As I was talking to Jeanne Sterling, I had another insight into the notes Jack and Jill had left. The poetry might be telling us something important. The FBI linguistic agents hadn’t found anything yet, but I didn’t care. Whoever was writing the rhymes, probably Jill, wanted us to know something…. Was there a definite order to what they were doing? The desire to create instead of destroy? The poetry had to mean something. I was almost sure of it.
“How about on your end, Jeanne? Anything?”
Jeanne shook her head and bit her lower lip with her big teeth. “Not a thing.”
CHAPTER
60
IT HAD BEEN a very long day and it was still going strong and hard. At ten o’clock that night, I arrived at the FBI offices on Pennsylvania Avenue. My mind was running way too fast as I rode the elevator up to twelve. The lights in the building were blazing like tiny campfires above D.C. I figured that Jack and Jill had a lot of people staying up late that night. I was only one of them.
I’d come to the FBI offices to listen to the phone message Jill had sent to the President early that morning. All the important evidence was being made available to me. I was being let inside. I was even being allowed to make waves inside the White House. I knew all about horrible multiple killers; most of the rest of the team hadn’t had that pleasure.
No rules.
I was brought by Security to an audio/electronics office on twelve. An NEC tape machine was waiting for me. A copy of Jill’s voice tape was already in. The tape machine was on. Running hot.
“This is a dupe, Dr. Cross, but it’s close enough for your listening purposes,” I was told. An FBI techie, long hair and all, went on to inform me they were certain that the voice on the tape had been altered or filtered electronically. The FBI experts didn’t believe the caller could possibly be identified from the tape. Once again, Jack and Jill had carefully covered their trail.
“I talked to a contact at Bell Labs,” I said. “He told me the same thing. Couple more experts confirm that and I’ll believe it.”
The nonconformist-looking FBI technician finally left me alone with the taped phone call. I wanted it that way. For a while I just sat in the office and stared out at the Justice Department across Pennsylvania Avenue.
Jill was right there with me.
She had something about herself to reveal, something she needed to tell us. Her deep, dark secret.
The tape had been cued up. Her voice startled me in the silent, lonely office.
Jill spoke.
“Good morning, Mr. President. It’s December ten. Exactly five A.M. Please don’t hang up on me. This is Jill. Yes, the Jill. I wanted to speak to you, to make this situation very personal for you. Are we okay so far?”
“It’s way past ‘personal.’” President Byrnes spoke calmly to her. “Why are you murdering innocent people? Why do you want to kill me, Jill?”
“Oh, there’s a very good reason, a fully satisfactory explanation for all our actions. Maybe we just like the power trip of frightening the so-called most powerful people in the world. Maybe we like sending you a message from all the little people you’ve frightened with your command decisions and almighty mandates from on high. At any rate, no one who’s been killed was innocent, Mr. President. They all deserved to die, for one reason or another.”
Then Jill laughed. The sound of the electronically altered voice was almost childlike.
I thought of Aiden Cornwall’s young son. Why did a nine-year-old boy deserve to die? At that moment, I hated Jill—whoever she was, whatever her motives.
President Byrnes didn’t back down. The President’s voice was measured, calm. “Let me make one thing clear to you: you don’t frighten me. Maybe you ought to be afraid, Jill. You and Jack. We’re getting close to you now. There’s nowhere on earth you can hide. There isn’t one safe spot on the globe. Not anymore.”
“We’ll certainly keep that in mind. Thanks so much for the warning. Very sporting of you. And you please keep this in mind—you’re a dead man, Mr. President. Your assassination is already a done deal.”
That was the end of the tape. Jill’s final words to President Byrnes, spoken so coolly, so brazenly.
Jill the morning deejay. Jill the poet. Who are you, Jill?
Your assassination is already a done deal.
I wanted to interview President Byrnes again. I wanted to talk with him right now. I needed him in this office, listening to the sick, threatening tape with me. Maybe the President knew things that he wasn’t telling any of us. Someone must.
I played the frightening taped message several more times. I don’t know how long I sat in the FBI office, staring out over the becalmed lights of Washington, D.C. They were somewhere out there. Jack and Jill were out there. Possibly planning an assassination. But maybe not. Maybe that wasn’t it at all.
You’re a dead man, Mr. President.
Your assassination is already a done deal.