Be Jack.
Kill.
JACK -- whoever the hell he was -- was three or four steps from the master bedroom when its varnished wood door suddenly opened.
A tall, balding man stepped out into the hall. Very hairy arms and legs. Bare, bony feet; toes splayed.
Only half awake. In the middle of a jaw-cracking yawn.
He had on blue plaid boxer shorts, nothing else. A good build, still athletic-looking; just a hint of a spare tire above the boxers' elastic band. Still formidable after all the years of D.C. power lunches.
General Aiden Cornwall!
"You! You son of a bitch!" he whispered as he suddenly saw Jack in the upstairs hallway "I knew it might be you." Yes, Alden Cornwall knew everything in an instant. He had solved the mystery; a lot of mysteries, actually He understood Jack and Jill.
Where it was going. And why it was going there: why it had to be this way. Why there could be no turning back.
Jack fired the silenced Beretta twice and the target collapsed.
Jack quickly stepped forward and caught the lifeless body before it could thud loudly against the floor.
He held the body in his arms, lowering it slowly to the carpet.
His friend, whatever that meant now. He stayed down on his knees for a long moment. His heart was exploding.
He hadn't realized how hard this one was going to be until now. Not until this instant.
He looked down into the startled gray blue eyes of the former member of the Joint Chiefs, part of the White House's Jack and Jill emergency task force.
One of the hounds had been taken out. Just like that. Jack and Jill had struck back boldly at the manhunters! They had shown their strength again.
He took a note from his pocket. He left a calling card on Aiden Cornwall's chest.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill To storm your picket fences.
Once safe and sound They easily found The flaw in your Defenses.
A noise in the hall! He looked up. Aiden's boy! "Oh, Jesus God, no," he whispered out loud. "Oh, God, no." He felt sick all over. He wanted to run from the house.
The boy had recognized him. How could he not? Young Aiden even knew his children. He knew too much. Dear God, have mercy on me. Please have mercy.
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Jack fired the Beretta again.
This was war.
I WAS CALLED to an emergency criss team meeting at the White House at 8:00 A.M. on December 10. I had been causing some trouble over the past few days there. My internal investigation was making waves, ruffling feathers. The big cats on The Hill didn't like being under suspicion -- but all of them were, at least in my book.
Jay Grayer grabbed me the moment I arrived inside the West Wing. Jay's eyes were flat and cold and hard. His grip was strong on my shoulder. "Alex, I need to talk to you for a minute," he said. "It's important."
"What's going on now?" I asked the Secret Service agent. He didn't look well. There were dark puffs under both his eyes.
Something else had happened. I could tell.
"Aiden Cornwall was murdered early this morning. It happened at his house out in McLean. It was Jack and Jill. They called us again. Called it in to us like we're mission control."
He shook his head in sadness and disbelief. "They killed Aiden's nine-year-old son, Alex."
I found myself rocking back on my heels. The news from Jay Grayer didn't make sense to me; it didn't track with the Jack and Jill style to this point. Goddamn them! They kept changing the rules. They had to be doing it on purpose.
"I want to go there right now," I told him. "I need to see the house. I need to be out there, not here."
"I hear you, but wait a minute, Alex," he said. "Hold on. Let me tell you the rest of what's going on. It gets worse."
"How could it get any worse?" I asked him. "Jesus, Jay."
"Trust me, it does. Just listen for a minute."
Agent Grayer continued to talk in a subdued whisper in the White House hallway as we walked together toward the Emergency Command Center, where the others were gathering. He pulled me aside a few paces from the meeting room. His voice was still an urgent whisper.
"The President is always awakened at quarter to five by the agent in charge. Happens every morning.
This morning, the President dressed and went down to the library, where he reads the early papers as well as an executive summary that's prepared for him before he rises."
"What happened this morning?" I asked Jay. I was beginning to perspire. "What happened, Jay?"
