“You didn't. Somebody nailed you. Somebody set you up with the press. It's a lot of bull.”
“It's bullshit,” Damon blurted. “Right, Big Daddy?”
“This is Jezzie,” I said to the kids. “We work together sometimes.” The kids were getting used to Jezzie, but they were still a little shy. Jannie was trying to hide behind her brother. Damon had both hands stuffed in his back pockets, just like his dad.
Jezzie went down on her haunches; she got down to their size. She shook hands with Damon, then with Janelle. It was a good instinctive move on her part.
“Your daddy is the best policeman I ever saw,” she told Damon.
“I know that. ” He accepted the compliment graciously.
“I'm Janelle. ” Janelle surprised me by offering her name to Jezzie.
I could tell she wanted a hug. Janelle loves hugs more than anyone ever put on this earth. That's where she got one of her many nicknames, “ Velcro. ”
Jezzie sensed it, too. She reached out and hugged Jannie. It was a neat little scene to watch. Damon immediately decided to join in. It was the thing to do. It was as if their long-lost best friend had suddenly returned from the wars.
After a minute or so, Jezzie stood up again. At that moment it struck me that she was a real nice person, and that I hadn't met too many of those during the investigation. Her house visit was thoughtful, but also a little brave. Southeast is not a great neighborhood for white women to travel in, even one who was probably carrying a gun. I 'Well, I just stopped by for a few hugs. “ She winked to me. ”Actually, I have a case not too far from here. Now I'm off to be a workaholic again."
“How about some hot coffee?” I asked her. I thought I could manage the coffee. Nana probably had some in the kitchen that was only five or six hours old.
S. he squinted a look at me and she started to smile again.
“Two nice kids, nice Sunday morning at home with them. You're not such a tough guy after all.”
“No, I'm a tough guy, too,” I said. "I just happen to be a tough guy who finds his way home by Sunday morning.
'Okay, Alex.“ She kept her smile turned on. ”Just 't let this newspaper nonsense get you down. Nobody believes the funny pages, anyway. I've got to go. I'll take a rain check on the coffee." Jezzie Flanagan opened the front door and started to leave. She waved to the kids as the door was closing behind her.
“So long, Big Daddy,” she said to me and grinned.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 31
FRER JEZZIE FLANAGAN had finished her business in Southeast, she drove out to the farm where Gary Soneji had buried the two children. She had been there twice before, but a lot of things still bothered her about the farm in Maryland. She was obsessive as hell, anyway. She figured that nobody wanted to catch Soneji any more than she did.
Jezzie ignored the crime scene signage and sped down the rutted dirt road to a cluster of buildings in disrepair. She distinctly remembered everything about the place. There was the main farmhouse, a garage for machinery, and the barn where the kids had been kept.
Why this place? she asked herself. Why here, Soneji? What should it tell her about who he really is?
Jezzie Flanagan had been a whiz-kid investigator since the day she'd first entered the Secret Service. She'd come there with an honors law degree from the University of Virginia, and Treasury had tried to steer her toward the FBI, where nearly half the agents had
173 law degrees. But Jezzie had surveyed the situation and chosen the Service, anyway, where the law degree would make her stand out more. She'd worked eightyand hundred-hour weeks from the beginning, right up to the present. She'd been a shooting star for one reason: she was smarter and tougher than any of the men she worked with, or the ones she worked for. She was more driven. But Jezzie had known from the beginning that, if she ever made a big mistake., her starship would crash. She'd known it. There was only one solution. She had to find Gary Soneji, somehow. She had to be the one.
She walked the farmhouse grounds until darkness fell. Then she walked them again with a flashlight. Jezzie scribbled down notes, trying to find some missing connection. Maybe it did have something to do with the old Lindbergh case, the so-called crime of the century from the 1930s.
Son of Lindbergh?
The Lindbergh place in Hopewell, New Jersey, had been a farmhouse, too.
Baby Lindbergh had been buried not far from the kidnap site.
Bruno Hauptmann, the Lindbergh kidnapper, had beenfrom New York City. Could the kidnapper in Washington be some kind of distant relative? Could he be from somewhere near Hopewell? Maybe Princeton? How could nothing have turned up on Soneji so far:'
Before she left the farm, Jezzie sat in her town car. She turned on the engine, the heat, and just sat there. Obsessing. Lost in her thoughts.
Where was Gary Soneji? How had he disappeared?
Nobody can just disappear nowadays. No one is that smart.
Then she thought about Maggie Rose Dunne and “Shrimpie” Goldberg, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. She couldn't stop sobbing. That was the real reason she'd come out to the farmhouse, she knew. Jezzie Flanagan had to let herself cry.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 32
MAGGIE ROSE was in complete darkness.
She didn't know how long she had been there.
A long, long time, though. She couldn't remember when she'd eaten last. Or when she'd seen or talked to anybody, except the voices inside her head.
She wished somebody would come right now. She held that thought in her head-for hours. She even wished the old woman would come back and scream at her. She'd begun to wonder why she was being punished; what she'd done that was so wrong. Had she been bad, and deserved all this to happen to her? She was starting to think that she must have been a bad person for all these terrible things to be happening.
She couldn't cry again. Not even if she wanted to. She couldn't cry anymore.
A lot of the time, she thought she must be dead. Maggie Rose almost didn't feel things now. Then she would pinch herself really hard. Even bite herself. One time she bit her finger until it bled. She tasted her own
176 warm blood and it was weirdly wonderful. Her time in the dark seemed to go on forever. The darkness was a tiny room like a closet. She Suddenly, Maggie Rose heard voices outside. She couldn't hear well enough to understand what was being said, but there were definitely voices. The old woman? Must be. Maggie Rose wanted to call out, but she was frightened of the old woman. Her awful screaming, her threats, her scratchy voice that was worse than horror movies her mother didn't even like her to watch. Worse than Freddy Krueger by miles. The voices stopped. She couldn't hear anything, not even when she pressed her ear against the closet door. They had gone away. They were leaving her in there forever.
She tried to cry, but no tears would come. Then Maggie Rose started to scream. The door suddenly burst open and she was blinded by the most beautiful light.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 33
N THE NIGHT OF JANUARY I 1, Gary Murphy was cozy and safe in his basement. Nobody knew that he was down there, but if snoopy Missy happened to open the basement door, he'd just flick on the lamp at his workbench. He was thinking everything through. One more time for good measure.
He was becoming nicely obsessed with murdering Missy and Roni, but he thought that he wouldn't do it just yet. Still, the fantasy was rich. To murder your own family had a certain homespun style to it It wasn't very imaginative, but the effect would be neat: the icy chill racing through the serene, dippity-doo suburban community. All the other families doing the most ironic thing-locking their doors, locking themselves in together.
Around midnight he realized that his little family had gone to bed without him. No one had even bothered to call down to him. They didn't care. A hollow roar was
178 starting inside his head. He needed about a half-dozen Nuprins to stop the white noise for a while.
Mayb
e he would torch the perfect little house on Central Avenue. Torching houses was good for the soul. He'd done it before; he'd do it again. God, his whole skull ached as if somebody'd been hitting it with a ball peen hammer. Was something physically the matter with him? Was it possible he was going mad this time?
He tried to think about the Lone Eagle@arles Lindbergh. That didn't work, either. In his mind, he revisited the farmhouse in Hopewell Junction. No good. That mind-trip was getting old, too.
He was world famous himself, for Chrissakes. He was famous now. Everybody in the world knew about him. He was a media star all over Planet Dearth.
. He finally left the cellar, and then the house in Wilmington. It was just past five-thirty in the morning. As he walked outside to the car, he felt like an animal, suddenly on the loose.
He drove back to D.C. There was more work to do there. He didn't want his public to be disappointed, did he?
He thought he had a treat for everyone now. Don't get comfortable with me!
