Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

“What do you know, Detective Cross?” one of them asked.

“Beautiful morning,” I said. “You can quote me. Feel free.”

This was where the Sterlings were being held in custody, where the government had decided to keep them until their trial for the murder of Thomas Byrnes.

Alex, you have to come out to Lorton Prison. Please come, right now.

I met Jay Grayer on the fourth floor of the prison building. Warden Marion Campbell was there, too. The two of them looked as pale as the institution’s stucco walls.

“Oh, goddamn, Alex,” Dr. Campbell groaned when he saw me approaching. The two of us went back. I took his hand and shook it firmly. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

More police and prison personnel were posted outside an examination room on the fifth floor. Grayer and I filed inside behind the warden and his closest aides. My heart was in my throat.

We had to wear blue surgical masks and clear plastic gloves for the occasion. We were having trouble breathing, even without the masks.

“Oh, goddammit,” I muttered as we entered the room.

Jeanne and Brett Sterling were dead.

The two bodies were laid out on matching stainless steel tables. Both Sterlings were stripped naked. The overhead lighting was bright and harsh. The glare was overpowering.

The whole scene was beyond my powers of comprehension, beyond anyone’s.

Jack and Jill were dead.

Jack and Jill had been murdered inside a federal prison.

“Goddammit. Goddamn them,” I said into my surgical mask.

Brett Sterling was well-built and looked powerful even in death. I could imagine him as Sara Rosen’s lover. I noticed that the bottoms of his feet were dirty. Probably walking barefoot in his cell all night. Pacing? Waiting for someone to come for him?

Who had gotten inside Lorton and done this? Was he murdered? What in the name of God had happened? How could it happen here?

Jeanne Sterling had pasty-white skin, and she wasn’t in good physical shape. She looked much better in tailored gray and blue suits than in the nude.

Above her black pubic hair was a soft roll of paunch. Her legs were crisscrossed with varicose veins. She’d had a nosebleed either before she died or while she was dying.

Neither of the Sterlings seemed to have suffered much. Was that a clue for us? They both had been found dead in their cells at the same 5:00 A.M. guard check.

They had died close to the same time. According to plan? Of course, according to plan. But whose plan was it?

Jack and Jill came to Lorton Prison… and what happened to them here? What the hell happened out here last night?… Who finally killed Jack and Jill?

“They both underwent extensive body searches when they were brought here,” Warden Campbell said to Jay and me. “This may have been a joint suicide, but they had to have help, even for that. Someone got them the poison between six last night and early this morning. Somebody got inside their cells.”

Dr. Marion Campbell looked directly at me. His eyes were bleary and wild and incredibly red-rimmed. “There was a small amount of blood under her right index finger. She fought someone. Jeanne Sterling tried to fight back. She was murdered; at least, I think so. She didn’t want to die, Alex.”

I closed my eyes for a second or two. It didn’t help. Everything was the same when I opened them again. Jeanne and Brett Sterling still lay naked and dead on the two stainless steel tables.

They had been executed. Professionally. Without passion. That was the eeriest part—it was almost as if Jack and Jill had been visited and murdered by Jack and Jill.

Had a “ghost” murdered Jeanne and Brett Sterling? I was afraid we would never know. We weren’t supposed to know. We weren’t important enough to know the truth.

Except maybe one tenet, one principle: there are no rules.

Not for some people, anyway.

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