To murder me and the kids, right here in our house.
Will took a knife from his shirt. Big knife, hunting knife. He raised it toward me. He lunged.
I fired a second time.
EPILOGUE Night Songs
CHAPTER 121
SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT IN early November. Four and a half months after the shooting. Will and I were finally off the front pages of most newspapers and magazines.
There was just one more story to tell.
It was a bright and crisp fall afternoon—high school football weather. Only to me, peering out the tinted Plexiglas windows of my car, it seemed a gloomy day, a day meant for unfinished business.
Norma had come along with me, but I drove. I needed to be in control. I thought that I was. We’d see about that soon enough.
I was trying to be brave, to survive this final test.
I hadn’t done anything wrong—not ever. I’d just protected what was important, my family. Sure, I had made mistakes, but who doesn’t. With Will, I’d been a victim for his obsessions. He had lied so brilliantly, right from the start of our relationship.
Norma and I talked everything through again during the drive from Bedford. Finally, I pulled up at the Institute for Living, a Federal-style building in the outskirts of New Heaven that looked like a cross between a college administration building and a prison. It was neither, nothing so benign. It was a mental hospital, supposedly one of the best.
Norma and I hurried across a popular- and maplelined parking area, then into the vestibule, where we approached a receptionist dressed in nurse’s white.
“We’re here to see Mr. Shepherd,” I told her, and if she recognized me she didn’t show it. I appreciated that.
“I’ll have someone take you to his room,” is all she said. An aide eventually materialized to escort us.
Outside Will’s room, I stopped. “Can you wait here?” I said to Norma. “I think I want to see him alone.”
“You’re sure, Maggie? You don’t have to punish yourself, honey.”
“I’m sure. I’m not afraid of him anymore.” Not too much anyway.
“Good for you then. I’ll be the short, dumpy broad waiting outside. Maybe some guy in here is nuts enough to fall for me.”
The aide unlocked the door and I entered. I entered. It was a plain enough room: clean, a made bed, desk, desk chair, easy chair, and standing lamp its only furniture. There was a bookcase built into the far wall holding a few new paperbacks, obviously unread, and a small sink for washing. It reminded me of prison, only it was nicer.
Will was standing by the window. There was no sign that he ever sat down. He was looking at me, looking through me, I guess I should say.
I’m not afraid anymore. I can do this. Whatever is necessary, I told myself.
If it was possible, Will was even more handsome than when I had first met him in London. His hair was its natural blond, long and full. It caught the afternoon sun through the heavily screened window.
“Hello, Will.”
Nothing.
His face was clean shaven and pale pink; his body seemed to have the same lithe grace, even standing still, that it always had.
“It’s Maggie, Will.”
He looks like a grown-up little boy, I thought, remembering Will at the very first Lake Club party, at our wedding, confessing his sorrow and pain, and all his lies.
I had loved him—because he could make himself seem so lovable. He was a very good actor after all. He had fooled so many people—half the world. He had worked hard to fool me.
He made a strange sound, a high-pitched wail that reverberated in the hospital room. The second shot I’d fired at the estate had struck his head, caromed off bone, but done severe damage anyway.
“Mmahhlah … mmahhlah,” he said to me. He seemed insistent; but I didn’t understand.
What was he trying to say?
Was it Maggie? Mother? Was it Mama? What was it?
I sat in a hard wooden chair directly across from him. I forced myself to look at his face.
I’m sorry I did this to you, Will. But I’m not guilty about it. I sleep at night—I sleep just fine. You did this to yourself.
I thought of the murder he’d committed in Bedford Hills; of his terrifying betrayal of me; of what he had done to Jennie and Allie, and what he’d planned to do to us all.
But I couldn’t hate him. Not now. Not the way he was.
“Will, can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The dead stare didn’t change. He couldn’t understand, could he? He had gone to his own world forever.
It’s so sad, I thought, as I watched him that afternoon at the hospital. You’re still young. You look so young, so full of promise. But you won’t hurt me ever again. You won’t hurt my children. I’m not scared of you, Will.
A little past five o’clock, the aide returned. He was jangling his keys so I’d hear him come up on us. “Visiting hours are over.”
“Thank you. I’ll just be another minute. Please?”
I stood and walked to the window where Will was still standing. A cloak of solemn gray had already replaced the sunlight outside.
I turned to Will. “I feel so sorry for you,” I said, “but I can’t forgive you either.”
I wanted him to say something. A final few words to remember him by. To explain why he had wanted to kill me. Why he had hurt us. Who was Will Shepherd, really? Did anyone know?
“Okay. Good-bye, Will. I’m sorry for you.”
I gathered myself together, and started to leave the room. I turned my back on Will. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore.
CHAPTER 122
SUDDENLY, WILL SCREAMED with a tremendous force that echoed through the hospital. I whirled around toward him.
He shrieked again, his body rocking violently.
Aides came running down the hallway. A burly male nurse appeared with a plastic-sheathed needle clasped in his fist. I sensed that this had happened before.
“Mmahhlah!” Will screamed.
I thought that he might be having a stroke. Certainly this was some kind of fit.
