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  I was taped and bandage and I must have looked like an escapee from a local ER. Even so, it was hard to stand out on a beach like the one at Atlantic City. An ice-cream man hauling a box on his shoulder cried out, “Hitch your tongue to a sleigh ride! Get your Fudgie Wudgies here!”

  Was Thomas Pierce watching us and laughing? He could be the ice-cream man, or anyone else in this frenetic mob scene.

  I cupped my hands over my eyes and looked up and down the beach. I spotted policeman and FBI agents moving into the crowd. There must have been at least fifty thousand sunbathers on the beach. I could faintly hear electronic bells from the slot machines in one of the nearby hotels.

  Inez. Atlantic City. Jesus!

  A madman on the loose near the famous Steel Pier.

  I looked for Sampson or Kyle, but I didn’t see either of them. I searched for pierce, and for Inez, and for Mr. Smith.

  I heard a loud voice, and it stopped me in my tracks. “This is the FBI.”

  Chapter 118

  THE VOICE boomed over a loudspeaker. Probably from one of the hotels, or maybe a police hookup. “This is the FBI,” Kyle Craig announced.

  “Some of our agents are on the beach now. Cooperate with them and also with the Atlantic City police. Do whatever they ask. There’s no reason for undue concern. Please cooperate with police officers.”

  The huge crowd became strangely quiet. Everyone was staring around, looking for the FBI. No, there was no reason for undue concern — not unless we actually found Pierce. Not unless we discovered Mr. Smith operating on somebody in the middle of this beach crowd.

  I made my way toward the famous amusement pier, where as a young boy I had actually seen the famous diving horse. People were standing out in the low surf, just looking in toward shore. It reminded me of the movie Jaws.

  Thomas Pierce was in control here.

  A black Bell Jet Ranger hovered less than seventy yards from shore. A second helicopter came into view from the northeast. It swept in close to the first, then fluttered away in the direction of the Taj Mahal Hotel complex. I could make out sharpshooters positioned in the helicopters.

  So could Pierce, and so could the people on the beach. I knew there were FBI marksmen in the nearby hotels. Pierce would know that. Pierce was FBI. He knew everything we did. That was his edge and he was using it against us. He was winning.

  There was a disturbance up closer to the pier. People were pushing forward to see, while others were moving away as fast as they could. I moved forward.

  The beach crowd’s noise level was building again. En Vogue played from somebody’s blaster. The smell of cotton candy and beer and hot dogs was thick in the air. I began to run toward the Steel Pier, remembering the diving horse and Lucy the Elephant from Margate, better times a long time ago.

  I saw Sampson and Kyle up ahead.

  They were bending over something. Oh God, Oh God, no. Inez, Atlantic City! My pulse raced out of control.

  This was not good.

  A dark-haired teenage girl was sobbing against an older man’s chest. Others gawked at the dead body, which had been clumsily wrapped in beach blankets. I couldn’t imagine how it had gotten here — but there it was.

  Inez, Atlantic City. It had to be her.

  The murdered woman had long bleach blond hair and looked to be in her early twenties. It was hard to tell now. Her skin was purplish and waxy. The eyes had flattened because of a loss of fluid. Her lips and nail beds were pale. He had operated on Inez: The ribs and cartilage had been cut away, exposing her lungs, esophagus, trachea, and heart.

  Inez sounds like Isabella.

  Pierce knew that.

  He hadn’t taken out Inez’s heart.

  The ovaries and fallopian tubes were neatly laid out beside the body. The tubes looked like a set of earrings and a necklace.

  Suddenly, sunbathers were pointing to something out over the ocean.

  I turned and I looked up, shading my eyes with one hand.

  A prop plane was lazily making its way down the shoreline from the north. It was the kind of plane you rented for commercial messages. Most of the messages on forty-foot banners hyped the hotels, local bars, area restaurants, and casinos.

  A banner waved behind the sputtering plane, which was getting closer and closer. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was another message.

  Mr. Smith is gone for now! Wave good-bye.