He was very thorough and procedural. "At five o'clock the phone in the library rang. It was Jill on the private line. She was calling to talk with the President. She got through to him, and that just isn't possible."
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My head involuntarily shook back and forth. I agreed with Jay Grayer: this couldn't be happening. The idea, the concept, of the President as a murder target was a hugely disturbing one.
The fact that, so far, we were helpless to stop it was much, much worse.
"I think I understand why the call couldn't happen, but tell me anyway," I said. I needed to hear it from him.
"Every single call to the White House goes through a private switchboard. Then the call is monitored by a second operator in White House Communications, which is actually part of our Intelligence Division.
Every call except this one. The call completely bypassed the control system. Nobody knows how the hell it happened. But it happened."
"This phone call that couldn't have happened- was it recorded?" I asked Grayer.
"Yes, of course it was. It's already being processed at FBI headquarters and also at Bell Atlantic out in White Oak. Jill used another filtering device to modify her voice, but there might be ways to get around that. We've got half the Baby Bell's high-tech lab on it."
I shook my head again. I'd heard it, but I couldn't believe any of this. "What did Jill have to say?"
"She began by identifying herself. She said, 'Hi, this is Jill speaking." I'm sure that got the President's attention better than his usual cup of joe in the morning. Then she said, 'Mr. President, are you ready to die?""
I NEEDED TO SEE the house. I needed to be inside the place where General Cornwall and his son had been murdered. I needed to feel everything about the killers, their modus operandi.
I got my wish. I reached McLean before nine that morning.
The December day was very gray and overcast. The Cornwall house looked surreal, stark and cold, as I approached and then entered through the front door. It was cold on the inside, too.
Either the Cornwall family was denying that winter was coming or they were saving money on heat.
The double murders had been committed on the second floor.
General Aiden Cornwall and his nine-year-old son still lay on their backs in the upstairs hallway It was a cold, calculated, very professional killing. The grisly murder scene looked like something from a casebook, maybe even one of my notebooks. It was forensic textbook stuff, almost too much so.
FBI technicians and medical examiners were all over the house. There were probably twenty people inside.
It began raining hard just after I arrived at the house. The cars and TV news trucks that came after me all had their headlights on. It was eerie as hell.
Jeanne Sterling found me in the upstairs hallway. For the first time, the CIA inspector general seemed rattled. The severe, constant pressure was getting to all of us. Some people were after the President of the United States, and they were very good at this. They were extremely brutal as well.
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"What's your gut reaction, Alex?" asked Jeanne.
"My reaction won't make any of our jobs easier," I said. "The only truly sustaining pattern I've seen is that Jack and Jill really don't have a pattern. Other than the notes, the poems. There certainly doesn't seem to be any sexual angle to these two murders.
Also, from what I understand, Aiden Cornwall was a conservative, not a liberal like the other victims.
That's a shift that might knock down a whole lot of theories about Jack and Jill."
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."
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.
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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.
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Your assassination is already a done deal.
Why were they warning us?
Why warn us about what they planned to do?
IT WAS PAST TEN-THIRTY, but I still had one more important stop I wanted to make. I called Jay Grayer and told him I was on my way to the White House. I wanted to see President Byrnes again.
Could he make it happen?
"This can wait until the morning, Alex. It should wait."
"It shouldn't wait, Jay. I've got a couple of theories that are burning a hole in my brain. I need the President's input. If President Byrnes says that it waits until the morning, then it waits.
But talk to Don Hamerman and whoever else needs to be talked to about it. This is a murder investigation. We're trying to prevent murders. At any rate, I'm on my way over there."
I arrived at the White House, and Don Hamerman was waiting for me. So was John Fahey, the chief counsel, and James Dowd, the attorney general and a personal friend of President Byrnes.
They all looked put out and also very tense. This apparently wasn't how things were done in the Big House.
