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  Laura was just a smidgen over five foot tall, but she was still a very big girl, large at the hips and breasts. Christine couldn’t keep from smiling at her friend’s greeting. Trouble was, she was also incredibly close to tears. She realized she wasn’t ready for school.

  “Good morning, Ms. Johnson!” the first graders chorused like a practiced glee club. God, they were wonderful! So bright and enthusiastic, sweet and good.

  “Good morning back at you.” Christine beamed. There, she felt a little better. A big letter B was scrawled on the blackboard, as well as Laura’s sketches of a Bumblebee Buzzing around Batman and a Big Blue Boat.

  “Don’t let me interrupt progress,” she said. “I’m just here for a little refresher course. B is for Beautiful Beginnings, Babies.”

  The class laughed, and she felt connected with them, thank God. It was at times like this when she dearly wished she had kids of her own. She loved the first graders, loved kids, and, at thirty-two, it was definitely time.

  Then, out of nowhere, an image flashed from the terrible scene a few days earlier. Alex being moved from his house on Fifth Street to one of the ambulances! She had been called to the scene by neighbors, friends of hers. Alex was conscious. He said, “Christine, you look so beautiful. Always.” And then they took him away from her.

  The image from that morning and his final words made her shiver to remember. The Chinese had a saying that had been in her mind for a while, troubling her: Society prepares the crime; the criminal only commits it.

  “Are you all right?” Laura Dixon was at her side, had seen Christine falter at the door.

  “Excuse us, ladies and gentlemen,” she said to her class. “Ms. Johnson and I have to chat for a minute right outside the door. You may chat as well. Quietly. Like the ladies and gentlemen that you are, I trust.”

  Then Laura took Christine’s arm and walked her out into the deserted hallway.

  “Do I look that bad?” Christine asked. “Does it show all over my face, Laura?”

  Laura hugged her tightly and the heat from her friend’s ample body felt good. Laura was good.

  “Don’t you try to be so goddamn strong, don’t try to be so brave,” Laura said. “Have you heard anything more, sweetheart? Tell Laura. Talk to me.”

  Christine mumbled into Laura’s hair. It felt so good to hold her, to hold on to someone. “Still listed as critical. Still no visitors. Unless you happen to be high up in the Metro police or the FBI.”

  “Christine, Christine,” Laura whispered softly. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “What, Laura? I’m okay now. I really am.”

  “You are so strong, girl. You are about the best person I have ever met. I love you dearly. That’s all I’ll say for right now.”

  “That’s enough. Thank you,” Christine said. She felt a little better, not quite so hollowed out and empty, but the feeling didn’t last very long.

  She started to walk back to her office.

  As she turned down the east corridor, she spotted the FBI’s Kyle Craig waiting for her near her office. She hurried down the hallway toward him. This is not good, she told herself. Oh dear God, no. Why is Kyle here? What does he have to tell me?

  “Kyle, what is it?” Her voice trembled and nearly went out of control.

  “I have to talk to you,” he said, taking her hand. “Please, just listen. Come inside your office, Christine.”

  Chapter 89

  THAT NIGHT, back in my room at the Marriott in Princeton, I couldn’t sleep again. It was two cases, both running concurrently in my mind. I skimmed several chapters from a rather pedestrian book about trains, just to gather data.

  I was starting to familiarize myself with the vocabulary of trains: vestibules, step boxes, roomettes, annunciators, the dead-man control. I knew that trains were a key part to the mystery I had been asked to solve.

  What part had Gary Soneji played in the attack at Alex Cross’s house?

  Who was his partner?

  I went to work at my PowerBook, which I’d had set up on the hotel room desk. As I would later relate to Kyle Craig, I no sooner sat down than the specially designed alarm in the computer started to beep. A fax was waiting for me.

  I knew instantly what it was—Smith was calling. He had been contacting me for over a year, on a regular basis. Who was tracking whom? I sometimes asked myself.

