“Is she okay?” I asked Sampson. He had agreed to meet me at the house, though I could tell he was still angry about my leaving the case for a few days.
He shrugged his shoulders. “She won’t accept that Alex isn’t coming back, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “If he dies, I don’t know what will happen to her.”
Sampson and I climbed the stairs in silence. We were in the hallway when the Cross children appeared out of a side bedroom.
I hadn’t formally met Damon and Jannie, but I had heard about them. Both children were beautiful, though still showing bruises from the attack. They had inherited Alex’s good looks. They had bright eyes and their intelligence showed.
“This is Mr. Pierce,” Sampson said, “he’s a friend of ours. He’s one of the good guys.”
“I’m working with Sampson,” I told them. “Trying to help him.”
“Is he, Uncle John?” the little girl asked. The boy just stared at me — not angry, but wary of strangers. I could see his father in Damon’s wide brown eyes.
“Yes, he is working with me, and he’s very good at it,” Sampson said. He surprised me with the compliment.
Jannie stepped up close to me. She was the most beautiful little girl, even with the lacerations and a bruise the size of a baseball on her cheek and neck. Her mother must have been a beautiful woman.
She reached out and shook my hand. “Well, you can’t be as good as my daddy, but you can use my daddy’s bedroom,” she said, “but only until he comes back home.”
I thanked Jannie, and nodded respectfully at Damon. Then I spent the next hour and a half going over Cross’s extensive notes and files on Gary Soneji. I was looking for Soneji’s partner. The files dated back over four years. I was convinced that whoever attacked Alex Cross didn’t do it randomly. There had to be a powerful connection with Soneji, who claimed to always work alone. It was a knotty problem and the profilers at Quantico weren’t making headway with it either.
When I finally trudged back downstairs, Sampson and Nana were both in the kitchen. The uncluttered and practical-looking room was cozy and warm. It brought back memories of Isabella, who had loved to cook and was good at it, too, memories of our home and life together.
Nana looked up at me, her eyes as incisive as I remembered. “I remember you,” she said. “You were the one who told me the truth. Are you close to anything yet? Will you solve this terrible thing?” she asked.
“No, I haven’t solved it, Nana,” I told her the truth again. “But I think Alex might have. Gary Soneji might have had a partner all along.”
Chapter 100
A RECURRING THOUGHT was playing constantly inside my head: Who can you trust? Who can you really believe? I used to have somebody — Isabella.
John Sampson and I boarded an FBI Bell Jet Ranger around eleven the following morning. We had packed for a couple of days’ stay.
“So who is this partner of Soneji’s? When do I get to meet him?” Sampson asked during the flight.
“You already have,” I told him.
We arrived in Princeton before noon and went to see a man named Simon Conklin. Sampson and Cross had questioned him before. Alex Cross had written several pages of notes on Conklin during the investigation of the sensational kidnapping of two young children a few years back: Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael “Shrimpie” Goldberg. The FBI had never really followed up on the extensive reports at the time. They wanted the high-profile kidnapping case closed.
I’d read the notes through a couple of times now. Simon Conklin and Gary had grown up on the same country road, a few miles outside the town of Princeton. The two friends thought of themselves as “superior” to other kids, and even to most adults. Gary had called himself and Conklin the “great ones.” They were reminiscent of Leopold and Loeb, two highly intelligent teens who had committed a famous thrill killing in Chicago one year.
As boys, Simon Conklin and Gary had decided that life was nothing more than a cock-and-bull “story” conveniently cooked up by the people in charge. Either you followed the “story” written by the society you lived in, or you set out to write your own.
Cross double-underscored in the notes that Gary had been in the bottom fifth of his class at Princeton High School, before he transferred to The Peddie School. Simon Conklin had been number one, and gone on to Princeton University.
A few minutes past noon, Sampson and I stepped out into the dirt-and-gravel parking lot of a dreary little strip mall between Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey. It was hot and humid and everything looked bleached out by the sun.