"What the hell is this all about?" Hamerman confronted me angrily I had been waiting to see what his bite was like. I'd seen worse, actually
"If you want, I'll wait until tomorrow. But my instincts tell me not to," I told him in a soft but firm voice.
"Tell us what you want to say to him," James Dowd spoke up.
"Then we'll decide."
"I'm afraid that it's only for the President to hear. I need to talk with him, alone, just like we did the first time we met."
Hamerman exploded. "Jesus Christ, you arrogant son of a bitch. We're the ones who let you in here in the first place."
"Then you're the ones to blame, I guess. I told you that I was here to conduct a murder investigation and that you wouldn't like some of my methods. I told the President the same thing."
Hamerman stormed away from us, but he returned in a couple of minutes. "He'll see you up on the third floor. This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes of his time. It won't take more than a few minutes."
"We'll see what the President has to say about that."
THE TWO OF US met in a solahum that is attached to the living quarters on the third floor. The room had been a favorite of Reagan's. Outside the windows, the lights of Washington were shining brightly. I felt as if I were living a chapter out of All the President's Men.
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"Good evening, Alex. You needed to see me," the President said, and seemed calm and cheerful enough.
Of course, there was no way for me to judge his true feelings. He was dressed casually in khakis and a blue sport shirt.
"I apologize for coming in and causing a lot of upset and inconvenience," I said to him.
The President raised his hand to stop me from apologizing further. "Alex, you're here because we wanted you to do exactly what you're doing. We didn't think anybody on the inside would have the balls. Now, what's on your mind? How can I help you?"
I relaxed a little bit. How could the President help me? That was a question most of us had always wanted to hear. "I spent the day thinking about this morning's phone call, and also the murders out in McLean. Mr. President, I don't think we have a lot of time left. Jack and Jill are making that pretty clear.
They're impatient, very violent; they're taking more and more risks. They also have a psychological need to rub it in our face every time that they can."
"Are they just flattering their egos, Alex?"
"Possibly, but maybe they want to diminish your power. Mr. President, I wanted to see you alone because what I have to say needs absolute confidentiality. As you know, we've been checking out everyone who works at the White House. The Secret Service has been cooperative. So has Don Hamerman."
The President smiled. "I'll bet Don has."
"In his own way, he has. A watchdog is a watchdog, though.
Based on our findings so far, we've placed three members Of the current staff under surveillance by the Secret Service. We would rather watch than dismiss them. They've been added to the seventy-six others currently under surveillance around Washington."
"The Secret Service always has a number of potential threats to the President under surveillance,"
Thomas Byrnes said.
"Yes, sir. We're just taking precautions. I don't have particularly high hopes for the three staff members.
They're all males.
Somehow I thought we might turn up Jill. But we didn't."
The President's look darkened. "I would have liked to meet Jill and have a private chat with her. I'd have liked that a lot."
I nodded. Now came the really difficult part of our little talk.
"I have to broach a tough subject, sir. We need to talk about some of the other people around you, the people closest to you."
Thomas Byrnes sat forward in his chair. I could tell that he didn't like this at all.
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with power and influence here, might be involved in all of this. Jack and Jill are certainly getting into high places with the greatest of ease The people close to you have to be checked, and checked very closely"
Both of us were suddenly quiet. I could almost visualize Don Hamerman waiting outside, chewing on his silk tie.
I broke the awkward silence.
"I know that we're talking about things you would rather not," I said.
The President sighed. "That's why you're here. That's why you're here."
"Thank you," I told him. "Sir, you have no reason not to trust me on this. As you said yourself I'm an outsider. I have nothing to gain."
Thomas Byrnes sighed a second time. I sensed that I had reached him, at least for the moment. "I trust many of these people with my life. Don Hamerman is one of them, my bulldog, as you correctly surmised.
