Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

“Bye-bye,” the little boy mimicked, waving his hand. “Bye-bye.”

“Hope I see ya some other time,” said the Sojourner Truth School killer. “Bye-bye.” You morons! You incredible idiots. You pathetic simps.

He walked away from the family. Never looked back once. He was wetting his pants, but he was also beginning to laugh. He couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Here was another thing in his favor—even if he was caught someday—they wouldn’t believe that he was the Truth School killer. No way in hell.

CHAPTER

15

AH, THIS WAS MUCH BETTER. Life was good again. I opened my eyes and Jannie was there, staring at me from about three feet away. Jannie had Rosie the cat in her arms. Jannie likes to watch me sleep sometimes. I like to watch her sleep, too. Fair is fair.

“Hey there, sweetness and light,” I said to her. “You know the song ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’? You remember that one?” I hummed a couple of bars for her.

Jannie nodded her head yes. She knew the song. She’d heard me play it on the piano downstairs, on our porch. “You have guests,” she announced.

I sat up in bed. “How long have they been here?”

“They just came. Nana sent me and Rosie up to get you. She’s making them coffee. You, too. You have to get up.”

“Is it Sampson and Rakeem Powell?” I asked.

Jannie shook her head. She seemed unusually shy this morning, which isn’t really like her. “They’re white men.”

I was starting to wake up in a hurry. “I see. You happen to catch the names?” Suddenly, I thought I knew the names. I solved the mystery myself—at least, I thought I had.

Jannie said, “Mr. Pittman and Mr. Clouser.”

“Very good,” I complimented her.

Not good, not good at all, I was thinking about my “guests.” I didn’t want to see the chief of detectives, or the police commissioner—especially not in my house.

Especially not for the reason I imagined that they were here to see me.

Jannie bent and gave me my morning kiss. Then a second kiss.

“Oh, what lies there are in kisses,” I winked and said to her.

“Nope,” she said. “Not my kisses.”

It took me less than five minutes to get as ready as I was going to get for this. Nana was entertaining our visitors in the parlor. Commissioner Clouser had come to my house twice before. This was a first for the chief of detectives. The Jefe. I assumed that Clouser had forced him to come.

Chief Pittman and Commissioner Clouser were sipping Nana’s steaming coffee, smiling at a story she was spinning for them. I wondered what it was she had decided to get off her chest. This was a dangerous time—for Pittman and Clouser.

“I was just rebuking these gentlemen for allowing Emmanuel Perez to roam our streets for so long,” she told me as I entered the parlor. “They promised not to let that sort of thing happen again. Should I believe them, Alex?”

Both Pittman and Clouser chuckled as they looked at me. Neither of them realized this was no chuckling matter, and that my grandmother was no one to mess with or, even worse, condescend to in her house.

“No, you shouldn’t believe one word they say. Are you finished now?” I asked her, returning her sweet, phony smile with one of my own.

“I didn’t think I could trust either of them. I wanted to get their promise in writing,” Nana said.

I nodded and smiled, as if she’d just made a joke, which I knew she hadn’t. She was dead serious. The Jefe and Commissioner Clouser both laughed heartily. They thought Nana Mama was a stitch. She isn’t. She’s the whole nine yards.

“Can the three of us talk in here?” I asked her. “Or should we go outside for our discussion?”

“I’ll go in my kitchen,” Nana evil-eyed me and said. “So nice to meet you, Chief Pittman, Commissioner Clouser. Don’t forget your promise. I won’t.”

Once she had left the room, the commissioner spoke right up. “Well, congratulations are in order, Alex. I understand that you found all kinds of kiddie porn in Emmanuel Perez’s apartment.”