“Mmahhlah. Mmahhlah,” he continued to shout. His face and neck were bright red. His veins stood out against his skin.
I stared at Will in horror. Maggie? Mother? What in God’s name was he trying to tell me?
In his eyes, there wasn’t the slightest comprehension or recognition. He was pushed down firmly onto the bed, and I felt his legs shrivel.
The Blond Arrow, shriveling.
I had to get out of there. I nearly ran from the room. There was nothing I could do for him anymore. Norma was waiting for me at the end of the corridor.
“Maggie! My God! What was that? What the hell happened in there? You okay?”
I put my arms around her and held Norma tightly, as though to blot out those screams. Finally, the two of us walked out of the building and onto the black-topped parking area, the trees now ghostly silhouettes.
Halfway across the parking lot I turned. I felt as though someone had just stepped out of a grave.
I had the powerful intuition that something was chasing after me. Mmahhlah … Mmahhlah was coming fast, right behind me.
Those lifeless, haunting eyes …
But there was no one looking out from Will’s hospital window. There was no one when I looked back.
CHAPTER 123
IN HIS BARREN, insular hospital room Will screamed and screamed. Screamed and screamed. Until his throat was raw and felt as though it had splinters in it. Still, he continued to scream.
As the night-shift aides tried to feed him his dinner, changed him, and put him to bed, he continued to scream. His strength, his stamina, were amazing to all of them. He was still young, and very athletic, and so powerfully strong.
“Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah!” He cried over and over.
“Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah! Mmahhlah!
“MMAHHLAH!”
He had seen Maggie today. He’d been aware
of everything. He’d wanted to speak to her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Mmahhlah was all he could get out.
Why didn’t she understand him? Why didn’t anyone?
“Mmahhlah.”
I’m alive!
I’m alive!
Please don’t leave me like this!
I’m trapped inside this body. Can’t you see that? Won’t you help me?
“Mmahhlah!
“Mmahhlah!”
I’m alive!
I was halfway home to Bedford when it hit me, and I understood what Will had been trying to say to me at the hospital.
He was badly slurring his words, jumbling them together. Mmahhlah was I’m alive. He could think, and understand. He just couldn’t mouth the words clearly.
It took my breath away.
But I never went to see him again.
I never will.
More James Patterson!
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Jack & Jill
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PROLOGUE
The Games Begin
I
Sam Harrison swung his agile body out of the silver-blue Ford Aerostar, which he had parked on Q Street in the Georgetown section of Washington. Horror stories and games are popular for a good reason, he was thinking as he locked the vehicle and set its alarm. Not the comfortable sit-around-the-campfire horror tales and games we used to cherish as kids, but the real live horror stories that are everywhere around us these days.
Now I’m living one myself. I’m about to become part of the horror. How easy it is. How terribly, terribly easy to move past the edge and into the darkness.
He had stalked and shadowed Daniel Fitzpatrick for two long weeks. He’d done his job in New York City, London, Boston, and finally, now in Washington, D.C. Tonight, he was going to murder the United States senator. In cold blood, execution-style. No one would be able to figure out why. No one would have a clue that might matter later on.
That was the first, and most important rule of the game called Jack and Jill.
In many ways this was a textbook celebrity-stalker pattern. He knew it to be true as he took up his post across from No. 211 Q Street.
And yet, if anyone bothered to look more closely, it was like no other stalking pattern before it. What he was going to do now was more provocative than secretly observing Senator Fitzpatrick downing obscene numbers of Glenlivet cocktails at The Monocle, his favorite bar in Washington. This was the truest form of madness, Sam Harrison knew. It was pure madness. He didn’t believe be was mad. He believed only in the validity of the game of chance.
And then, less than thirty yards across the shiny-wet street—there was Daniel Fitzpatrick himself! Right on schedule. At least close enough.
He watched the senator stiffly climb out of a shiny, navy-blue Jaguar coupe, a ‘96 model. He wore a gray topcoat with a paisley silk scarf. A sleek, slender woman in a black dress was with him. A Burberrys raincoat was casually thrown over her arm. She was laughing at something Fitzpatrick had said. She threw her head back like a beautiful, spirited horse. A wisp of her warm breath met the cool of the night.
The woman was at least twenty years the senator’s junior. She wasn’t his wife, Sam knew. Dannyboy Fitzpatrick rarely if ever slept with his wives. The blond woman walked with a slight limp, which made the two of them even more intriguing. Memorable, actually.
Sam Harrison concentrated fiercely. Measure twice, measure five times if necessary. He took stock of all the details one final time. He had arrived in Georgetown at eleven-fifteen. He looked as if he belonged in the chic, attractive, fashionable neighborhood around Q Street. He looked exactly right for the part he was going to play.
A very big part in a very big story, one of the biggest in America’s history. Or American theater, if you preferred.
A leading-man role, to be sure.
He wore professorial, tortoiseshell glasses for the part. He never wore glasses. Didn’t need them.
His hair was light blond. His hair wasn’t really blond.
He called himself Sam Harrison. His name wasn’t really Sam, or Harrison.
