Cat and Mouse Read online

  Thomas Pierce began to cry, to sob into his hands.

  Isabella’s long auburn hair was loose and strands and bunches flowed free on the pillows. For Martin Straw.

  Martin Straw always lay on the left side of the bed. He had a deviated septum that he should have tended to, but doctors put off operations, too. He couldn’t breathe very well out of the right nostril.

  Thomas Pierce knew this. He had studied Straw, tried to understand him, his so-called humanity.

  Pierce knew he had to act now, knew that he couldn’t take too much time.

  He fell on Isabella with all his weight, his force, his power. His tools were ready. She struggled, but he held her down. He clutched her long swanlike throat with his strong hands. He wedged his feet under the mattress for leverage.

  The struggle exposed her bare breasts and he was reminded of how “sexy” and “absolutely beautiful” Isabella was; how they were “perfect together”; “Cambridge’s very own Romeo and Juliet.” What bullshit it was. A sorry myth. The perception of people who couldn’t see straight. She didn’t really love him, but how he had loved her. Isabella made him feel for the one and only time in his life.

  Thomas Pierce looked down at her. Isabella’s eyes were like sandblasted mirrors. Her small, beautiful mouth fell open to one side. Her skin still felt satin soft to his touch.

  She was helpless now, but she could see what was happening. Isabella was aware of her crimes and the punishment to come.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he finally said. “It’s as if I’m outside myself, watching. And yet… I can’t tell you how alive I feel right now.”

  Every newspaper, the news magazines, TV, and radio reported what happened in gruesome detail, but nothing like what really happened, what it was like in the bedroom, staring into Isabella’s eyes as he murdered her.

  He cut out Isabella’s heart.

  He held her heart in his hands, still pumping, still alive, and watched it die.

  Then he impaled her heart on a spear from his scuba equipment.

  He “pierced” her heart. That was the clue he left. The very first clue.

  He had the feeling, the sixth sense, that he actually watched Isabella’s spirit leave her body. Then he thought he felt his own soul depart. He believed that he died that night, too.

  Smith was born from death that night in Cambridge.

  Thomas Pierce was Mr. Smith.

  Chapter 104

  THOMAS PIERCE is Mr. Smith,” I said to the agents gathered at Quantico. “If any of you still doubt that, even a little bit, please don’t. It could be dangerous to you and everyone else on this team. Pierce is Smith, and he’s murdered nineteen people so far. He will murder again.”

  I had been speaking for several moments, but now I stopped. There was a question from the group. Actually, there were several questions. I couldn’t blame them — I was full of questions myself.

  “Can I backtrack for just a second here? Your family was attacked?” A young crew-cut agent asked. “You did sustain injuries?”

  “There was an attack at my house. For reasons that we don’t understand yet, the intruder stopped short of murder. My family is all right. Believe me, I want to understand about the attack, and the intruder, more than anyone does. I want that bastard, whoever he is.”

  I held up my cast for all of them to see. “One bullet clipped my wrist. A second entered my abdomen, but passed through. The hepatic artery was not nicked, as was reported. I was definitely banged up, but my EKG never showed ‘a pattern of decreased activity.’ That was for Pierce’s benefit. Kyle? You want to fill in some more of the holes you helped create?”

  This was Kyle Craig’s master plan, and he spoke to the agents.

  “Alex is right about Pierce. He is a cold-blooded killer and what we hope to do tonight is dangerous. It’s unusual, but this situation warrants it. For the past several weeks, Interpol and the Bureau have been trying to set a foolproof trap for the elusive Mr. Smith, who we believe to be Thomas Pierce,” Kyle repeated. “We haven’t been able to catch him at anything conclusive, and we don’t want to do something that might spook him, make him run.”

  “He’s one scary, spooky son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that much,” John Sampson said from his place alongside me. I could tell he was holding back, keeping his anger inside. “And the bastard is very careful. I never caught him in anything close to a slipup while I was working with him. Pierce played his part perfectly.”

  “So did you, John.” Kyle offered a compliment. “Detective Sampson has been in on the ruse, too,” he explained.

