THE BACK DOOR into the Moore house was unlocked, and Sampson pushed it right in. The two of us exploded into the homey kitchen with its smells of freshly toasted Pop-Tarts and coffee. We were in the Capitol Hill section of Washington. The house and kitchen looked it. So did the Moores. Neither Sampson nor I was fooled by the trappings of normalcy, though. We’d seen it before, in the homes of other psychos.
“Hands on top of your heads! Both of you. Put your arms up slow and easy,” Sampson yelled at the man and woman we had surprised in the kitchen.
We had our Glocks trained on Colonel Moore. He didn’t look like too much of a threat: a short man, thin and balding, middle-aged paunch, eyeglasses. He wore a standard-issue Army uniform, but even that didn’t help his image too much.
“We’re detectives with the Metro D.C. police,” Sampson identified the two of us. The Moores looked in shock. I couldn’t blame them. Sampson and I can be shocking under the wrong circumstances, and these were definitely the wrong circumstances.
“There’s been some kind of really bad, really crazy mistake,” Colonel Moore finally said very slowly and carefully.
“I’m Colonel Franklin Moore. This is my wife, Connie Moore. The address here is 418 Seward Square North.” He slowly enunciated each word. “Please lower your weapons, Officers. You’re in the wrong place.”
“We’re at the correct address, sir,” I told the colonel. And you’re the crank caller we want to talk to. Either you’re a crank or you’re a killer.
“And we’re looking for Colonel Frank Moore,” Sampson filled in. He hadn’t lowered his Glock an inch, not a millimeter. Neither had I.
Colonel Moore maintained his cool pretty well. That concerned me, set my inner alarms off in a loud jangle.
“Well, can you please tell us what this is all about? And please do it quickly. Neither of us has ever been arrested. I’ve never even had a traffic violation,” he said to both Sampson and me, not sure who was in charge.
“Do you subscribe to Prodigy, Colonel?” Sampson asked him. It sounded a little crazy when it came out, like everything else lately.
Colonel Moore looked at his wife, then he turned back to us. “We do subscribe, but we do it for our son, Sumner. Neither of us has much time in our schedules for computer games. I don’t understand them much and don’t want to.”
“How old is your son?” I asked Colonel Moore.
“What difference does that make? Sumner is thirteen years old. He’s in the ninth grade at the Theodore Roosevelt School. He’s an honor student. He’s a great kid. What is this all about, Officers? Will you please tell us why you’re here?”
“Where is Sumner now?” Sampson said in a very low and threatening voice.
Because maybe young Sumner was listening somewhere near in the house. Maybe the Sojourner Truth School killer was listening to us right now.
“He gets up half an hour to forty-five minutes later than we do. His bus comes at six-thirty. Please? What is this about?”
“We need to talk to your son, Colonel Moore,” I said to him. Keep it real simple for right now.
“You have to do better—” Colonel Moore started to say.
“No, we don’t have to do better,” Sampson interrupted him.
“We need to see your son right now. We’re here on a homicide investigation, Colonel. Two small children have already been killed. Your son may be involved with the murders. We need to see your son.”
“Oh, dear God, Frank,” Mrs. Moore spoke up for the first time. Connie, I remembered her name. “This can’t be happening. Sumner couldn’t have done anything.”
Colonel Moore seemed even more confused than when we first burst in, but we had gotten his full attention. “I’ll show you up to Sumner’s room. Could you please holster your weapons, at least?”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” I told him. The look in his eyes was inching closer to panic. I didn’t even look at Mrs. Moore anymore.
“Please take us to the boy’s bedroom now,” Sampson repeated. “We need to go up there quietly. This is for Sumner’s own protection. You understand what I’m saying?”
Colonel Moore nodded slowly. His face was a sad, blank stare. “Frank?” Mrs. Moore pleaded. She was very pale.
The three of us went upstairs. We proceeded in single file. I went first, then Colonel Moore, followed by Sampson. I still hadn’t ruled out Franklin Moore as a suspect, as a potential madman, as the killer.
