Alex Cross 1 - Along Came A Spider

by Patterson, James

  Cool beans.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 84

  SLEPT RESTLESSLY, waking just about every hour on the hour. There was no piano to go pound out on the porch. No Jannie and Damon to go wake. Only the murderer peacefully sleeping at my side. Only the plan I was there to execute.

  When the sun finally rose, the hotel kitchen staff fixed us a fancy box lunch to go. They packed a wicker basket with fine wines, French bottled water, expensive gourmet goodies. There were also snorkeling gear, fluffy towels, a striped yellow-and-white beach umbrella.

  Everything was already loaded onto a speedboat when we arrived on the dock, at just past eight. It took the boat about thirty minutes to get to our island-a beautiful, secluded spot. Paradise regained.

  We would be out there alone all day. Other couples from the hotel had their own private islands to visit. A coral reef encircled our beach, stretching out about seventy to a hundred yards from shore.

  The water was the clearest bottle green. When I looked straight down, I could see the texture of the sand on the bottom. I could have counted grains of sand. Angel and warrior fish darted around my legs in small spirited schools. A smiling pair of five-foot-long barracuda had followed our boat almost to the shoreline, then lost interest.

  “What time would you like me to come back?” the boat driver asked. “It's your choice.”

  He was a muscular fisherman-a sailor in his forties. A happy-go-lucky type, he had shared big-fish and other colorful island stories on the way out. He seemed to think nothing of Jezzie and my being together.

  “Oh, I think two or three o'clock?” I looked for some help from Jezzie. “What time should Mr. Richards come back for us?”

  She was busy laying out beach towels and the rest of our exotic gear. “I think three is good. That sounds great, Mr. Richards.”

  “All right, then, have fun, you two.” He smiled. “You're all alone. I can see my services are no longer required. ”

  Mr. Richards saluted us, then hopped back into the boat. He started the engine, and soon had vanished from sight.

  We were all alone on our private island. Don't worry, be happy.

  There is something so strange and unreal about lying on a beach towel next to a kidnapper and murderer. I went over and over all of my feelings, plans, the things I knew I had to do.

  I tried to get control of my confusion and rage. I had loved this woman who was now such a stranger. I closed my eyes and let the sun relax my muscles. I needed to untense, or this wouldn't work.

  How could you have murdered the little girl, Jezzie? How could you do that? How could you tell so many lies to everybody?

  Gary Soneji flew out of nowhere! He came suddenly, and with no warning.

  He had a foot-long hunting knife like the one he'd used in the D.C. ghetto killings. He was arched high overhead, his shadow covering me completely.

  There was no way he could have gotten onto the island. No way.

  “Alex. Alex, you were dreaming,” Jezzie said. She put a cool hand on my shoulder. She gently touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers.

  The long, mostly sleepless night... the warm sun and the cooling sea breeze... I had fallen asleep on the beach.

  I looked up at Jezzie. She had been the shadow over my body, not Soneji. My heart was pounding loudly. Dreams are as powerful as the real world to our nervous systems.

  “How long was I out?” I asked. “Whew.” itiust a couple of minutes, baby,“ she said. ”Alex, let me hold you - "

  Jezzie moved against me on the beach towel. Her breasts brushed my chest. She had taken off her bathingsuit top while I slept. Her smooth skin glowed with tanning oil. A thin line of moisture beaded on her upper lip. She couldn't help looking good. I sat up and moved away from Jezzie on the towel. I pointed to where a garden of bougai-nvillea grew, almost to the seawater.

  “Let's walk down along the beach. Okay? Let's take a walk. I want to talk to you about a few things.”

  “What kind of things?” Jezzie asked me. She was clearly disappointed that I was putting her off, even for a moment. She'd wanted to make love on the beach. I didn't.

  “C'mon. Let's walk and talk a little,” I said. “This sun feels so good.”

  I pulled Jezzie up and she came along with me somewhat reluctantly. She didn't bother to put her top back on.

  We walked along the shoreline with our feet in the clear, calm water. We weren't touching now, but we were only inches apart. It was so strange and unreal. It was one of the worst moments of my life, if not the worst.

