“Roni! It’s the police. You’re safe now, Roni! You can come out.”
Someone had ransacked the master bedroom. Someone had invaded this space, desecrated it, broken every piece of furniture, overturned beds and bureaus.
“You remember her, John?” I asked as we checked the rest of the bedrooms.
“I remember her pretty good,” Sampson said in a soft voice. “Cute little girl.”
“Oh, no — nooo—”
Suddenly I was running down the hallway, back down the stairs. I raced through the kitchen and pulled open a hollow-core door between the refrigerator and a four-burner stove.
We both hurried down into the basement, into the cellar of the house.
My heart was out of control, beating, banging, thuding loudly inside my chest. I didn’t want to be here, to see any more of Soneji’s handiwork, his nasty surprises.
The cellar of his house.
The symbolic place of all Gary’s childhood nightmares.
The cellar.
Blood.
Trains.
The cellar in the Murphy house was small and neat. I looked around. The trains were gone! There had been a train set down here the first time we came to the house.
I didn’t see any signs of the girl, though. Nothing looked out of place. We threw open work cabinets. Sampson yanked open the washer, then the clothes dryer.
There was an unpainted wooden door to one side of the water heater and a fiberglass laundry sink. There was no sign of blood in the sink, no bloodstained clothes. Was there a way outside? Had the little girl run away when her father came to the house?
The closet! I yanked open the door.
Roni Murphy was bound with rope and gagged with old rags. Her blue eyes were large with fear. She was alive!
She was shaking badly. He didn’t kill her, but he had killed her childhood, just as his had been killed. A few years before, he had done the same thing with a girl called Maggie Rose.
“Oh, sweet girl,” I whispered as I untied her and took out the cloth gag her father had stuffed into her mouth. “Everything is all right now. Everything is okay, Roni. You’re okay now.”
What I didn’t say was, Your father loved you enough not to kill you — but he wants to kill everything and everyone else.
“You’re okay, you’re okay, baby. Everything is okay,” I lied to the poor little girl. “Everything is okay now.”
Sure it is.
Chapter 36
ONCE UPON a long time ago, Nana Mama had been the one who had taught me to play the piano.
In those days, the old upright sat like a constant invitation to make music in our family room. One afternoon after school, she heard me trying to play a little boogie-woogie. I was eleven years old at the time. I remember it well, as if it were yesterday. Nana swept in like a soft breeze and sat next to me on the piano bench, just the way I do now with Jannie and Damon.
“I think you’re a little ahead of yourself with that cool jazz stuff, Alex. Let me show you something beautiful. Let me show you where you might start your music career.”
She made me practice my Czerny finger exercises every day until I was ready to play and appreciate Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn — all from Nana Mama. She taught me to play from age eleven until I was eighteen, when I left for school at Georgetown and then Johns Hopkins. By that time, I was ready to play that cool jazz stuff, and to know what I was playing, and even know why I liked what I liked.
When I came home from Delaware, very late, I found Nana on the porch and she was playing the piano. I hadn’t heard her play like that in many years.
She didn’t hear me come in, so I stood in the door way and watched her for several minutes. She was playing Mozart and she still had a feeling for the music that she loved. She’d once told me how sad it was that no one knew where Mozart was buried.
When she finished, I whispered, “Bravo. Bravo. That’s just beautiful.”
Nana turned to me. “Silly old woman,” she said and wiped away a tear I hadn’t been able to see from where I was standing.
“Not silly at all,” I said. I sat down and held her in my arms on the piano bench. “Old yes, really old and cranky, but never silly.”
“I was just thinking,” she said, “about that third movement in Mozart’s Concerto No. 21, and then I had a memory of how I used to be able to play it, a long, long time ago.” She sighed. “So I had myself a nice cry. Felt real good, too.”
“Sorry to intrude,” I said as I continued to hold her close.
“I love you, Alex,” my grandmother whispered. “Can you still play ‘Clair de Lune’? Play Debussy for me.”
