“I believe I can he'p y'all, ” Mrs. Scott said to us in a soft, sincere voice. She was probably eighty years old, but very focused and clear in her delivery.
“We'd appreciate that, ” I said. The four of us sat around the kitchen table. A plate of oatmeal cookies had been set out for the occasion of anyone's visit. A triptych with photos of the two murdered Kennedys and Martin Luther King was prominent on a kitchen wall.
“I heard about the murder of the teacher,” Mrs. Scott said for Sampson's and my benefit, “and, well, I saw a man driving around the neighborhood a month or so before the Turner murders. He was a white man. I am fortunate to still have a very good memory. I try to keep it that way by concentrating on whatever passes before these eyes. Ten years from today, I will be able to recall this interview on a moment-to-moment basis, detectives. ”
Her friend Mrs. McBride had pulled her chair beside Mrs. Scott. She didn't speak at first, though she did take Mrs. Scott's bulging arm in her hand.
“It's true. She will,” Quillie McBride said.
“One week before the Turner murders, the same white man came through the neighborhood again,” Mrs. Scott continued. “This second time, he was going door to door. He was a salesman.”
Sampson and I looked at each other. “What kind of salesman?” Sampson asked her..
Mrs. Scott allowed her eyes to drift over Sampson's face before she answered the question. I figured she was concentrating, making sure she remembered everything about him. “He was selling heating systems for the winter. I went over by his car and looked inside. A sales book of some sort was on the front seat. His company is called Atlantic Heating, out of Wilmington, Delaware. ”
Mrs. Scott looked from face to face, either to make sure that she was being clear, or that we were getting all of what she had just said.
“Yesterday, I saw the same car drive through the neighborhood. I saw the car the morning the woman on C Street was killed. I said to my friend here, 'This can't all be a coincidence, can it?' Now, I don't know if he's the one you're looking for, but I think you should talk to him.”
Sampson looked at me. Then the two of us did a rare thing of late. We broke into smiles. Even the ladies decided to join in. We had something. We had a break, finally, the first of the case.
“We're going to talk to the traveling salesman,” I said to Mrs. Scott and Quillie McBride. “We're going to Wilmington, Delaware.”
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 36
GARY MURPHY got home at a little past five on the following afternoon, January 14. He'd gone into the office, just outside Wilmington. Only a few people had been there, and he'd planned to get some useless paperwork done. He had to make things look good for a little while longer. He'd ended up thinking about larger subjects. The master plan. Gary just couldn't get serious about the paper blizzard of bills and invoices littering his desk. He kept picking up crumpled customer bills, glancing at names, amounts, addresses.
Who in their right fucking mind could care about all the invoices? he was thinking to himself. It was all so brutally small-time, so dumb and petty. Which was why the job, and Delaware, were such a good hiding spot for him.
So he accomplished absolutely nothing at the office, except blowing off a few hours. At least he'd picked up a present for Roni on the way home. He bought Roni a
190 pink bike with training wheels and streamers. He added a Barbie Dream House. Her birthday party was set for six o'clock.
Missy met him at the front door with a hug and a kiss. Positive reinforcement was her strong suit. The party gave her something to think about. She'd been off his back for days.
“Great day, honey. I kid you not. Three home visits set up for next week. Count them, three,” Gary told her. What the hell. He could be charming when he wanted to be. Mr. Chips goes to Delaware.
He followed Missy into the dining room, where she was setting out brightly colored plastic and paper for the party of parties. Missy had already hung a painted sheet on one wall-the kind they held up for foothall games at U.D., University Dumb. This one said: GO RONI-SEVEN OR BUST!
“This is pure genius, hon. You can make something out of nothing. This all looks fantastic,” Gary said. “Things are sure looking up now.”
Actually, he was starting to get a little depressed. He felt out of it and wanted to take a nap. The idea of Roni's birthday party seemed exhausting suddenly. There sure hadn't been any parties when he was a kid.
The neighbors started to arrive right at six o'clock. That was good, he thought. It meant the kids really wanted to come. They liked Roni. He could see it on all of their little Balloonhead faces.
