Alex Cross 1 - Along Came A Spider Read online

  Just then I was hit on the back of my neck. It felt like a lead pipe. I didn't go out immediately. Soneji? a voice inside me screamed. A second hard blow cracked the back of my skull, the tender part. This time, I went down for the count. I never saw who was doing the swinging, or what he had used.

  When I came to, the small airfield in South Carolina was a raft of dazzling lights and activity. The FBI was there in full force. So were the local Carolina police. EMS ambulances and fire engines were everywhere.

  The contact man was gone, though, So was the tenmillion-dollar ransom. He'd made a clean getaway. Perfect planning on Soneji's part. Another perfect move.

  “The little girl? Maggie Rose?” I asked a balding emergency doctor tending the wounds on my head. “No sir,” he said in a slow drawl. "The little girl is still missing. Maggie Rose Dunne was never seen around here.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 25

  IUSFIELD, MARYLAND, lay under gloomy, elephant gray skies. It had been raining on and off for most of the day. A lone police car raced along rainslicked country roads with its siren screaming. Inside the car were Artie Marshall and Chester Dils. Dils was twenty-six, which made him exactly twenty years younger than Marshall. Like many young, rural policemen, he had dreams of getting out of the areathe same kind of hopes and dreams he'd had while attending Wilde Lake High School in Columbia.

  But here he was, still in Crisfield. Twin Peaks II, he liked to call the town of under three thousand.

  Dils almost physically ached to become a Maryland state trooper. It was tricky sledding because of the demanding trooper exams, especially the math. But becoming a trooper would get him the hell out of Somerset County. Maybe as far away as Salisbury or Chestertown. Neither Dils nor especially mild-mannered Artie Mar

  I was ready for the exposure and the quicksilver tations they were about to get. Just like that on the afternoon of the thirtieth of December. A telephone call had come into their station house on Old Hurley Road. A couple of hunters had spotted something that looked suspicious over in West Crisfield, on the way to the camping ground on Tangier Island. The hunters had found an abandoned vehicle. A blue Chevy minivan.

  For the past several days, anything and everything vaguely suspicious immediately got associated with the big Washington kidnapping. That pattern had gotten old real fast. Dils and Marshall were ordered to check it out, anyway. A blue minivan had been used to take the kids from the school.

  The afternoon was dying when they arrived at the farm out on Route 413. It was even a little spooky heading down the badly rutted dirt road onto the property.

  “Old farm or something back here?” Dils asked his partner. Dils was behind the wheel. Doing about fifteen on the muddy, rutted road. Artie Marshall prefeffed to ride shotgun, sans the shotgun.

  “Yeah. Nobody lives here now, though. I doubt this'll amount to anything monumental, Chesty. ”

  “That's the beauty of The Job,” Chester Dils said. “You never know. Monumental is always out there somewhere.” He had a short-standing habit of making everything. a little more glamorous than it actually was. He had his dream and all his big ideas, but Artie Marshall thought of them more as the immaturity of a younger man. They arrived at the dilapidated barn that the hunters had mentioned iR their call to the station. “ Let's go for a look-see,” Marshall said, trying to match the younger officer's enthusiasm.

  Chester Dils hopped out of the squad car. Artie Marshall followed, though not at the same sprightly pace. They approached a badly faded red barn, a low building that looked as if it had sunk a couple of feet into the ground since its heyday. The hunters had stopped at the barn to get out of the rainstorm earlier that afternoon. Then they had called the police.

  The barn was fairly dark and gloomy inside. The windows had been covered over with cheesecloth. Artie Marshall turned on his flashlight.

  “Let's have a little light on the subject,” he muttered. Then, he bellowed, “Bingo fucking Jesus!”

  There it was, all right. A big sinkhole in the middle of the dirt floor. A dark blue van parked next to the hole. “Son-of-a-B, Artie!”

  Chester Dils pulled out his service revolver. Suddenly, he was having trouble getting his breath. He was having trouble just standing there. In all honesty, he did not want to go up to the big hole in the ground. He did not want to be inside the old barn anymore. Maybe he wasn't ready for the troopers after all.