And so with Nana Mama close beside me, I played.
Chapter 37
THE GROAN-and-grunt work continued the following morning.
First thing, Kyle faxed me several stories about his agent, Thomas Pierce. The stories came from cities where Mr. Smith had committed murders: Atlanta, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, London, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Rome. Pierce had helped to capture a murderer in Fort Lauderdale in the spring, unrelated to Smith.
Other headlines:
FOR THOMAS PIERCE, THE CRIME SCENE IS IN THE MIND
MURDER EXPERT HERE IN ST. LOUIS
THOMAS PIERCE — GETTING INTO KILLERS’ HEADS
NOT ALL PATTERN KILLERS ARE BRILLIANT — BUT AGENT
THOMAS PIERCE IS
MURDERS OF THE MIND, THE MOST CHILLING
MURDERS OF ALL.
If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought Kyle was trying to make me jealous of Pierce. I wasn’t jealous. I didn’t have the time for it right now.
A little before noon, I drove out to Lorton Prison, one of my least favorite places in the charted universe.
Everything moves slowly inside a high-security federal prison. It is like being held underwater, like being drowned by unseen human hands. It happens over days, over years, sometimes over decades.
At an administrative max facility, prisoners are kept in their cells twenty-two to twenty-three hours a day. The boredom is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t served time. It is not imaginable. Gary Soneji told me that, created the drowning metaphor when I interviewed him years back at Lorton.
He also thanked me for giving him the experience of being in prison, and he said that one day he would reciprocate if he possibly could. More and more, I had the sense that my time had come, and I had to guess what the excruciating payback might be.
It was not imaginable.
I could almost feel myself drowning as I paced inside a small administrative room near the warden’s office on the fifth floor at Lorton.
I was waiting for a double murderer named Jamal Autry. Autry claimed to have important information about Soneji. He was known inside Lorton as the Real Deal. He was a predator, a three-hundred-pound pimp who had murdered two teenage prostitutes in Baltimore.
The Real Deal was brought to me in restraints. He was escorted into the small, tidy office by two armed guards with billy clubs.
“You Alex Cross? Gah-damn. Now ain’t that somethin’,” Jamal Autry said with a middle-South twang.
He smiled crookedly when he spoke. The lower half of his face sagged like the mouth and jaw of a bottom feeder. He had strange, uneven piggy eyes that were hard to look at. He continued to smile as if he were about to be paroled today, or had just won the inmates’ lottery.
I told the two guards that I wanted to talk to Autry alone. Even though he was in restraints, they departed reluctantly. I wasn’t afraid of this big load, though. I wasn’t a helpless teenage girl he could beat up on.
“Sorry, I missed the joke,” I finally said to Autry. “Don’t quite know why it is that you’re smiling.”
“Awhh, don’t worry ’bout it, man. You get the joke okay. Eventually,” he said with his slow drawl. “You’ll get the joke, Dr. Cross. See, it’s on you.”
I shrugged. “You asked to see me, Autry. You want something out of this and so do I. I’m not here for
your jokes or your private amusement. You want to go back to your cell, just turn the hell around.”
Jamal Autry continued to smile, but he sat down on one of two chairs left for us. “We boff want somethin’,” he said. He began to make serious eye contact with me. He had the don’t-mess-with-me look now. His smile evaporated.
“Tell me what you’ve got to trade. We’ll see where it goes,” I said. “Best I can do for you.”
“Soneji said you a hard-ass. Smart for a cop. We’ll see what we see,” he drawled.
I ignored the bullshit that flowed so easily from his overlarge mouth. I couldn’t help thinking about the two sixteen-year-old girls he’d murdered. I imagined him smiling at them, too. Giving them the look. “The two of you talked sometimes? Soneji was a friend of yours?” I asked him.
Autry shook his head. The look stayed fixed. His piggy eyes never left mine. “Naw, man. Only talked when he needed somethin’. Soneji rather sit in his cell, stare out into far space, like Mars or someplace. Soneji got no friends in here. Not me, not anybody else.”
