Cat & Mouse - James Patterson [114]
I remembered something Mr. Smith had written in one of his messages to Pierce, which Pierce had then passed on to the FBI. The god within us is the one that gives the laws and can change the laws. And God is within us.
The words had seemed familiar to me, and I finally tracked down the source. The quote was from Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist and folklorist who had taught at Harvard when Pierce was a student there.
I was trying different perspectives to the puzzle. Two entry points in particular interested me.
First, Pierce was curious about language. He had studied linguistics at Harvard. He admired Noam Chomsky. What about language and words, then?
Second, Pierce was extremely organized. He had created the false impression that Mr. Smith was disorganized. He had purposely misled the FBI and Interpol.
Pierce was leaving clues from the start. Some of them were obvious.
He wants to be caught. So why doesn’t he stop himself?
Murder. Punishment. Was Thomas Pierce punishing himself, or was he punishing everybody else? Right now, he was certainly punishing the hell out of me. Maybe I deserved it.
Around three o’clock, I took a stroll and picked up Damon and Jannie at the Sojourner Truth School. Not that they needed someone to walk them home. I just missed the hell out of them. I needed to see them, couldn’t keep myself away.
Besides, my head ached and I wanted to get out of the house, away from all of my thoughts.
I saw Christine in the schoolyard. She was surrounded by little children. I remembered that she wanted to have kids herself. She looked so happy, and I could see that the kids loved to be around her. Who in their right mind wouldn’t. She made it look so natural to be turning jump rope in a navy business suit.
She smiled when she saw me approaching across the schoolyard full of kids. The smile warmed the cockles of my heart, and all my other cockles as well.
“Look who’s taking a break for air,” she said, “three potato, four.”
“When I was in high school,” I told her as she continued to turn her end of a Day-Glo pink jump rope, “I had a girlfriend over at John Carroll. This was in my sophomore and junior years.”
“Mmm, hmmm. Nice Catholic girl? White blouse, plaid skirt, saddle shoes?”
“She was very nice. Actually, she’s a botanist now. See, nice? I used to walk all the way over to South Carolina Avenue just on the off chance I might see Jeanne for a couple of minutes after she finished school. I was seriously smitten.”
“Must have been the saddle shoes. Are you trying to tell me that you’re smitten again?” Christine laughed. The kids couldn’t quite hear us, but they were laughing anyway.
“I am way beyond smitten. I am smote.”
“Well that’s good,” she said and continued to turn the pink rope and smile at her kids, “because so am I. And when this case is over, Alex—”
“Anything you want, just say the word.”
Her eyes brightened even more than was usual. “A weekend away from everything. Maybe at a country inn, but anywhere remote will do just fine.”
I wanted to hold Christine so much. I wanted to kiss her right there, but that wasn’t going to happen in the crowded schoolyard.
“It’s a date,” I said. “It’s a promise.”
“I’ll hold you to it. Smote, that’s good. We can try that on our weekend away.”
CHAPTER 124
BACK HOME, I worked on the Pierce case until supper time. I ate a quick meal of hamburgers and summer squash with Nana and the kids. I took some more heavy heat for being an incurable and unrepentant workaholic. Nana cut me a slice of pie, and I retreated to my room again. Well fed, but deeply unsatisfied.
I couldn’t help it—I was worried. Thomas Pierce might already have grabbed another victim. He could be performing an “autopsy” tonight. He could send us a message at any time.
I reread the notes I had plastered on the bedroom wall. I felt as if the answer were on the tip of my tongue and it was driving me crazy. People’s lives