Cat and Mouse

what’s your plan? Tell me what you’re going to do.”
    I shook my head back and forth. I still couldn’t believe I was doing this. “My plan is as follows. I’m going home to Washington, and that’s nonnegotiable. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll fly up to Boston. I want to see Pierce’s apartment. He wanted to see my house, didn’t he? Then, we’ll see, Kyle. Please keep your evidence gatherers on a leash before I get to his apartment.
Look, photograph,
but don’t move anything around. Mr. Smith is a very orderly man. I want to see how Pierce’s place looks, how he arranged it for us.”
    Kyle was back to the deadpan look, superserious, which I actually prefer. “We’re not going to get him, Alex. He’s been given a warning. He’ll be more careful from now on. Maybe he’ll disappear like some killers do, just vanish off the face of the earth.”
    “That would be nice,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s going to happen. There
is
a pattern, Kyle. We just haven’t found it.”

Chapter 110

    A S THEY say in the wild, Wild West, you have to get right back on the horse that threw you. I spent two days back in Washington, but it seemed more like a couple of hours. Everybody was mad at me for getting into the hunt. Nana, the kids, Christine. So be it.
    I took the first flight into Boston and was at Thomas Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge by nine in the morning. Reluctantly, the dragon slayer was back in play.
    Kyle Craig’s original plan to catch Pierce was one of the most audacious ever to come out of the usually conservative Bureau, but it probably had to be. The question now — had Thomas Pierce been able to get out of the Princeton area somehow? Or was he still down there?
    Had he circled back to Boston? Fled to Europe? Nobody knew for sure. It was also possible that we might not hear from Pierce, or from Mr. Smith, for a long time.
    There was a pattern
. We just had to find it.
    Pierce and Isabella Calais had lived together for three years in the second-floor apartment of a building in Cambridge. The front door of the place opened onto the foyer and kitchen. Then came a long railroad-style hallway. The apartment was a revelation.
There were memories and reminders of Isabella Calais everywhere
.
    It was strange and overwhelming, as if she still lived here and might suddenly appear from one of the rooms.
    There were photographs of her in every single room. I counted more than twenty pictures of Isabella on my first pass, a quick sight-seeing tour of the apartment.
    How could Pierce bear to have this woman’s face everywhere, looking at him, staring silently, accusing him of the most unspeakable murder?
    In the pictures, Isabella Calais has the most beautiful auburn hair, worn long and perfectly shaped. She has a lovely face and the sweetest, natural smile. It was easy to see how he could have loved her. But her eyes had a far-off look in some of the pictures, as if she weren’t quite there.
    Everything about their apartment made my head spin, my insides, too. Was Pierce trying to tell us, or maybe tell himself, that he felt absolutely nothing — no guilt, no sadness, no love in his heart?
    As I thought about it, I was overwhelmed with sadness myself. I could imagine the torture that must be his life every day — never to experience real love or deep feelings. In his crazed mind did Pierce think that by dissecting each of his victims he would find the answer to himself?
    Maybe the opposite was true.
    Was it possible that Pierce needed to feel her presence, to
feel
everything with the greatest intensity imaginable? Had Thomas Pierce loved Isabella Calais more than he’d thought he was capable of loving anyone? Had Pierce felt redeemed by their love? When he’d learned of her affair with a doctor named Martin Straw, had it driven him to madness and the most unspeakable of acts: the murder of the only person he had ever loved?
    Why were her pictures still looming everywhere in the apartment? Why had Thomas Pierce been torturing himself with this constant reminder?
    Isabella Calais was watching me as I moved through every room in the apartment. What was she trying to say?
    “Who is he, Isabella?” I whispered. “What is he up to?”

Chapter 111

    I BEGAN a more detailed search of the apartment. I paid careful attention not just to Isabella’s things, but to Pierce’s, too. Since both had been students, I wasn’t surprised by the academic texts and papers lying about.
    I found a