Cat and Mouse

dreamed it possible, but Pierce was already eclipsing Gary Soneji and Simon Conklin. I despised everything about Pierce. Seeing the pictures of Isabella Calasis had done it for me.
    Alien?
I wrote on the foolscap pad lying across my lap.
He identifies with descriptor.
    Alienated? Alienated from what? Idyllic upbringing in California. Doesn’t fit any of the psychopathic profiles we used before. He’s an original. He secretly enjoys that, doesn’t he?
    No discernible pattern to murders that link with a psychological motive.
    Murders seem haphazard and arbitrary! He revels in his own originality.
    Dr. Sante, Simon Conklin, now Anthony Bruno. Why them? Does Conklin count?
    Seems impossible to predict Thomas Pierce’s next move. His next kill.
    Why go south toward the New Jersey Shore?
    It had occurred to me that he was originally from a shore town. Pierce had grown up near Laguna Beach in Southern California. Was he going home, in a manner of speaking? Was the New Jersey Shore as close to home as he could get — as close as he dared go?
    I now had a reasonable amount of information about his background in California before he came east. He had lived on a working farm not far from the famous Irvine Ranch properties. Three generations of doctors in the family. Good, hardworking people. His siblings were all dong well, and not one of them believed that Thomas was capable of any of this mayhem and murder he was accused of committing.
    FBI says Mr. Smith is disorganized, chaotic, unpredictable,
I scribbled in my pad.
    What if they’re wrong? Pierce is responsible for much of their data about Smith. Pierce created Mr. Smith, then did the profile on him.
    I kept revisiting his and Isabella’s apartment in my mind. The place was so very neat and organized. The home had a definite
organizing principle.
It revolved around Isabella — her pictures, clothes, even her perfume bottles had been left in place. The smell of L’Air du Temps and Je Reviens permeated their bedroom to this day.
    Thomas Pierce had loved her.
Pierce had loved.
Pierce had felt passion and emotion. That was another thing the FBI was wrong about. He’d killed because he thought he was losing her, and he couldn’t bear it. Was Isabella the only person who had ever loved Pierce?
    Another small piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place! I was so struck by it that I said it aloud in the helicopter. “
Her heart on a spear!
”
    He had “pierced” her heart! Jesus Christ! He had confessed to the very first murder! He had confessed!
    He’d left a clue, but the police missed it. What else were we missing? What was he up to now? What did “Mr. Smith” represent inside his mind? Was everything representational for him? Symbolic? Artistic? Was he creating a kind of language for us to follow? Or was it even simpler? He had “pierced” her heart. Pierce wanted to be caught. Caught and punished.
    Crime and punishment.
    Why couldn’t we catch him?
    I landed in New Jersey around five at night. Kyle Craig was waiting for me. Kyle was sitting on the hood of a dark blue Town Car. He was drinking Samuel Adams beer out of a bottle.
    “You find Anthony Bruno yet?” I called out as I walked toward him. “You find the body?”

Chapter 113

    M R. SMITH goes to the seashore.
Sounded like an unimaginative children’s story.
    There was enough moonlight for Thomas Pierce to make his way along the long stretch of glowing White sand at Point Pleasant Beach. He was carrying a corpse, what was left of it. He had Anthony Bruno loaded on his back and shoulders.
    He walked just south of popular Jenkinson’s Pier and the much newer Seaquarium. The boarded-up arcades of the amusement part were tightly packed along the beach shoulder. The small, grayish buildings looked forlorn and mute in their shuttered state.
    As usual, music ran through his head — first Elvis Costello’s “Clubland,” then Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21, then “Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham. The savage beast inside him wasn’t calmed, not even close, but at least he could feel a beat.
    It was quarter to four in the morning and even the surfcasting fishermen weren’t out yet. He’d seen only one police patrol car so far. The police in the tiny beach town were a joke anyway.
    Mr. Smith against the Keystone Kops.
    This whole funky seashore area reminded him of Laguna Beach, at least the
tourista
parts of Laguna. He could still picture the surf shops that dotted the Pacific Coast Highway