Whom don't I trust ? I'm not completely comfortable with Sullivan or Thompson at the Joint Chiefs. I'm not even sure about Bowen at the FBI. I've made serious enemies on Wall Street already. Their reach inside Washington is very deep and very powerful. I understand that organized crime is none too pleased with my programs, and they are much more organized now than they've ever been. I'm challenging an old, powerful, very f*cked-up system -- and the f*cked-up system doesn't like it. The Kennedys did that
-- especially Robert Kennedy"
I was having trouble catching my breath all of a sudden. "Who else, Mr. President? I need to know all your enemies."
"Helene Glass in the Senate is an enemy... Some of the reactionary conservatives in the Senate and House are enemies.... I believe... that Vice President Mahoney is an enemy, or close to one. I made a compromise before the convention to put him on the ticket. Mahoney was supposed to deliver Florida and other parts of the South. He did deliver. I was supposed to deliver certain considerations to patrons of his. I haven't delivered.
I'm screwing with the system, and that isn't done, Alex."
I listened to Thomas Byrnes without moving a muscle. The effect of talking to the President like this was numbing and disturbing. I could see by the look on his face what it cost Thomas Byrnes to admit some of what he had to me.
"We should put surveillance on these people," I said.
The President shook his head. "No, I can't allow it. Not at this time. I can't do that, Alex." The President rose from his chair.
"How did your kids like the keepsakes?" he asked me.
I shook my head. I wouldn't be held off like that. "Think about the vice president, and about Senator Glass, too. This is a murder investigation. Please don't protect someone who might be involved. Please, Mr. President, help us... whoever it is."
"Goodnight, Alex," the President said in a strong, clear voice.
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His eyes were unflinching.
"Goodnight, Mr. President."
"Keep at it," he said. Then he turned away from me and walked out of the solarium.
Don Hamerman entered the room. "I'll see you out," he said stiffly. He was cold -- unfriendly Perhaps I also had an enemy in the White House.
NO WAY, JOSE! Couldn't be. Could not be. This just could not be happening. Welcome to the X-Files meets The Twilight Zone meets the Information Superhighway At five one and two hundred ten pounds, Maryann Maggio was a powerhouse. She thought of herself as a "censor of the obscene and dangerous"
on the Prodigy interactive network. Her job with Prodigy was to protect travelers on the Information Superhighway An emergency was developing before her eyes right now. There was an intruder on the network.
This couldn't be happening. She couldn't take her eyes off her IBM desktop screen. "This is the interactive age, all right. Well, people, get ready for it," she muttered at the screen. "There's a train wreck a-comin'."
Maryann Maggio had been a censor with IBM-owned Prodigy for nearly six years. By far, the most popular service on Prodigy was the billboards. The billboards were used by members to broadcast personal messages for other members to react to, learn from, plan their vacations, find out about a new restaurant, that sort of thing.
Usually the messages were pretty harmless, covering topical subjects, questions and answers on anything from welfare reform to the ongoing murder trial of the month.
But not the messages that she was staring at right now. This called for Infante the Censor, the protector of young minds, as she sometimes thought of herself. "Big Sister," according to her bearded, three-hundred-pound husband, Terry the Pirate.
She had been monitoring messages from a particular subscriber in Washington, D.C., since around eleven that night. In the beginning, the quirky messages were borderline judgment calls for her to make.
Should she censor or hold back? After all, Prodigy now had to compete with the Internet, which could get pretty damn wild and wacky She wondered if the sender knew this. Cranks sometimes knew the rules. They wanted to push the edge of the envelope.
Sometimes they just seemed to need human contact, even contact with her. The censor of their thoughts and actions. Big Sister is watching.
The first messages had asked other subscribers for their "sincere" point of view on a controversial subject. A child-murder case in Washington, D.C., was described. Then subscribers were asked whether the child murders or the Jack and Jill case deserved more attention from the police and from the press. Which case was more important, morally and ethically?
Maryann Maggio had been forced to pull two of the early messages.
Not because of their content per se, but because of the repeated use of four-letter words, especially the dreaded f word and the s word and one of the c words.