For tonight’s special occasion, he’d carefully selected a soft black cashmere turtleneck, charcoal-gray trousers, which were pleated and cuffed, and light brown walking boots. He wasn’t really such a dapper, self-absorbed dresser. His thick hair was cut short, vaguely reminiscent of the actor Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard, one of his least-favorite movies. He carried a small black duffel bag, swinging it like a baton as he now walked briskly toward No. 211. A camcorder was tucked inside the bag.
He planned to capture as much of this as possible on tape. This was history in the making. It really was history: America at the end of its century, America at the end of an era, America at the end.
At quarter to twelve, he entered No. 211 through a darkened service entryway that smelled strongly of ammonia and of dust and decay. He walked up to the fourth floor, where the senator had his flat, his study, his love nest in the capital.
He reached Daniel Fitzpatrick’s door, 4J, at ten minutes to twelve. He was still pretty much on time. So far, so good. Everything was going exactly as planned.
The highly polished, mahogany wood door opened right in his face!
He stared at an ash-blond woman who was slender and trim and well kept. She was actually somewhat plainer looking than she had appeared from a distance. It was the same woman who had gotten out of the blue Jag with Fitzpatrick. The woman with the limp.
Except for a gold barrette in her hair, a lioness from a trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a gold choker, she was gloriously naked.
“Jack,” she whispered.
“Jill,” he said, and smiled.
II
In a different part of Washington, in a different world, another would-be killer was playing an equally terrifying game. He had found an absolutely terrific hiding place among the thick pines and a few towering, elderly oaks at the center of Garfield Park. He made himself comfortable inside a kind of tent formed by the overhanging tree limbs and a few sturdy, overgrown shrubs.
“Let’s get busy,” he whispered, though no one was in the hiding place with him. This was going to be a wonderful adventure, a great fantasy. He believed it with his whole heart, body, and what remained of his soul.
He sat cross-legged on the damp grass and began to work on his face and hair. A tune from the rock band Hole was blasting from the speakers inside his head. This was really good stuff. He loved it to death. Disguises and costumes were a rush. They were about the only thing that let you truly escape, and goddamn did be ever need to escape.
When he eventually finished with the costume, he emerged from the shadows of the trees. He had to laugh. He was cracking himself up today. This was the best yet. It was so goofy that it was great. Reminded him of a good joke: Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.
Hardy-bar!
He definitely looked like an old, homeless fuck-bum now. He really did look like a hopeless old fart. Like the mangy character in the rock song “Aqualung.” He had put on a white fright wig and a salt-and-pepper beard from an actor’s costume kit. Any slight failure of his imagination, or skill as a makeup artist, was covered by the floppy hood of his sweatshirt.
The sweatshirt had Happy, happy. Joy, joy printed on it.
What an incredible, mindblowing adventure this was going to be, he kept thinking. Happy, happy. Joy, joy. That was the ticket. That said it all. The irony just killed him.
The killer-to-be crossed the park, walking quickly now, almost breaking into a run. He was headed in the general direction of the Anacostia River.
He began to see people. Strollers, muggers, lovers, whatever the hell they were. Most of them were black, but that was okay. That was good, actually. Nobody gave a damn about the blacks in D.C. That was a fact of life.
“Aqualung, oh-oh-oh, Aqualung,” he sang the old r
ock-and-roll tune as he walked. It was from a really great, old band called Jethro Tull. He listened to rock music incessantly, even in his sleep. Earphones on all the time. He had just about memorized the entire history of rock and roll. If he could just force himself to listen to Hootie and the Blowfish, he’d have it all down cold.
Hardy-bar, he laughed at his Hootie joke. He was in a really fine mood today. This was such a cool, fucked-up, freaky blast of a head trip. It was the best of times, the worst of times. Best and worst, worst and best, worst and worse?
He had already selected the spot for the murder. The thicket of spruce trees and evergreens up close to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Freeway. It was wild and overgrown and nearly perfect.
The spot was at a ninety-degree angle to a grouping of delapo, yellow-brick rowhouses and a popular bodega on Sixth Street in Southeast. He had already scouted there, scoped the area out, fallen in love with his spot. He could already see kids from the Sojourner Truth Elementary School traipsing in and out of the corner candy store. The little buggers were so cute at that age.
Man, he hated cute with a passion you wouldn’t believe. Little fucking robots was what they really were. Mean little parasites, too. Kidz! Everything about them was so kute.
He scrunched down and climbed under the thick, scratchy bushes and got down to serious business. He began to blow up several latex balloons—red, orange, blue, yellow ones.
These were big, really colorful suckers that no kids in their wrong mind could resist. Personally, he had always hated balloons intensely. Hated the forced, phony gaiety they seemed to symbolize. But most kids were ya-ya about balloons. Figured, right?
He tied about a ten-foot length of twine around one balloon. Then he secured the string to a thick tree branch.
The balloon floated lazily above the old tree. It looked like a pretty, decapitated head.
He waited in his tree hut. He bung out with himself, which he liked to do anyway.
“Got to waste some-body to-day.” He hummed a little non-song to a non-melody. “Got to, got to. Just gotta, gotta, gotta,” he sang and kind of liked the riff.