Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

His eyes were cold. They showed nothing at all.

“That’s Jill,” he told Natalie Sheehan. “I’m Jack. I’m sorry. I really am.”

CHAPTER

20

I EASED MY WAY inside the Jefferson Hotel just before eight in the morning. A little Gershwin was rolling through my head, trying to soothe the savage, trying to smooth out the jagged edges. Suddenly, I was playing the bizarre game, too. Jack and Jill. I was part of it now.

The cool dignity of the hotel was being scrupulously maintained; at least, it was in the elegant front lobby. It was difficult to grasp the reality that a bizarre and unspeakable tragedy had struck here, or that it ever could.

&nbs

p; I passed a fancy grillroom and a shop displaying couture fashion. A century-old clock gently chimed the hour; otherwise, the room was hushed. There was no sign, not a hint, that the Jefferson—indeed the entire city of Washington—was in shock and chaos over a pair of grisly, high-profile murders and threats of still more to come.

I am continually fascinated by facades like the one I encountered at the Jefferson. Maybe that’s why I love Washington so much. The hotel lobby reminded me that most things aren’t what they appear to be. It was a perfect representation for so much that goes on in D.C. Clever facades fronting even more clever facades.

Jack and Jill had committed their second murder in five days. In this serene and very posh hotel. They had threatened several more murders—and no one had a clue why, or how to stop the celebrity stalking.

It was escalating.

Clearly, it was.

But why? What did Jack and Jill want? What was their sick game all about?

I had already been on the phone very early that morning, talking to my strange friends in abnormal psych at Quantico. One of the advantages I have is that they all know I have a doctorate in psych from Johns Hopkins and they’re willing to talk with me, even to share theories and insights. So far, they were stumped. Then I checked in with a contact of mine at the FBI’s evidence analysis labs. The evidence hounds didn’t have much of anything to go on, either. They admitted as much to me. Jack and Jill had all of us chasing our tails in double time.

Speaking of which, I had been ordered by the chief of detectives to work up “one of your famous psych profiles” on the homicidal couple, if that’s what they really were. I felt the task was futile at this point, but I hadn’t been given a choice by The Jefe. Working at home on my PC, I ran a wide swath through the available Behavioral Science Unit and Violent Criminal Apprehension Program data. Nothing obvious or very useful popped up, as I suspected it wouldn’t. It was too early in the chase, and Jack and Jill were too good.

For now at least the correct steps were (1) gather as much information and data as possible; (2) ask the right questions, and plenty of them; (3) start collecting wild hunches on index cards that I would carry around until the end of the case.

I knew about several stalker cases, and I ran the information down in my head. One inescapable fact was that the Bureau now had a database of more than fifty thousand potential and actual stalkers. That was up from less than a thousand in the 1980s. There didn’t seem to be any single stalker profile, but many of them shared traits: first and foremost, obsession with the media; need for recognition; obsession with violence and religion; difficulty forming loving relationships of their own. I thought of Margaret Ray, the obsessed fan who had broken into David Letterman’s home in Connecticut numerous times. She had called Letterman “the dominant person in my life.” I watched Letterman sometimes myself, but he’s not that good.

Then there was the Monica Seles stabbing in Hamburg, Germany.

Katarina Witt had nearly suffered the same fate at the hand of a “fan.”

Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Jodie Foster had all been seriously stalked and attacked by people who claimed to adore them.

But who were Jack and Jill? Why had they chosen Washington, D.C., for their murders? Had someone in the government harmed one or both of them in some real or imagined way?

What was the link between Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick and the murdered television newswoman Natalie Sheehan? What could Fitzpatrick and Sheehan possibly have in common? They were liberals—could that be something? Or were the killings random, and therefore nearly impossible to chart? Random was a nasty word that was sticking in my head more and more as I thought about the case. Random was a very bad word in homicide circles. Random murders were almost impossible to solve.

Most celebrity stalkers didn’t murder their prey—at least, they didn’t use extreme violence right away. That bothered the hell out of me about Jack and Jill. How long had they been obsessed with Senator Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan? How had they ultimately chosen their victims? Don’t let these be random selections and murders. Anything but that.

I was also intrigued by the fact that there were two of them, working closely together.

I had just come off a dizzying, high-profile case in which two friends, two males, had been kidnapping and murdering women for more than thirteen years. They had been cooperating, but also competing with each other. The psychological principle involved was known as twinning.

So what about Jack and Jill? Were they freak-friends? Were they romantically involved? Or was their bond something else? Was it a sexual thing for them? That seemed like a reasonable possibility. Power dominance? A really kinky parlor game, maybe the ultimate sex fantasy? Were they a husband-and-wife team? Or maybe spree killers like Bonnie and Clyde?

Was this the beginning of a gruesome crime spree? A multiple-murder spree in Washington?

Would it spread elsewhere? To other large cities where celebrities tend to cluster? New York? Los Angeles? Paris? London?

I stepped off the elevator on the seventh floor of the Jefferson Hotel and looked into a corridor of dazed and confused faces. Judging from the looks at the crime scene, I was pretty much up to speed.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill