Jack stood, the Glock pointing at the floor. "Why did you kill Gus?"

"No questions, remember? Not that it matters-you already know the answer to that one. Gus wasn't going to give up looking for me. That idiot detective, Stanz, would have finally let it go, but not Gus." Brady lazily tilted his head to one side. "But that isn't the question you really want to ask, is it?"

An icy ball formed in the pit of Jack's stomach. "What d'you mean?"

"C'mon, Jack. I killed Gus inside his house. You were asleep down the hall. You want to know why I left you alive."

Jack, realizing he was right, said nothing.

"It's a mystery, Jack, like many others in this life destined to remain unsolved."

Jack aimed the Glock at him. "You will tell me."

"Are you going to shoot me? That would be a blessing. My term would end in a blaze of glory because my bosses would lock you up and throw away the key. Lawyer, what lawyer? You wouldn't even get a phone call. No, they'll stick you in solitary in a federal high-security penitentiary." He gestured with his gun, careful not to point it at Jack. "So sit back down, have a drink."

Jack stood where he was.

"Suit yourself." Brady sighed deeply. "We're both orphans, in our own ways. I murdered my parents, as you should have."

"If you're trying to say we're alike-"

"I must say you made up for it, though, when you killed that street thug, Andre." Brady chuckled. "In a library yet. Brilliant." He took another hit of the Polish vodka. "I'm going to tell you a secret, Jack. I have not one grain of faith in me. Early in life I wanted to get past all of life's tricks, small and large, to get to the heart of things." His eyes lit up. They were the eyes of Ron Kray, Charles Whitman, Ian Brady. "Sounds familiar, doesn't it, Jack? That's your search, too." He nodded. "Instead, what have I become? Life's ultimate trickster. You see, there's nothing left of me but tricks. That's because I discovered that there is no heart of things. I think there used to be, but that was a long time ago. Life's hollow, like a tree full of burrowing insects. That's what humans are, Jack. They've burrowed into life with their frenzied civilization, their running after wealth and fame, their attempts to deny the body's decay. They're all insane. What else could they be, making such an unholy mess of things? They've hollowed life out, Jack, till there's nothing left but the shell, the illusion of happiness."

"I don't believe you."

"Ah, but it's true, and your daughter knew it. Emma heard what I had to say, and it drew her like a moth to a flame. Too bad she died so young-I had big plans for her. Aside from killing, mentoring's what I do best. Emma had real potential, Jack. She could have become my most ardent pupil."

With a savage cry, Jack launched himself at Brady, crashed into him with his leading shoulder. The chair tipped backwards, and they both tumbled head over heels in a tangle of arms and legs, fetched up against the wall under the rear window. Jack punched Brady in the nose, heard with satisfaction the cartilage fracture. Blood spouted out, covering them both. At almost the same time, Jack felt the Glock being ripped from his hand. He felt around blindly for the other gun, saw Brady raise the Glock. A moment more, he'd shoot Jack. But then Jack saw where the Glock was pointed and, in a flash of insight, knew that Brady meant to shoot himself in the head with Jack's gun. He meant what he said about going out in a blaze of glory. He was going to end his reign by ensuring that Jack would spend the rest of his life in prison.

With a desperate swing, Jack knocked the Glock from Brady's hand. It went skittering across the floor. He hauled Brady to his feet, but one foot trod on Brady's gun. It was, like everything else in the area, slippery with blood. Jack lurched forward, taking Brady with him as they pitched through the window in a blizzard of shattered glass. Brady teetered for a moment with Jack over him, the two of them in stunned equilibrium. Jack tried to pull back, to right himself, but Brady was too far. Without Jack's weight to hold him in place, he began to slide headfirst out the window. Jack made a grab for him, but Brady slapped his hands away.

Brady stared up into Jack's face without expression of any kind. "Makes no difference. You'll never stop it."

The next instant he plummeted down three stories to the concrete apron. Jack, covered in blood and shards of glass, scooped up his Glock, ran out of the apartment, along the catwalk. He clattered down the stairs three at a time, around the side of the building.

Brady lay in a grotesque heap. He might have survived the fall, but the impact had broken his neck. His handsome face, under the harsh sodium glare of the parking lot lights, was a patchwork of seams, as if over time it had been stitched together. The eyes, devoid of their animating spark, were only buttons now. Stripped of charisma, he was nothing remarkable to look at. He was dead, Jack was dripping blood, and twenty-five years of rage, sorrow, and feeling abandoned drained away like grains of sand.

FORTY — SEVEN

WALKING INTO the vast hushed public library on G Street NW put Jack immediately at peace. The dry, slightly dusty scent of books came to him like a breath of fresh air, bringing back memories of so many hours happily poring through books to his heart's content. There was a certain kind of quiet here that calmed and stirred him at the same time. It was like being in the ocean, feeling your body light and buoyant and, at the same time, attuning yourself to the galaxy of unknown life that seethed beneath the surface. The knowledge of the world lay before him, the wisdom of history. This was his cathedral. Here was God.

IT WAS the morning of January 20. Inauguration Day. For a few hours, Jack had slept in his car before waking up just before dawn stiff and tired, his eyes full of grit. He went home, stripped off his bloody clothes, climbed into a hot shower, and putting all thoughts aside, stood under the cascade for fifteen blissful minutes. Then he scrubbed himself with soap, rinsed, dried off.

Fighting the urge to call Sharon, he dialed Alli's cell.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to come by last night."

"That's okay." Her voice sounded furred with the remnants of sleep. "I missed you." There was a slight hesitation. "I had another dream last night." She meant about Ian Brady.

"Can you remember it?"

"He was talking to me, but his voice was all gauzy. It-I don't know-I had pictures in my head, like a movie. I was walking through a crowd of people."

"Were you trying to get away from him?"

"I don't know. I guess."

"Alli, you don't have to worry about him anymore."

"What d'you mean?"

He heard in her voice that she'd come fully awake.

"This is just between the two of us, right?"

"Right."

"That's why I couldn't come see you," Jack said. "I was with him. And now he'll never hurt you again."

He heard her sharply indrawn breath. "Really?"

"Really. I'll see you at the inauguration, okay? Now let me speak with Nina."

After a short pause, Nina came on the line.

"Good idea not contacting me on my cell. Are you calling from a pay phone?"

"A burner I bought a couple of days ago." He paused to stare out his bedroom window, where the branches of the oak tree reached toward the sky. "Listen, Ian Brady's history."

"What?"

"I tracked him down last night to a residence hotel in Mount Rainier, Maryland. He's dead."

"What a relief."

"Brady wanted to die, Nina. I'll give you the details after the inauguration, okay?"

"It's a date," she said. "Now I've got to get back to work."

Downstairs, he pulled the suit Chief Bennett had waiting for him those long weeks ago when he was being prepped for his assignment to Hugh Garner's joint task force. He stripped off the dry cleaning bag. He turned on Emma's iPod. He wanted to hear more of her music while he dressed. Alli had said that she was always making playlists. Seeing a playlist category in the iPod screen, he clicked on it. Oddly, there was only one, called Outside. He set it to play. Immediately, "Life on Mars?" — David Bowie's famous song about alienation-started up.