Jack & Jill by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson [Patterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2003-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

PART IV

A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

CHAPTER

53

I LAY ON THE COUCH with Rosie the cat and a full sack of nightmares. Rosie was a beautiful, reddish brown Abyssinian. She was wonderfully athletic, independent, feral, and also a great nuzzler. She reminded me of the much larger cats of Africa in the way she moved. One weekend morning she just showed up at the house, liked it, and stayed.

“You’re not going to leave us one day, are you, Rosie? Leave us like you came?” Rosie shook her whole body. “What a dopey question,” she was telling me. “No, absolutely not. I’m part of this family now.”

I couldn’t sleep. Even Rosie’s purring didn’t relax me. I was a few aches beyond bone-tired, but my mind was racing badly. I was counting murders, not sheep. About ten o’clock I decided to go for a drive to clear my head. Maybe get in touch with my chi energy. Maybe get a sharper insight into one of the murder cases.

I drove with the car windows open. It was minus three degrees outside.

I didn’t know exactly where I was going—and yet unconsciously, I did know. Shrink shrinks shrink.

Both murder cases were running hard and fast inside my head. They were on dangerous parallel tracks. I kept reviewing and re-reviewing my talk with the CIA contract killer Andrew Klauk. I was trying to connect what he’d said to the Jack and Jill murders. Could one of the “ghosts” be Jack?

I found myself on New York Avenue, which is also Route 50 and eventually turns into the John Hanson Highway. Christine Johnson lived out this way, on the far side of the beltway in Prince Georges County. I knew where Christine lived. I’d looked it up in the casenotes of the first detective who interviewed her after Shanelle Green’s murder.

This is a crazy thing, I thought as I drove in the direction of her town—Mitchellville.

Earlier that night, I’d talked to Damon about how things were going at school now, and then about the teachers there. I eventually got around to the principal. Damon saw through my act like the little Tasmanian devil that he is sometimes.

“You like her, don’t you?” he asked me, and his eyes lit up like twin beacons. “You do, don’t you, Daddy? Everybody does. Even Nana does. She says Mrs. Johnson is your type. You like her, right?”

“There’s nothing not to like about Mrs. Johnson,” I said to Damon. “She’s married, though. Don’t forget that.”

“Don’t you forget,” Damon said and laughed like Sampson.

And now here I was driving through the suburban neighborhood relatively late at night. What in hell was I doing? What was I thinking of? Had I been spending so much time around madmen that finally some of it rubbed off? Or was I actually following one of my better instincts?

I spotted Summer Street and made a quick right turn. There was a mild squeal of tires that pierced the perfect quiet of the neighborhood. I had to admit it was beautiful out in suburbia, even at night.

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