  A few hours earlier, Sampson had been with Pierce in New Jersey. He knew him better than I did, though not as well as Kyle or Sondra Greenberg of Interpol, who had originally profiled Pierce, and was with us now at Quantico.

  “How is he acting, Sondra?” Kyle asked Greenberg. “What have you noticed?”

  The Interpol inspector was a tall, impressive-looking woman. She’d been working the case for nearly two years in Europe. “Thomas Pierce is an arrogant bastard. Believe me, he’s laughing at all of us. He’s one hundred percent sure of himself. He’s also high-strung. He never stops looking over his shoulder. Sometimes, I don’t think he’s human either. I do believe he’s going to blow soon. The pressure we’ve applied is working.”

  “That’s becoming more evident,” said Kyle, picking up the thread. “Pierce was very cool in the beginning. He had everyone fooled. He was as professional as any agent we’ve ever had. Early on, no one in the Cambridge police believed he had murdered Isabella Calais. He never made a mistake. His grief over her death was astonishing.”

  “He’s for real, ladies and gents.” Sampson spoke up again. “He’s smart as hell. Pretty good investigator, too. His instincts are sharp and he’s disciplined. He did his homework, and he went right to Simon Conklin. I think he’s competing with Alex.”

  “So do I,” said Kyle, nodding at Sampson. “He’s very complex. We probably don’t know the half of it yet. That’s what scares me.”

  Kyle had come to me about Mr. Smith before the Soneji shooting spree had started. We had talked again when I’d taken Rosie to Quantico for tests. I worked with him on an unofficial basis. I helped with the profile on Thomas Pierce, along with Sondra Greenberg. When I was shot at my house, Kyle rushed to Washington out of concern. But the attack was nowhere near as bad as everyone thought, or as we led them to believe.

  It was Kyle who decided to take a big chance. So far, Pierce was running free. Maybe if he brought him in on the case, on my case? It would be a way to watch him, to put pressure on Pierce. Kyle believed that Pierce wouldn’t be able to resist. Big ego, tremendous confidence. Kyle was right.

  “Pierce is going to blow,” Sondra Greenberg said again. “I’m telling you. I don’t know everything that’s going on in his head, but he’s close to the limit.”

  I agreed with Greenberg. “I’ll tell you what could happen next. The two personas are starting to fuse. Mr. Smith and Thomas Pierce could merge soon. Actually, it’s the Thomas Pierce part of his personality that seems to be diminishing. I think he just might have Mr. Smith take out Simon Conklin.”

  Sampson leaned into me and whispered, “I think it’s time that you met Mr. Pierce and Mr. Smith.”

  Chapter 105

  THIS WAS it. The end. It had to be.

  Everything we could think of was tightly in place by seven o’clock that night in Princeton. Thomas Pierce had proven to be elusive in the past, almost illusory. He kept mysteriously slipping in and out of his role as “Mr. Smith.” But he was clearly about to blow.

  How he accomplished his black magic, no one knew. There were never any witnesses. No one was left alive.

  Kyle Craig’s fear was that we would never catch Pierce in the act, never be able to hold him for more than forty-eight hours. Kyle was convinced that Pierce was smarter than Gary Soneji, cleverer than any of us.

  Kyle had objected to Thomas Pierce’s assignment to the Mr
. Smith case, but he’d been overruled. He had watched Pierce, listened to him, and became more and more convinced that Pierce was involved — at least with the death of Isabella Calais.

  Pierce never seemed to make a mistake, though. He covered all of his tracks. Then a break came. Pierce was seen in Frankfurt, Germany, on the same day a victim disappeared there. Pierce was supposed to be in Rome.

  It was enough for Kyle to approve a search of Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Nothing was found. Kyle brought in computer experts. They suspected that Pierce might be sending himself messages, supposedly from Smith, but there was no proof. Then Pierce was seen in Paris on the day Dr. Abel Sante disappeared. His logs stated that he was in London all day. It was circumstantial, but Kyle knew he had his killer.

  So did I.

  Now we needed concrete proof.

  Nearly fifty FBI agents were in the Princeton area, which seemed like the last place in the world where a shocking crime ought to occur, or a notorious murder spree end.

