Jack & Jill

killer, but then again, neither did she.
He looks a little like an airline pilot,
Sara thought as she sized him up.
A successful Washington lawyer?
He was over six feet tall, trim and fit. He had a strong, confident face. And he also had the brightest, clearest blue eyes. He had a sensitive, gentle look about him. Not at all what she had expected. She liked him immediately. She knew that they agreed on the important things in life, that they shared a vision.
    “You’re looking at me as if I’m supposed to be a bad person, and you’re surprised that I’m not,” he’d said as he sat across from her at the café. “I’m not a bad person, Sara. You can call me Sam, by the way. I’m a pretty good guy, actually.”
    No, Sam was much better than that. He was amazing—extremely smart, strong, and yet always considerate of her feelings, and committed to their cause. Sara Rosen had fallen in love with him within a week of their meeting. She knew that she shouldn’t, but she had; and now here they were. Living this secret life.
    Playing the game of life and death as a guinea hen slowly spun on the spit. Sitting before a cozy fire. Thinking about making love—at least, she was. She thought about being with Sam,
with Jack,
all the time. She loved it when he was inside her.
    “This roll should do it,” Sam said, and he handed her the dice. “Your turn. Six rolls for each of us. You do the honors, Sara.”
    “Here we go, huh?”
    “Yes, here we go again.”
    Sara Rosen’s heart began to thunder. She could feel it
thump, thump
under her blouse. She had the paralyzing thought that this single roll of the dice was like the murder itself. It was almost as if she were pulling the trigger right now.
    Who was going to die next? It was all in her hand, wasn’t it? Who would it be?
    She squeezed the three dice incredibly tight. Then she shook them and let the dice go, watched them wobble and roll forward and then stop abruptly, as if someone had pulled an invisible string. She quickly added up the number of the roll—
nine.
    Sam picked up the marker and counted off nine places, nine photographs.
    She stared down at the face of the next target, the next celebrity to die. It was a woman!
    It’s for the cause,
she told herself, but Sara Rosen’s heart continued to beat loudly all the same.
    The next victim was a very famous woman.
    Washington, the whole world, would be shocked and outraged for a second time.

CHAPTER
8

    SAMPSON AND I walked into the fog-shrouded heart of Garfield Park, which borders the Anacostia River and the Eisenhower Freeway and isn’t far from the Sojourner Truth School.
The color of truth is gray,
I was thinking as we entered the ground smog.
Always gray.
We weren’t out for an early-morning run—we were hurrying to the place where Shanelle Green had actually been murdered, her skull crushed by some fiend.
    Several uniforms, a captain, and another detective were already at the homicide scene. A dozen or so casual onlookers were on hand—looky-loos. Search dogs originally brought in from Georgia had led a search party to the murder site. I could see Sixth Street from the thicket of evergreens where the killer had brutally savaged the little girl. I could almost see the Sojourner Truth School.
    “Think he carried the body out of here to the schoolyard?” Sampson asked. His tone of voice indicated he didn’t believe it. Neither did I. So how did the little girl’s body get to the schoolyard?
    A bright red balloon floated a couple of feet above the overgrown bushes where the terrible murder had occurred.
    “O
marks the spot?” Sampson asked. “That balloon the marker?”
    “I don’t know … I wonder,” I muttered as I pushed aside the thick evergreen branches and made my way into the hideaway. The smell of pine was heavy, even in the cold air. Reminded me that the Christmas season was here.
    I could feel the presence of the killer inside the tree branches, challenging me. I sensed Shanelle’s presence as well, as if she were trying to tell me something. I wanted to be alone in here for a moment or two.
    It was a small clearing where the murder had actually taken place. Dried blood was on the ground and had even splashed across some of the branches.
He lured her in here. How did he do that? She’d be suspicious, or scared, unless she knew him from the neighborhood.
It suddenly struck me.
The balloon!
It was just a guess, but it seemed right to me.
The red balloon could have been the