Several of the parents stayed for the party. They were friends of his and Missy's. He dutifully played bartender while Missy started the kids on an assortment of games: Duck-Duck-Goose, Musical Chairs, Pin the Tail. rybody was having a good time. He looked at i, and she was like a spinning top.
Gary had a recurring fantasy-he murdered everyone attending a child's birthday party. A birthday partyor maybe a children's Easter egg hunt. That made him feel a little better.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 37
HE HOUSE was two-story, white-painted brick, on a wooded half-lot. It was already surrounded by cars: station wagons, Jeeps, the family vehicles of suburbia. “This can't be his house,” Sampson said as we parked on a side street. “The Thing doesn't live here. Jimmy Stewart does.”
We had found Gary Soneji-but it didn't feel fight. The monster's house was a perfect suburban beauty, a gingerbread house on a well-maintained street in Wilmington, Delaware. It was a little less than twenty-four hours since we'd spoken to Mrs. Scott in D.C. In that time, we had tracked down Atlantic Heating in Wilmington. We had gathered the original Hostage Rescue Team together.
Lights were shining through most of the house windows. A Domino's delivery truck arrived at almost the same time that we did. A lanky blond kid ran to the door with four big pizza boxes in his outstretched arms.
The delivery kid got paid, then the truck was gone as quickly as it had come.
The fact that it was a nice house in a nice neighborhood made me nervous, even more leery about the next few minutes. Soneji had always been two steps ahead of us-somehow.
“Let's move,” I said to Special Agent Scorse. “This is it, folks. The front gates of hell.”
Nine of us rushed the house-Scorse, Reilly, Craig, and two others from the Bureau, Sampson, myself, Jeb Klepner, Jezzie Flanagan. We were heavily armed and wore bulletproof vests. We wanted to end this. Right here. Right now.
I entered through the kitchen. Scorse and I came in together. Sampson was a step behind. He didn't look like a neighborhood dad arriving late for the party, either.
“Who are you men? What's going on?” a woman at the kitchen counter screamed as we burst inside.
“Where is Gary Murphy?” I asked in a loud voice. I flashed my I.D. at the same time. “I'm Alex Cross. Police. We're here in connection with the Maggie Rose Dunne kidnapping.”
“Gary's in the dining room,” a second woman, standing over a blender, said in a trembling voice. “Through here.” She pointed.
We ran down the connecting hallway. Family pictures were up on the walls. A pile of unopened presents lay on the floor. We had our revolvers drawn.
It was a terrifying moment. The children we saw were afraid. So were their mothers and fathers. There were so many innocent people here-just like Disney World, I was thinking. like the Washington Day School.
Gary Soneji wasn't anywhere in the dining room. Just more police, kids in birthday hats, pets, mothers and dads with their mouths open in disbelief.
“I think Gary went upstairs,” one of the fathers finally said. “What's going on here? What the hell is going on?”
Craig and Reilly were already crashing back down the stairs into the front hallway.
“Not up there,” Reilly yelled. One of the kids said, “I think Mr. Murphy went down to the cellar. What'
d he do?”
We ran back to the kitchen and down to the cellarScorse, Reilly, and myself. Sampson went back upstairs to double-check.
No one was anywhere in the two small cellar rooms. There was a storm door to the outside. It was closed and locked from the outside.
Sampson came down a moment later, two stairs at a clip. “I checked over the whole upstairs. He's not there! ”
Gary Soneji had disappeared again.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 38
KA Y, let's dial it up a notch! Let's do some serious rock and roll. Let's play for keeps now, Gary thought as he ran for it.
He'd had escape plans in mind since he'd been fifteen or sixteen years old. He'd known the so-called authorities would come for him someday, somehow, somewhere. He'd seen it all in his mind, in his elaborate daydreams. The only question was when. And maybe, for what? For which of his crimes?
Then they were there on Central Avenue in Wilmington! The end of the celebrated manhunt. Or was it the beginning?