Autry leaned forward in his chair. He had something to tell me. Obviously, he thought it was worth a lot. He lowered his voice as if there were someone in the room besides the two of us.
Someone like Gary Soneji, I couldn’t help thinking.
Chapter 38
“LOOKIT, SONEJI didn’t have no friends in here. He didn’t need nobody. Man had a guest in his attic. Know what I mean? Only talked to me when he wanted something.”
“What kind of things did you do for Soneji?” I asked.
“Soneji had simple needs. Cigars, fuck-books, mustard for his Froot Loops. He paid to keep certain individuals away. Soneji always had money.”
I thought about that. Who gave Gary Soneji money while he was in Lorton? It wouldn’t have come from his wife — at least I didn’t think so. His grandfather was still alive in New Jersey. Maybe the money had come from his grandfather. He had only one friend that I knew of, but that had been way back when he was a teenager.
Jamal Autry continued his bigmouthed spiel. “Check it out, man. Protection Gary bought from me was good — the best. Best anybody could do in here.”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” I said. “Spell it out for me, Jamal. I want all the details.”
“You can protect some of the people some of the time. That’s all it is. There was another prisoner here, name of Shareef Thomas. Real crazy nigger, originally from New York City. Ran with two other crazy niggers — Goofy and Coco Loco. Shareef’s out now, but when he inside, Shareef did whatever the hell he wanted. Only way you control Shareef, you cap him. Twice, just to make sure.”
Autry was getting interesting. He definitely had something to trade. “What was Gary Soneji’s connection with Shareef?” I asked.
“Soneji tried to cap Shareef. Paid the money. But Shareef was smart. Shareef was lucky, too.”
“Why did Soneji want to kill Shareef Thomas?”
Autry stared at me with his cold eyes. “We have a deal, right? I get privileges for this?”
“You have my full attention, Jamal. I’m here, I’m listening to you. Tell me what happened between Shareef Thomas and Soneji.”
“Soneji wanted to kill Shareef ’cause Shareef was fuckin’ him. Not just one time either. He wanted Gary to know he was the man. He was the one man even crazier than Soneji in here.”
I shook my head and leaned forward to listen. He had my attention, but something wasn’t tracking for me. “Gary was separated from the prison population. Maximum security. How the hell did Thomas get to him?”
“Gah-damn, I told you, things get done in here. Things always get done. Don’t be fooled what you hear on the outside, man. That’s the way it is, way it’s always been.”
I stared into Autry’s eyes. “So you took Soneji’s money for protection, and Shareef Thomas got to him anyway? There’s more, isn’t there?”
I sensed that Autry was relishing his own punch line, or maybe he just liked having the power over me.
“There’s more, yeah. Shareef gave Gary Soneji the Fever. Soneji has the bug, man. He’s dying. Your old friend Gary Soneji is dying. He got the message from God.”
The news hit me like a sucker punch. I didn’t let it show, didn’t give away any advantage, but Jamal Autry had just made some sense of everything Soneji had done so far. He had also shaken me to the quick. Soneji has the Fever. He has AIDS. Gary Soneji is dying. He has nothing to lose anymore.
Was Autry telling the truth or not? Big question, important question.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you, Autry. Why the hell should I?” I said.
He looked offended, which was part of his act. “Believe what you want. But you ought to believe. Gary got the message to me in here. Gary contacted me this week, two days ago. Gary let me know he has the Fever.”
We had come full circle. Autry knew that he had me from the minute he walked into the room. Now I got to hear the punch line of his joke — the one he’d promised at the start. First, though, I had to be his straight man for a little while longer.
“Why? Why would he tell you he’s dying?” I played my part.
“Soneji said you’d come here asking questions. He knew you were coming. He knows you, man — better than you know him. Soneji wanted me to give you the message personally. He gave me the message, just for you. He said to tell you that.”
Jamal Autry smiled his crooked smile again. “What do you say now, Dr. Cross? You get what you come here for?”