  “You're being so serious, Alex. We were going to have fun, remember? Are we having fun yet?”

  “I know what you did, Jezzie. It's taken a while, but I finally pulled it together,” I told her. “I know that you took Maggie Rose Dunne from Soneji. I know that you killed her.”

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 85

  WANT TO TALK about all of it. I don't have a wire on me, Jezzie. Obviously."

  She half smiled at that. Always the perfect actress. “I can see you don't,” she said.

  My heart was booming at a tremendous rate. “Tell me what happened. Just tell me why, Jezzie. Tell me what I spent almost two years trying to find out, and you knew all the time. Tell me your side of this.”

  Jezzie's mask, which was always her perfectly beautiful smile, had finally disappeared. She sounded resigned. “All right, Alex. I'll tell you some of what you want to know, what you just wouldn't leave alone.”

  We continued to walk, and Jezzie finally told me the truth.

  "How did it happen? Well, in the beginning, we were just doing our job. I swear that's true. We were babysitting the secretary's family. Jerrold Goldberg wasn't used to getting threats. The Colombians made a threat against him. He acted like the civilian that he is.

  He overreacted. He demanded Secret Ser,,ice protection for his entire family. That's how it all began. With a surveillance detail that none of us thought was necessary. "

  “So you assigned two lightweight agents.”

  “Two friends, actually. Not lightweights at all. We figured the detail would be a boondoggle. Then Mike Devine noticed that one of the teachers, a math teacher named Gary Soneji, had made a couple of passes by the Goldberg house. At first we thought he had a crush on the boy. Devine and Chakely thought he might be a pederast. Nothing much more than that. We had to check him out, anyway. It was in the original logs that Devine and Chakely kept.”

  “One of them followed Gary Soneji?”

  “A couple of times, yes. To a couple of places. We weren't really concerned at that point, but we were following through. One night, Charlie Chakely tailed him into Southeast. We didn't connect Soneji to the murders there, especially since the story never made any splash in the papers. Just more inner-city murders, you know.”

  “Yeah. I do know. When did you suspect something else about Gary Soneji?”

  "We didn't suspect a kidnapping until he actually picked up the two kids. Two days before that, Charlie Chakely had followed him out to the farm in Maryland. Charlie didn't suspect a kidnapping at the time. No reason to.

  'But he knew where the farm was located now. Mike Devine called me from the school when it all came crashing down. They wanted to go after Soneji then.

  That's when it struck me about taking the ransom ourselves. I don't know “for sure. Maybe I'd thought of it before. It was so easy, Alex. Three or four days and it would be over. Nobody would be hurt. Not any more than they'd already been hurt. We'd have the ransom money. Millions. ”

  The way Jezzie spoke about the kidnapping plot so casually was scary. She downplayed it, but it had been her idea. Not Devine's or Chakely's idea, Jezzie's. She was the mastermind. “What about the children?” I asked. “What about Maggie Rose and Michael?”

  “They'd already been kidnapped. We couldn't stop what had already happened. We staked out the farm in Maryland. We were confident that nothing could happen to the kids. He was a math tea
cher. We didn't think he'd hurt them. We thought he was nothing but an amateur. We were completely in control.”

  “He buried them in a box, Jezzie. And Michael Goldberg died. ”

  Jezzie stared out to sea. She nodded slowly. “Yes, the little boy died. That changed everything, Alex. Forever. I don't know if we could have prevented it. We moved in and took Maggie Rose then. We made our own kidnap demands. The whole plan changed.”

  The two of us continued to walk along the edge of the shimmering water. If anyone had seen us, they probably would have thought we were lovers, having a serious talk about our relationship. The second half of that was true enough.

  Jezzie finally looked at me. “I want to tell you how it was between us, Alex. My side of things. It's not what you think.”

  I had no words for her. It felt as if I were standing on the dark side of the moon again, and about to explode. My mind was screaming. I let Jezzie go on, let her talk. It didn't really matter now.