Around eleven that morning, Tuesday, Gary Murphy lightly tapped the front doorbell of a well-kept brick townhouse on the edge of Capitol Hill. Bing-bong went a polite door chime inside.
The sheer danger of the situation, of his being in Washington again, gave him a nice chill. This was a lot better than being in hiding. He felt alive again, he could breathe, he had his own space.
Vivian Kim kept the lock chain on, but she opened the door about a foot. She'd seen the familiar uniform of Washington's PEPCO public utilities service through the peephole.
Pretty lady, Gary remembered from the Washington Day School. Long black braids. Cute little upturned nose. She clearly didn't recognize him as a blond. No mustache. Little flesh off the cheeks and chin.
“Yes? What is it? Can I help you?” she asked the man standing on her porch. Inside the house, jazzy music was playing. Thelonious.
“I hope it's the other way around.” He smiled pleasantly. "Somebody called about an overcharge on the electric.
Vivian Kim frowned and shook her head. She had a tiny map of Korea hanging from rawhide around her neck. “I didn't call anybody. I know I didn't call PEPCO.” “Well, somebody called us, miss.”
“Come back some other time,” Vivian Kim told him. "Maybe my boyfriend called. You'll have to come back. I'm sony.
Gary shrugged his shoulders. This was so delicious. He didn't want it to end. “I guess. You can call us again if you like,” he said. “Get on the schedule again. It's an overcharge, though. You paid too much.”
“Okay. I hear you. I understand.”
Vivian Kim slowly stripped away the chain and opened the door. Gary stepped into the apartment. He pulled a long hunting knife from under his work jacket.
He pointed it at the teacher's face. “Don't scream. Do not scream, Vivian.”
“How do you know my name?” she asked. “Who are you?”
“Don't raise your voice, Vivian. There's no reason to be afraid.... I've done this before. I'm just your garden-variety robber. ”
“What do you want?” The teacher had begun to tremble.
Gary thought for a second before he answered her scared-rabbit question. “I want to send out another message over the TV, I guess. I want the fame I so richly deserve,” he finally said. “I want to be the scariest man in America. That's why I work in the capital. I'm Gary. Don't you remember me, Viv?”
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 34
AMPSON AND I raced down C Street in the heart of
Capitol Hill. I could hear the breath inside my nose as I ran. My arms and legs felt disjointed.
Squad cars from the department and EMS ambulances had the street completely blocked off. We'd had to park on F Street and sprint the last couple of blocks. WJLATV was already there. So was CNN. Sirens screamed everywhere.
I spotted a clique of reporters up ahead. They saw Sampson and me coming. We're about as hard to miss as the Harlem Globetrotters in Tokyo.
“Detective Cross? Dr. Cross?” the reporters called out, trying to slow us down.
“No comment,” I waved them off. “From either of us - Get the fuck out of the way.”
Inside Vivian Kim's apartment, Sampson and I passed all the familiar faces-techies, forensics, the DOA gang in their ghoulish element.
“I don't want to do this anymore,” Sampson said.
“Whole world's flowing down the piss-tubes. It's too much, even for me.”
“We burn out,” I mumbled to him, “we burn out together. ”
Sampson grabbed my hand and held it. That told me he was as fucked up about this as he got. We went inside the first bedroom on the right side of the hallway. I tried to be still inside. I couldn't do it.
Vivian Kim's bedroom was beautifully laid out. Lots of exquisite, black-and-white family photographs and art posters covered most of the wall space. An antique violin was hung on one wall. I didn't want to look at the reason I was there. Finally, I had to.
Vivian Kim was pinned to the bed with a long hunting knife. It was driven through her stomach. Both her breasts had been removed. Her pubic hair had been shaved. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, as if she had seen something unfathomable during her last moments.
I let my eyes wander around the bedroom. I couldn't look at Vivian Kim's mutilated body. I stared at a splash of bright color on the floor. I caught my breath. Nobody had said anything about it on the way up. Nobody had noticed the most important clue. Fortunately, nobody had moved the evidence. “Look at this here.” I showed Sampson.
