Patterson, James - Alex Cross 1 - Along Came A Spider

“Yes? What is it? Can I help you?” she asked the man standing on her porch. Inside the house, jazzy music was playing. Thelonious.

“I hope it's the other way around.” He smiled pleasantly. "Somebody called about an overcharge on the electric.

Vivian Kim frowned and shook her head. She had a tiny map of Korea hanging from rawhide around her neck. “I didn't call anybody. I know I didn't call PEPCO.” “Well, somebody called us, miss.”

“Come back some other time,” Vivian Kim told him. "Maybe my boyfriend called. You'll have to come back. I'm sony.

Gary shrugged his shoulders. This was so delicious. He didn't want it to end. “I guess. You can call us again if you like,” he said. “Get on the schedule again. It's an overcharge, though. You paid too much.”

“Okay. I hear you. I understand.”

Vivian Kim slowly stripped away the chain and opened the door. Gary stepped into the apartment. He pulled a long hunting knife from under his work jacket.

He pointed it at the teacher's face. “Don't scream. Do not scream, Vivian.”

“How do you know my name?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“Don't raise your voice, Vivian. There's no reason to be afraid.... I've done this before. I'm just your garden-variety robber. ”

“What do you want?” The teacher had begun to tremble.

Gary thought for a second before he answered her scared-rabbit question. “I want to send out another message over the TV, I guess. I want the fame I so richly deserve,” he finally said. “I want to be the scariest man in America. That's why I work in the capital. I'm Gary. Don't you remember me, Viv?”

Along Came A Spider

CHAPTER 34

AMPSON AND I raced down C Street in the heart of

Capitol Hill. I could hear the breath inside my nose as I ran. My arms and legs felt disjointed.

Squad cars from the department and EMS ambulances had the street completely blocked off. We'd had to park on F Street and sprint the last couple of blocks. WJLATV was already there. So was CNN. Sirens screamed everywhere.

I spotted a clique of reporters up ahead. They saw Sampson and me coming. We're about as hard to miss as the Harlem Globetrotters in Tokyo.

“Detective Cross? Dr. Cross?” the reporters called out, trying to slow us down.

“No comment,” I waved them off. “From either of us - Get the fuck out of the way.”

Inside Vivian Kim's apartment, Sampson and I passed all the familiar faces-techies, forensics, the DOA gang in their ghoulish element.

“I don't want to do this anymore,” Sampson said.

“Whole world's flowing down the piss-tubes. It's too much, even for me.”

“We burn out,” I mumbled to him, “we burn out together. ”

Sampson grabbed my hand and held it. That told me he was as fucked up about this as he got. We went inside the first bedroom on the right side of the hallway. I tried to be still inside. I couldn't do it.

Vivian Kim's bedroom was beautifully laid out. Lots of exquisite, black-and-white family photographs and art posters covered most of the wall space. An antique violin was hung on one wall. I didn't want to look at the reason I was there. Finally, I had to.

Vivian Kim was pinned to the bed with a long hunting knife. It was driven through her stomach. Both her breasts had been removed. Her pubic hair had been shaved. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, as if she had seen something unfathomable during her last moments.

I let my eyes wander around the bedroom. I couldn't look at Vivian Kim's mutilated body. I stared at a splash of bright color on the floor. I caught my breath. Nobody had said anything about it on the way up. Nobody had noticed the most important clue. Fortunately, nobody had moved the evidence. “Look at this here.” I showed Sampson.

Maggie Rose Dunne's second sneaker was lying on Vivian Kim's bedroom floor. The killer was leaving what the pathologists call “artistic touches.” He'd left an overt message this time-the signature of signatures. I was shaking as I bent down over the little girl's sneaker. Here was the most sadistic humor at work. The pink sneaker, in shocking contrast to the bloody crime scene.

Gary Soneji had been in the bedroom. Soneji was the project killer, too. He was The Thing. And he was back in town.

Along Came A Spider

CHAPTER 35

ARY SONEJI was still in Washington, indeed. He as sending out special-delivery messages to his fans. There was a difference now. He was baiting us, too. Sampson and I got a dispensation from The

Jefe: we could work on the kidnapping as long as it was linked to the other murder investigations. It definitely was.

“This is our day off, so we must be having fun,”

Sampson said to me as we walked the streets of South east. It was the thirteenth of January. Bitter cold. Folks had fires blazing in the garbage cans on almost every street corner. One of the brothers had FUC U 2 razor cut on the back of his head. My sentiments exactly.

“Mayor Monroe doesn't call anymore. Doesn't write,” I said to Sampson. I watched my breath launch clouds in the freezing air.

“See, there is a silver lining,” he said into the wind.

“He'll come around when we catch The Thing. He'll be there to take all the bows for us.”

We walked along, goofing on the situation and on each other. Sampson rapped lyrics from pop songs, something he does a lot. That morning, it was “Now That We've Found Love. ” Heavy D &The Boyz. “Rev me up, rev me up, you're my little buttercup, ” Sampson kept saying, as if the lyrics made sense out of everything.

We were canvassing Vivian Kim's neighborhood, which was on the edge of Southeast. Canvassing a neighborhood is mind-numbing work, even for the young and uninitiated. “Did you see anyone or anything unusual yesterday?” we asked anybody dumb enough to open their doors for us. “Did you notice any strangers, strange cars, anything that sticks out in your mind? Let us decide whether it's important.”

As usual, nobody had seen a thing. Nada de nada. Nobody was happy to see us, either, especially as we moved into Southeast on our canvass.

To top it off, the temperature was about three degrees with the windchill. It was sleeting. The streets and sidewalks were covered with icy slush. A couple of times we joined the street people warming themselves over their garbage-can fires.

“You motherfuckin' cops always cold, even in the, summer,” one of the young fucks said to us. Both Sampson and I laughed. We finally trudged back toward our car around six. We were beaten up. We'd blown a long day. Nothing good had come of it. Gary Soneji had disappeared into thin air again. I felt as if I were in a horror movie.

“Want to go out a few extra blocks?” I asked Sampson. I was feeling desperate enough to try the slot ma chines in Atlantic City. Soneji was playing with us. Maybe he was watching us. Maybe the fucker was invis ible.

Sampson shook his head. “No mas, sugar. I want to drink at least a case of brew. Then I just might do some serious drinking.”

He wiped slush off his sunglasses, then put them on again. It's weird how well I know his every move. He's been dusting his glasses like that since he was twelve. Through rain or sleet or snow.

“Let's do the extra blocks,” I said. “For Ms. Vivian. Least we can do - ”

"I knew you were going to say. that.

We filed into the apartment of a Mrs. Quillie McBride at around six-twenty that night. Quillie and her friend Mrs. Scott were seated at the kitchen table. Mrs. Scott had something to tell us that she thought might help. We were there to listen to anything she had to say. If you ever go through D.C.'s Southeast, or the north section of Philadelphia, or Harlem in New York, on a Sunday morning, you'll still see ladies like Mrs. McBride and her friend Willie Mae Randall Scott. These ladies wear blousy shirts and faded gabardine skirts. Their usual accoutrements include feathered hats and thick-heeled, lace-up shoes that bunch their feet like sausage links. They are coming or going from various churches. In the case of Willie Mae, who is a Jehovah's Witness, they distribute the Watchtower magazine.