Cat and Mouse (Alex Cross 4)

Pierce spoke to me. I don’t know how, but he did. “You’ve never seen Mr. Smith’s handiwork before?”

I shook my head in disbelief. I had never seen anything like this, not in all my years in Violent Crimes or Homicide. Flaps of skin hung over Pierce’s rib cage, exposing translucent muscle and tendons. I was afraid, repulsed, shocked — all at the same time.

Thomas Pierce was Mr. Smith’s victim. His last?

“Don’t come any closer. Just stay there,” he said. It was a command.

“Who am I talking to? Thomas Pierce, or Mr. Smith?”

Pierce shrugged. “Don’t play shrink games with me. I’m smarter than you are.”

I nodded. Why argue with him — with Pierce, or was it Mr. Smith?

“I murdered Isabella Calais,” he said slowly. His eyes became hooded. He almost looked in a trance. “I murdered Isabella Calais.”

He pressed the scalpel to his chest, ready to stab himself again, to pierce. I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t.

This man wants to cut into his own heart, I thought to myself. Everything has come full circle to this. Is Mr. Smith S? Of course he is.

“You never got rid of any of Isabella’s things,” I said. “You kept her pictures up.”

Pierce nodded. “Yes, Dr. Cross. I was mourning her, wasn’t I?”

“That’s what I thought at first. It’s what the people at the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico believed. But then I finally got it.”

“What did you get? Tell me all about myself.” Pierce mocked. He was lucid. His mind still worked quickly.

“The other murders — you didn’t want to kill any of them, did you?”

Thomas Pierce glared. He focused on me with a sheer act of will. His arrogance reminded me of Soneji. “So why did I?”

“You were punishing yourself. Each murder was a reenactment of Isabella’s death. You repeated the ritual over and over. You suffered her death each time you killed.”

Thomas Pierce moaned. “Ohhh, ohhh. I murdered her here. In this bed!… Can you imagine? Of course you can’t. No one can.”

He raised the scalpel above his body.

“Pierce, don’t!”

I had to do something. I rushed him. I threw myself at him, and the scalpel jammed into my right palm. I screamed in pain as Pierce pulled it out.

I grabbed at the folded yellow-and-white-flowered comforter and pressed it against Pierce’s chest. He was fighting me, flopping around like a man having a seizure.

“Alex, no. Alex, look out!” I heard Sampson call out from behind me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was moving fast toward the bed. “Alex, the scalpel!” he yelled.

Pierce was still struggling beneath me. He screamed obscenities. His strength was amazing. I didn’t know where the scalpel was, or if he still had it.

“Let Smith kill Pierce!” he screeched.

“No,” I yelled back. “I want you alive.”

Then the unthinkable — again.

Sampson fired from point-blank range. The explosion was deafening in the small bedroom. Thomas Pierce’s body convulsed on the bed. Both his legs kicked high in the air. He screeched like a badly wounded animal. He sounded inhuman — like an alien.

Sampson fired a second time. A strange guttural sound came from Pierce’s throat. His eyes rolled way back in his head. The whites showed. The scalpel dropped from his hand.

I shook my head. “No, John. No more. Pierce is dead. Mr. Smith is dead, too. May he rest in hell.”