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When she pulled the messages, though, it seemed to cause an unbelievable emotional explosion from the subscriber in Washington. First came a long, nasty diatribe about the "obscene and unnecessary censorship plague on Prodigy." It urged subscribers to switch to CompuServe and other rival on-line services. Of course, CompuServe and America Online had their censors, too.
The messages continued to fly out of Washington faster than the D.C.-New York shuttle. One called for Prodigy to "fire the ass of your absurdly incompetent censor." Maryann Magio censored it.
Another message used the f word eleven times in two paragraphs.
She censored that f*cker, too.
Then the message sender became more than just another foul-mouthed, annoying loose cannon on the service. At 1:17 the subscriber in Washington began to claim responsibility for the two brutal child murders.
The subscriber claimed that he was the murderer, and he would prove it, live on Prodigy.
"Big Sister" pulled the message immediately She also called her supervisor to her cubicle at the Prodigy center in White Plains, New York. Her huge body was shaking all over like jelly by the time her boss arrived, bringing black coffee for both of them. Black coffee? Maryann needed a couple of Little John's
"fully loaded" pizzas to get her through this total disaster.
Suddenly, a brand-new message flashed across the screen from the Washington subscriber, who seemed articulate and intelligent enough, but incredibly angry and really, really crazy.
The latest message listed gory details about the murder of a black child, "details only the D.C. police would know," the subscriber wrote.
"Jesus, Maryann, what a nasty, weird creep," the Prodigy supervisor said over Maryann Magio's shoulder. "Are all the messages like this one?"
"Pretty much, Joanie. He's toned down his language some, but the violence is really graphic stuff.
Vampire creepy Been that way since I clipped his wings."
The latest message from Washington continued to scroll before their eyes. The description seemed to be of an actual murder of a small black child in Garfield Park. The killer claimed to have used a sawed-off baseball bat reinforced with electrical tape. He claimed to have struck the child twenty-three times, and to have counted every single blow.
"Stop this awful, freakish crap now. Pull the damn plug on him!" the supervisor quickly made her decision.
Then the supervisor made an even more important decision.
She decided the Washington Police Department had to be alerted about the suspicious subscriber.
Neither she nor Maryann Maggio knew whether the child murders were real, but they sure sounded that way.
At one-thirty in the morning, the Prodigy supervisor reached a detective at the 1st District in D.C. The Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
supervisor made a note of the detective's rank and also his name in her own log: Detective John Sampson.
I HAD GOTTEN TO BED at a little past one. Nana came and woke me at quarter to five. I heard her slippers scuffing across the bare wood of the bedroom floor. Then she spoke in a low whisper just above my ear. Made me feel as if I were six years old again.
"Alex? Alex? You awake?"
"Mm, hmm. You bet. I am now."
"Your friend's down in the kitchen. Eating bacon and tomatoes out of my skillet like there's no tomorrow, and he would know, wouldn't he? He still eats it faster than I can cook it."
I held in a soft, painful moan. My eyes blinked twice and felt badly puffed and swollen each time they opened. My throat was scratchy and sore.
"Sampson's here?" I finally managed to say.
"Yes, and he says he might have a lead on the Truth School killer. Isn't that a good way to start your day?"
She was taunting me. Same as always. It wasn't even five o'clock in the morning and Nana had her rusty shiv in me already.
"I'm up," I whispered. "I don't look like it, but I'm up."
Less than twenty minutes later, Sampson and I pulled up in front of a brick townhouse on Seward Square. He admitted that he needed me at the scene. Rakeem Powell and a white detective named Chester Mullins, who wore an ancient porkpie hat, were standing outside their own cars, waiting for us.
They looked extremely tense and uncomfortable.
The street was on the moderately upscale side of Seward Square Park, less than a mile and a half from the Sojourner Truth School. This was probably Mullins's home beat.
