Jack & Jill

Tiny black bugs crawled along the hairline. A thin line of maggots spilled from a split in the scalp above the right ear.
    Sampson sucked it up, grimaced, and forced himself to move around to the other side of the boy’s body. Nobody knew it, not even Alex, but this was the part of homicide that he just couldn’t handle. DOAs. Bodies in decomposition.
    “You won’t like it,” Esther Lee told him before he looked. “I’m warning you.”
    “I know I won’t,” he muttered. He blew warmth on his hands, but it didn’t help much.
    He could see the boy’s face now. He could see it—but he couldn’t believe it. And he certainly didn’t like it Esther Lee was right about that.
    “Jesus Christ,” he said out loud. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Make this terrible thing stop.”
    Sampson stood up straight. He was six nine again, only it wasn’t tall enough, wasn’t big enough. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen—
the boy’s face.
    This killing was too much even for him, and he had seen so much in D.C. during the past few years.
    The murdered boy was Sumner Moore.

Part V

    No Rules. No Regrets.

CHAPTER
77

    NOTHING EVER BEGINS at the time we believe it does. Still, this is what I think of as the beginning.
    Jannie and I sat in the kitchen and we talked the talk, our own special talk. The words didn’t matter much, just the sentiments.
    “You know, this is an anniversary for us,” I said to her. “Special anniversary.” I touched her cheek. So soft. Soft as a butterfly’s belly.
    “Oh,
really?”
Jannie said and gave me her most skeptical Nana Mama look. “And what anniversary might that be?”
    “Well, I’ll tell you. This just happens to be the
five-hundredth
time that I’ve read you
The Stinky Cheese Man.”
    “Okay, fine,” she said and smiled in spite of herself, “so read the story already! I love the way you read it.” I read the story again.
    After we were done with our
Stinky Cheese,
I spent some time with Damon, and then with Nana. Then I went upstairs to pack.
    When I came back down, I talked out on the porch with Rakeem Powell. Rakeem was waiting to be relieved. Sampson was coming over for the night. Man Mountain was late as usual, and we hadn’t heard from him yet, which was a little unusual, but I knew he would be there.
    “You okay?” I asked Rakeem.
    “I’m fine, Alex. Sampson will get here eventually. You take care of yourself.”
    I went out to my car. I stepped inside and put in a tape that felt right for the moment at hand—for my mood, anyway. It was the finale to Saint-Saëns’s second piano concerto. I had always dreamed of being able to play the piece on the porch piano. Dream on, dream on.
    I listened to the blazing music as I drove out to Andrews airfield, where
Air Force One
was being prepared.
    President Byrnes was going to New York City, and I was going with him.
    No regrets.

CHAPTER
78

    THERE HAVE BEEN many conflicting accounts, but this is what happened and how it happened. I know, because I was there.
    On Monday evening, nine days before Christmas, we landed in a grayish-blue fog and light rain at La Guardia Airport on Long Island. No specific information about President Byrnes’s travel plans had been announced to the press, but the President was keeping his commitment to speak in New York the following morning. Thomas Byrnes was known for keeping his commitments, keeping his word.
    It had been decided to go from La Guardia into Manhattan by car, rather than by helicopter. The President wasn’t hiding anymore.
Had Jack and Jill counted on just that kind of courage, or arrogance, from him?
I wondered. Would Jack and Jill follow the President to New York? I was almost sure that they would. It fit everything we knew about them so far.
    “Ride with us, Alex,” Don Hamerman said as we hurried across the tarmac, a cold December rain blowing hard in our faces. Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and I had gotten off
Air Force One
together. During the plane ride we sat together, planning how to protect President Byrnes from an assassination attempt in New York. Our talk was so intense that I missed out on the specialness of the ride.
    “We’re traveling in the car directly behind the President. We can continue our little chat on the way into Manhattan,” Hamerman said to me.
    We climbed into a somber, blue Lincoln Town Car that was parked less than fifty yards from the jet. It was close to ten in the evening, and that part of the airfield had been secured. There