Cat & Mouse

“As you can all see, rumors of my imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated. I’m just fine, actually,” I said and cracked a smile. That seemed to break the ice a little with the agents.

“The official statements out of St. Anthony’s Hospital-‘not expected to live,’ ‘grave condition,’ ‘highly unusual for someone in Dr. Cross’s condition to pull through’-were overstatements, and sometimes outright lies. The releases were manufactured for Thomas Pierce’s benefit. The releases were a hoax. If you want to blame someone, blame Kyle Craig,” I said.

“Yes, definitely blame me,” Kyle said. He was standing at my side, along with John Sampson and Sondra Greenberg from Interpol. “Alex didn’t want to go this way. Actually, he didn’t want any involvement at all, if my memory serves me.”

“That’s right, but now I involved. I’m in this up to my eyebrows. Soon you will be, too. Kyle and I are going to tell you everything.”

I took a breath, then I continued. My nervousness was mostly gone.

“Four years ago, a recent Harvard Medical School grad named Thomas Pierce discovered his girlfriend murdered in their apartment in Cambridge. That was the police finding at the time. It was later corroborated by the Bureau. Let me tell you about the actual murder. Now let me tell you what Kyle and I believe really happened. This is how it went down that night in Cambridge.”

Chapter 103

THOMAS PIERCE had spent the early part of the night out drinking with friends at a bar called Jillian’s in Cambridge. The friends were recent med-school graduates and they’d been drinking hard since about two in the afternoon.

Pierce had invited Isabella to the bar, but she’d turned him down and told him to have fun, let off some steam. He deserved it. That night, as he had been doing for the past six months, a doctor named Martin Straw came over to the apartment Isabella and Pierce shared. Straw and Isabella were having an affair. He had promised he would leave his wife and children for her.

Isabella was asleep when Pierce got to the apartment on Inman Street. He knew that Dr. Martin Straw had been there earlier. He had seen Straw and Isabella together at other times. He’d followed them on several occasions around Cambridge and also on day trips out into the countryside.

As he opened the front door of his apartment, he could feel, in every inch of his body, that Martin Straw had been there. Straw’s scent was unmistakable, and Thomas Pierce wanted to scream. He had never cheated on Isabella, never even come close.

She was fast asleep in their bed. He stood over her for several moments and she never stirred. He had always loved the way she slept, loved watching her like this. He had always mistaken her sleeping pose for i

He could tell that Isabella had been drinking wine. He smelled the sweet odor from where he stood.

She had on perfume that night. For Martin Straw.

It was Jean Patou’s Joy-very expensive. He had bought it for her the previous Christmas.

Thomas Pierce began to cry, to sob into his hands.

Isabella’s long auburn hair was loose and strands and bunches flowed free on the pillows. For Martin Straw.

Martin Straw always lay on the left side of the bed. He had a deviated septum that he should have tended to, but doctors put off operations, too. He couldn’t breathe very well out of the right nostril.

Thomas Pierce knew this. He had studied Straw, tried to understand him, his so-called humanity.

Pierce knew he had to act now, knew that he couldn’t take too much time.

He fell on Isabella with all his weight, his force, his power. His tools were ready. She struggled, but he held her down. He clutched her long swanlike throat with his strong hands. He wedged his feet under the mattress for leverage.

The struggle exposed her bare breasts and he was reminded of how “sexy” and “absolutely beautiful” Isabella was; how they were “perfect together”; “ Cambridge ’s very own Romeo and Juliet.” What bullshit it was. A sorry myth. The perception of people who couldn’t see straight. She didn’t really love him, but how he had loved her. Isabella made him feel for the one and only time in his life.

Thomas Pierce looked down at her. Isabella’s eyes were like sandblasted mirrors. Her small, beautiful mouth fell open to one side. Her skin still felt satin soft to his touch.

She was helpless now, but she could see what was happening. Isabella was aware of her crimes and the punishment to come.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he finally said. “It’s as if I’m outside myself, watching. And yet…I can’t tell you how alive I feel right now.”

Every newspaper, the news magazines, TV, and radio reported what happened in gruesome detail, but nothing like what really happened, what it was like in the bedroom, staring into Isabella’s eyes as he murdered her.

He cut out Isabella’s heart.

He held her heart in his hands, still pumping, still alive, and watched it die.

Then he impaled her heart on a spear from his scuba equipment.

He “pierced” her heart. That was the clue he left. The very first clue.

He had the feeling, the sixth sense, that he actually watched Isabella’s spirit leave her body. Then he thought he felt his own soul depart. He believed that he died that night, too.

Smith was born from death that night in Cambridge.

Thomas Pierce was Mr. Smith.

Chapter 104

THOMAS PIERCE is Mr. Smith,” I said to the agents gathered at Quantico. “If any of you still doubt that, even a little bit, please don’t. It could be dangerous to you and everyone else on this team. Pierce is Smith, and he’s murdered nineteen people so far. He will murder again.”

I had been speaking for several moments, but now I stopped. There was a question from the group. Actually, there were several questions. I couldn’t blame them-I was full of questions myself.

“Can I backtrack for just a second here? Your family was attacked?” A young crew-cut agent asked. “You did sustain injuries?”

“There was an attack at my house. For reasons that we don’t understand yet, the intruder stopped short of murder. My family is all right. Believe me, I want to understand about the attack, and the intruder, more than anyone does. I want that bastard, whoever he is.”

I held up my cast for all of them to see. “One bullet clipped my wrist. A second entered my abdomen, but passed through. The hepatic artery was not nicked, as was reported. I was definitely banged up, but my EKG never showed ‘a pattern of decreased activity.’ That was for Pierce’s benefit. Kyle? You want to fill in some more of the holes you helped create?”

This was Kyle Craig’s master plan, and he spoke to the agents.

“Alex is right about Pierce. He is a cold-blooded killer and what we hope to do tonight is dangerous. It’s unusual, but this situation warrants it. For the past several weeks, Interpol and the Bureau have been trying to set a foolproof trap for the elusive Mr. Smith, who we believe to be Thomas Pierce,” Kyle repeated. “We haven’t been able to catch him at anything conclusive, and we don’t want to do something that might spook him, make him run.”

“He’s one scary, spooky son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that much,” John Sampson said from his place alongside me. I could tell he was holding back, keeping his anger inside. “And the bastard is very careful. I never caught him in anything close to a slipup while I was working with him. Pierce played his part perfectly.”

“So did you, John.” Kyle offered a compliment. “Detective Sampson has been in on the ruse, too,” he explained.

A few hours earlier, Sampson had been with Pierce in New Jersey. He knew him better than I did, though not as well as Kyle or Sondra Greenberg of Interpol, who had originally profiled Pierce, and was with us now at Quantico.