  Chapter 119

  EARLY THE next morning, I headed home to Washington. I needed to see the kids, needed to sleep in my own bed, to be far, far away from Thomas Pierce and his monstrous creation — Mr. Smith.

  Inez had turned out to be an escort from a local service. Pierce had called her to his room at Bally’s Park Place. I was starting to believe that Pierce could find intimacy only with his victims now, but what else was driving him to commit these horrifying murders? Why Inez? Why the Jersey Shore?

  I had to escape for a couple of days, or even a few hours, if that was all I could get. At least we hadn’t already gotten another name, another location to rush off to.

  I called Christine from Atlantic City and asked her if she wanted to have dinner with my family that night. She said yes, she’d like that a lot. She said she’d “be there with bells on.” That sounded unbelievably good to me. The best medicine I could imagine for what ailed me.

  I kept the sound of her voice in my head all the way home to Washington. She would be there with bells on.

  Damon, Jannie, and I spent a hectic morning getting ready for the party. We shopped for groceries at Citronella, and then at the Giant. Veni, vidi, Visa.

  I had almost put Pierce–Mr. Smith out of my mind, but I still had my Glock in an ankle holster to go grocery shopping.

  At the Giant, Damon scouted on ahead to find some RC Cola and tortilla chips. Jannie and I had a chance to talk the talk. I knew she was dying to bzzz-bzzz-bzzz. I can always tell. She has a fine, overactive imagination, and I couldn’t wait to hear what was on her little mind.

  Jannie was in charge of pushing the shopping cart, and the metal handle of the cart was just above her eye level. She stared at the immense array of cereals in our aisle, looking for the best deals. Nana Mama had taught her the fine art of grocery shopping, and she can do most of the math in her head.

  “Talk to me,” I said. “My time is your time. Daddy’s home.”

  “For today.” She sent a hummer right past my ear, brushed me right back from home plate with a high, hard one.

  “It’s not easy being green,” I said. It was an old favorite line between us, compliments of Kermit the Frog. She shrugged it off today. No sale. No easy deals.

  “You and Damon mad at me?” I asked in my most soothing tones. “Tell me the truth, girlfriend.”

  She softened a little. “Oh, it’s not so much that, Daddy. You’re doing the best you can,” she said, and finally looked my way. “You’re trying, right? It’s just hard when you go away from home. I get lonely for you. It’s not the same when you’re away.”

  I shook my head, smiled, and wondered where she got much of her thinking from. Nana Mama swears that Jannie has a mind of her own.

  “You okay with our dinner plans?” I asked, treading carefully.

  “Oh ab-solutely.” She suddenly beamed. “That’s not a problem at all. I love dinner parties.”

  “Damon? Is he okay with Christine coming over tonight?” I asked my confidante.

  “He’s a little scared ’cause she’s the principal of our school. But he’s cool, too. You know Damon. He’s the man.”

  I nodded. “He is cool. So dinner’s not a problem? You’re not even a little scared?”

  Jannie shook her head. “Nope. Not because of that. Dinners can’t scare me. Dinner is dinner.”

  Man, she was smart, and so subtle for her age. It was like talking to a very wise adult. She was already a poet, and a philsopher, too. She was going to be competition for Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison one day. I loved that about her.

 
“Do you have to keep going after him? After this bum Mr. Smith?” Jannie finally asked me. “I guess you do.” She answered her own question.

  I echoed her earlier line. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  Jannie stood up on her tippy-toes. I bent low to her, but not as far as I used to. She kissed me on the cheek, a nice smacker, as she calls the kisses.

  “You’re the bee’s knees,” she said. It was one of Nana’s favorite things to say and she’d adopted it.

  “Boo!” Damon peeked around the soda-pop aisle at the two of us. His head was framed against a red, white, and blue sea of Pepsi bottles and cans. I pulled Damon close, and I kissed him on the cheek, too. I kissed the top of his head, held him in a way I would have liked my father to have held me a long time ago. We made a little spectacle of ourselves in the grocery-store aisle. Nice spectacle.

