Cat and Mouse

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

    I T 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 curtains 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