Jack & Jill

could tell that the schoolteacher wanted to run real bad. There was nowhere to go, though. Not unless she went right through the picture window and out onto her lawn. She had her hand up to her mouth. Her hand looked as if it were stock there with Velcro. Probably in shock.
    Lady, who isn’t these days?
    “Don’t yell anymore,” he warned her in a high-pitched scream of his own. “Don’t scream again or I’ll shoot you, too. I can and I will. I’ll shoot you dead as the doorman.”
    He closed in on her now. He kept the Smith & Wesson pointed out in front of him. He wanted her to see that he was very comfortable with the weapon, very expert with firearms— which he was, thanks to the Teddy Roosevelt School.
    His hand was shaking some, but so what? He wouldn’t miss her at this distance.
    “Hi there, Mrs. Johnson,” he said and gave her his best spooky-guy grin. “I’m the one who killed Shanelle Green and Vernon Wheatley. Everybody’s been looking all over for me. Well, I guess
you
found me,” he told her. “Congratulations, babe. Nice work.”
    Danny Boudreaux was crying now, and he couldn’t remember why he was so sad. All he knew for sure was that he was furiously angry. With everybody. Everybody had fucked up real bad this time. This was about the worst so far.
    No happy, happy. No joy, joy.
    “I’m the Truth School killer,” he repeated. “You believe that? You got it? It’s a true tale. Tale of heartbreak and woe. Don’t you even remember me? Am I that forgettable? I sure remember
you.”

CHAPTER
96

    I RUSHED BACK to the Washington, D.C., area that night about eleven o’clock. The Sojourner Truth School killer was rampaging. I had predicted he was going to go off, but being right held no rewards for me. Stopping the explosion might.
    Maybe it was no accident that he was blowing the same night as Jack and Jill. He wanted to be better than them, didn’t he? He wanted to be important, famous, in the brightest spotlight
He couldn’t bear being Nobody.
    I tried to put my mind somewhere else for the short time I was on the military jet. I was feeling so low, I could have jumped off a dime. I scanned the late papers, which carried front-page stories about President Byrnes and the shooting in New York. The President was in extremely critical condition at New York University Hospital on East Thirty-third Street in Manhattan. Jack and Jill were both reported dead. Doctors at University Hospital didn’t know if the President would survive the night.
    I was numb, disoriented, overloaded, on the slippery borderline of shock trauma myself. Now it was getting worse. I didn’t know for certain if I could handle this, but I hadn’t been given a choice.
    The killer had demanded to see me. He claimed that I was
his
detective and that he’d been calling my house for the past few days.
    A police cruiser was scheduled to meet me at Andrews Air Force Base. From there I’d be taken to nearby Mitchellville, where Danny Boudreaux was holding Christine Johnson hostage. So far, Boudreaux had murdered two small children, a classmate of his named Sumner Moore, and his own foster parents. It was an extraordinary rampage, and the case deserved more resources than it had received from the Metro police.
    A police cruiser was waiting at Andrews as promised. Somebody had put together material for me on Daniel Boudreaux. The boy had been under a psychiatrist’s care since he was seven. He had been severely depressed. He’d apparently committed bizarre acts of animal torture as early as seven. Daniel Boudreaux’s real mother had died during his infancy, and he blamed himself. His real father had committed suicide. The father had been a state trooper in Virginia.
Another cop, I
noted. Probably some kind of transference going on inside the boy’s head.
    I recognized Summer Street as soon as we branched off the John Hanson Highway. A detective from Prince Georges County sat with me in the backseat of the cruiser. His name was Henry Fornier. He tried to brief me on the hostage situation as best he could under the bizarre circumstances.
    “As we understand it, Dr. Cross, George Johnson has been shot, and he may be dead in the house. The boy won’t allow the body to be removed or to receive any medical attention,” Officer Former told me. “He’s a nasty bastard, I’ll tell you. A real little prick.”
    “Boudreaux was being treated for his anger, his depression and rage cycles, with Depakote. I’ll bet