"It's the white-on-white Colonial motherlode on the corner," Rakeem said, pointing to a big house about a block away "Man, I like working in these high-rent neighborhoods. You'all smell the roses?"
"That's window-cleaning solution," I said.
"There goes my career with FTD," Rakeem Powell laughed, and so did his partner Chester.
"Might not be the Partridge Family living in that nice house up yonder," Sampson cautioned the two detectives. "Beautiful surroundings, peaceful street and all, maybe a homicidal maniac shitheel waiting for us inside, though. You copy?"
Sampson turned to me. "What are you thinking about, Sugar?
You having your usual nasty thoughts on this? Feeling the gris-gris?"
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Prodigy interactive service, an Army man, Colonel Frank Moore, had been sending messages about the child killings over the service. He appeared to know details about the murders that only the police and the real killer knew. He sounded like our freak.
"I don't like what I'm hearing from you so far, Mister John.
The killings suggest he's in a rage state, and yet he's fairly careful.
Now he's reaching out for help? He's virtually leading us to his doorstep? I don't know if I get that. And I don't like it too much, either. That's what I'm feeling so far, partner."
"I was thinking the same thing." Sampson nodded and kept staring at the house in question. "At any rate, we're here. Might as well check out what the colonel wanted us to see."
"Not mutilated bodies," Rakeem Powell said and frowned deeply "Not at five on a Monday morning.
Not more little kids stashed somewhere in that big house."
"Alex and I will take the back door in," Sampson said to Rakeem. "You and Popeye Doyle here can cover the front. Watch the garage. If this is the killer's house, you might expect a surprise or two.
Everybody wide-awake? Wakee-wakee!"
Rakeem and the white man in the hat nodded. "Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," Rakeem said with fake enthusiasm.
"We have you covered, Detectives." Chester Mullins finally said something.
Sampson nodded calmly "Let's do it then. Not daylight yet, maybe he's still in his coffin."
Five-twenty A.M. and my adrenaline was pumping wildly I had already met all the human monsters I cared to meet in my lifetime. I didn't need any more on-the-job experience in this particular area.
"Am I here to watch your ass?" I asked as Man Mountain and I moved toward the big house perched on the corner.
"You got it, Sugar. I need you on this. You got the magic touch with these psycho-killers," Sampson said without looking back at me.
"Thanks. I think," I muttered. There was a real loud noise roaring in my head, as if I'd just taken nitrous oxide at the dentist's.
I really didn't want to meet another psychopath; I didn't want to meet Colonel Franklin Moore.
We cut across a spongy lawn leading to a long, deep porch with an ivy trellis.
I could see a man and woman standing in the kitchen. Two people were already up inside.
"Must be Frank and Mrs. Frank," Sampson muttered.
The man was eating something as he leaned over the kitchen counter. I could make out a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts pastry, a carton of skim milk, and the morning's Washington Post.
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"Very Partridge Family," I whispered to John. "I really don't like this at all. He's leading us all the way, right to the door."
"Homicidal maniac," he said through brilliantly white, gritted teeth. "Don't let the Pop-m-ups fool you.
Only psychos eat that shit."
"Not easily fooled," I said to Sampson.
"So I hear. Let's do it then, Sugar. Time to be unsung heroes again."
We both crouched down below the level of the kitchen windows -- no easy task. We couldn't see the man and woman from there, and they couldn't see us.
Sampson grasped the doorknob and slowly turned it.
THE BACK DOOR into the Moore house was unlocked, and Sampson pushed it right in. The two of us exploded into the homey kitchen with its smells of freshly toasted Pop-Tarts and coffee. We were in the Capitol Hill section of Washington. The house and kitchen looked it. So did the Moores. Neither Sampson nor I was fooled by the trappings of normaIcy, though. We'd seen it before, in the homes of other psychos.
"Hands on top of your heads! Both of you. Put your arms up slow and easy," Sampson yelled at the man and woman we had surprised in the kitchen.
