Jack & Jill

Margaret Ray, the obsessed fan who had broken into David Letterman’s home in Connecticut numerous times. She had called Letterman
“the dominant person in my life.”
I watched Letterman sometimes myself, but he’s not
that
good.
    Then there was the Monica Seles stabbing in Hamburg, Germany.
    Katarina Witt had nearly suffered the same fate at the hand of a “fan.”
    Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Jodie Foster had all been seriously stalked and attacked by people who claimed to adore them.
    But who were Jack and Jill? Why had they chosen Washington, D.C., for the murders? Had someone in the government harmed one or both of them in some real or imagined way?
    What was the link between Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick and the murdered television newswoman Natalie Sheehan? What could Fitzpatrick and Sheehan possibly have in common? They were liberals—could that be something? Or were the killings random, and therefore nearly impossible to chart?
Random
was a nasty word that was sticking in my head more and more as I thought about the case.
Random
was a very bad word is homicide circles. Random murders were almost impossible to solve.
    Most celebrity stalkers didn’t murder their prey—at least, they didn’t use extreme violence right away. That bothered the hell out of me about Jack and Jill. How long had they been obsessed with Senator Fitzpatrick and Natalie Sheehan? How had they ultimately chosen their victims?
Don’t let these be random selections and murders. Anything but that.
    I was also intrigued by the fact that there were two of them, working closely together.
    I had just come off a dizzying, high-profile case in which two friends, two males, had been kidnapping and murdering women for more than thirteen years. They had been cooperating, but also competing with each other. The psychological principle involved was known as twinning.
    So what about Jack and Jill? Were they freak-friends? Were they romantically involved? Or was their bond something else? Was it a sexual thing for them? That seemed like a reasonable possibility. Power dominance? A really kinky parlor game, maybe the ultimate sex fantasy? Were they a husband-and-wife team? Or maybe spree killers like Bonnie and Clyde?
    Was this the beginning of a gruesome crime spree? A multiple-murder spree in Washington?
    Would it spread elsewhere? To other large cities where celebrities tend to cluster? New York? Los Angeles? Paris? London?
    I stepped off the elevator on the seventh floor of the Jefferson Hotel and looked into a corridor of dazed and confused faces. Judging from the looks at the crime scene, I was pretty much up to speed.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill
To kill, to kill, to kill.

CHAPTER
21

    “THE GOOD DOCTOR CROSS, the master of disaster. Well, I’ll be. Alex—hey, Alex—
over here!”
    I was lost in a bad jumble of thoughts and impressions about the murders when I heard my name. I recognized the voice immediately, and it brought a smile to my lips.
    I turned and saw Kyle Craig of the FBI. Another dragon-slayer, this one originally from Lexington, Massachusetts. Kyle was not your typical FBI agent. He was a totally straight shooter. He wasn’t uptight, and he usually wasn’t bureaucratic. Kyle and I had worked together on some very bad cases in the past. He was a specialist in high-profile crimes that were marked by extreme violence or multiple murders. Kyle was an expert in the nasty, scary stuff most Bureau agents didn’t want to be involved with on a regular basis. Beyond that, he was a friend.
    “They’ve got all the big guns out on this one,” Kyle said as we shook hands in the foyer. He was tall, still gaunt. Distinctive features and strikingly black hair, coal black hair. He had a long hawk’s nose that looked sharp enough to cut.
    “Who’s here so far, Kyle?” I asked him. He would have everything scoped out by now. He was smart and observant, and his instincts were usually good. Kyle also knew who everybody was and how they fit into the larger picture.
    Kyle puckered up. He made a face as if he had just sucked on a particularly sour lemon. “Who the hell isn’t here, Alex? Detectives from D.C., your own
compadres.
The Bureau, of course. DEA, believe it or not. The blue suit is CIA. You can tell by the clipped wings. Your close friend Chief Pittman is in visiting with Ms. Sheehan’s lovely corpse. They’re in the boudoir as we speak.”
    “Now
that’s
scary,” I said and smiled thinly.