  “Who's here?” Artie Marshall called out in a loud, clear voice. “Come out, right now. We're the police! This is the Crisfield police.”

  Christ, Artie was doing better than he was, Dils thought. The man was rising to the occasion. That got Chester Dils's feet and legs moving, anyway. He was heading farther inside the bam-to see if this was what he prayed to Almighty God it wasn't.

  “Point that lamp right down in there,” he said to his partner in cfime-solving. They had come up fight alongside the hole in the ground. He could barely breathe now. His chest felt as if it were constricted by a tourniquet. His knees were knocking against each other. “You okay, Artie?” he asked his partner.

  Marshall beamed the flashlight down into the dark, deep hole. They saw what the hunters had already seen.

  There was a small box... almost a casket., in the sinkhole. The wooden case, or casket, was wide open. And it was empty. “What the hell is that thing?” Dils heard himself asking.

  Artie Marshall bent down closer. He aimed the flashlight beam directly into the hole. Instinctively, he looked around. He checked his back. Then his attention went to the black hole again.

  Something was down at the bottom of the hole. Something that looked bright pink, or red.

  Marshall's mind was raeing. It's a shoe... Christ, it must be the little girl's. This must be where they kept Maggie Rose Dunne.

  “This is where they kept those two kids,” he finally spoke to his partner. "We found it, Chesty.

  And they had.

  Along with one of Maggie Rose's pretty-in-pink sneakers. The old trusty-dusty Reebok sneakers that were supposed to help her blend in with the other kids at Washington Day School. The really weird part was that the sneaker looked as if it had been left there to be found.

  Part Two

  The Son of L'indbergh

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 26

  UPSET, he retreated into his, s and powerful fantasies.. His master plan seemed to be racing out of control. He didn't even want to think about it.

  Speaking in a whisper, he repeated the magical words from memory: “The Lindbergh farmhouse glowed with bright orangish lights. It looked like a fiery castle.... But now, the taking of Maggie Rose is the Crime of the Century. It simply is!”

  He'd had a fantasy about committing the Lindbergh kidnapping as a boy. Gary. had even committed it to memory.

  That was the beginning of everything: a story he had made up when he was twelve years old. A story he told himself over and over to keep from going insane. A daydream about a crime committed twenty-five years before he was born.

  It was pitch-black in the basement of his house now.

  He had gotten used to the dark. It was livable. It could even be great.

  It was 6:15 P.m., a Wednesday, January 6, in Wilmington, Delaware.

  Gary was letting his mind wander now, letting his mind fly. He was able to visualize every intimate detail of Lucky Lindy and Anne Moffow Lindbergh's farmhouse in Hopewell. He'd been obsessed with the worldfamous kidnapping for so long. Ever since his stepmother had arrived with her two spoiled bastard kids. Ever since he was first sent down to the cellar. “Where bad boys go to think about what they did wrong.”

  He knew more than anyone alive about the thirties kidnapping. Baby Lindbergh had eventually been dredged up from a shallow grave only four miles from the New Jersey estate. Ah, but was it really Baby Lindbergh? The corpse they'd found had been too tallthirty-three inches, to only twenty-nine for Charles Jr.

  No one understood the sensational, unsolved kidn
apping. To this day. And that was the way it would be with Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg.

  No one was ever going to figure it out. That was a definite promise.

  No one had figured out any of the other murders he'd done, had they? They got John Wayne Gacy, Jr., after over thirty murders in Chitown. Jeffrey Dahmer went down after seventeen in Milwaukee. Gary had murdered more than both of them put together. But no one knew who he was, or where he was, or what he planned to do next. it was dark down in his cellar, but Gary was used to it. “The cellar is an acquired taste,” he'd once told his stepmother to make her angry. The cellar was like your mind would be after you died. It could be exquisite, if you had a really great mind. Which he certainly did.

  Gary was thinking about his plan of action, and the thought was simple: they hadn't really seen anything yet.

  They better not blink.