“Princeton education sure worked out well for Conklin,” Sampson said with sarcasm in his voice. “I’m really impressed.”
For the past two years, Simon Conklin had managed an adult bookstore in the dilapidated strip mall. The store was located in a single-story, red-brick building. The front door was painted black and so were the padlocks. The sign read ADULT.
“What’s your feeling about Simon Conklin? Do you remember much about him?” I asked as we walked toward the front door. I suspected there was a back way out, but I didn’t think he would run on us.
“Oh, Simon Says is definitely a world-class freakazoid. He was high on my Unabomber list at one time. Has an alibi for the night Alex was attacked.”
“He would,” I muttered. “Of course he would. He’s a clever boy. Don’t ever forget that.”
We walked inside the seedy, grungy store and flashed our badges. Conklin stepped out from behind a raised counter. He was tall and gangly and painfully thin. His milky brown eyes were distant, as if he were someplace else. He was instantly unlikable.
He had on faded black jeans and a studded black leather vest, no shirt under the vest. If I hadn’t known a few Harvard flameouts myself, I wouldn’t have imagined he had graduated from Princeton and ended up like this. All around him were pleasure kits, masturbators, dildos, pumps, restraints. Simon Conklin seemed right in his element.
“I’m starting to enjoy these unexpected visits from you assholes. I didn’t at first, but now I’m getting into them,” he said. “I remember you, Detective Sampson. But you’re new to the traveling team. You must be Alex Cross’s unworthy replacement.”
“Not really,” I said. “Just haven’t felt like coming around to this shithole until now.”
Conklin snorted, a phlegmy sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You haven’t felt like it. That means you have feeling that you occasionally act on. How quaint. Then you must be with the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Analysis Program. Am I right?”
I looked away from him and checked out the rest of the store.
“Hi,” I said to a man perusing a rack with Spanish Fly Powder, Sta-Hard, and the like. “Find anything you like today? Are you from the Princeton area? I’m Thomas Pierce with the FBI.”
The man mumbled something unintelligible into his chin and then he scurried out, letting a blast of sunlight inside.
“Ouch. That’s not nice,” Conklin said. He snorted again, not quite a laugh.
“I’m not very nice sometimes,” I said to him.
Conklin responded with a jaw-cracking yawn. “When Alex Cross got shot, I was with a friend all night. Your very thorough cohorts already spoke to my squeeze, Dana. We were at a party in Hopewell till around midnight. Lots and lots of witnesses.”
I nodded, looked as bored as he did. “On another, more promising subject, tell me what happened to Gary’s trains? The ones he stole from his stepbrother?”
Conklin wasn’t smiling anymore. “Look, actually I’m getting a little tired of the bullshit. The repetition bores me and I’m not into ancient history. Gary and I were friends until we were around twelve years old. After that, we never spent time together. He had his friends, and so did I. The end. Now get the hell out of here.”
I shook my head. “No, no, Gary never had any other friends. He only had time for the ‘great ones.’ He believed you were one of them. He told that to Alex Cross. I think you were Gary’s fri
end until he died. That’s why you hated Dr. Cross. You had a reason to attack his house. You had a motive, Conklin, and you’re the only one who did.”
Conklin snorted out of his nose and the side of his mouth again. “And if you can prove that, then I go directly to jail. I do not pass Go. But you can’t prove it. Dana. Hopewell. Several witnesses. Bye-bye, assholes.”
I walked out the front door of the adult bookstore. I stood in the blazing heat of the parking lot and waited for Sampson to catch up with me.
“What the hell is going on? Why did you just walk out like that?” he asked.
“Conklin is the leader,” I said. “Soneji was the follower.”
Chapter 101
SOONER OR later almost every police investigation becomes a game of cat and mouse. The difficult, long-running ones always do. First you have to decide, though: Who is the cat? Who is the mouse?