  Sampson and I waited in the front seat of a dark sedan parked on an anonymous-looking street. We weren’t part of the main surveillance team, but we stayed close. We were never more than a mile, or at most two, from Pierce. Sampson was restless and irritable through the early night. It had gotten excruciatingly personal between him and Pierce.

  I had a very personal reason to be in Princeton myself. I wanted a crack at Simon Conklin. Unfortunately, Pierce was between me and Conklin for now.

  We were a few blocks from the Marriott in town where Pierce was staying.

  “Quite a plan,” Sampson mumbled as we sat and waited.

  “The FBI tried just about everything else. Kyle thinks this will work. He feels Pierce couldn’t resist solving the attack on my house. It’s the ultimate competition for him. Who knows?”

  Sampson’s eyes narrowed. I knew the look — sharp, comprehending. “Yeah, and you had no part in any of the hinky shit, right?”

  “Maybe I did offer a suggestion about why the setup might be attractive to Thomas Pierce, to his huge ego. Or why he might be cocky enough to get caught.”

  Sampson rolled his eyes back into his forehead, the way he’d been doing since we were about ten years old. “Yeah, maybe you did. By the way, he’s an even bigger pain in the ass than you are to work with. Anal as shit, to coin a phrase.”

  We waited on the side street in Princeton as night blanketed the university town. It was déjà vu all over again. John Sampson and Alex Cross on stakeout duty.

  “You still love me,” Sampson said and grinned. He doesn’t get giddy too often, but when he does — watch out. “You do love me, sugar?”

  I put my hand high on his thigh. “Sure do, big fellow.”

  He punched me in the shoulder — hard. My arm went numb. My fingers tingled. The man can hit.

  “I want to put the hurt on Thomas Pierce! I’m going to put the hurt on Pierce!” Sampson yelled out in the car.

  “Put the hurt on Thomas Pierce,” I yelled with him. “And Mr. Smith, too!”

  “Put the hurt on Mr. Smith and Mr. Pierce,” we sang in unison, doing our imitation of the Bad Boys movie.

  Yeah!

  We were back. Same as it ever was.

  Chapter 106

  THOMAS PIERCE felt that he was invincible, that he couldn’t be stopped.

  He waited in the dark, trancelike, without moving. He was thinking about Isabella, seeing her beautiful face, seeing her smile, hearing her voice. He stayed like that until the living room light was switched on and he saw Simon Conklin.

  “Intruder in the house,” Pierce whispered. “Sound familiar? Ring any bells for you, Conklin?”

  He held a .357 Magnum pointed directly at Conklin’s forehead. He could blow him right out the front door and down the porch stairs.

  “What the—?” Conklin was blinky-eyed in the bright light. Then his dark eyes grew beady and hard. “This is unlawful entry!” Conklin screamed. “You have no right to be here in my house. Get the hell out!”

  Pierce couldn’t hold back a smile. He definitely got the humor in life, but sometimes he didn’t take enough pleasure in it. He got up out of the chair, holding the gun perfectly still in front of him.

  There wasn’t much space to move in the living room, which was filled with tall stacks of newspapers, books, clippings, and magazines. Everything was categorized by date and subject. He was pretty sure that not-so-Simple Simon had an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  “Downstairs. We’re going to your basement,” he said. “Down to the cellar.”

  The light was already on downstairs. Thomas Pierce had gotten everything ready. An old cot was set up in the center of the crowded basement room. He had cleared away stacks of survivalist and sci-fi books to make room for the cot.

  He wasn’t sure, but he thought Conklin’s obsession had to do with the end of the human race. He hoarded books, journals, and newspaper stories that supported his pathological idea. The cover of a science journal was taped to the cellar wall. It read: “Sex Changes in Fish — A Look at Simultaneous and Sequential Hermaphrodites.”

  “What the hell?” Simon Conklin yelled when he saw what Pierce had done.

  “That’s what they all say,” Thomas Pierce said and shoved him. Conklin stumbled down a couple of stairs.

  “You think I’m afraid of you?” Conklin whirled and snarled. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Pierce nodded his head once and cocked an eyebrow. “I hear you, and I’m gong to straighten that out right now.”

  He shoved Conklin hard again and watched him tumble down the rest of the stairs. Pierce walked slowly down toward the heap. “You starting to get afraid of me now?” he asked.

