Cat & Mouse

“How is he acting, Sondra?” Kyle asked Greenberg. “What have you noticed?”

The Interpol inspector was a tall, impressive-looking woman. She’d been working the case for nearly two years in Europe. “Thomas Pierce is an arrogant bastard. Believe me, he’s laughing at all of us. He’s one hundred percent sure of himself. He’s also high-strung. He never stops looking over his shoulder. Sometimes, I don’t think he’s human either. I do believe he’s going to blow soon. The pressure we’ve applied is working.”

“That’s becoming more evident,” said Kyle, picking up the thread. “Pierce was very cool in the begi

“He’s for real, ladies and gents.” Sampson spoke up again. “He’s smart as hell. Pretty good investigator, too. His instincts are sharp and he’s disciplined. He did his homework, and he went right to Simon Conklin. I think he’s competing with Alex.”

“So do I,” said Kyle, nodding at Sampson. “He’s very complex. We probably don’t know the half of it yet. That’s what scares me.”

Kyle had come to me about Mr. Smith before the Soneji shooting spree had started. We had talked again when I’d taken Rosie to Quantico for tests. I worked with him on an unofficial basis. I helped with the profile on Thomas Pierce, along with Sondra Greenberg. When I was shot at my house, Kyle rushed to Washington out of concern. But the attack was nowhere near as bad as everyone thought, or as we led them to believe.

It was Kyle who decided to take a big chance. So far, Pierce was ru

“Pierce is going to blow,” Sondra Greenberg said again. “I’m telling you. I don’t know everything that’s going on in his head, but he’s close to the limit.”

I agreed with Greenberg. “I’ll tell you what could happen next. The two personas are starting to fuse. Mr. Smith and Thomas Pierce could merge soon. Actually, it’s the Thomas Pierce part of his personality that seems to be diminishing. I think he just might have Mr. Smith take out Simon Conklin.”

Sampson leaned into me and whispered, “I think it’s time that you met Mr. Pierce and Mr. Smith.”

Chapter 105

THIS WAS it. The end. It had to be.

Everything we could think of was tightly in place by seven o’clock that night in Princeton. Thomas Pierce had proven to be elusive in the past, almost illusory. He kept mysteriously slipping in and out of his role as “Mr. Smith.” But he was clearly about to blow.

How he accomplished his black magic, no one knew. There were never any witnesses. No one was left alive.

Kyle Craig’s fear was that we would never catch Pierce in the act, never be able to hold him for more than forty-eight hours. Kyle was convinced that Pierce was smarter than Gary Soneji, cleverer than any of us.

Kyle had objected to Thomas Pierce’s assignment to the Mr. Smith case, but he’d been overruled. He had watched Pierce, listened to him, and became more and more convinced that Pierce was involved-at least with the death of Isabella Calais.

Pierce never seemed to make a mistake, though. He covered all of his tracks. Then a break came. Pierce was seen in Frankfurt, Germany, on the same day a victim disappeared there. Pierce was supposed to be in Rome.

It was enough for Kyle to approve a search of Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Nothing was found. Kyle brought in computer experts. They suspected that Pierce might be sending himself messages, supposedly from Smith, but there was no proof. Then Pierce was seen in Paris on the day Dr. Abel Sante disappeared. His logs stated that he was in London all day. It was circumstantial, but Kyle knew he had his killer.

So did I.

Now we needed concrete proof.

Nearly fifty FBI agents were in the Princeton area, which seemed like the last place in the world where a shocking crime ought to occur, or a notorious murder spree end.

Sampson and I waited in the front seat of a dark sedan parked on an anonymous-looking street. We weren’t part of the main surveillance team, but we stayed close. We were never more than a mile, or at most two, from Pierce. Sampson was restless and irritable through the early night. It had gotten excruciatingly personal between him and Pierce.

I had a very personal reason to be in Princeton myself. I wanted a crack at Simon Conklin. Unfortunately, Pierce was between me and Conklin for now.

We were a few blocks from the Marriott in town where Pierce was staying.

“Quite a plan,” Sampson mumbled as we sat and waited.

“The FBI tried just about everything else. Kyle thinks this will work. He feels Pierce couldn’t resist solving the attack on my house. It’s the ultimate competition for him. Who knows?”

Sampson’s eyes narrowed. I knew the look-sharp, comprehending. “Yeah, and you had no part in any of the hinky shit, right?”

“Maybe I did offer a suggestion about why the setup might be attractive to Thomas Pierce, to his huge ego. Or why he might be cocky enough to get caught.”

Sampson rolled his eyes back into his forehead, the way he’d been doing since we were about ten years old. “Yeah, maybe you did. By the way, he’s an even bigger pain in the ass than you are to work with. Anal as shit, to coin a phrase.”

We waited on the side street in Princeton as night blanketed the university town. It was déjà vu all over again. John Sampson and Alex Cross on stakeout duty.

“You still love me,” Sampson said and gri

I put my hand high on his thigh. “Sure do, big fellow.”

He punched me in the shoulder-hard. My arm went numb. My fingers tingled. The man can hit.

“I want to put the hurt on Thomas Pierce! I’m going to put the hurt on Pierce!” Sampson yelled out in the car.

“Put the hurt on Thomas Pierce,” I yelled with him. “And Mr. Smith, too!”

“Put the hurt on Mr. Smith and Mr. Pierce,” we sang in unison, doing our imitation of the Bad Boys movie.

Yeah!

We were back. Same as it ever was.

Chapter 106

THOMAS PIERCE felt that he was invincible, that he couldn’t be stopped.

He waited in the dark, trancelike, without moving. He was thinking about Isabella, seeing her beautiful face, seeing her smile, hearing her voice. He stayed like that until the living room light was switched on and he saw Simon Conklin.

“Intruder in the house,” Pierce whispered. “Sound familiar? Ring any bells for you, Conklin?”

He held a.357 Magnum pointed directly at Conklin’s forehead. He could blow him right out the front door and down the porch stairs.

“What the-?” Conklin was blinky-eyed in the bright light. Then his dark eyes grew beady and hard. “This is unlawful entry!” Conklin screamed. “You have no right to be here in my house. Get the hell out!”

Pierce couldn’t hold back a smile. He definitely got the humor in life, but sometimes he didn’t take enough pleasure in it. He got up out of the chair, holding the gun perfectly still in front of him.

There wasn’t much space to move in the living room, which was filled with tall stacks of newspapers, books, clippings, and magazines. Everything was categorized by date and subject. He was pretty sure that not-so-Simple Simon had an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“Downstairs. We’re going to your basement,” he said. “Down to the cellar.”

The light was already on downstairs. Thomas Pierce had gotten everything ready. An old cot was set up in the center of the crowded basement room. He had cleared away stacks of survivalist and sci-fi books to make room for the cot.