Cat & Mouse

“Don’t come any closer. Just stay there,” he said. It was a command.

“Who am I talking to? Thomas Pierce, or Mr. Smith?”

Pierce shrugged. “Don’t play shrink games with me. I’m smarter than you are.”

I nodded. Why argue with him-with Pierce, or was it Mr. Smith?

“I murdered Isabella Calais,” he said slowly. His eyes became hooded. He almost looked in a trance. “I murdered Isabella Calais.”

He pressed the scalpel to his chest, ready to stab himself again, to pierce. I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t.

This man wants to cut into his own heart, I thought to myself. Everything has come full circle to this. Is Mr. Smith S? Of course he is.

“You never got rid of any of Isabella’s things,” I said. “You kept her pictures up.”

Pierce nodded. “Yes, Dr. Cross. I was mourning her, wasn’t I?”

“That’s what I thought at first. It’s what the people at the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico believed. But then I finally got it.”

“What did you get? Tell me all about myself.” Pierce mocked. He was lucid. His mind still worked quickly.

“The other murders-you didn’t want to kill any of them, did you?”

Thomas Pierce glared. He focused on me with a sheer act of will. His arrogance reminded me of Soneji. “So why did I?”

“You were punishing yourself. Each murder was a reenactment of Isabella’s death. You repeated the ritual over and over. You suffered her death each time you killed.”

Thomas Pierce moaned. “Ohhh, ohhh. I murdered her here. In this bed!…Can you imagine? Of course you can’t. No one can.”

He raised the scalpel above his body.

“Pierce, don’t!”

I had to do something. I rushed him. I threw myself at him, and the scalpel jammed into my right palm. I screamed in pain as Pierce pulled it out.

I grabbed at the folded yellow-and-white-flowered comforter and pressed it against Pierce’s chest. He was fighting me, flopping around like a man having a seizure.

“Alex, no. Alex, look out!” I heard Sampson call out from behind me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was moving fast toward the bed. “Alex, the scalpel!” he yelled.

Pierce was still struggling beneath me. He screamed obscenities. His strength was amazing. I didn’t know where the scalpel was, or if he still had it.

“Let Smith kill Pierce!” he screeched.

“No,” I yelled back. “I want you alive.”

Then the unthinkable-again.

Sampson fired from point-blank range. The explosion was deafening in the small bedroom. Thomas Pierce’s body convulsed on the bed. Both his legs kicked high in the air. He screeched like a badly wounded animal. He sounded inhuman-like an alien.

Sampson fired a second time. A strange guttural sound came from Pierce’s throat. His eyes rolled way back in his head. The whites showed. The scalpel dropped from his hand.

I shook my head. “No, John. No more. Pierce is dead. Mr. Smith is dead, too. May he rest in hell.”

Epilogue. Home Again, Home Again

Chapter 130

I WAS DRAINED of all feeling, slightly wounded and bandaged, but at least I got home safe and sound and in time to say good night to the kids. Damon and Jannie now had their own rooms. They both wanted it that way. Nana had given Jannie her room on the second floor. Nana had moved down to the smaller bedroom near the kitchen, which suited her fine.

I was so glad to be there, to be home again.

“Somebody’s been decorating in here,” I said as I peeked into Jannie’s new digs. It surprised her that I was home from the wars. Her face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern on Halloween.

“I did it myself.” Jannie pumped up her arms and “made muscles” for me. “Nana helped me hang the new curtains, though. We made them on the sewing machine. You like?”

“You’re the hostess with the mostes’. I guess I missed all the fun,” I told her.

“You sure did,” Jannie said and laughed. “C’mere you,” she said.

I went over to my little girl, and she gave me one of the sweetest hugs in the long and sometimes illustrious history of fathers and daughters. I felt so safe in her arms.

Then I went to Damon’s room, and because it had been both Damon and Jannie’s room for so long, I was taken aback, shook up with the change.

Damon had chosen a sporting decor with monster and comedy movie accents. Manly, yet sensitive. I liked what he’d done to his room. It was pure Damon.

“You’ve got to help me with my room,” I told him.

“We missed our boxing lesson tonight,” he said, not in the tone of a major complaint, just setting the record straight.

We settled for wrestling on his bed, but I also had to agree to a double boxing lesson in the basement the following night. Actually, I couldn’t wait. Damon was growing up too fast. So was Jannie. I couldn’t have been happier with either of them.

I was a lucky man.

I had made it home again.

Chapter 131

I WAS TRYING to live my life differently, but it’s hard to change old habits. I had a saying I really liked: heart leads head.

I was working on that too. I was going for it tonight.