“Goddamnit.”
'Neither do I. The girl might have caught a bullet meant for somebody else. She was out with a Supreme Court justice, Alex.
Thomas Henry Franklin. Maybe the bullet was meant for him.
That would fit the celebrity pattern. Maybe they've finally made a mistake.'
“I'm on my way,” I told Jay GraTer. “I'll meet you inside the Kennedy Center.”
Maybe they finally made a mistake.
I didn't think so.
IT WASN'TREALLYANYBODY, ALEX. How the hell could that be?
A twenty-three-year-old law student from Georgetown was dead. Christ. It didn't make sense to me, didn't track at all. It changed everything. It seemed to blow the pattern.
I drove from our home to the Kennedy Center in record time.
Jay Grayer wasn't the only one partly out of control. I stuck a flasher on the roof of my car and rode like hell on wheels.
The second half of Miss Saigon had been canceled. The murder had taken place less than an hour before, and there were still hundreds of onlookers at the crime scene.
I heard “Jack and Jill” mumbled several times as I made my way to the Grand Foyer. Fear was a tangible, almost physical, presence in the crowd. A lot of elements of the murder at the Kennedy Center were torturing me when I arrived at the crime scene at quarter past ten. There were some similarities with the other Jack and Jill killings. A rhyming note had been left. The job had been done coldly and professionally. A single shot.
But there were huge differences this time. They seemed to have destroyed their pattern.
Copycat killer? Maybe. But I didn't think so. Yet nothing could, or should, be dismissed. Not by me, and not by anyone else on the case.
The new twists nagged at me as I pushed my way through the curious, horrified, even dumbstruck, crowd on New Hampshire Avenue. The law student hadn't been a national figure. So why had she been killed? Jay Grayer had called her a nobody. Grayer said she wasn't the daughter of anybody famous, either. She had been out to the theater with Supreme Court Justice Thomas Henry Franklin, but that didn't seem to count as a celebrity stalk-and- kill.
Charlotte Kinsey hadhat would fit the celebrity pattern. Maybe they've finally made a mistake.'
“I'm on my way,” I told Jay GraTer. “I'll meet you inside the Kennedy Center.”
Maybe they finally made a mistake.
I didn't think so.
IT WASN'TREALLYANYBODY, ALEX. How the hell could that be?
A twenty-three-year-old law student from Georgetown was dead. Christ. It didn't make sense to me, didn't track at all. It changed everything. It seemed to blow the pattern.
I drove from our home to the Kennedy Center in record time.
Jay Grayer wasn't the only one partly out of control. I stuck a flasher on the roof of my car and rode like hell on wheels.
The second half of Miss Saigon had been canceled. The murder had taken place less than an hour before, and there were still hundreds of onlookers at the crime scene.
I heard “Jack and Jill” mumbled several times as I made my way to the Grand Foyer. Fear was a tangible, almost physical, presence in the crowd. A lot of elements of the murder at the Kennedy Center were torturing me when I arrived at the crime scene at quarter past ten. There were some similarities with the other Jack and Jill killings. A rhyming note had been left. The job had been done coldly and professionally. A single shot.
But there were huge differences this time. They seemed to have destroyed their pattern.
Copycat killer? Maybe. But I didn't think so. Yet nothing could, or should, be dismissed. Not by me, and not by anyone else on the case.
The new twists nagged at me as I pushed my way through the curious, horrified, even dumbstruck, crowd on New Hampshire Avenue. The law student hadn't been a national figure. So why had she been killed? Jay Grayer had called her a nobody. Grayer said she wasn't the daughter of anybody famous, either. She had been out to the theater with Supreme Court Justice Thomas Henry Franklin, but that didn't seem to count as a celebrity stalk-and- kill.
Charlotte Kinsey had been a nobody.
The killing just didn't fit the pattern. Jack and Jill had taken a huge risk committing the murder in such a public place. The other killings had been private affairs, safer and more controllable.
Shit, shit, shit. What were they up to now? Was this whole thing changing? Escalating? Why had they varied their pattern? Were the killers moving into another, more random phase?
Had I missed their original point? Had we all missed the real pattern they were creating? Or had they made a mistake at the Kennedy Center?
Maybe they finally made a mistake.
That was our best hope. It would show that they weren't invincible.
Let this be a goddamn mistake! Please let it be their first.
