Jack & Jill

Klauk, for that afternoon at least, I talked with Jeanne Sterling for a while more. We sat in an idyllic, multiwindowed sunroom that looked out on the idyllic backyard. The subject of conversation continued to be murder. I hadn’t come down yet from my talk with the assassin. The ghost.
    “What did you think of our Mr. Klauk?” Jeanne asked me.
    “Disturbed me. Irritated me. Scared the hell out of me,” I admitted to her. “He’s really unpleasant Not nice. He’s a jerk, too.”
    “An
incredible
asshole,” she agreed. Then she didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds. “Alex, somebody
inside the Agency
has killed at least three of our agents. That’s one of the skeletons I’ve dug up so far in my time as inspector. It’s an ‘unsolved crime.’ The killer isn’t Klauk, though. Andrew is actually under control. He
isn’t
dangerous.
Somebody else is.
To tell you the complete truth, the Directorate of Operations has demanded that we bring in somebody from the outside on this. We definitely think one of our contract killers could be Jack. Who knows, maybe Jill is one of ours, too.”
    I didn’t talk for a moment, just listened to what Jeanne Sterling had to say.
Jack and Jill came to The Hill.
Could Jack be a trained assassin? What about Jill? And then, why were they killing celebrities in Washington? Why had they threatened President Byrnes?
    My mind whirled around in great looping circles. I thought about all the possibilities, the connections, and also the disconnects. Two renegade contract killers on the loose. It made as much sense as anything else I had heard so far. It explained some things about Jack and Jill for me, especially the absence of passion or rage in the murders. Why were they killing politicians and celebrities, though? Had they been commissioned to do the job? If so, by whom? To what end? What was their
cause
?
    “Let me ask you a burning question, Jeanne. Something else has been bothering me since we got here.”
    “Go ahead, Alex. I want to try and answer all your questions. If I can, that is.”
    “Why did you bring him here to talk? Why take Andrew Klauk right into your own house?”
    “It was a safe place for the meeting,” she said without any hesitation. She sounded so unbelievably certain when she said it. I felt a chill ease up my spine. Then Jeanne Sterling sighed loudly. She knew what I was getting at, what I was feeling, as I sat inside her home.
    “Alex, he
knows
where I live. Andrew Klauk could come here if he wanted to. Any of them can.”
    I nodded and left it at that. I knew the feeling exactly; I lived with it. It was my single greatest fear as an investigator. My worst nightmare.
    They know where we live.
    They can come to our houses if they want to… anytime they want to.
    Nobody was safe anymore.
    There are no rules.
    There are “ghosts” and human monsters, and they are very real in our lives. Especially in my life.
    There was Jack and Jill.
    There was the Sojourner Truth School killer.

CHAPTER
50

    AT A LITTLE PAST SEVEN the next morning, I sat across from Adele Finaly and unloaded everything that I possibly could on her. I unloaded—
period
. Dr. Adele Finaly has been my analyst for a half-dozen years, and I see her on an irregular basis. As needed. Like right now. She’s also a good friend.
    I was ranting and raving a little bit. This was the place for it, though. “Maybe I want to leave the force. Maybe I don’t want to be part of any more vile homicide investigations. Maybe I want to get out of Washington, or at least out of Southeast. Or maybe I want to trot down and see Kate McTiernan in West Virginia. Take a sabbatical at just about the worst possible time for one.”
    “Do you really want to do any of those things?” Adele asked when I had finished, or at least had quieted down for a moment. “Or are you just venting?”
    “I don’t know, Adele. Probably venting. There’s also a woman I met whom I could become interested in. She’s
married,”
I said and smiled. “I’d never do anything with a married woman, so she’s perfectly safe for me. She couldn’t be safer. I think I’m regressing.”
    “You want an opinion on that, Alex? Well, I can’t give you one. You certainly have a lot on your plate, though.”
    “I’m right smack in the middle of a very bad homicide investigation. Two of them, actually. I just came off another particularly disturbing one. I think I can sort that part out for myself. But, you know, it’s