Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

There was much more for me to take in, and I did, madly scribbling away in my notepad. Occasionally, The Jefe looked my way and glared at me. Checking up on me.

I wanted to go at him. He represented so many things that were wrong with the department, the Washington P.D. He was such a controlling macho asshole, and not half as bright as he thought he was.

“Anything, Cross?” he finally turned and asked in his usual clipped manner.

“Not so far,” I said.

That wasn’t the truth. What definitely occurred to me was that Daniel Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan might both have been “promiscuous,” in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Maybe Jack and Jill “disapproved” of them. Both bodies had been left exposed, in compromising and very embarrassing positions. The killers seemed preoccupied with sex—or at least the sex lives of famous people.

Exposed… or to expose…, I wondered. Exposed for what reason?

“I’d like to look at the note,” I told Pittman, trying to be civil and professional.

Pittman waved a hand in the direction of an end table on the far side of the bed. His gesture was dismissive and rude. I wouldn’t treat the rawest rookie patrolman that way. I had shown more respect to Chop-It-Off-Chucky.

I walked over and read the note for myself. It was another poem. Five lines.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill

To right another error.

To make it short

Her news report

Was filled with her own terror.

I shook my head back and forth a few times, but didn’t say anything about the note to Pittman. To hell with him. The rhyme didn’t tell me much of anything yet. I hoped it would eventually. Actually, the rhymes were clever, but without emotion. What had made these two killers so clever and cold?

I continued to search the bedroom. I was infamous in homicide circles for spending a lot of time at crime scenes. Sometimes I’d spend a whole day. I planned to do the same thing here. Most of the dead woman’s effects seemed to tie in with her career, almost as if she had no other life. Videocassettes, expense sheets from her network, a pilfered stapler with CBS engraved on it. I observed the murder scene, and the dead woman, from several angles. I wondered if the killers had taken anything with them.

I couldn’t concentrate the way I wanted to, though. Chief Pittman had gotten on my nerves. I had let him get to me.

Why had both victims been left exposed? What was it that connected them in death—at least in the minds of the murderers? The killers felt compelled to graphically point out certain things to us. In fact, everything about Fitzpatrick and Sheehan was in public view now. Thanks to Jack and Jill.

This is so bad, I thought and had to reach down deep for a breath.

Worst of all, I was completely hooked on the case. I was definitely hooked.

Then everything took a turn for the worse in the bedroom. A bad and unexpected turn.

I was standing near George Pittman when he spoke again, without looking at me. “You come back after we’re finished, Cross. Come back later.”

The Jefe’s words hung like stale smoke in the air. I had trouble believing that he’d actually said them. I have always tried to act with some respect toward Pittman. It’s been hard, nearly impossible most of the time, but I’ve done it anyway.

“I’m talking to you, Cross,” Pittman raised his voice a notch. “You hear what I said? Do you hear me?”

Then the chief of detectives did something he shouldn’t have, something so bad, something I couldn’t look past. He reached out and pushed me with the heel of his hand. Pushed me hard. I stumbled back a half-step. Caught my balance. Both my fists slowly rose to my chest.

I didn’t stop to think. Maybe some stored-up venom and powerful dislike made me act. That was part of it.

I reached out and grabbed Pittman with both hands. This unspoken thing between us, the pattern of disrespect from him, had been building for a couple of years—at least that long. Now it flared big-time and ugly. It exploded inside the dead woman’s bedroom.

George Pittman and I are about the same age. He’s not as tall as I am, but he’s probably heavier by thirty pounds. He has the squat, blocklike build and look of a football linebacker from the early sixties. He’s bad at his job and he shouldn’t have it. He resents the hell out of me because I’m decent at what I do. Fucker!

I grabbed and picked him up, right off the floor. I look fairly strong, but I’m actually a lot stronger. Pittman’s eyes widened in disbelief and sudden fear.

I slammed him hard against the bedroom wall. Then I banged him into the wall a second time. Nothing lethal or too damaging, but definitely a bell-ringer, an attention-grabber.