We had our Glocks trained on Colonel Moore. He didn't look like too much of a threat: a short man, thin and balding, middle-aged paunch, eyeglasses. He wore a standard-issue Army uniform, but even that didn't help his image too much.
"We're detectives with the Metro D.C. police," Sampson identified the two of us. The Moores looked in shock. I couldn't blame them. Sampson and I can be shocking under the wrong circumstances, and these were definitely the wrong circumstances.
"There's been some kind of really bad, really crazy mistake," Colonel Moore finally said very slowly and carefully.
"I'm Colonel Franklin Moore. This is my wife, Connie Moore.
The address here is 418 Seward Square North." He slowly enunciated each word. "Please lower your weapons, Officers. You're in the wrong place."
"We're at the correct address, sir," I told the colonel. And you're the crank caller we want to talk to.
Either you ''re a crank or you're a killer.
"And we're looking for Colonel Frank Moore," Sampson filled in. He hadn't lowered his revolver an inch, not a millimeter.
Neither had I.
Colonel Moore maintained his cool pretty well. That concerned me, set my inner alarms off in a loud jangle.
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"Well, can you please tell us what this is all about? And please do it quickly Neither of us has ever been arrested. I've never even had a traffic violation," he said to both Sampson and me, not sure who was in charge.
"Do you subscribe to Prodigy, Colonel?" Sampson asked him.
It sounded a little crazy when it came out, like everything else lately Colonel Moore looked at his wife, then he turned back to us.
"We do subscribe, but we do it for our son, Sumner. Neither of us has much time in our schedules for computer games. I don't understand them much and don't want to."
"How old is your son?" I asked Colonel Moore.
"What difference does that make? Sumner is thirteen years old. He's in the ninth grade at the Theodore Roosevelt School.
He's an honor student. He's a great kid. What is this all about, Officers? Will you please tell us why you're here?"
"Where is Sumner now?" Sampson said in a very low and threatening voice.
Because maybe young Sumner was listening somewhere near in the house. Maybe the Sojourner Truth School killer was listening to us right now.
"He gets up half an hour to forty-five minutes later than we do. His bus comes at six-thirty Please? What is this about?"
"We need to talk to your son, Colonel Moore," I said to him.
Keep it real simple for right now.
"You have to do better --" Colonel Moore started to say "No, ;ve don't have to do better," Sampson interrupted him.
"We need to see your son right now. We're here on a homicide investigation, Colonel. Two small children have already been killed. Your son may be involved with the murders. We need to see your son."
"Oh, dear God, Frank," Mrs. Moore spoke up for the first time. Connie, I remembered her name. "This can't be happening.
Sumner couldn't have done anything."
Colonel Moore seemed even more confused than when we first burst in, but we had gotten his full attention. "I'll show you up to Sumner's room. Could you please holster your weapons, at least?"
"I'm afraid we can't do that," I told him. The look in his eyes was inching closer to panic. I didn't even look at Mrs. Moore anymore.
"Please take us to the boy's bedroom now," Sampson repeated.
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"We need to go up there quietly. This is for Sumner's own protection. You understand what I'm saying?"
Colonel Moore nodded slowly His face was a sad, blank stare.
"Frank?" Mrs. Moore pleaded. She was very pale.
The three of us went upstairs. We proceeded in single file.
I went first, then Colonel Moore, followed by Sampson. I still hadn't ruled out Franklin Moore as a suspect, as a potential madman, as the killer.
"Which room is your son's?" Sampson asked in a whisper.
His voice barely made a sound. Last of the Masai warriors. On a capital-murder case in Washington, D.C.
"It's the second door on the left. promise you, Sumner hasn't done anything. He's thirteen years old. He's first in his class."
"Is there a lock on the bedroom door?" I asked.
"No... I don't think so... there might be a hook. I'm not sure. He's a good boy, Detective."