For the next few days, Sampson and I kept Simon Conklin under surveillance. We let him know we were there, waiting and watching, always just around the next corner, and the corner after that. I wanted to see if we could pressure Conklin into a telling action, or even a mistake.
Conklin’s reply was a occasional jaunty salute with his middle finger. That was fine. We were registering on his radar. He knew we were there, always there, watching. I could tell we were unnerving him, and I was just beginning to play the game.
John Sampson had to return to Washington after a few days. I had expected that. The D.C. police department couldn’t let him work the case indefinitely. Besides, Alex Cross and his family needed Sampson in Washington.
I was alone in Princeton, the way I liked it, actually.
Simon Conklin left his house on Tuesday night. After some maneuvering of my own, I followed in my Ford Escort. I let him see me early on. Then I dropped back in the heavy traffic out near the malls, and I let him go free!
I drove straight back to his house and parked off the main road, which was hidden from sight by thick scrub pines and brambles. I walked through the dense woods as quickly as I could. I knew I might not have a lot of time.
No flashlight, no lights of any kind. I knew where I was going now. I was pumped up and ready. I had figured it all out. I understood the game now, and my part in it. My sixth sense was active.
The house was brick and wood and it had a quirky hexagonal window in the front. Loose, chipped, aqua-colored shutters occasionally banged against the house. It was more than a mile from the closest neighbor. No one would see me break in through the kitchen door.
I was aware that Simon Conklin might circle back behind me — if he was as bright as he thought he was. I wasn’t worried about that. I had a working theory about Conklin and his visit to Cross’s house. I needed to test it out.
I suddenly thought about Mr. Smith as I was picking the lock. Smith was obsessed with studying people, with breaking and entering into their lives.
The inside of the house was absolutely unbearable: Simon Conklin’s place smelled like Salvation Army furniture laced with BO and immersed in a McDonald’s deep fryer. No, it was actually worse than that. I held a handkerchief over my nose and mouth as I began to search the filthy lair. I was afraid that I might find a body in here. Anything was possible.
Every room and every object was coated with dust and grime. The best that could be said for Simon Conklin was that he was an avid reader. Volumes were spread open in every room, half a dozen on his bed alone.
He seemed to favor sociology, philosophy, and psychology: Marx, Jung, Bruno Bettelheim, Malraux, Jean Baudrillard. Three unpainted floor-to-ceiling bookcases were crammed with books piled horizontally. My initial impression of the place was that it had already been ransacked by someone.
All of this fit with what had really happened at Alex Cross’s house.
Over Conklin’s rumpled, unmade bed was a framed Vargas girl, signed by the model, with a lipstick kiss next to the butt.
A rifle was stashed under the bed. It was a BAR — the same model Browning Gary Soneji had used in Washington. A smile slowly broke across my face.
Simon Conklin knew the rifle was circumstantial evidence, that it proved nothing about his guilt or innocence. He wanted it found. He wanted Cross’s badge found. He liked to play games. Of course he did.
I climbed down creaking wooden stairs to the basement. I kept the house lights off and used only my penlight.
There were no windows in the cellar. There were dust and cobwebs, and a loudly dripping sink. Curled photographic prints were clipped to strings dangling from the ceiling.
My heart was beating in double time. I examined the dangling pictures. They were photos of Simon Conklin himself, different pics of the auteur cavorting in the buff. They appeared to have been taken inside the house.
I shined the light haphazardly around the basement, glancing everywhere. The floor was dirt and there were large rocks on which the old house was built. Ancient medical equipment was stored: a walker, an aluminum-framed potty, an oxygen tank with hoses and gauges still attached, a glucose monitor.
My eyes trailed over to the far side, the southern wall of the house. Gary Soneji’s train set!
I was in the house of Gray’s best friend, his only friend in the world, the man who had attacked Alex Cross and his family in Washington. I was certain of it. I was certain I had solved the case.
I was better than Alex Cross.
There, I’ve said it
The truth begins.