Gary was like a programmed machine from the moment he spotted the police. He almost couldn't believe that what he'd fantasized so many times was actually happening. They were there, though. Special dreams do come true. If you're young at heart.
He had calmly paid the pizza delivery boy. Then he went down the stairs and out through the cellar. He used
196 a special half-hidden door and went into the garage. He relocked the door from the outside. Another side door led to a tiny alley into the Dwyers' yard. He relocked that door, also. Jimmy Dwyer's snow boots were sitting on the porch steps. Snow was on the ground. He took his neighbor's boots.
He paused between his house and the Dwyers'. He thought about letting them catch him then and theregetting caught-just like Bruno Hauptmann in the Lindbergh case. He loved that idea. But not yet. Not here.
Then he was running away, down a tight row of alleys. between the houses. Nobody but kids used the little alleyway, which was overgrown with high weeds and littered with soda cans.
He felt as if he had tunnel vision. Must have something to do with the fear he felt in every inch of his body. Gary was afraid. He had to admit that he was. Face the adrenaline facts, pal.
He ran through backyard after backyard, down good old Central Avenue. Then into the deep woods of Downing Park. He didn't see a soul on the way.
Only when he glanced back once could he see them moving toward his house. Saw the big black Kaffirs Cross and Sampson. The vastly overrated Manhunt. The Federal Bureau in all its glory.
He was sprinting now, full out toward the Metro train station, which was four blocks from the house. This was his link to Philly, Washington, New York, the outside world He must have mtide it in ten flat-something like that. He kept himself in good shape. Powerful legs and arms, a washboard-flat stomach.
An old VW was parked at the station. It was always parked there-the trusty Bug from his unholy youth. The “scene of past cfimes,” to put it mildly. Driven just enough to keep the battery alive. It was time for more fun, more games. The Son of Lindbergh was on the move again.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 39
AMPSON AND I were still at the Murphy house at well past eleven o'clock. The press was gathered behind bright yellow ropes outside. So were a cou ple of hundred close friends and neighbors from around the community of Wilmington. The town had never had a bigger night Another massive manhunt had already been set in motion along the Eastern Seaboard, but also west into
Pennsylvania and Ohio. It seemed impossible that Gary
Soneji/Murphy could get away a second time. We didn't believe he could have planned this escape the way he'd planned the one out of Washington.
One of the kids at the party had spotted a local police cruiser doing a fide-by minutes before we arrived in the neighborhood. The boy had innocently mentioned the police car to Mr. Murphy. He had escaped through sheer luck! We'd missed catching him by a few minutes at most.
Sampson and I questioned Missy Murphy for more than a hour. We were finally going to learn something ut the real Soneji/Murphy.
Missy Murphy would have fit in with the mothers of the childreo at Washington Day School. She wore her blond hair in a no-frills flip. She had on a navy skirt, white blouse, boaters. She was a few pounds overweight, but pretty.
“None of you seem to believe this, but I know Gary. I know who he is,” she told us. “He is not a kidnapper.”
She chain-smoked Marlboro Lights as she spoke. That was the only gesture thaf betrayed anxiety and pain. We talked with Mrs. Murphy in the kitchen. It was orderly and neat, even on party day. I noted Betty Crocker cookbooks stacked beside Silver Palate cookbooks and a copy of Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much. A snapshot of Gary Soneji/Murphy in a bathing suit was stuck up on the fridge. He looked like the all-American father.
“Gary is not a violent person. He can't even bear to discipline Roni,” Missy Murphy was saying to us.
That interested me. It fit a pattern of bell curves I had been studying for years: reports on sociopaths and their children. Sociopaths often had difficulty disciplining their children.
“Has he told you why he has difficulty disciplining your daughter?” I asked her.
“Gary didn't have a happy childhood himself. He wants only the best for Roni. He knows that he's compensating. He's a very bright man. He could easily have his Ph.D. in math.”
“Did Gary grow up right here in Wilmington?”
Sampson asked, Iviissy. He was soft spoken and down to earth with the woman.
