Jack looked at the Secret Service agent, and then back at me.
He recognized me. He knew who I was. What else did he know?
At first he'd been startled, but now he became calm. It was astonishing to see the calmness and cool take hold. He's calm as death, I thought.
I shouldn't have been surprised. This was the real Jack. This was the President killer.
“Very good,” he finally said, commending us for doing a good job, for our professionalism. The son of a bitch nodded his approval.
“I'm proud of you. You did your jobs extremely well.” It made my blood boil, but I knew the order of the day: we take him real easy. The gentle beartrap.
He slowly got out of the spit-shined red vehicle. Both his hands were held up high. He offered no resistance; he didn't want to be shot.
Suddenly, one of the Secret Service agents sucker punched him. The agent threw a hard roundhouse right that connected with the killer's jaw. I couldn't believe he'd done it, but I was glad.
Jack's head snapped back and he dropped like a stone. Jack was smart. He stayed down. There was no provocation for the agent's punch, no excuse whatsoever--except that the freak sprawled on the ground had murdered the President in cold blood.
Jack shook his head and worked his jaw as he looked up at us from the pavement. “How much do you know?” he asked.
We didn't answer him. None of us said a goddamn word. It was our turn to play games. Now we had a few surprises for Jack.
JACK WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING. We knew he was only part of the puzzle we were attempting to solve. We had decided to take him down first, but now came the second crucial stop.
As we rode back to his house on Oxford Street, I felt distant from the scene, almost as if I were watching myself in a dream. I remembered the few meetings I'd had with Thomas Byrnes. He'd told us all to have no regrets, but that advice didn't work out in the real world. The President was dead, and I would always feel partly responsible, even if I wasn't responsible at all.
I wasn't thinking only about the President's murder. There was thirteen-year-old Danny Boudreaux. I felt an unsettling connection between the two cases. I had from the very beginning. The murders and unprecedented violence were everywhere. It was as if a strange, crippling disease were spreading across much of the world, but especially right here in America. I had already witnessed too much of it. I didn't know how to make the nightmare stop. No one did.
It wasn't over.
We were finally at the beginning of the awful mystery.
This was where it had started.
At this house just coming into view.
Jay Grayer spoke into the car's hand mike. 'Dr. Cross and I will go the front-door route. Everyone cover us like a blanket.
No shooting. Not even return fire, if you can help it. Everybody clear on that?'
All the other agents were clear on the procedure and knew the stakes. Beartrap wasn't over yet.
Grayer pulled the black sedan up beside the front walk to the house. “You ready for one more shitstorm?” he asked me. “You okay with how this is going down, Alex?”
“I'm as okay as I'm going to be,” I told him. “Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I needed to be here.”
“We wouldn't even be here without you. Let's go do it.”
The two of us got out of his unmarked car and hurried up the red-brick front walkway together. We matched each other, step for step.
This was where it had all started.
The big house, the whole street, seemed so innocent and appealing.
A beautiful, white Colonial stood before us. The house had a big old porch supported by column pedestals. Children's bikes were neatly stacked on the porch. Everything out here was so neat. Was it all a disguise? Of course it was.
Jay Grayer rang the doorbell and it sounded like the “Avon calling” bell. Jack and Jill came to The Hill But Jack and Jill started right here, didn't it? In this very house.
The door was answered by a woman wearing a red plaid robe that looked as if it came straight out of the J. Crew catalog.
A grapevine wreath, one of those peculiar, decorative affairs that looks. like Jesus' crown of thorns, was hung on the front door for the holidays. It had a big red bow tied around it. Here is Jill, I was thinking. Finally, the real Jill.
“ALEX, JAY. My God, what is it? What's happened now? Don't tell me this is a social visit?”
Jeanne Sterling stood just inside the front door of her house. I could see a polished oak stairway glistening behind her. A formal dining room was visible through pocket doors, which were also polished oak. A tall stack of gift-wrapped Christmas presents lay piled near a desk and a six-foot-high standing mirror in the foyer.
Jill's house. The inspector general of the CIA. Clean Jeanne.
“What's happened? I just made some coffee. Please, come in.”
She sounded as if Jay Grayer and I were a couple of neighbors from just down the street. A social visit, right?