“Which room is your son’s?” Sampson asked in a whisper. His voice barely made a sound. Last of the Masai warriors. On a capital-murder case in Washington, D.C.
“It’s the second door on the left. I promise you, Sumner hasn’t done anything. He’s thirteen years old. He’s first in his class.”
“Is there a lock on the bedroom door?” I asked.
“No… I don’t think so… there might be a hook. I’m not sure. He’s a good boy, Detective.”
Sampson and I positioned ourselves on either side of the closed bedroom door. We understood that a murderer might be waiting inside. Their good boy might be a child killer. Times two. Colonel Moore and his wife might have no idea about their son, and what he was truly all about.
Thirteen years old. I was still slightly stunned by that. Could a thirteen-year-old have committed the two vicious child murders? That might explain the amateurness at the crime scenes. But the rage, the relentless violence? The hatred.
He’s a good boy, Detective.
There was no lock, no hook, on the boy’s door. Here we go. Here we go. Sampson and I burst into the bedroom, our guns drawn.
The room was a regular teenager’s hideout, only with more computer and audio equipment than most I’d seen. A gray cadet dress uniform hung on the open closet door. Someone had slashed it to shreds!
Sumner Moore wasn’t in his bedroom. He wasn’t catching an extra half-hour of sleep that morning.
The room was empty.
There was a typewritten note on the crumpled bedsheets, where it couldn’t be missed.
The note simply said Nobody is gone.
“What is this?” Colonel Moore muttered when he read it. “What is going on? What is going on? Can somebody please explain? What’s happening here?”
I thought that I got it, that I understood the boy’s note. Sumner Moore was Nobody—that was how he felt. And now, Nobody was gone.
An article of clothing lying beside the note was the second part of the message to whoever came to his room first. He had left behind Shanelle Green’s missing blouse. The tiny electric-blue blouse was covered with blood.
A thirteen-year-old boy was the Truth School killer. He was in a state of total rage. And he was on the loose somewhere in Washington.
Nobody was gone.
CHAPTER
66
THE SOJOURNER TRUTH SCHOOL killer traipsed along M Street reading the Washington Post from cover to cover, looking to see if he was famous yet. He had been panhandling all morning and had made about ten bucks. Life be good!
He had the newspaper spread wide open, and he wasn’t much looking where he was going, so he bumped into various assholes on his way. The Post was full of stories about goddamn Jack and Jill, but nothing about him. Not a paragraph, not a single word, about what he’d done. What a frigging joke newspapers were. They just lied their asses off, but everybody was supposed to believe them, right?
Suddenly, he was feeling so bad, so confused, that he wanted to just lie down on the sidewalk and cry. He shouldn’t have killed those little kids, and he probably wouldn’t have if he’d stayed on his medication. But the Depakote made him feel dopey, and he hated it as if it were strychnine.
So now his life was completely ruined. He was a goner. His whole life was over before it had really begun.
He was on the mean streets, and thinking about living out here permanently. Nobody is here. And nobody can stop Nobody.
He had come to visit the Sojourner Truth School again. Alex Cross’s son went there and he was pissed as hell at Cross.
The detective didn’t think much of him, did he? He hadn’t even come to the Teddy Roosevelt School with Sampson. Cross had dissed him again and again.
It was approaching the noon recess at the Truth School and he decided to stroll by, maybe to stand up close to the fenced yard where they had found Shanelle Green. Where he had brought the body. Maybe it was time to tempt the fates. See if there was a God in heaven. Whatever.
Rock-and-roll music was pounding nonstop in his head now. Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, Oasis. He heard “Black Hole Sun” and “Like Suicide” from Soundgarden. Then “Chump” and “Basket Case” from Green Day’s Dookie.
He caught himself, pulled himself back from the outer edge.
Man, he had gone ya-ya for a couple of minutes there. He had completely zoned out. How long had he been out of it? he wondered.