“No, he grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. Gary lived there until he was nineteen.”
Sampson jotted a note, then he glanced my way. Princeton was near Hopewell, where the Lindbergh kidnapping had taken place in the 1930s. The Son of Lindbergh, Soneji had signed the ransom notes. We still didn't know why. “His family is still in Princeton?” I asked Mrs. Murphy. “Can we contact them there?”
“There's no family left now. There was a fire while Gary was at school. Gary's stepmom and d@d, his stepbrother and stepsister all died in the tragedy.”
I wanted to probe deeply into everything Missy Murphy was saying. I resisted for the moment. A fire in the house of a disturbed young man, though? Another family dead; another family destroyed. Was that Gary Soneji/Murphy's real target? Families? If so, what about Vivian Kim? Did he kill her just to show ofP “Did you know any of the family?” I asked Missy. "No. 'Mey died before Gary and I got together. The two of us met our senior year in college. I was at Delaware. I I
“What did your husband tell you about his years around Princeton?”
“Not very much. He keeps a lot inside. The Murphys lived several miles from town, I know. Tleir closest neighbor was two or three miles. Gary didn't have friends until he went to school. Even then he was often the odd man out. He can be very shy.”
“What about the brother and sister you mentioned?” son asked.
“Actually, they were his stepbrother and stepsister. That was part of Gary's problem. He wasn't close to them. ”
“Did he ever mention the Lindbergh kidnapping? Does he have any books on Lindbergh?” Sampson continued. His technique is to go for the jugular in Q & A.
Missy Murphy shook her head back and forth. “No. Not that I know of. There's a room filled with his books down in the cellar. You can look.”
“Oh, we will,” Sampson said to her.
This was rich material, and I was relieved to hear it. Before this, there had been nothing, or very little, for us to go on.
“Is his real mother alive?” I asked her.
“I don't know. Gary just won't talk about her. He won't discuss her at all.” “What about the stepmother?”
“Gary didn't like his stepmother. Apparently she was very -attached to her own children. He called her 'The Whore of Babylon.' I believe she was originally from West Babylon in New York. I think it's out on Long Island somewhere. ”
After months without any information
, I couldn't get the questions out fast enough. Everything I'd heard so far was tracking. An important question loomed: Had Gary Soneji/Murphy been telling the truth to his wife? Was he capable of telling the truth to another person?
“Mrs. Murphy, do you have any idea where he might have gone?” I asked now. “Something really frightened Gary,” she said. “I think maybe it relates to his job somehow. And to my brother, who's his employer. I can't imagine that he went home to New Jersey, but maybe he did. Maybe Gary went back home. He is impulsive.”
One of the FBI agents, Marcus Connor, peeked into the kitchen where we were talking. “Can I see both of you for a minute?... I'm sony, this will just be one minute,” he said to Mrs. Murphy. Connor escorted us down into the basement of the house. Gerry Scorse, Reilly, and Kyle Craig from the FBI were already down there, waiting.
Scorse held up a pair of Fido Dido socklets. I recognized them from descriptions of what Maggie Rose Dunne had been wearing the day of the kidnapping. Also from visits to the little girl's room, where I'd seen her collection of clothes and trinkets. “So, what do you think, Alex?” Scorse asked me. I had noticed that whenever things got really weird, he asked for my opinion.
“Exactly what I said about the sneaker in Washington. He left it for us. He's playing a game now. He wants us to play with him.”
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 40
HE OLD DU PONT HOTEL in downtown Wilmington was a convenient place to get some sleep. It had a nice quiet bar, and Sampson and I planned on doing some quiet drinking there. We didn't think we'd have company, but we were surprised when Jezzie Flanagan, Klepner, and some of the FBI agents joined us for nightcaps We were tired and frustrated after the near-miss with Gary Soneji/Murphy. We drank a lot of hard liquor in a short time. Actually, we got along well. “The team. ” We got loud, played liar's poker, raised some hell in the tony Delaware Room that night. Sampson talked to Jezzie Flanagan for a while. He thought she was a good cop, too.
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