Rosie the cat got into the act. She was definitely family now, and we were all glad she'd somehow found her way to our house.

I didn't mind any of it. Not one minute of the attention. I was starved myself. I had a quick regret that my wife, Maria, wasn't around to enjoy the special moment, but the rest was okay. Pretty good, actually. Our life was going to get back to normal again now. I vowed it would happen this time.

The next morning I was up to take Damon over to the Sojourner Truth School. The place was already bouncing back nicely. Innocence has a short memory. I stopped by Christine Johnson's office, but she wasn't back at work yet.

Nobody knew when she would return to the school, but they all missed her like a cure for the flu. So did I, so did i. There was something special about her. I hoped she was going to be all right.

I got home at quarter to nine that morning. The house on Fifth Street was incredibly quiet and peaceful. Kind of nice, actually. I put on Billie Holiday: The Legacy 1933-1958. One of my all-time favorites.

The phone rang about nine. The damn infernal phone.

It was Jay Grayer. I couldn't imagine why he would be calling me at home. I almost didn't want to hear the reason for his call.

“Alex, you have to come out to Lorton Prison,” he said in an urgent-sounding voice. “Please come, right now.”

I BROKE every posted speed limit traveling out to the federal prison in Virginia. My head was spinning, threatening to come right off, to smash through the car windshield. As a homicide detective, you need to think that you're strong and that you can take just about anything that's dished out, but sooner or later you find out you really can't. Nobody can.

I had been to Lorton Prison a few times before. The kidnapper and mass killer Gary Soneji had been kept in maximum security there once upon a time.

I arrived about ten in the morning. It was a crisp, blue-skied morning. A few reporters were in the parking lot and on the side lawns when I arrived.

“What do you know, Detective Cross?” one of them asked.

“Beautiful morning,” I said. “You can quote me. Feel free.”

This was where the Sterlings were being held in custody, where the government had decided to keep them until their trial for the murder of Thomas Byrnes.

Alex, you have to come out to Lorton Prison. Please come, right now.

I met Jay Grayer on the fourth floor of the prison building.

Warden Marion Campbell was there, too. The two of them looked as pale as the institution's stucco walls.

“Oh, goddamn, Alex,” Dr. Campbell groaned when he saw me approaching. The two of us went back. I took his hand and shook it firmly. “Let's go upstairs,” he said.

More police and prison personnel were posted outside an examination room on the fifth floor. Grayer and I filed inside behind the warden and his closest aides. My heart was in my throat.

We had to wear blue surgical masks and clear plastic gloves for the occasion. We were having trouble breathing, even without the masks.

“Oh, goddammit,” I muttered as we entered the room.

Jeanne and Brett Sterling were dead.

The two bodies were laid out on matching stainless steel tables. Both Sterlings were stripped naked. The overhead lighting was bright and harsh. The glare was overpowering.

The whole scene was beyond my powers of comprehension, beyond anyone's.

Jack and Jill were dead.

Jack and Jill had been murdered inside a federal prison.

“Goddamnit. Goddamn them,” I said into my surgical mask.

Brett Sterling was well-built and looked powerful even in death. I could imagine him as Sara Rosen's lover. I noticed that the bottoms of his feet were dirty Probably walking barefoot in his cell all night. Pacing? Waiting for someone to come for him?

Who had gotten inside Lorton and done this? Was he murdered?

What in the name of God had happened? How could it happen here?

Jeanne Sterling had pasty-white skin, and she wasn't in good physical shape. She looked much better in tailored gray and blue suits than in the nude.

Above her black pubic hair was a soft roll of paunch. Her legs were crisscrossed with varicose veins. She'd had a nosebleed either before she died or while she was dying.

Neither of the Sterlings seemed to have suffered much. Was that a clue for us? They both had been found dead in their cells at the same 5:00 A.M. guard check.

They had died close to the same time. According to plan? Of course, according to plan. But whose plan was it?

Jack and Jill came to Lorton Prison... and what happened to them here? What the hell happened out here last night?... Who finally killed Jack and Jill?

“They both underwent extensive body searches when they were brought here,” Warden Campbell said to Jay and me. “This may have been a joint suicide, but they had to have help, even for that. Someone got them the poison between six last night and early this morning. Somebody got inside their cells.”

Dr. Marion Campbell looked directly at me. His eyes were bleary and wild and incredibly red-rimmed. “There was a small amount of skin and blood under her right index finger. She fought someone. Jeanne Sterling tried to fight back. She was murdered; at least, I think so. She didn't want to die, Alex.”

I closed my eyes for a second or two. It didn't help. Everything was the same when I opened them again. Jeanne and Brett Sterling still lay naked and dead on the two stainless steel tables.

They had been executed. Professionally Without passion.

That was the eeriest part -- it was almost as if Jack and Jill had been visited and murdered by Jack and Jill.

Had a “ghost” murdered Jeanne and Brett Sterling? I was afraid we would never know. We weren't supposed to know. We weren't important enough to know the truth.

Except maybe one tenet, one principle: there are no rules.

Not for some people, anyway.

I ALWAYS WANT everything tied up nice and neat with a bright ribbon and bow on the package. I want to be the mastermind dragonslayer on every case. It just doesn't work out that way -- probably wouldn't be any fun if it did.