This was getting bad now. Or was it getting very good? Maybe he ought to take just a wee bit of the old Depakote. See if it brought him back anywhere near our solar system.
Suddenly, he spotted the black bitch Amazon woman coming toward him. It was already too late to move out of the way of the cyclone.
He recognized her right away. She was the high-and-mighty principal from the Sojourner Truth School. She had a bead on him, had him in her sights. Man, she should have been wearing a NO FEAR T-shirt to play that kind of game. You put the bead on me—then I’ll put the bead on you, lady. You don’t want my bead on you. Trust me on that, partner.
She was yelling, raising her voice anyway. “Where do you go to school? Why aren’t you there now? You can’t stand around here.” She called loudly as she kept walking straight toward him.
FUCK YOU, BLACK BITCH. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TALKING TO?
YOU… TALKIN’… TO… ME?
“Do you hear me, mister? You deaf or something? This is a drug-free area, so move on. Now. There’s absolutely no loitering near this school. That means you, in the fatigue jacket! Move on. Go on, get out of here.”
Just fuck you, all right? I’ll move on when I’m good and ready.
She came right up to him, and she was big. A lot bigger than he was, anyway.
“Move it or lose it. I won’t take any crap from you. None at all. Now get out of here. You heard me.”
Well, hell. He moved on without giving her the satisfaction of word one. When he got up the block, he saw all the schoolkids being let outside into the yard with the high fence that didn’t mean squat in terms of protection. Can’t keep me out, he thought.
He looked for Cross’s little boy, searched the schoolyard with his eyes. Found him, too. No sweat. Tall for his age. Beautiful, right? Cute as hell. Damon was his name-o, name-o.
The school principal was still out in the playground—staring up the street at him, bad-eyeing him. Mrs. Johnson was her name-o.
Well, she was a dead woman now. She was already ancient history. Just like old Sojourner Truth—the former slave, former abolitionist. They all are, the killer thought as he finally moved on. He had better things to do than loitering, wasting his precious time. He was a big star now. He was important. He was somebody.
Happy, happy. Joy, joy.
“You believe that,” he said to nobody in particular, just the generic voices crackling inside his head, “then you must be crazier than I am. I ain’t happy. There ain’t no joy.”
As he turned the corner, he saw a police car coming up the street toward the school. It was time to get the hell out of there, but he would be back.
CHAPTER
67
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON I gathered up my files and all my notes on Jack and Jill. I headed to Langley, Virginia, again. No music in the car that morning. Just the steady whhrrr of my tires on the roadway. Jeanne Sterling had asked to see what I had come up with so far. She’d called half a dozen times. She promised to reciprocate this time. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Okay? Why not? It made a lot of sense.
An Agency assistant sporting a military style crew cut, a woman in her twenties, escorted me into a conference room on the seventh floor. The room was filled with bright light and was a far cry from my cube in the White House basement. I felt like a mouse out of its hole. Speaking of the White House, I hadn’t heard from the Secret Service about any plan to investigate possible enemies of the President in high places. I would stir that pot again when I got back to D.C.
“On a clear day you used to be able to see the Washington Monument,” Jeanne Sterling said as she came striding in behind me. “Not anymore. The air quality in Fairfax County is abysmal. What’s your reaction to the files on our killer elite, so far? Shock? Surprise? Boredom? What do you think, Alex?”
I was starting to get used to Jeanne’s rapid-fire style of speaking. I could definitely see her as a law school professor. “My first reaction is that we need weeks to analyze the possibility that one of these people might be a psychotic killer. Or that one of them might be Jack,” I told her.
“I agree with you on that,” she nodded. “But just suppose we had to compress our search into about twenty-four fun-filled hours, which is about what we have to work with. Now then, are there any prime suspects in your mind? You have something, Alex. What is it?”
I held up three fingers. I had three somethings so far.
She smiled broadly. Both of us did. You had to learn to laugh at the madness or it could bring you so far down, you’d never make it back up again.