  Upstairs in the house, Missy Murphy was trying her best not to be too angry at Gary. She was making cookies for their daughter, Roni, and the other neighborhood kids, Missy was really trying to be understanding and supportive. One more time. She had been trying not to think of Gary. Usually Gary when she baked, it worked. This time it didn't. was incorrigible. He was also lovable, sweet, and bright as a thousand-watt bulb. That was why she had been attracted to him in the first place. She'd met him at a University of Delaware mixer. Gary had been slumming at Delaware. He'd come down there from Princeton. She'd never talked to anyone so smart in her life; not even her professors at school were as smart as Gary.

  The really endearing part of him was why she had mrried him in 1982. Against the advice of everybody. Her best friend, Michelle Lowe, believed in tarot cards, reincarnation, all that stuff. She'd done their horoscopes, Gary's and hers. “Call it off, Missy,” she'd said. Don't you ever look in his eyes?" But Missy had gone ahead with the wedding, gone against everybody's advice. Maybe that was why she'd stuck with him through thin, and thinner. Thinner than anyone had a right to expect her to put up with. Sometimes, it was as if there were a couple of Garys to put up with. Gary and his unbelievable mind games.

  Something real bad was coming now, she was thinking as she spilled in a full bag of morsels. Any day now he was going to tell her he'd been fired from his job. The old, awful pattern had started up again.

  Gary had already told her he was “smarter than anybody” at work. (Undoubtedly, this was true.) He'd told her he was “zooming ahead” of everybody. He'd told her his bosses loved him. (This had probably been true in the beginning.) He'd told her they were going to make him a district sales manager soon. (This was definitely one of Gary's “stories.”) Then, trouble. Gary said his boss was starting to get jealous of him. The hours were impossible. (That was true enough. He was away all week and some weekends.) The danger pattern was in full gear. The sad part was that if he couldn't make it at this job, with this boss, how could he possibly make it anywhere?

  Missy Murphy was certain that Gary would come home any day now and tell her he'd been asked to leave again. His days as a traveling sales rep for the Atlantic Heating Company were definitely numbered. Where would he find work after that? Who could possibly be more sympathetic than his current boss-her own brother, Marty.

  Why did it have to be so hard all the time? Why was she such an all-day sucker for the Gary Murphys of this world?

  Missy Murphy wondered if tonight was the night. Had Gary already been fired again? Would he tell her that when he got home from work tonight? How could such a smart man be such an unbelievable loser? she ndered. The first tear fell into the cookie mix, then wo Missy let the rest of Niagara Falls come. Her whole body began to tremble and heave.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 27

  D NEVER HAD MUCH TROUBLE laughing at my frustrations as a cop or a psychologist. This time it was lot tougher to take in stride. Soneji had beaten us down South, in Florida and Carolina. We hadn't gotten Maggie Rose back. We didn't know if she was alive or dead.

  After I was debriefed for five hours by the Federal Bureau, I was flown up to Washington where I got to answer all the same questions from my own department. One of the last inquisitors was Chief of Detectives Pittman. The Jefe appeared at midnight. He was all showered and shaved for the occasion of our special meeting.

  “You look like absolute hell,” he said to me. Those were the first words out of his mouth.

  “I've been up since yesterday morning, ” I explained. "I know how I look. Tell me something I don't already know.

  I knew that was a mistake before the words got out.

  I don't usually lead with my chin, but I was groggy and tired and generally fucked up by that time.

  The Jefe leaned forward on one of the little metal chairs in his conference room. I could see his gold fillings as he spoke to me. “Sure thing, Cross. I have to blow you off the kidnapping case. Right or wrong, the press is pinning a lot of what went haywire on you, and us. The FBI isn't taking any of the heat. Thomas Dunne's making a lot of noise, too. Seems fair to me. The ransom's gone; we don't have his daughter.”

  “Most of that is pure bullshit,” I told Chief Pittman. “Soneji asked for me to be the contact. Nobody knows why yet. Maybe I shouldn't have gone, but I did. The FBI blew the surveillance, not me.”

  “Now tell me something I don't already know,” Pittman came back. “Anyway, you and Sampson can go back on the Sanders and Turner murders. Just the way you wanted it in the first place. I don't mind if you stay in the background on the kidnapping. That's all there is to talk about. ” The Jefe said his piece, and then he left. Over and out. No discussion of the matter.

