Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

A pair of wire-rim eyeglasses were on the rug near her Nike sneakers.

She had been shot execution-style—as the early victims of Jack and Jill had been.

One shot, close to the head.

Very professional. Very cold.

No passion.

“Was she ever on any of our suspect lists?” I asked Grayer. We knew that the dead woman’s name was Sara Rosen. She had been cleared as part of the White House staff. She’d escaped detection during two “thorough” investigations of the staff, and that was the scariest piece of evidence yet.

“Not that we know of. She was something of a fixture at the White House communications office. Everybody liked her efficiency, her professionalism. She was trusted. Jesus, what a mess. What a disaster. She was trusted, Alex.”

Part of the left side of her face was gone, ripped away as if by an animal. Jill looked as if she had been caught by surprise. Her eyebrows were arched. There was no fear in her eyes.

She had trusted her killer. Was it Jack who had pulled the trigger? I noticed the smudging around the wound, the gray ring. It was a close-range discharge. It must have been Jack. Professional. No passion. Another execution.

But is this really Jill? I wondered as I bent over the body. The contract killer Kevin Hawkins had died at St. Vincent’s Hospital downtown. We knew that Hawkins had disguised himself as a female FBI agent to get into Madison Square Garden. He had used the concussion bomb to get his target where he wanted, when he wanted. He’d been waiting in the exit tunnel, dressed as a woman. It had worked. What was Kevin Hawkins’s relationship to this woman? What in hell was going on?

“He left a poem. Somebody did. Looks like the others,” Jay Grayer said to me. The note was in a plastic evidence bag. He handed it to me. “The last will and testament of Jack and Jill,” he said.

“The perfect assassination,” I muttered, more to myself than to Grayer. “Jack and Jill both dead in New York. Case closed, right?”

The Secret Service agent stared at me and then slowly shook his head. “This case will never be closed. Not in our lifetime, anyway.”

“I was just being ironic,” I said.

I read the final note.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill

Where Jill did what she must.

Her reason drove her

The game is over

Thou

gh dead Jill’s cause was just.

“Fuck you, Jill,” I whispered over the dead body. “I hope you burn in hell for what you’ve done today. I hope there’s a hell just for you and Jack.”

CHAPTER

94

NOWHERE was the news of the shooting taken any harder than in Washington. Thomas Byrnes was loved and he was hated, but he was one of the city’s own, especially now.

Christine Johnson was in shock, as were her closest friends and most everyone that she knew. The teachers at Sojourner Truth and the children were completely destroyed by what had happened to the President in New York City. It was so horrifying and stark, but also so unbearably sad and unreal.

Because of the shooting, all D.C. schools had canceled classes for the afternoon. She had been watching the nightmarish TV coverage of the assassination attempt from the first moment she got home from school. She still couldn’t believe what had happened. No one could believe it. The President was still alive. No other bulletins were being released.

Christine didn’t know whether Alex Cross had been at Madison Square Garden, but she imagined that he had been there. She worried about Alex, too. She liked the detective’s sincerity and his inner strength, but especially his compassion and his vulnerability. She liked the way he looked, talked, acted. She also liked the way Alex was bringing up his son, Damon. It made her want children even more herself. She and George had to talk about that. She and George had to talk.

He arrived home before seven that night, which was an hour or two early for him. George Johnson was a hard worker in his corporate law job. He was thirty-seven years old and had a smooth, attractive baby face. He was a good man, although way too self-centered and, truthfully, a little bit of a buppie at times.

Christine loved him, though; she accepted the good and the bad. She was thinking that as she fiercely hugged him at the front door. There was no doubt of it in her mind. She and George had met at Howard University and been together ever since. That was the way she believed it ought to be, and would be as far as she was concerned.