  God, I loved the two of them, and what a continued dilemma it presented. The Glock on my ankle weighed a ton and felt as hot as a poker from a fire. I wanted to take it off and never put the weapon on again.

  I knew I wouldn’t, though. Thomas Pierce was still out there somewhere, and Mr. Smith, and all the rest of them. For some reason I felt it was my responsibility to make them all go away, to make things a little safer for everyone.

  “Earth to Daddy,” Jannie said. She had a small frown on her face. “See? You went away again. You were with Mr. Smith, weren’t you?”

  Chapter 120

  CHRISTINE can save you. If anyone can, if it’s possible for you to be salvaged at this point in your life.

  I got to her place around six-thirty that night. I’d told her I would pick her up out in Mitchellville. My side was hurting again, and I definitely felt like damaged goods, but I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.

  She came to the front door in a bright tangerine sundress and heeled espadrilles. She looked slightly beyond great. She wore a bar pin with tiny silver bells. She did have bells on.

  “Bells.” I smiled.

  “You bet. You thought I was kidding.”

  I took her in my arms right there on the red-brick front stoop, with blooming red and white impatiens and climbing roses all around us. I hugged Christine tightly against my chest and we started to kiss.

  I was lost in her sweet, soft mouth, in her arms. My hands flew up to her face, lightly tracing her cheekbones, her nose, her eyelids.

  The shock of intimacy was rare and overwhelming. So good, so fine, and missing for such a long time.

  I opened my eyes and saw that she was looking at me. She had the most expressive eyes I’d ever seen. “I love the way you hold me, Alex,” she whispered, but her eyes said much more. “I love your touch.”

  We backed into the house, kissing again.

  “Do we have time?” She laughed.

  “Shhh. Only a crazy person wouldn’t. We’re not crazy.”

  “Of course we are.”

  The bright tangerine sundress fell away to the floor. I liked the feel of shantung, but Christine’s bare skin felt even better. She was wearing Shalimar and I liked that, too. I had the feeling that I had been here before with her, maybe in a dream. It was as if I had been imagining this moment for a long time and now it was here.

  She helped me with her white-lace demibra. We slid down the matching panties, two pairs of hands working together. Then we were naked, except for the fine rope necklace with a fire opal around her neck. I remembered a poem, something magical about the nakedness of lovers, but with just a touch of jewelry to set it off. Baudelaire? I bit gently into her shoulder. She bit back.

  I was so hard it hurt, but the pain was exquisite, the pain had its own raw power. I loved this woman completely, and I was also turned on by her, every inch of her being.

  “You know,” I whispered, “you’re driving me a little crazy.”

  “Oh. Just a little?”

  I let my lips trail down along her breasts, her stomach. She was lightly scented with perfume. I kissed between her legs and she began to gently call my name, then not so gently. I entered Christine as we stood against the cream living room wall, as we seemed to push our bodies into the wall.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  “I love you, Alex.”

  She was strong and gentle and graceful, all at the same time. We danced, but not in the metaphorical sense. We really danced.

  I loved the sound of her voice, the softest cry, the song she sang when she was with me like this.

  Then I was singing, too. I had found my voice again, for the first time in many years. I don’t know how long we were like that. Time wasn’t part of this. Something in it was eternal, and something was so very real and right now in the present.

  Christine and I were soaking wet. Even the wall behind me was slippery and wet. The wild ride at the beginning, the rocking and rolling, had transformed itself into a slower rhythm that was even stronger. I knew that no life was right without this kind of passion.

  I was barely moving inside her. She tightened around me and I thought I could feel the edges of her. I surged deeper and Christine seemed to swell around me. We began to move into each other, trying to get closer. We shuddered, and got closer still.

  Christine climaxed, and then the two of us came together. We danced and we sang. I felt myself melting into Christine and we were both whispering yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No one could touch us here, not Thomas Pierce, no one.

  “Hey, did I tell you I loved you?”

  “Yes, but tell me again.”