  “When it started, down in Florida, I needed to know whatever you could find out. I wanted a connection inside the D.C. police. You were supposed to be a good cop. You were also your own man.” “So you used me to watch your flanks. You chose me to hand over the ransom. You couldn't trust the Bureau. Always the professional, Jezzie.”

  “I knew you wouldn't do anything to endanger the little girl. I knew you'd deliver the ransom. The complications started after we got back from Miami. I don't know exactly when. I swear this is the truth.”

  I felt numb and hollow inside as I listened to her. I was dripping with perspiration, and not because of the beating sun.

  I wondered if Jezzie had brought a gun to the island? Always the professional, I reminded myself. “For what it's worth now, I fell in love with you, Alex. I did. You were so many of the things I'd given up looking for. Warm and decent. Loving. Understanding. Damon and Janelle touched me. When I was with you, I felt whole again.”

  I was a little dizzy, and nauseated. It was exactly the way I'd felt for about a year after Maria died. “For what it's worth, I fell in love with you, too, Jezzie. I tried not to, but I did. I just couldn't have imagined anybody lying to me the way you did. Lying and deceiving. I still can't believe all the lies. What about Mike Devine?” I asked.

  Jezzie shrugged her shoulders. That was her only answer.

  “You committed the perfect crime. A masterpiece,” I told her then. “ ou created the master crime that Gary Soneji always wanted to commit.”

  Jezzie peered into my eyes, but she seemed to be looking right through me. There was just one more piece to the puzzle now-one last thing that I had to know.

  One unthinkable detail. “What really happened to the little girl? What did you, or Devine and Chakely, do with Maggie Rose?”

  Jezzie shook her head. “No, Alex. That I can't tell you. You know that I can't.”

  She had folded her arms across her chest when she'd begun to reveal the truth. Her arms remained tightly folded.

  “How could you kill a little girl? How could you do it, Jezzie? How could you kill Maggie Rose Dunne?”

  Jezzie suddenly whirled away- from me. It was too much, even for her. She headed back toward the beach umbrella and towels. I took a quick step and I caught her arm. I grabbed the crook of her- elbow.

  “Get your hands off me!” she screamed. Her face contorted. “Maybe you can trade me the information about Maggie Rose,” I shouted back. “Maybe we can make a trade, Jezzie!”

  She turned around. “They're not going to let you open this case again. Don't kid yourself, Alex. They don't have a thing on me. Neither do you. I'm not going to trade you information. ”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you are,” I said. My voice had gone from loud to close to a whisper. “Yes, you are, Jezzie. You're going to trade information.... You definitely are. ”

  I pointed up toward the barranca and the palm trees that thickened as you got farther from the sandy beach.

  Sampson stood up from his hiding spot in the deep island brush. He waved something that looked like a silver wand. What he was actually holding was a longdistance microphone.

  Two FBI agents got up and waved, too. They stood beside Sampson. They'd all been out in the bush since before seven that morning. The agents were as red as lobsters around the face and arms. Sampson probably had the tan of his life, also.

  “My friend Sampson up there. He's recorded everything you said since we started our walk.”

  Jezzie closed her eyes for several seconds. She hadn't expected I would go this far. She didn't think I had it in me. “You'll tell us now how you murdered Maggie Rose,” I demanded.

  Her eyes opened and they looked small and black. “You don't get it. You just don't get it, do you?” she said.

  "What don't I get, Jezzie? You tell me what I don't get. I I

  “You keep looking for the good in people. But it's not there! Your case will get blown up. You'll look like a fool in the end, a complete and utter fool. They'll all turn on you again.”

  “Maybe you're right,” I said, “but at least I'll have this moment.”

