Jack & Jill

eighty-one-year-old grandmother held my hand in both of hers. I told her what I knew so far. She was shaking slightly and that wasn’t like her, either. She is not a weak person, not in any way. She rarely shows her fear to anyone, even me. Nana Mama does not seem to be losing anything of herself; instead, she is becoming more luminous and concentrated.
    “I feel so bad about this killing at the Sojourner Truth School,” Nana said, and her head lowered.
    “I know. It’s all I’ve thought about today. I’m working every angle I can.”
    “You know much about Sojourner Truth, Alex?”
    “I know she was a powerful abolitionist, an ex-slave.”
    “Sojourner Truth should be talked about when they mention Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alex. She couldn’t read, so she memorized most of the Bible for her teaching. She actually helped stop segregation of the transportation system here in Washington. And now we have this abomination at the school named in her honor.
    “Catch him, Alex,”
Nana suddenly whispered in a low, almost desperate, voice. “Please catch this terrible man. I can’t even say the name they call him—this
Chucky.
He’s real, Alex. He’s not a made-up bogeyman.”
    I would definitely try my damnedest. I was on the murder case. I was chasing down the chimera as best I could.
    My mind was working overtime already.
A child molester? Boys and girls. Now a child killer? Chop-It-Off-Chucky? Was he real, or had he been made up by frightened children? Was he a chimera? Had he murdered Shanelle Green?
    I needed to pound the piano on our porch for a little while after Nana went up to bed. I played “Jazz Baby” and “The Man I Love,” but the piano wasn’t the ticket that night.
    Just before I fell off to sleep, I remembered something. Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick had been murdered in Georgetown. What a day it had been. What a nightmare.
    Two of them.

CHAPTER
7

    JACK AND JILL.
    Sam and Sara.
    Whoever they really were,
the two of them Jay on their stomachs on a tasteful, knock-off Persian rug in the small living room of her Washington pied-à-terre. It was a kind of safe house. A fire blazed and crackled; fragrant apple logs were being crisped. They were playing a board game on the rug, which covered a hatched parquet floor. It was a special game. Unique in every way.
The game of life and death,
they called it.
    “I feel like a damn Washington, D.C., Georgetown University white liberal yuppie,” Sam Harrison said and smiled at the unlikely image created in his mind.
    “Hey, I resemble that remark.” Sara Rosen made a pouting face. She was kidding. She and Sam weren’t yuppies. Sam certainly wasn’t.
    And yet a guinea hen
was
roasting in the kitchen, the aroma sweetening the air. They
were
playing a parlor game on the living room rug.
    The game wasn’t anything like Monopoly or Risk, though.
    Actually, they were playing a game to choose their next murder target. In turn, they calmly rolled the dice, then moved a marker around a rectangle of photos. The photos were of very famous people.
    The board game was important to Jack and Jill. It was a game of chance. It made it impossible for the police or FBI to predict their movements or their motive.
    If
there was a motive. But
of course
there was a motive.
    Sam rolled the dice again. Then he moved the marker. Sara watched him in the warm, flickering glow of the fire. Her eyes glazed over slightly. She was remembering their very first meeting, the initial contact between them. The beginning of everything that was happening now.
    This was how the complex and beautiful and very mysterious game had begun.
They had agreed to meet at a coffee shop inside a bookstore in downtown D.C. Sara had arrived first, her heart trapped in her throat. Everything about the meeting was
insane,
maybe dangerously insane, and insanely irresistible to her. She couldn’t pass up this chance, this opportunity, or especially this cause. The cause was everything to her.
    At the time of their first meeting, she had no idea what Sam Harrison would look like, and she was surprised and delighted when he sat at her table. He excited her.
    She had seen him enter the coffeehouse area,-watched him order espresso and a scone. She hadn’t imagined that the dreamy-looking man at the counter would turn out to be Harrison, though.
    So this was
The Soldier.
This was her potential partner. He kind of fit in at the bookstore. He would fit in anywhere. He didn’t look like a