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 skin and 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.
I ALWAYS WANT everything tied up nice and neat with a bright ribbon and bow on the package. I want to be the mastermind dragonslayer on every case. It just doesn't work out that way -- probably wouldn't be any fun if it did.
I spent the next two and a half days at the Sterling house, working side by side with the Secret Service and FBI. Jay Grayer and Kyle Craig both came out to the house in Chevy Chase. I had an idea in the back of my head that maybe Jeanne Sterling had left us a clue to go on -- something to get back at her murderers.
Just in case. I figured that she was capable of something nasty and vengeful like that -- her last dirty trick!
After two and a half days, we didn't find anything in the house.
If there had been a clue, then someone had gotten into the house first. I didn't discount that possibility
Kyle Craig and I talked out in the kitchen late the afternoon of the third day We were both pretty well worn to the bone. We opened a couple of Brett Sterling's microbrewery ales and had a chat about life, death, and infinity.
“You ever hear of the notion -- too many logical suspects?” I asked Kyle as we sipped our beers in the quiet of the Sterling kitchen.
'Not that specific language, but I can see how it applies here.
We have scenarios that could implicate the CIA, the military, maybe big business, maybe even President Mahoney History rarely moves in straight lines.'
I nodded at Kyle's answer. As usual, he was a quick study “Thirty-five years after the Kennedy assassination the only thing that's certain is that there was some kind of conspiracy,” I said to him.
“No way to reconcile the physical evidence- ballistic and medical -- with one shooter in Dallas,” Kyle said.
“So there's the same goddamn problem -- too many logical suspects. To this day, nobody can rule out the possible involvement of Lyndon Johnson, the Army, a CIA 'black op,' the Mafia, your outfit's old boss. There are such obvious parallels to what's happened here, Kyle. A possible coup d'etat to eliminate a troublemaker in office -- with a much friendlier replacement -- LB J, and now Mahoney -- waiting in the wings. The CIA and the military were extremely angry at both JFK and Thomas Byrnes. The system fiercely resists change.”
“Keep that in mind, Alex,” Kyle said to me. “The system fiercely resists change, and also troublemakers.”
I frowned, but nodded my head. “I have it in mind. Thanks for all your help.”
Kyle reached out his hand and we shook. “Too many logical suspects,” I said. 'Is that part of the nasty, badass plot, too? Is that their idea for cover in daylight?
'It wouldn't surprise me if it was. Nothing surprises me anymore.
I'm going home to see my kids,' I finally said.
“I can't think of anything better to do,” Kyle said and smiled and waved for me to go on and get out of there.
I CAME HOME and played with the kids -- tried to be there for them. I kept flashing on the face of Thomas Byrnes, though.
Occasionally, I saw beautiful little Shanelle Green or Vernon Wheatley or even poor George Johnson, Christine's husband. I saw the corpses of Jeanne and Brett Sterling on those stainless steel gurneys at Lorton Prison.
I worked some hours at the soup kitchen at St. As over the next few days. I'm “Mr. Peanut Butter Man” there. I ration out the PB&J, and occasionally a little pro bono advice for those more or less unfortunate than
