Jack & Jill

mind’s eye continued to snap off photo after photo of the two of them. He would never forget any of this, not a single frame of the intimate murder scene.
    He could see, hear, touch, smell; and yet he couldn’t feel a thing.
    Kevin Hawkins resisted all human impulses now. No pity. No guilt. No shame. And no mercy.
    The law student carried a leather bag on her left shoulder. It was slightly open, just a sliver, just enough. Ah, carefree, casual, careless youth.
    The photojournalist was good with his hands.
Still
good. Still steady. Still very quick. Still one of the best.
    He slid something into her bag.
C’est ça.
That was it! Success. The first of the night.
    Neither she nor Justice Franklin noticed the fleeting movement, or
him,
as he passed by in the crowd. He was the river breeze, the night, the’ light of the moon.
    He felt incredible exhilaration at that special moment. There was nothing in the world like this. The power in taking,
stealing,
another human life was like nothing else in the full palette of human experiences.
    The hard part was over, he knew. The close work. Now the simple act of murder.
    To murder in public view.
    And not get caught.
    His heart suddenly jumped, bucked horribly. Something was going wrong. Very wrong. As wrong as could be. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
    Jesus,
Charlotte Kinsey was reaching into her bag.
    Snapshot.
    She’d found the note he’d left there
—
the note from Jack and Jill! Wrong, wrong, wrong!
    Snapshot.
    She was looking at it curiously, wondering what it was, wondering how it had gotten in her handbag.
    She began to unfold the note, and he could feel his temples pounding horribly. She had gotten the justice’s attention. He glanced down at the note as well.
    Nooooo! Jesus, nooo,
he wanted to scream.
    Kevin Hawkins operated on pure instinct. The purest. No time to second-guess himself now.
    He moved forward very quickly and surely.
    His Luger was out, dangling below his waist. The gun was concealed because of the closeness of the crowd, the forest of legs and arms, pleated trousers, fluffed dresses.
    He raised and fired the Luger just once. Tricky angle, too. Far from ideal. He saw the sudden blossom of crimson red. The body jolted, then crumbled and fell to the marble floor.
    A heartshot! Certainly a miracle, or close to it. God was on his side, no?
    Snapshot!
    Snapshot!
    His heart almost couldn’t take it. He wasn’t used to this sudden improvising.
    He thought about getting caught, after all of these years, and on such an unbelievably important job. He had a vision of total failure. He felt…
he felt something.
    He dropped the Luger into the jumble of legs, trousers, satin and taffeta gowns, high-heeled slippers, highly polished dark cordovans.
    “Was that a gunshot?” a woman shrieked. “Oh, God, Phillip.
Someone’s been shot.”
    He backed away from the spectacle as just about everyone else did. The Grand Foyer looked as if it were ablaze.
    He was part of them, part of the fearful, bolting crowd. He had nothing to do with the terrifying disturbance, the murder, the loud gunshot.
    His face was a convincing mask of shock and disbelief. God, he knew this look so well. He had seen it so many times before in his lifetime.
    In another tense few moments, he was outside the Kennedy Center. He was heading toward New Hampshire Avenue at a steady pace. He was one with the crowd.
    “Seems Like Old Times” raced through his head, playing much too fast, at double or triple speed. He remembered humming the tune on his walk in. And as the photojournalist knew, the old times were definitely the best.
    The old times were coming back now, weren’t they?
    Jack and Jill had come to The Hill.
    The game was so beautiful, so delicate and exquisite.
    Now for the greatest shocker of them all.

CHAPTER
45

    AGENT JAY GRAYER called me at home from his car phone. I was in the middle of reading approximately two hundred background security checks done on White House personnel by the Secret Service uniformed division. The deputy director was speeding downtown to the Kennedy Center complex, doing ninety on the beltway. I could hear the siren blaring from his car.
    “They struck again. Jesus, they made a hit at the Kennedy Center tonight. Right under our noses. It’s another real bad acid trip, Alex. Just come.” He definitely sounded out of control.
    Just come.
    “They hit during intermission of
Miss Saigon.
I’ll meet you there, Alex. I’m seven to ten minutes away.”
    “Who