James Patterson - Cat & Mouse

Thomas Pierce frowned. “Freak, goddamn butcher.”

“Why Piccadilly? A hub of London. Why under Eros?”

“He’s leaving clues for us, obvious clues. We just don’t understand,” Thomas Pierce said and continued to shake his head.

“Right you are, Thomas. Because we don’t speak Martian.”

CRIME MARCHES on and on.

Sampson and I drove to Wilmington, Delaware, the following morning. We had visited the city made famous by the Du Ponts during the original manhunt for Gary Soneji a few years before. I had the Porsche floored the entire ride, which took a couple of hours.

I had already received some very good news that morning. We’d solved one of the case’s nagging mysteries. I had checked with the blood bank at St. Anthony’s. A pint of my blood was missing from our family’s supply. Someone had taken the trouble to break in and take my blood. Gary Soneji? Who else? He continued to show me that nothing was safe in my life.

“Soneji” was actually a pseudonym Gary had used as part of a plan to kidnap two children in Washington. The strange name had stuck in news stories, and that was the name the FBI and media used now. His real name was Gary Murphy. He had lived in Wilmington with his wife, Meredith, who was called Missy. They had one daughter, Roni.

Actually, Soneji was the name Gary had appropriated when he fantasized about his crimes as a young boy locked in the cellar of his house. He claimed to have been sexually abused by a neighbor in Princeton, a grade-school teacher named Martin Soneji. I suspected serious problems with a relative, possibly his paternal grandfather.

We arrived at the house on Central Avenue at a little past ten in the morning. The pretty street was deserted, except for a small boy with Rollerblades. He was trying them out on his front lawn. There should have been local police surveillance here, but, for some reason, there wasn’t. At least I didn’t see any sign of it yet.

“Man, this perfect little street kills me,” Sampson said. “I still keep looking for Jimmy Stewart to pop out of one of these houses.”

“Just as long as Soneji doesn’t,”I muttered.

The cars parked up and down Central Avenue were almost all American makes, which seemed quaint nowadays: Chevys, Olds, Fords, some Dodge Ram pickup trucks.

Meredith Murphy wasn’t answering her phone that morning, which didn’t surprise me.

“I feel sorry for Mrs. Murphy and especially the little girl,” I told Sampson as we pulled up in front of the house. “Missy Murphy had no idea who Gary really was.”

Sampson nodded. “I remember they seemed nice enough. Maybe too nice. Gary fooled them. Ole Gary the Fooler.”

There were lights burning in the house. A white Chevy Lumina was parked in the driveway. The street was as quiet and peaceful as I remembered it from our last visit, when the peacefulness had been short-lived.

We got out of the Porsche and headed toward the front door of the house. I touched the butt of my Glock as we walked. I couldn’t help thinking that Soneji could be waiting, setting some kind of trap for Sampson and me.

The neighborhood, the entire town, still reminded me of the 1950s. The house was well kept and looked as if it had recently been painted. That had been part of Gary ’s careful facade. It was the perfect hiding place: a sweet little house on Central Avenue, with a white picket fence and a stone walkway bisecting the front lawn.

“So what do you figure is going on with Soneji?” Sampson asked as we came up to the front door. “He’s changed some, don’t you think? He’s not the careful planner I remember. More impulsive.”

It seemed that way. “Not everything’s changed. He’s still playing parts, acting. But he’s on a rampage like nothing I’ve seen before. He doesn’t seem to care if he’s caught. Yet everything he does is planned. He escapes.”

“And why is that, Dr. Freud?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out. And that’s why we’re going to Lorton Prison tomorrow. Something weird is going on, even for Gary Soneji.”

I rang the front doorbell. Sampson and I waited for Missy Murphy on the porch. We didn’t fit into the small-town-America neighborhood, but that wasn’t so unusual. We didn’t exactly fit into our own neighborhood back in D.C. either. That morning we were both wearing dark clothes and dark glasses, looking like musicians in somebody’s blues band.

“Hmm, no answer,” I muttered.

“Lights blazing inside,” Sampson said. “Somebody must be here. Maybe they just don’t want to talk to Men In Black.”

“Ms. Murphy,” I called out in a loud voice, in case someone was inside but not answering the door. “Ms. Murphy, open the door. It’s Alex Cross from Washington. We’re not leaving without talking to you.”

“Nobody home at the Bates Motel,” Sampson grunted.

He wandered around the side of the house, and I followed close behind. The lawn had been cut recently and the hedges trimmed. Everything looked so neat and clean and so harmless.

I went to the back door, the kitchen, if I remembered. I wondered if he could be hiding inside. Anything was possible with Soneji-the more twisted and unlikely the better for his ego.

Things about my last visit were flashing back. Nasty memories. It was Roni’s birthday party. She was seven. Gary Soneji had been inside the house that time, but he had managed to escape. A regular Houdini. A very smart, very creepy creep.

Soneji could be inside now. Why did I have the unsettling feeling that I was walking into a trap?

I waited on the back porch, not sure what to do next. I rang the bell. Something was definitely wrong about the case, everything about it was wrong. Soneji here in Wilmington? Why here? Why kill people in Union and Penn Stations?

“Alex!” Sampson shouted. “Alex! Over here! Come quick. Alex, now!”

I hurried across the yard with my heart in my throat. Sampson was down on all fours. He was crouched in front of a doghouse that was painted white and shingled to look like the main residence. What in hell was inside the doghouse?

As I got closer, I could see a thick black cloud of flies.

Then I heard the buzzing.

“OH, GODDAMN it, Alex, look at what that madman did. Look at what he did to her!”

I wanted to avert my eyes, but I had to look. I crouched down low beside Sampson. Both of us were batting away horse-flies and other unpleasant swarming insects. White larvae were all over everything-the doghouse, the lawn. I held a handkerchief bunched over my nose and mouth, but it wasn’t enough to stifle the putrid smell. My eyes began to water.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Sampson said. “Where does he get his insane ideas?”

Propped up inside the doghouse was the body of a golden retriever, or what remained of it. Blood was spattered everywhere on the wooden walls. The dog had been decapitated.

Firmly attached to the dog’s neck was the head of Meredith Murphy. Her head was propped perfectly, even though it was too large proportionately for the retriever’s body. The effect was beyond grotesque. It reminded me of the old Mr. Potato Head toys. Merdith Murphy’s open eyes stared out at me.

I had met Meredith Murphy only once, and that had been almost four years before. I wondered what she could have done to enrage Soneji like this. He had never talked much about his wife during our sessions. He had despised her, though. I remembered his nicknames for her: “Simple Cipher,” “The Headless Hausfrau,” “Blonde Cow.”

“What the hell is going on inside that sick, sorry son of a bitch’s head? You understand this?” Sampson muttered through his handkerchief-covered mouth.