“Okay. All right. That’s what I like to hear. Let me guess,” she said, and went ahead. “Jeffrey Daly, Howard Kamens, Kevin Hawkins.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” I said. “That might tell us something at least. Maybe we better start with the one name that’s on both of our shortlists. Tell me about Kevin Hawkins.”
CHAPTER
68
JEANNE STERLING spent about twenty minutes briefing me on Kevin Hawkins. “You’ll be gratified to hear that we have Hawkins under surveillance already,” she said as we rode a swift, smooth elevator down to the basement garage, where our cars were parked.
“See, you don’t need my help, after all,” I said. I was buoyed by the prospect of any kind of progress on the case. I was actually feeling positive for the first time in several days.
“Oh, but we do, Alex. We haven’t brought him in for an interview, because we don’t have anything concrete on him. Just nasty, nasty suspicions. That and a need to catch somebody. Let’s not forget about that. Now you’re suspicious, too.”
“That’s all I have at this point,” I reminded her. “Suspicions.”
“Sometimes that’s enough, and you know it. Sometimes it has to be.”
We arrived at the small private garage underneath the CIA complex at Langley. The space was filled mostly with family vehicles like Taurus station wagons, but there were a few high-testosterone sports cars as well. Mustangs, Bimmers, Vipers. The cars matched up fairly well with the personnel I had seen upstairs.
“I guess we should take both our cars,” Jeanne suggested, and it made sense to me. “I’ll drive back here when we’re through. You can go on into D.C. Hawkins is staying with his sister in Silver Spring. He’s at the house now. It’s about half an hour on the beltway, if that.”
“You’re going to take him in now?” I asked her. It sounded like it to me.
“I think we should, don’t you? Just to have a little chat, you know.” I went to my car. She walked to her station wagon. “This man we’re going to see, he’s a professional killer,” I called to her across the garage floor.
She called back, her voice echoing against concrete and steel. “From what I gather, he’s one of our very best. Isn’t that a fun thought?”
“Does he have an alibi for any of the Jack and Jill murder dates?”
“Not that we know of. We’ll have to ask him more about it—in detail.”
We got into our respective cars and started up the engines. I was beginning to notice that the CIA inspector general wasn’t a bureauc
rat; she certainly wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. Mine, either. We were going to meet another “ghost.” Was he Jack? Could it be that easy? Stranger things had happened.
It took the full thirty minutes to get over to Hawkins’s sister’s house in Silver Spring, Maryland. The houses there were somewhat overpriced, but it was still considered a middle-class area. Not my middle class. Somebody else’s.
Jeanne pulled her Volvo wagon up alongside a black Lincoln parked three-quarters of a block from the sister’s house. She powered down the passenger-side window and talked to two agents inside the parked car. One of her surveillance teams, I guessed. Either that or she was asking directions to the assassin’s hideout, which struck me as humorous. One of the few laughs I’d had recently.
Suddenly, I saw a man come out of the sister’s Cape Cod–style house.
I recognized Kevin Hawkins from his file pictures. No doubt about it.
He threw a quick glance down the street, and he must have seen us. He started to run. Then he hopped on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked in the driveway.
I shouted, “Jeanne,” out my open window and gunned my engine at the same time.
I began to chase… Jack?
CHAPTER
69
THE FIRST THING Kevin Hawkins did on the motorcycle was to cut sharply sideways over the sliver of frost-covered lawn separating two split-level ranch houses. He raced past a few more houses, one of them with an aboveground pool covered by a baby-blue tarp for the winter.
I aimed my old Porsche along the same inland route that Hawkins was taking. Fortunately, the past few days had been cold, and the ground was mostly solid. I wondered if anybody from the houses had spotted the motorcycle and car crazily zigzagging through their backyards.
The motorcycle took a sharp right onto the development road past the last row of houses. I followed close behind. My car was bouncing high. Then it scraped bottom loudly against the high curb. It thudded hard onto the road pavement, and my head struck the rooftop.