  T

  Jezzie moved to hit me, but I blocked her fist with a forearm. Her body twisted and she went down. The hard fall was a lot less than she deserved. Jezzie's face was a brittle mask of surprise. “That's a start, Alex,” she said from her sandy seat on the beach. “You're becoming a bastard, too. Congratulations. ”

  “ Nah, ” I said to Jezzie. “I'm just fine. There's nothing wrong with me.” i I let the FBI agents and Sampson make the formal arrest of Jezzie Flanagan. Then I took a skiff back to the hotel. I packed and was on my way back to Washington within the hour.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 86

  WO DAys after we returned to D.C., Sampson and I were back on the road. We were headed for Uyuni, Bolivia. We had reason to hope and believe that we might have finally found Maggie Rose Dunne. Jezzie had talked and talked. Jezzie had traded information. She had refused to talk to the Bureau, though. She'd traded with me.

  Uyuni is in the Andes Mountains, one hundred and ninety-one miles south of Oruro. The way to get there is to land a small plane in Rfo Mulato, then go by jeep or van to Uyuni.

  A Ford Explorer held eight of us for the final leg of the difficult trip. I was in the minivan with Sampson, two special agents from Treasury, the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, our driver, and Thomas and Katherine Rose Dunne.

  Charles Chakely and Jezzie had both been willing to trade information about Maggie Rose during the last grueling thirty-six hours. The butchered body of Mike

  Devine had been found in his Washington apartment. The manhunt for Gary Soneji/Mu,-,phy had intensified after the body was discovered. But so far, nothing. Gary was certainly watching the story of our trip to Bolivia on TV. Gary was watching his story.

  Chakely and Jezzie told virtually the same tale about the kidnapping. There had been an opportunity to take the ten-million-dollar ransom and get away with it. They couldn't return the girl. They needed us to believe that Soneji/Murphy was the kidnapper. The girl could dispute that. They'd drawn the line at killing Maggie Rose, though. Or so they said back in Washington.

  Sampson and I were quiet inside the minivan for the last miles of the trip through the Andes. So was everyone else.

  I watched the Dunnes as we approached Uyuni. They sat together quietly, a little distant from each other. As Katherine had told me, losing Maggie Rose had nearly destroyed their marriage. I was reminded of how much I had liked them in the beginning. I still liked Katherine Rose. We had talked for a while during the trip. She thanked me with genuine emotion and I would never forget that.

  I hoped their little girl was waiting safely at the end of this long and horrible ordeal.... I thought about Maggie Rose Dunne-a little girl I had never met, and was about to meet soon. I thought about all the prayers said for her, the placards held outside a D.C. courthouse, the candles burning in so many windows. Sampson elbowed me as we drove through the village. “Look up the hill the
re, Alex. I won't say this makes it all worthwhile. But maybe it comes close.”

  The minivan was climbing a steep hill in the village of Uyuni. Tin and wood shacks lined both sides of what was virtually an alleyway cut into rock. Smoke spiraled from a couple of the tin rooftops. The narrow lane seemed to continue straight up into the Andes Mountains.

  Maggie Rose was there waiting for us halfway up the road.

  The eleven-year-old girl stood in front of one of the nearly identical shacks. She was with several other members of a family called Patino. She had been with them for nearly two years. It looked as if there were a dozen other children in the family.

  From a hundred yards away, as the van strained up the rutted dirt road, we could all see her clearly. Maggie Rose wore the same kind of loose shirt, cotton shorts, and th@ngs as the other Patino children, but her blond hair made her stand out. She was tan; she appeared to be in good health. She looked just like her beautiful mother.

  The Patino family had no idea who she really was. They had never heard of Maggie Rose Dunne in Uyuni. Or in nearby Pulacayo, or in Ubina eleven miles over the high and mighty Andes Mountains. We knew that much from the Bolivian officials and police.

  The Patino family had been paid for keeping the girl in the village, keeping her safe, but keeping her there. Maggie had been told by Mike Devine that there was nowhere for her to escape to. If she tried, she would be caught and she would be tortured. She would be kept under the ground for a long, long time.

  I couldn't take my eyes off her now. This little girl, who had come to mean so much to so many people. I thought of all the countless pictures and posters, and I couldn't believe she was really standing there. After all this time.

  Maggie Rose didn't smile, or react in any way, as she watched us coming up the hill in the U.S. embassy van.

  She didn't seem happy that someone had finally come for her, that she was being rescued.