Cat & Mouse

He walked just south of popular Jenkinson’s Pier and the much newer Seaquarium. The boarded-up arcades of the amusement part were tightly packed along the beach shoulder. The small, grayish buildings looked forlorn and mute in their shuttered state.

As usual, music ran through his head-first Elvis Costello’s “Clubland,” then Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21, then “Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham. The savage beast inside him wasn’t calmed, not even close, but at least he could feel a beat.

It was quarter to four in the morning and even the surfcasting fishermen weren’t out yet. He’d seen only one police patrol car so far. The police in the tiny beach town were a joke anyway.

Mr. Smith against the Keystone Kops.

This whole funky seashore area reminded him of Laguna Beach, at least the tourista parts of Laguna. He could still picture the surf shops that dotted the Pacific Coast Highway back home-the Southern California artifacts: Flogo sandals, Stussy T’s, neroprene gloves and wet suits, beach boots, the unmistakable smell of board wax.

He was physically strong-had a workingman’s build. He carried Anthony Bruno over one shoulder without much effort. He had cut out all the vital parts, so there wasnt’t much of Anthony anymore. Anthony was a shell. No heart, liver, intestines, lungs, or brain.

Thomas Pierce thought about the FBI’s continuing search. The Bureau’s fabled “manhunts” were overrated-a holdover from the glory days of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. He knew this to be so after years of observing the Bureau chase Mr. Smith. They would never have caught Smith, not in a hundred years.

The FBI was looking for him in all the wrong places. They would surely have “numbers,” meaning excessive force, their trademark maneuver. They would be all over the airports, probably expecting him to head back to Europe. And what about the wild cards in the search, people like Alex Cross? Cross had made his bones, no doubt about that. Maybe Cross was more than he seemed to be. At any rate, he relished the thought of Dr. Cross being in on this, too. He liked the competition.

The dead weight on his back and shoulder was starting to get heavy. It was almost morning, close to daybreak. I wouldn’t do to be found lugging a disemboweled corpse across Point Pleasant Beach.

He carried Anthony Bruno another fifty yards to a glistening white lifeguard’s chair. He climbed the creaking rungs of the chair, and propped the body in the seat.

The remains of the corpse were naked and exposed for the world to see. Quite a sight. Anthony was a clue. If anybody on the search team had half a brain and was using it properly.

“I’m not an alien. Do any of you follow that?” Pierce shouted above the ocean’s steady roar.

“I’m human. I’m perfectly normal. I’m just like you.”

Chapter 114

IT WAS all a mind game, was’t it-Pierce against the rest of us.

While I had been at his apartment in Cambridge, a team of FBI agents went out to Southern California to meet with Thomas Pierce’s family. The mother and father still lived on the same farm, between Laguna and EI Toro, where Thomas Pierce had grown up.

Henry Pierce practiced medicine, mostly among the indigent farmworkers in the area. His lifestyle was modest and the reputation of the family impeccable. Pierce had an older brother and sister, doctors in Northern California, who were also well regarded and worked with the poor.

Not a person the profilers spoke to could imagine Thomas a murderer. He’d always been a good son and brother, a gifted student who seemed to have close friends and no enemies.

Thomas Pierce fit no brief for a pattern killer that I was familiar with. He was an original.

“Impeccable” was a word that jumped out of the FBI profiler reports. Maybe Pierce didn’t want to be impeccable.

I re-reviewed the news articles and clippings about Pierce from the time of Isabella Calais’s gruesome murder. I was keeping track of the more perplexing notions on three-by-five index cards. The packet was growing rapidly.

Laguna Beach -commercial shore town. Parts similar to point Pleasant and Bay Head. Had Pierce killed in Laguna in the past? Had the disease now spread to the Northeast?

Pierce’s father was a doctor. Pierce didn’t “Make it” to Dr. Pierce, but as a med student he had performed autopsies.

Looking for his humanity when he kills? Studying humans because he fears he has no human qualities himself?

He had a dual major as an undergrad: biology and philosophy. Fan of the linguist Noam Chomsky. Or is it Chomsky’s political writings that turn Pierce on? Plays word and much games on his PowerBook.

What were we all missing so far?

What was I missing?

Why was Thomas Pierce killing all of these people?

He was “impeccable,” wasn’t he.

Chapter 115