  The fax message was classic Smith. I read it line by line.

  Paris—Wednesday.

  In Foucault’s Discipline & Punish, the philosopher suggests that in the modern age we are moving from individual punishment to a paradigm of generalized punishment. I, for one, believe that is an unfortunate happenstance. Do you see where I might be going with this line of thinking, and what my ultimate mission might be?

  I’m missing you over here on the Continent, missing you terribly. Alex Cross isn’t worth your valuable time and energy. I’ve taken one here in Paris in your honor—a doctor! A doctor, a surgeon, just like you wanted to be once upon a time.

  Always,

  Mr. Smith

  Chapter 90

  THIS WAS THE WAY the killer communicated with me for more than a year. E-mail messages arrived on the PowerBook at any time of day or night. I would then transmit them to the FBI. Mr. Smith was so contemporary, a creature of the nineties.

  I relayed the message to the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico. Several of the profilers were still working. I could visualize the scene of consternation and frustration. My trip to France was approved.

  Kyle Craig telephoned my room at the Marriott a few minutes after the message had been relayed to Quantico. Mr. Smith was giving me another window of opportunity to catch him, usually only a day or so, but sometimes only hours. Smith was challenging me to save the kidnapped doctor in Paris.

  And yes, I did believe Mr. Smith was far superior to Gary Soneji. Both his mind and his methodology outstripped Soneji’s more primitive approach.

  I was carrying my travel bag and computer when I saw John Sampson. He was outside in the parking lot of the hotel. It was a little past midnight. I wondered what he’d been up to in Princeton that night.

  “What the hell is this, Pierce? Where do you think you’re going?” he said in a loud, angry voice. He towered over me in the parking lot. His shadow stretched out thirty or forty feet from the lights of the building.

  “Smith contacted me about thirty minutes ago. He does this just before he makes a kill. He gives me a location and challenges me to stop the murder.”

  Sampson’s nostrils flared. He was shaking his head from side to side. There was only one case in his mind.

  “So you’re just dropping what we’re working on here? You weren’t even going to tell me, were you? Just leave Princeton in the dead of night.” His eyes were cold and unfriendly. I had lost his trust.

  “John, I left a message explaining everything to you. It’s at the front desk. I already spoke to Kyle. I’ll surely be back in a few days. Smith never takes long. He knows it’s too dangerous. I need time to think about this case anyway.”

  Sampson frowned and he continued to shake his head. “You said it was important to visit Lorton Prison. You said Lorton is the one place where Soneji could have gotten somebody to do his dirty work. His partner probably came from Lorton.”

  “I still plan to visit Lorton Prison. Right now, I have to try and prevent a murder. Smith abducted a doctor in Paris. He’s dedicating the kill to me.”

  John Sampson wasn’t impressed with anything I’d said.

  I didn’t get a chance to tell him the other thing, the part that bothered me the most. I hadn’t told Kyle Craig either.

  Isabella had come from Paris. Paris was her home. I hadn’t been there since her murder.

  Mr. Smith knew that.

  Chapter 91

  IT WAS a beautiful spot, and Mr. Smith wanted to spoil it, to ruin it forever inside his mind. The small stone house with its earth-grouted walls and white-shuttered windows and country-lace curta
ins was peaceful and idyllic. The garden was surrounded by twig fencing. Under a lone apple tree sat a long wooden table, where friends, family, and neighbors might gather to eat and talk.

  Smith carefully spread out pages from Le Monde across the linoleum floor of the spacious farmhouse kitchen. Patti Smith— not a relation—was screeching from his CD player. She sang “Summer Cannibals,” and the blatant irony wasn’t lost on him.

  The newspaper front page screamed as well—Mr. Smith Takes Surgeon Captive in Paris!

  And so he had, so he had.

  The idée fixe that had captured the public’s fancy and fear was that Mr. Smith might be an alien visitor roaming and ravaging the earth for dark, unknown, perhaps unknowable reasons. He didn’t share any traits with humans, the lurid news stories reasoned. He was described as “not of the earth,” “incapable of any human emotion.”