I had what I needed all right. Gary Soneji was dying. He wanted me to follow him into hell. He was on a rampage with nothing to lose, nothing to fear from anyone.
Chapter 39
WHEN I got home from Lorton Prison I called Christine Johnson. I needed to see her. I needed to get away from the case. I held my breath as I asked her to dinner at Georgia Brown’s on McPherson Square. She surprised me — she said yes.
Still on pins and needles, but kind of liking the feeling, I showed up at her place with a single red rose. Christine smiled beautifully, took the rose and put it in water as if it were an expensive arrangement.
She was wearing a gray calf-length skirt and a matching soft gray V-necked blouse. She looked stunning again. We talked about our respective days on the drive to the restaurant. I liked her day a lot better than mine.
We were hungry, and started with hot buttermilk biscuits slathered with peach butter. The day was definitely improving. Christine ordered Carolina shrimp and grits. I got the Carolina Perlau — red rice, thick chunks of duck, shrimp, and sausage.
“No one has given me a rose in a long time,” she told me. “I love that you thought to do that.”
“You’re being too nice to me tonight,” I said as we started to eat.
She tilted her head to one side and looked at me from an odd angle. She did that now and again. “Why do you say that I’m being too nice?”
“Well, you can tell I’m not exactly the best company tonight. It’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That I can’t turn off my job.”
She took a sip of wine. Shook her head. Finally she smiled, and the smile was so down-to-earth. “You’re so honest. But you have a good sense of humor about it. Actually, I hadn’t noticed that you weren’t operating at one hundred and ten percent.”
“I’ve been distant and into myself all night,” I said. “The kids say I get twilight zoned.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Stop it, stop it. You are the least into-yourself man I think I’ve ever met. I’m having a very nice time here. I was planning on a bowl of Sugar Puffs for my dinner at home.”
“Sugar Puffs and milk are good. Curl up in bed with a movie or book. Nothing wrong with that.”
“That was my plan. I finally gave in and started The Horse Whisperer. I’m glad you called and spoiled it for me, took me out of my own twilight zone.”
“You must really think I’m crazy,” Christine said and smiled a little later during dinner. “L
awdy, Miss Clawdy, I believe I am crazy.”
I laughed. “For going out with me? Absolutely crazy.”
“No, for telling you I didn’t think we should see each other, and now late dinner at Georgia Brown’s. Forsaking my Sugar Puffs and Horse Whisperer.”
I looked into her eyes, and I wanted to stay right there for a very long time, at least until Georgia Brown’s asked us to leave. “What happened? What changed?” I asked.
“I stopped being afraid,” she said, “Well, almost stopped. But I’m getting there.”
“Yeah, maybe we both are. I was afraid, too.”
“That’s nice to hear. I’m glad you told me. I couldn’t imagine that you get afraid.”
I drove Christine home from Georgia Brown’s around midnight. As we rode on the John Hansen Highway, all I could think about was touching her hair, stroking the side of her cheek, maybe a few other things. Yes, definitely a few other things.
I walked Christine to her front door and I could hardly breathe. Again. My hand was lightly on her elbow. She had her house key clasped in her hand.
I could smell her perfume. She told me it was called Gardenia Passion, and I liked it a lot. Our shoes softly scraped the cement.
Suddenly, Christine turned and put her arms around me. The movement was graceful, but she took me by surprise.
“I have to find something out,” she said.
Christine kissed me, just as we had a few days before. We kissed sweetly at first, then harder. Her lips were soft and moist against mine, then firmer, more urgent. I could feel her breasts press against me; then her stomach, her strong legs.
She opened her eyes, looked at me, and she smiled. I loved that natural smile — loved it. That smile — no other one.
She gently pulled herself away from me. I felt the separation and I didn’t want her to go. I sensed, I knew, I should leave it at that.
Christine opened her front door and slowly backed inside. I didn’t want her to go in just yet. I wanted to know what she was thinking, all her thoughts.
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