First Daughter

As Jack listened, he put on a freshly laundered white shirt, buttoned it up. "Life on Mars?" segued into the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." As he knotted his tie, on came Screamin' Jay Hawkins singing "I Put a Spell on You," a good deal more raw and powerful than subsequent versions.

After reknotting his tie three times, he got it right. He slipped on his jacket and was about to turn off the iPod when he heard Emma's voice coming out of the speakers. He stood, transfixed, listening to the aural diary of her three meetings with Ian Brady. This was how the entry ended:

"Finally, I said to him that if he saw me as his Myra Hindley, he was sorely mistaken because I had no intention of either fucking him or falling under his spell. This was the one time he surprised me. He laughed. I had nothing to fear. He said that he already had his Myra Hindley."

YOU'LL NEVER stop it.

Stop what? What had Brady pla

Jack walked through the library's stacks. With each book he touched, he sensed a new door open to him. This was the place where his disability vanished, where he could read without the tension and frustration his dyslexia usually caused him. In the shadowed aisles he recognized Andre, Gus, Ian Brady, Emma. Each of their lives had meaning, a certain force that would remain with him even after death; of this, he was absolutely certain. Though they were beyond him now, still he sensed them, as an animal scents spoor and in its mind forms an image of what had once been there and has since moved on.

The truth was, Jack still felt the spoor of Ian Brady's mesmeric power, even though he was quite certain Brady had lied about his co

Without quite knowing how it happened, Jack found himself at the section of the library that held the books of Colin Wilson. He ran his finger along the spines of the books until he found the intimidatingly thick A Criminal History of Mankind. Taking it down, he went over to a trestle table, sat down, and opened it up.

He was astonished to discover that the introduction was all about the real Ian Brady. Wilson had had a ten-year correspondence with Brady in prison. Wilson's conclusion was "that even an intelligent criminal remains trapped in the vicious circle of his criminality, and ca

Brady was involved in what Wilson termed a "dominance syndrome" with Myra Hindley, a young woman he seduced, deflowered, and somehow coerced into being his accomplice for a horrifying string of rape/murders over a two-year period. It was Myra who lured the teenage victims into her car so Brady could perform his acts of extreme cruelty and degradation. The real mystery was how he converted a young i

Jack paused. He could not help thinking of his Brady and Emma. Emma heard what I had to say, and it drew her like a moth to a flame. Too bad she died so young-I had big plans for her. Aside from killing, mentoring's what I do best. Emma had real potential, Jack. She could have become my most ardent pupil. What had he wanted with a Myra Hindley? So far as Jack could tell, Brady was a loner-whatever missions he performed for the government were strictly on his own. Anyone with him would have been a liability. So what, then, was he up to?

Jack went back to reading. On page twenty-nine, he came across the most heinous of Brady's crimes. He and Hindley picked up a ten-year-old girl. They took pictures of her (Jack couldn't help but think of the photos of Alli and Emma on the wall at the Marmoset's house), recorded her pleas for mercy, then killed her and buried her on the moor, where another of their young victims was buried. "Later," Wilson wrote, "they took blankets and slept on the graves. It was part of the fantasy of being Enemies of Society, dangerous revolutionaries."

Sickened by what these two people had done, Jack looked up. Into his head now came something else that his Brady had said to him last night: I've had a good run, but now, like the president, my term has come to an end. And like the president, it's time for me to look to my lasting legacy.

Jack understood that Brady had wanted to die last night: he'd tried to shoot himself with Jack's Glock, he'd brushed Jack's hands away when Jack tried to save him from his fall. Might it be that this was why Brady had kept Jack alive that night, because he suspected this moment in his future would come, that he wanted someone worthy to finish him off? Truth to tell, I've run you like a rat in a maze. Every time you got to another point in the maze, I moved your cheese. Jack had not only successfully negotiated the maze, but he'd also survived the horned viper's attack, the fusillade of bullets coming through the apartment door.

So Brady knew he was going to die last night, and yet he was looking to his lasting legacy. What might that be? Not his clandestine work for the government. A lasting legacy involves notoriety-a very public display. And he had very deliberately invoked the president. Why had he done that?

Another three-dimensional puzzle was forming in Jack's head as his brain made co

You'll never stop it.

Jack stood up so fast, he nearly overturned the table. The sound of its legs banging back on the floor was like a thunderclap in his mind. As he ran out of the library, he checked his watch. As usual, he'd lost himself in thought and reading. It was far later than he'd realized. The inauguration was about to begin and, with it, Ian Brady's lasting legacy.

FORTY — EIGHT

ALLI, IT'S time to go," Nina said gently.

Sam opened the door, stepped out into the wan January sunshine. Alli could hear him whispering into his mike, listening intently to security updates. When Sam nodded, Nina urged her charge forward, and Alli emerged from the plush cocoon of the limo into the seething crowd of politicians, foreign dignitaries, celebrities, the talking heads of worldwide media outlets, religious leaders, including Reverend Taske, head of the Renaissance Mission Congress, her father's special guest, military perso

Alli took all this in as if she were watching a film. Ever since she'd heard the first bars of Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible," she'd felt as if she were back in her dream with Ro

She was nearing her parents now. Her mother kissed her; her father smiled through her. The fanfare was playing, the Speaker of the House was preparing to take the podium for the Call to Order. Among the columns of the Capitol building hung three huge American flags. Above them, the dome glittered in sunlight.