  Chapter 121

  KIDS ARE so damn much smarter than we usually give them credit for. Kids know just about everything, and they often know it before we do.

  “You two are late! You have a flat tire — or were you just smooching?” Jannie wanted to know as we came in the front door. She can say some outrageous things and get away with them. She knows it, and pushes the envelope every chance she gets.

  “We were smooching,” I said. “Satisfied?”

  “Yes I am,” Jannie smiled. “Actually, you’re not even late. You’re right on time. Perfect timing.”

  Dinner with Nana and the children wasn’t an anticlimax. It was such a sweet, funny time. It was what being home is all about. We all pitched in and set the table, served the food, then ate with reckless abandon. The meal was swordfish steaks, scalloped potatoes, summer peas, buttermilk biscuits. Everything was served piping hot, expertly prepared by Nana, Jannie, and Damon. Dessert was Nana’s world-famous lemon meringue pie. She made it specially for Christine.

  I believe the simple yet complex word that I’m searching for is joy.

  It was so obvious around the dinner table. I could see it in the bright and lively eyes of Nana and Damon and Jannie. I had already seen it in Christine’s eyes. I watched her at dinner and I had the thought that she could have been somebody famous in Washington, anything she wanted to be. She chose to be a teacher, and I loved that about her.

  We repeated stories that had been in the family for years, and are always repeated at such occasions. Nana was lively and funny all through the night. She gave us her best advice on aging: “If you can’t recall it, forget it.”

  Later on, I played the piano and sang rhythm-and-blues songs. Jannie showed off and did the cakewalk to a jazzy version of “Blueberry Hill.” Even Nana did a minute of jitterbugging, protesting, “I really can’t dance, I never could dance,” as she did just beautifully.

  One moment, one picture, sticks out in my mind, and I’m sure it will be there until the day I die. It was just after we’d finished dinner and were cleaning up the kitchen.

  I was washing dishes in the sink, and as I reached to get another plate I stopped in midturn, frozen in the moment.

  Jannie was in Christine’s arms, and the two of them looked just beautiful together. I had no idea how she had gotten there, but they were both laughing and it was so natural and real. As I never had before, I knew and understood that Jannie and Damon were missing so much without a mother.

  Joy
— that’s the word. So easy to say, so hard to find in life sometimes.

  In the morning, I had to go back to work.

  I was still the dragonslayer.

  Chapter 122

  I SHUT MYSELF AWAY to think, to quietly obsess about Thomas Pierce and Mr. Smith.

  I made suggestions to Kyle Craig about moves that Pierce might make and precautions he should think about taking. Agents were dispatched to watch Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Agents camped out at his parents’ house outside Laguna Beach, and even at the gravesite of Isabella Calais.

  Pierce had been passionately in love with Isabella Calais! She had been the only one for him! Isabella and Thomas Pierce! That was the key — Pierce’s obsessive love for her.

  He’s suffering from unbearable guilt, I wrote in my notepad.

  If my hypothesis is right, then what clues are missing?

  Back at Quantico, a team of FBI profilers was trying to solve the problem on paper. They had all worked closely with Pierce in the BSU. Absolutely nothing in Pierce’s background was consistent with the psychopathic killers they had dealt with before. Pierce had never been abused, either physically or sexually. There was no violence of any kind in his background. At least not as far as anyone knew. There was no warning, no hint of madness, no sign until he blew sky-high. He was an original. There had never been a monster anything like him. There were no precedents.

  I wrote: Thomas Pierce was deeply in love. You are in love, too.

  What would it mean to murder the only person in the world whom you loved?

  Chapter 123

  I COULDN’T MANAGE any sympathy, or even a modicum of clinical empathy, for Pierce. I despised him, and his cruel, cold-blooded murders, more than any of the other killers I had taken down — even Soneji. Kyle Craig and Sampson felt the same, and so did most of the Bureau, especially the good folks in Behavioral Science. We were the ones in a rage state now. We were obsessed with stopping Pierce. Was he using that to beat our brains in?