Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

She did. She was certain that it was a possibility that needed to be checked out, and not just by her own people.

I studied Klauk as the two of us talked in a casual, sometimes even lighthearted, manner. It wasn’t the first time I’d conversed like that with a man who murdered for a living, with a mass murderer, so to speak. This killer, however, was allowed to go home nights to his family in Falls Church, and lead what he described as a “normal, rather guilt-free life.”

As Andrew Klauk told me at one point: “I’ve never committed a crime in my life, Dr. Cross. Never got a speeding ticket.” Then he laughed—a bit inappropriately, I thought. He laughed a little too hard.

“What’s so funny?” I asked him. “Did I miss something?”

“You’re what, two hundred pounds, six foot four? That about right?”

“Pretty close,” I told him. “Six three. A little under two hundred. But who’s counting?”

“Obviously, I am, Detective. I’m grossly overweight and look out of shape, but I could take you out right here on the patio,” he informed me. It was a disturbing observation on his part, provocatively stated.

Whether or not he could do it, he needed to tell me. That was the way his mind worked. Good to know. He’d succeeded in shaking me up a little just the same, in making me extra cautious.

“You might be surprised,” I said to him, “but I’m not sure if I get the point you’re trying to make.”

He laughed again, a tiny, unpleasant nose snort. Scary guy to drink lemonade with. “That’s the point. I could and I would, if it was asked of me by our country. That’s what you don’t get about the Agency, and especially about men and women in my position,” he said.

“Help me to get it,” I said. “I don’t mean you should try to kill me here in the Sterlings’ backyard, but keep talking.”

His tight smile turned to a wide-open grin. “Not try. Trust me on that one.”

He was a truly scary man. He reminded me a little of a psychopathic killer named Gary Soneji. I had talked to Soneji just like this. Neither of them had much affect in their faces. Just this cold fixed glare that wouldn’t go away. Then sudden bursts of laughter. My skin was crawling. I wanted to get up from the table and leave.

Klauk stared at me for a long moment before he went on. I could hear Jeanne Sterling’s kids inside the house. The refrigerator door opening and closing. Ice tinkling against glass. Birds whooping and twittering in background trees. It was a strange, strange scene. Indescribably eerie for me.

“There is one basic proposition in covert action. In subversion, sabotage, being better at it than the other guy. We can do anything we want.” Klauk said it very, very slowly, word by word.

“And we often do. You’re a psychologist and a homicide detective, right? What’s your objective take on this? What are you hearing from me?”

“No rules,” I said to him. “That’s what you’re telling me. You live, you work, in a closed world that virtually isn’t governed. You could say that your world is completely antisocial.”

He snorted a laugh again. I was a decent student, I guess. “Not a fucking one of them. Once we’re commissioned for a job—there are no rules. Not a one. Think about it.”

I definitely would think about it. I started right then and there. I considered the idea of Klauk trying to kill me—if our country asked him to. No rules. A world peopled by ghosts. And even scarier was that I could sense he believed every word he’d said.

After I finished with Klauk, for that afternoon at least, I talked with Jeanne Sterling for a while more. We sat in an idyllic, multiwindowed sunroom that looked out on the idyllic backyard. The subject of conversation continued to be murder. I hadn’t come down yet from my talk with the assassin. The ghost.

“What did you think of our Mr. Klauk?” Jeanne asked me.

“Disturbed me. Irritated me. Scared the hell out of me,” I admitted to her. “He’s really unpleasant. Not nice. He’s a jerk, too.”

“An incredible asshole,” she agreed. Then she didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds. “Alex, somebody inside the Agency has killed at least three of our agents. That’s one of the skeletons I’ve dug up so far in my time as inspector. It’s an ‘unsolved crime.’ The killer isn’t Klauk, though. Andrew is actually under control. He isn’t dangerous. Somebody else is. To tell you the complete truth, the Directorate of Operations has demanded that we bring in somebody from the outside on this. We definitely think one of our contract killers could be Jack. Who knows, maybe Jill is one of ours, too.”

I didn’t talk for a moment, just listened to what Jeanne Sterling had to say. Jack and Jill came to The Hill. Could Jack be a trained assassin? What about Jill? And then, why were they killing celebrities in Washington? Why had they threatened President Byrnes?

My mind whirled around in great looping circles. I thought about all the possibilities, the connections, and also the disconnects. Two renegade contract killers on the loose. It made as much sense as anything else I had heard so far. It explained some things about Jack and Jill for me, especially the absence of passion or rage in the murders. Why were they killing politicians and celebrities, though? Had they been commissioned to do the job? If so, by whom? To what end? What was their cause?

“Let me ask you a burning question, Jeanne. Something else has been bothering me since we got here.”

“Go ahead, Alex. I want to try and answer all your questions. If I can, that is.”

“Why did you bring him here to talk? Why take Andrew Klauk right into your own house?”

“It was a safe place for the meeting,” she said without any hesitation. She sounded so unbelievably certain when she said it. I felt a chill ease up my spine. Then Jeanne Sterling sighed loudly. She knew what I was getting at, what I was feeling, as I sat inside her home.

“Alex, he knows where I live. Andrew Klauk could come here if he wanted to. Any of them can.”