Who is the cat? Who is the mouse?
Part Five
Cat & Mouse
Chapter 102
A DOZEN OF the best FBI agents available stood in an informal grouping on the airfield in Quantico, Virginia. Directly behind them, two jet black helicopters were waiting for takeoff. The agents couldn’t have looked more solemn or attentive, but also puzzled.
As I stood before them, my legs were shaking and my knees were hitting together. I had never been more nervous, more unsure of myself. I had also never been more focused on a murder case.
“For those of you who don’t know me,” I said, pausing not for effect, but because of nerves, “I’m Alex Cross.”
I tried to let them see that physically I was fine. I wore loosefitting khaki trousers and a long-sleeved navy blue cotton knit shirt open at the collar. I was doing my best to disguise a mess of bruises and lacerations.
A lot of troubling mysteries had to unfold now. Mysteries about the savage, cowardly attack at my house in Washington — and who had done it; dizzying mysteries about the mass murderer Mr. Smith; and about Thomas Pierce of the FBI.
I could see by their faces that some of the agents remained confused. They clearly looked as if they’d been blindsided by my appearance.
I couldn’t blame them, but I also knew that what had happened was necessary. It seemed like the only way to catch a terrifying and diabolical killer. That was the plan, and the plan was all-consuming.
“As you can all see, rumors of my imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated. I’m just fine, actually,” I said and cracked a smile. That seemed to break the ice a little with the agents.
“The official statements out of St. Anthony’s Hospital — ‘not expected to live,’ ‘grave condition,’ ‘highly unusual for someone in Dr. Cross’s condition to pull through’ — were overstatements, and sometimes outright lies. The releases were manufactured for Thomas Pierce’s benefit. The releases were a hoax. If you want to blame someone, blame Kyle Craig,” I said.
“Yes, definitely blame me,” Kyle said. He was standing at my side, along with John Sampson and Sondra Greenberg from Interpol. “Alex didn’t want to go this way. Actually, he didn’t want any involvement at all, if my memory serves me.”
“That’s right, but now I involved. I’m in this up to my eyebrows. Soon you will be, too. Kyle and I are going to tell you everything.”
I took a breath, then I continued. My nervousness was mostly gone.
“Four years ago, a recent Harvard Medical School grad n
amed Thomas Pierce discovered his girlfriend murdered in their apartment in Cambridge. That was the police finding at the time. It was later corroborated by the Bureau. Let me tell you about the actual murder. Now let me tell you what Kyle and I believe really happened. This is how it went down that night in Cambridge.”
Chapter 103
THOMAS PIERCE had spent the early part of the night out drinking with friends at a bar called Jillian’s in Cambridge. The friends were recent med-school graduates and they’d been drinking hard since about two in the afternoon.
Pierce had invited Isabella to the bar, but she’d turned him down and told him to have fun, let off some steam. He deserved it. That night, as he had been doing for the past six months, a doctor named Martin Straw came over to the apartment Isabella and Pierce shared. Straw and Isabella were having an affair. He had promised he would leave his wife and children for her.
Isabella was asleep when Pierce got to the apartment on Inman Street. He knew that Dr. Martin Straw had been there earlier. He had seen Straw and Isabella together at other times. He’d followed them on several occasions around Cambridge and also on day trips out into the countryside.
As he opened the front door of his apartment, he could feel, in every inch of his body, that Martin Straw had been there. Straw’s scent was unmistakable, and Thomas Pierce wanted to scream. He had never cheated on Isabella, never even come close.
She was fast asleep in their bed. He stood over her for several moments and she never stirred. He had always loved the way she slept, loved watching her like this. He had always mistaken her sleeping pose for innocence.
He could tell that Isabella had been drinking wine. He smelled the sweet odor from where he stood.
She had on perfume that night. For Martin Straw.
It was Jean Patou’s Joy — very expensive. He had bought it for her the previous Christmas.
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