  His name—Mr. Smith—came from “Valentine Michael Smith,” a visitor from Mars in Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The book had always been a cult favorite. Stranger was the single book in Charles Manson’s backpack when he was captured in California.

  He studied the French surgeon lying nearly unconscious on the kitchen floor. One FBI report stated that “Mr. Smith seems to appreciate beauty. He has a human artist’s eye for composition. Observe the studied way in which he arranges the corpses.”

  A human artist’s eye for beauty and composition. Yes, that was true enough. He had loved beauty once, lived for it, actually. The artful arrangements were one of the clues he left for…his followers.

  Patti Smith finished her song, and the Doors immediately came on. “People Are Strange.” The moldy oldie was wonderful mood music as well.

  Smith let his gaze wander around the country kitchen. One entire wall was a stone fireplace. Another wall was white tile, with antique shelves that held copper pots, white cafi au lait bowls, antique jam jars, or confitures fines, as they were called here. He knew that, knew just about everything about everything. There was an antique black cast-iron stove with brass knobs. And a large white porcelain sink. Adjacent to the sink, just above a butcher-block worktable, hung an impressive array of kitchen knives. The knives were beautiful, absolutely perfect in every way.

  He was avoiding looking at the victim, wasn’t he?

  He knew that he was. He always did.

  Finally, he lowered his eyes and looked into the victim’s. So this was Abel Sante.

  This was lucky number nineteen.

  Chapter 92

  THE VICTIM was a very successful thirty-five-year-old surgeon. He was good-looking in a Gallic sort of way, in excellent shape even without very much meat left on his bones. He seemed a nice person, an “honorable” man, a “good” doctor.

  What was human? What exactly, was human-ness? Mr. Smith wondered. That was the fundamental question he still had, after physical exams like this, in nearly a dozen countries around the world.

  What was human? What, exactly, did the word mean?

  Could he finally find an answer here in this French country kitchen? The philosopher Heidegger believed the self is revealed by what we truly care about. Was Heidegger onto something? What was it that Mr. Smith truly cared about? That was a fair question to ask.

  The French surgeon’s hands were tightly tied behind his back. The ankles were bound to the hands; the knees were bent back toward the head. The remaining length of rope was attached to the neck in a noose.

  Abel Sante had already realized that any struggling, any thrashing about, created intense strangulation pressure. As the legs eventually tired, they would become numb and painful. The urge to straighten them would be overpowering. If he did this, it would induce self-strangulation.

  Mr. Smith was ready. He was on a schedule. The autopsy would start at the top of the body, then work its way down. The correct order: neck, spine, chest. Then abdomen, pelvic organs, genitalia. The head and brain would be examined last, in order to allow the blood to drain as much as possible—for maximum viewing.

  Dr. Sante screamed, but no one could hear him out here. It was an ungodly sound and almost made Smith scream, too.

  He entered the chest via a classic “Y” incision. The first cut went across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, continued over the breasts, then traveled from the tip of the sternum. He cut down the entire length of the abdomen to the pubic area.

  The brutal murder of an innocent surgeon named Abel Sante.

  Absolutely inhuman, he thought to himself.

  Abel Sante—he was the key to everything, and none of the police masterminds could figure it out. None of them were worth shit as detectives, as investigators, as anything. It was so simple, if only they would use their minds.

  Abel Sante.

  Abel Sante.

  Abel Sante.

  The autopsy finished, Mr. Smith lay down on the kitchen floor with what was left of poor Dr. Sante. He did this with every victim. Mr. Smith hugged the bleeding corpse against his own body. He whispered and sighed, whispered and sighed. It was always like this.

  And then, Smith sobbed loudly. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Somebody forgive me,” he moaned in the deserted farmhouse.

  Abel Sante.

  Abel Sante.