Maggie Rose Dunne's second sneaker was lying on Vivian Kim's bedroom floor. The killer was leaving what the pathologists call “artistic touches.” He'd left an overt message this time-the signature of signatures. I was shaking as I bent down over the little girl's sneaker. Here was the most sadistic humor at work. The pink sneaker, in shocking contrast to the bloody crime scene.
Gary Soneji had been in the bedroom. Soneji was the project killer, too. He was The Thing. And he was back in town.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 35
ARY SONEJI was still in Washington, indeed. He as sending out special-delivery messages to his fans. There was a difference now. He was baiting us, too. Sampson and I got a dispensation from The
Jefe: we could work on the kidnapping as long as it was linked to the other murder investigations. It definitely was.
“This is our day off, so we must be having fun,”
Sampson said to me as we walked the streets of South east. It was the thirteenth of January. Bitter cold. Folks had fires blazing in the garbage cans on almost every street corner. One of the brothers had FUC U 2 razor cut on the back of his head. My sentiments exactly.
“Mayor Monroe doesn't call anymore. Doesn't write,” I said to Sampson. I watched my breath launch clouds in the freezing air.
“See, there is a silver lining,” he said into the wind.
“He'll come around when we catch The Thing. He'll be there to take all the bows for us.”
We walked along, goofing on the situation and on each other. Sampson rapped lyrics from pop songs, something he does a lot. That morning, it was “Now That We've Found Love. ” Heavy D &The Boyz. “Rev me up, rev me up, you're my little buttercup, ” Sampson kept saying, as if the lyrics made sense out of everything.
We were canvassing Vivian Kim's neighborhood, which was on the edge of Southeast. Canvassing a neighborhood is mind-numbing work, even for the young and uninitiated. “Did you see anyone or anything unusual yesterday?” we asked anybody dumb enough to open their doors for us. “Did you notice any strangers, strange cars, anything that sticks out in your mind? Let us decide whether it's important.”
As usual, nobody had seen a thing. Nada de nada. Nobody was happy to see us, either, especially as we moved into Southeast on our canvass.
To top it off, the temperature was about three degrees with the windchill. It was sleeting. The streets and sidewalks were covered with icy slush. A couple of times we join
ed the street people warming themselves over their garbage-can fires.
“You motherfuckin' cops always cold, even in the, summer,” one of the young fucks said to us. Both Sampson and I laughed. We finally trudged back toward our car around six. We were beaten up. We'd blown a long day. Nothing good had come of it. Gary Soneji had disappeared into thin air again. I felt as if I were in a horror movie.
“Want to go out a few extra blocks?” I asked Sampson. I was feeling desperate enough to try the slot ma chines in Atlantic City. Soneji was playing with us. Maybe he was watching us. Maybe the fucker was invis ible.
Sampson shook his head. “No mas, sugar. I want to drink at least a case of brew. Then I just might do some serious drinking.”
He wiped slush off his sunglasses, then put them on again. It's weird how well I know his every move. He's been dusting his glasses like that since he was twelve. Through rain or sleet or snow.
“Let's do the extra blocks,” I said. “For Ms. Vivian. Least we can do - ”
"I knew you were going to say. that.
We filed into the apartment of a Mrs. Quillie McBride at around six-twenty that night. Quillie and her friend Mrs. Scott were seated at the kitchen table. Mrs. Scott had something to tell us that she thought might help. We were there to listen to anything she had to say. If you ever go through D.C.'s Southeast, or the north section of Philadelphia, or Harlem in New York, on a Sunday morning, you'll still see ladies like Mrs. McBride and her friend Willie Mae Randall Scott. These ladies wear blousy shirts and faded gabardine skirts. Their usual accoutrements include feathered hats and thick-heeled, lace-up shoes that bunch their feet like sausage links. They are coming or going from various churches. In the case of Willie Mae, who is a Jehovah's Witness, they distribute the Watchtower magazine.
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