“Depends on what you think of my hunches.”
I followed forest green signs toward Storrow Drive, heading out of Boston the way we came. Traffic was heavy in that direction, too. There were too many people everywhere you went these days, too much crowding, and too much chaos, too much stress on everybody.
“Better put your vest back on,” I told Sampson.
He didn’t argue with me. Sampson reached into the backseat and fished around for our vests.
I wiggled into my own vest as I drove. “I think Thomas Pierce wants this to end. I think he’s ready now. I saw it in his eyes.”
“So, he had his chance back there in Concord. ‘Pull off the road. Pull over, Pierce!’ You remember any of that? Sound familiar, Alex?”
I glanced at Sampson. “He needs to be in control. S was for Straw, but S is also for Smith. He has it figured out, John. He knows how he wants it to end. He always knew. It’s important to him that he finish this.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sampson staring. “And? So? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you know how it ends?”
“He wants to end on S. It’s magical for him. It’s the way he has it figured, the way it has to be. It’s his mind game, and he plays it obsessively. He can’t stop playing. He told us that. He’s still playing.”
Sampson was clearly having trouble with this. We had just missed capturing Pierce an hour ago. Would he put himself at risk again? “You think he’s that crazy?”
“I think he’s that crazy, John. I’m sure of it.”
Chapter 128
HALF A DOZEN police squad cars were gathered on Inman Street in Cambridge. The blue-and-white cruisers were outside the apartment where Thomas Pierce and Isabella Calais had once lived, where Isabella had been murdered four years before.
EMS ambulances were parked near the gray stone front stoop. Sirens bleated and wailed. If we hadn’t turned around at the Callahan Tunnel we would have missed it.
Sampson and I showed our detective shields and kept on moving forward in a hurry. Nobody stopped us. Nobody could have.
Pierce was upstairs.
So was Mr. Smith.
The game had come full circle.
“Somebody called in a homicide in progress,” one of the Cambridge uniforms told us on the way up the stone front stairs. “I hear they got the guy cornered upstairs. Wackadoo of the first order.”
“We know all about him,” Sampson said.
Sampson and I took the stairs to the second floor.
“You think Pierce called all this heat on himself?” Sampson asked as we hurried up the stairs. I was beyond being out of breath, beyond pain, beyond shock or surprise.
This is how he wants it to end.
I didn’t know what to make of Thomas Pierce. He had numbed me, and all the rest of us. I was drifting beyond thought, at least logical ideas. There had never been a killer like Pierce. Not even close. He was the most alienated human being I’d ever met. Not alien, alienated.
“You still with me, Alex?” I felt Sampson’s hand gripping my shoulder.
“Sorry,” I said. “At first, I thought Pierce couldn’t feel anything, that he was just another psychopath. Cold rage, arbitrary murders.”
“And now?”
I was inside Pierce’s head.
“Now I’m wondering whether Pierce maybe feels everything. I think that’s what drove him mad. This one can feel.”
The Cambridge police were gathered everywhere in the hallway. The local cops looked shell-shocked and wild-eyed. A photograph of Isabella stared out from the foyer. She looked beautiful, almost regal, and so very sad.
“Welcome to the wild, wacky world of Thomas Pierce,” Sampson said.
A Cambridge detective explained the situation to us. He had silver-blond hair, an ageless hatchet face. He spoke in a low, confidential tone, almost a whisper. “Pierce is in the bedroom at the far end of the hall. Barricaded himself in there.”
“The master bedroom, his and Isabella’s room,” I said.
The detective nodded. “Right, the master bedroom. I worked the original murder. I hate the prick. I saw what he did to her.”
“What’s he doing in the bedroom?” I asked.
The detective shook his head. “We think he’s going to kill himself. He doesn’t care to explain himself to us peons. He’s got a gun. The powers that be are trying to decide whether to go in.”
“He hurt anybody?” Sampson spoke up.
The Cambridge detective shook his head. “No, not that we know of. Not yet.”
Sampson’s eyes narrowed. “Then maybe we shouldn’t interfere.”
We walked down the narrow hallway to where several more detectives were talking among themselves. A couple of them were arguing and pointing toward the bedroom.
This is how he wants it. He’s still in control.
“I’m Alex Cross,” I told the detective-lieutenant on the scene. He knew who I was. “What has he said so far?”
The lieutenant was sweating. He was a bruiser, and a good thirty pounds over his fighting weight. “Told us that he killed Isabella Calais, confessed. I think we knew that already. Said he was going to kill himself.” He rubbed his chin with his left hand. “We’re trying to decide if we care. The FBI is on the way.”
I pulled away from the lieutenant.
“Pierce,” I called down the hallway. The talking going on outside the bedroom suddenly stopped. “Pierce! It’s Alex Cross,” I called again. “I want to come in, Pierce!”
I felt a chill. It was too quiet. Not a sound. Then I heard Pierce from the bedroom. He sounded tired and weak. Maybe it was an act. Who knew what he would pull next?
“Come in if you want. Just you, Cross.”
“Let him go,” Sampson whispered from behind. “Alex, let it go for once.”
I turned to him. “I wish I could.”
I pushed through the group of policemen at the end of the hallway. I remembered the poster that hung there: Without God, We Are Condemned to Be Free. Was that what this was about?
I took out my gun and slowly inched open the bedroom door. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
Thomas Pierce was sprawled on the bed he had once shared with Isabella Calais.
He held a gleaming, razor-sharp scalpel in his hand.
Chapter 129
THOMAS PIERCE’S CHEST was cut wide open. He had ripped himself apart as he would a corpse at an autopsy. He was still alive, but barely. It was incredible that he was conscious and alert.
Pierce spoke to me. I don’t know how, but he did. “You’ve never seen Mr. Smith’s handiwork before?”
I shook my head in disbelief. I had never seen anything like this, not in all my years in Violent Crimes or Homicide. Flaps of skin hung over Pierce’s rib cage, exposing translucent muscle and tendons. I was afraid, repulsed, shocked-all at the same time.
Thomas Pierce was Mr. Smith’s victim. His last?
“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?”