  Abel Sante.

  Didn’t anyone get it?

  Chapter 93

  ON THE American Airlines flight to Europe, I noticed that mine was the only overhead lamp glaring as the flight droned over the Atlantic.

  Occasionally, one of the stewardesses stopped to offer coffee or liquor. But for the most part, I just stared into the blackness of the night.

  There had never been a mass killer to match Mr. Smith’s unique approach to violence, not from a scientific vantage point anyway. That was one thing the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico and I agreed on. Even the contrarians at Interpol, the international clearinghouse for police information, agreed with us.

  In point of fact, the community of forensic psychologists is, or at least had been, in relative agreement about the different repeator pattern-murderer types; and also the chief characteristics of their disorders. I found myself reviewing the data as I flew.

  Schizoid personality disorder types, as they are currently called, tend to be introverted and indifferent to social relationships. This freak is a classic loner. He tends to have no close friends or close relationships, except possibly family. He exhibits an inability to show affection in acceptable ways. He usually chooses solitary activities for his free time. He has little or no interest in sex.

  Narcissists are different. They exhibit little or no concern for anyone but themselves, though they sometimes pretend to care about others. True narcissists can’t empathize. They have an inflated sense of self, can become highly unstable if criticized, and feel they are entitled to special treatment. They are preoccupied with grandiose feelings of success, power, beauty, and love.

  Avoidant personality disorder types usually won’t get involved with other people unless they’re completely sure of acceptance. These types avoid jobs and embarrass easily. They’re considered “sneaky dangerous.”

  Sadistic personality disorder types are ultimate in badness, as destructive individuals go. They habitually use violence and cruelty to establish control. They enjoy inflicting physical and psychological pain. They like to tell lies, simply for the purpose of inflicting pain. They are obsessed with involving violence, torture, and especially the death of others.

  As I said, all of this ran through my mind as I sat in my airplane seat high over the Atlantic. What interested me mostly, though, was the conclusion I’d reached about Mr. Smith, and which I had recently shared with Kyle Craig at Quantico.

  At different times during the long and complex investigation, Mr. Smith had fit all four of these classic murderer types. He would seem to fit one personality disorder type almost perfectly— then change into another—back and forth at whim. He might even be a fifth type of psychopathic killer, a whole new
breed of disorder type.

  Perhaps the tabloids were right about Mr. Smith, and he was an alien. He wasn’t like any other human. I knew that. He had murdered Isabella.

  This was really why I couldn’t sleep on the flight to Paris. It was why I could never sleep anymore.

  Chapter 94

  WHO COULD ever begin to forget the cold blooded murder of a loved one? I couldn’t. Nothing has diminished its vividness or unreality in four years. It goes like this, exactly the way I told it to the Cambridge police.

  It is around two in the morning, and I use my key to open the front door of our two-bedroom apartment on Inman Street in Cambridge. Suddenly, I stop. I have the sense that something is wrong in the apartment.

  Details inside are particularly memorable. I will never forget any of it. A poster in our foyer: Language is more than speech. Isabella is a closet linguist, a lover of words and word games. So am I. It’s an important connection between us.

  A favorite Noguchi rice paper lamp of Isabella’s.

  Her treasured paperbacks from home, most of them Folio. White uniformed spines with black lettering, so perfect and neat.

  I’d had a few glasses of wine at Jillian’s with some other medical students, recent graduates like myself. We were letting off steam after too many days and nights and weeks and years in the Harvard pressure cooker. We were comparing notes about the hospitals each of us would be working at in the fall. We were promising to stay in touch, knowing that we probably wouldn’t.

  The group included three of my best friends through medical school. Maria Jane Ruocco, who would be working at Children’s Hospital in Boston; Chris Sharp, who was soon off to Beth Israel; Michael Fescoe, who had landed a prize internship at NYU. I had been fortunate, too. I was headed to Massachusetts General, one of the best teaching hospitals in the world. My future was assured.