  Sampson and I had been put back in our place: Washington Southeast. Everybody had their priorities straight now. The murders of six black people mattered again.

  Along Came A Spider

  CHAPTER 28

  WO DAYS after I returned from South Carolina, I woke to the noise of a crowd gathered outside our house in Southeast.

  From a seemingly safe place, the hollow of my pillow, I heard a buzz of voices. A line was sounding in my head: “Oh no, it's tomorrow again.”

  I finally opened my eyes. I saw other eyes. Damon and Janelle were staring down at me. They seemed amused that I could be sleeping at a time like this.

  “Is that the TV, kids? All that awful racket I hear?”

  “No, Daddy,” said Damon. “TV's not on.”

  “No, Daddy,” repeated Janelle. “It's better than TV. ”

  I propped my head up on an elbow. “Well, are you two having a loud party with your friends outside? That it? Is that what I hear out my bedroom window?” Serious headshaking came from the two of them. Damon finally smiled, but my little girl remained serious and a little afraid.

  “No, Daddy. We aren't havin' a party,” Damon said.

  “Hmmm. Don't tell me the newspeople and the TV reporters are here again. They were here just a few hours ago. Just last night.”

  Damon stood there with his hands on top of his head. He does that when he's excited or nervous.

  “Yes, Daddy, it's the 'porters again.”

  “Piss me off,” I muttered to myself.

  “Piss me off, too,” Damon said with a scowl. He partially understood what was going on.

  A very public lynching! Mine.

  The damn reporters again, the newsies. I rolled over and looked up at the ceiling. I needed to paint again, I saw. It never stops when you own.

  It was now a media “fact” that I had blown the exchange for Maggie Rose Dunne. Someone, maybe the Federal Bureau, maybe George Pittman, had hung me out to dry. Somebody had also leaked the false insider information that my psychological evaluations of Soneji had dictated actions in Miami.

  A national magazine ran the headline D.C. Cop Lost Maggie Rose! Thomas Dunne had said in a TV interview that he held me personally responsible for failing to carry out the release of his daughter in Florida.

  Since then, I'd been the subject of several stories and editorials. Not one of them was part
icularly positiveor close to being factual.

  If I had screwed up the ransom exchange in any way, I would have taken the criticism. I can take heat okay. But I hadn't screwed up. I'd put my life on the line in Florida.

  More than ever, I needed to know why Gary Soneji had picked me for the exchange in Florida. Why had I been a part of his plans? Why had I been chosen? Until I found that out, there was no way I was coming off the kidnapping. It didn't matter what The Jefe said, thought, or did to me.

  “Damon, you march right outside to the front porch,” I told my little boy. “Tell the reporters to beat it. Tell them to take a hike. Tell them to hit the road, Jack. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Take a hike, Ike!” Damon said.

  I grinned at Damon, who understood I was making the best of the situation. He smiled back. Janelle finally grinned, and she took Damon's hand. I was getting up. They sensed that ACTION was coming. It sure was.

  I moseyed outside to the front porch. I was going to ,,peak to the newspeople.

  I didn't bother to put on my shoes. Or shirt. I thought of the immortal words of Tarzan-Aaeeyaayaayaa!

  “How are you folks this fine winter morning?” I asked, standing there in some baggy chinos. “Anybody need more coffee or sweet rolls?”

  “Detective Cross, Katherine Rose and Thomas Dunne are blaming you for the mistakes made in Florida. Mr. Dunne released another statement last night.” Someone gave me the morning news-free of charge, too. Yes, I was still the scapegoat of the week.

  “I can understand the Dunnes' disappointment at the results in Florida,” I said in an even tone. “Just drop your coffee containers anywhere on the lawn, like you've been doing. I'll pick up later.”

  “Then you agree you made a mistake,” someone said. “Handing over the ransom money without seeing Maggie Rose first?”

  “No. I don't agree at all. I had no choice down in Florida and South Carolina. The only choice I had was not to gq.with the contact man at all. See, when you're handcuffed, and the other guy has the gun, you're at a serious disadvantage. When your backup gets there late, that's another problem - ”