  He whacked Conklin with the side of the Magnum and watched as blood spit from Simon Conklin’s head. “You starting to get afraid now?”

  He bent down and put his mouth close to Conklin’s hairy ear.

  “You don’t understand very much about pain. I know that about you,” he whispered. “You don’t have much in the way of guts either. You were the one in the Cross house, but you couldn’t kill Alex Cross, could you? You couldn’t kill his family. You punked out at his house. You blew it. That’s what I already know.”

  Thomas Pierce was enjoying the confrontation, the satisfaction of it. He was curious about what made Simon Conklin tick. He wanted to “study” Conklin, to understand his humanity. To know Simon Conklin was to know something about himself.

  He stayed in Conklin’s face. “First, I want you to tell me that you’re the one who snuck into Alex Cross’s house. You did it! Now just tell me you did it. What you say here will not be held against you, and will not be used in a court of law. It’s just between us.”

  Simon Conklin looked at him as if he were a complete madman. How perceptive.

  “You’re crazy. You can’t do this. This won’t matter in court,” Conklin squealed.

  Pierce’s eyes widened in disbelief. He looked at Conklin as if he were the madman. “Didn’t I just say precisely that? Weren’t you listening? Am I talking to myself here? No, it won’t matter in their court. This is my court. So far, you’re losing your case, Simple Simon. You’re smart, though. I’m confident you can do a much better job over the next few hours.”

  Simon Conklin gasped. A shiny, stainless-steel scalpel was pointed at his chest.

  Chapter 107

  “LOOK AT ME! Would you focus on what I’m saying, Simon. I’m not another gray suit from the FBI — I have important questions to ask. I want you to answer them truthfully. You were the one at Cross’s house! You attacked Cross. Let’s proceed from there.”

  With a swift move of his left arm, Pierce pulled Conklin roughly up off the cellar floor. His physical strength was a shock to Conklin.

  Pierce put his scalpel down and hog-tied Conklin to the cot with rope.

  Pierce leaned in close to Simon Conklin once he was tied down and helpless. “Here’s a news flash — I don’t like your superior attitude. Believe me, you ar
en’t superior. Somehow, and this amazes me, I don’t think I’ve made myself clear yet. You’re a specimen, Simon. Let me show you something creepy.”

  “Don’t!” Conklin screeched. He was helpless as Pierce made a sudden incision in the upper chest. He couldn’t believe what was happening. Simon Conklin screamed.

  “Can you concentrate better now, Simon? See what’s on the table here? It’s your tape recorder. I just want you to confess. Tell me what happened inside Dr. Cross’s house. I want to hear everything.”

  “Leave me alone,” Conklin whispered weakly.

  “No! That’s not going to happen. You will never be alone again. All right, forget the scalpel and the tape recorder. I want you to focus on this. Ordinary can of Coca-Cola. Your Coke, Simon.”

  He shook the bright red can, shook it up good, and popped it open. Then he pulled Conklin’s head back. Grabbed a handful of long, greasy hair. Pierce pushed the harmless-looking can under Conklin’s nostrils.

  The soda exploded upward, fizz, bubbles, sugary-brown water. It shot up Conklin’s nose and toward the brain. It was an army interrogator’s trick. Excruciatingly painful, and it always worked.

  Simon Conklin choked horribly. He couldn’t stop coughing, gagging.

  “I hope you appreciate the kind of resourcefulness I’m showing. I can work with any household object. Are you ready to confess? Or would you like some more Coke?”

  Simon Conklin’s eyes were wider than they had ever been before. “I’ll say whatever you want! Just please stop.”

  Thomas Pierce shook his head back and forth. “I just want the truth. I want the facts. I want to know I solved the case that Alex Cross couldn’t.”

  He turned on the tape recorder and held it under Conklin’s bearded chin. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was the one who attacked Cross and his family. Yes, yes, it was me,” Simon Conklin said in a choked voice that made each word sound even more emotional. “Gary made me. He said if I didn’t, somebody would come for me. They’d torture and kill me. Somebody he knew from Lorton Prison. That’s the truth, I swear it is. Gary was the leader, not me!”