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

“Do you still believe in your omnipotence?” It was a serious question. I didn't think he'd tell me the truth, but I wanted to bear what he had to say, anyway.

He said, “What happened back then, my one mistake, was I permitted my successes, the applause of millions of admirers, to rush to my head. The' applause can be a drug. Katherine Rose suffers from the same disease, you know. Most of the movie people, the sports icons, they do, too. Millions are cheering for them, you understand. They're telling these people how 'special' and how 'brilliant' they are. And some of the stars forget any limitations they might have, forget the hard work that got them to the plateau originally. I did. At the time. That is precisely why I was caught. I believed I could escape_from the McDonald's! Just as I had always escaped before. I would just dabble in a little 'spree' killing, then get away. I wanted to sample all the highimpact crimes, Alex. A little Bundy, a little Geary, a little Manson, Whitman, Gilmore.”

“Do you feel omnipotent now? Since you're older and wiser?” I asked Soneji. He was being ironic. I assumed I could be, too.

“I'm the closest thing to it you'll ever see. I'm a way to understand the concept, no?”

He smiled that blank killer smile of his again. I wanted to hit him. Gary Murphy was a tragic and almost likable sort of man. Soneji was hateful, pure evil. The human monster; the human beast.

“When you scouted the Goldberg and Dunne houses, were you at the height of your powers?” Were you omnipotent then, shithead?

“No, no, no. As you know, Doctor, I was already becoming sloppy. I'd read too many news accounts of my 'perfect' killing in Condon Terrace. 'No traces, no clues, the perfect killer!' Even I was impressed.” “What went wrong out in Potomac?” I thought I knew the answer. I needed him to confirm it.

He shrugged. “I was being followed, of course.”

Here we go, I thought to myself. The “watcher.”

“You didn't know it at the time?” I asked Soneji.

“Of course not.” He frowned at the question. “I realized I was being followed much later. Then it was confirmed at the trial.”

“How was that? How did you find out you were being followed?”

Soneji stared into my eyes. He seemed to be staring straight through to the back of my skull. He considered me beneath him. I was just a vessel for his outpouring. But he found me more interesting than the others to talk to. I didn't know whether to feel honored or defiled. He was also curious about what I knew, or what I didn't know.

“Let me stop to make a point,” he said. "This one is important to me. I have secrets to tell you. Lots of big and little secrets. Dirty secrets, juicy secrets. I'm going to give you one secret now. Do you know why.

“Elementary, my dear Gary,” I told him. “It's hell for you to be under the control of others. You need to be in charge.”

“That's very good, Doctor Detective. But I do have some neat things to trade. Crimes that go all the way back to when I was twelve and thirteen years old. There are major unsolved crimes that go back that far. Believe me. I have a treasure trove of goodies to share with you. ” “I understand,” I told him. “I can't wait to hear about them.”

“You always did understand. All you have to do is convince the other zombies to walk and chew Juicy Fruit at the same time.”

“The other zombies?” I smiled at his slip.

“Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. Can you convince the zombies? You know who I mean. You have less respect for them than I do That was true enough. I'd have to convince Chief of Detectives Pittman for one. ”You:ll help me out? Give me something concrete? I have to find out what happened to the little girl. Let her parents have some peace at last."

“All right. I will do that,” Soneji said. It was so simple in the end.

You wait. And you wait. That's the way it goes in almost every police investigation. You ask thousands of questions, literally thousands. You fill entire file cabinets with unnecessary paperwork. Then you ask more questions. You follow countless leads that go nowhere. Then something goes right for a change. It happens every once in a while. It was happening now. A payout for thousands of hours of work. A reward for coming to see Gary again and again.

“I didn't notice any surveillance back then,” Gary Soneji continued. “And none of what I'm going to tell you about happened near the Sanders house. It occurred on Sorrell Avenue in Potomac. In front of the Goldberg house, in fact.”

Suddenly I was tired of his chest-beating games. I had to know what he knew. I was getting close. Talk to me, you little fucker.

“Go on,” I said. “What happened out in Potomac? What did you see at the Goldbergs'? Who did you see?”

“I drove by there one of those nights before the kidnapping. A man was walking on the sidewalk. I thought nothing of him. It never registered until I saw the same man at the trial.” Soneji stopped talking for a moment. Was he playing again? I didn't think so. He stared at me as if he were looking right into my soul. He knows who I am. He knows me, perhaps better than I know myse4f.

What did he want from me? Was I a substitute for something missing from his childhood? Why had I been chosen for this horrific job?

“Who was the man you recognized at the trial?” I asked @ Soneji. "It was the Secret Service agent. It was Devine. He his pal Chakely must have seen me watching the Idberg and Dunne houses. They were the ones who followed me. They took precious Maggie Rose! They got the ransom in Florida. You should have been looking for cops all this time. Two cops murdered the little girl.

Along Came A Spider

CHAPTER 75

Y HUNCH about Devine and Chakely had been right after all. Soneji/Murphy was the only eye witness, and he'd confirmed it. Now we had to move.

I had to personally reopen the Dunne-Goldberg case-and with news that no one in Washington would want to hear.

I decided to talk to the FBI first.... Two cops had murdered Maggie Rose. The investigation had to be opened up again. The kidnapping hadn't been solved the first time. Now the whole mess was going to blow up once more.

I dropped in on my old buddy of buddies, Gerry

Scorse, at FBI headquarters. After I cooled my heels for forty minutes in reception, Scorse brought me coffee and invited me into his office. "Come right in, Alex.

Thanks for waiting. "

He listened politely, and with apparent concern, as I went over what I had previously learned, and then what

Soneji had told me concerning Secret Service agents Mike Devine and Charles Chakely. He took notes, a lot of notes on yellow foolscap.

After I'd finished, Scorse said, “I have to make a phone call. Sit tight, Alex.”

When he returned, he asked me to come upstairs with him. He never said it but I assumed he was impressed by the news from Gary Soneji.

I was escorted to the deputy director's private conference room on the top floor. The deputy, Kurt Weithas, is the number-two person at the Bureau. They wanted me to understand that this was an important meeting. I got it.

Scorse went with me into the impressive, very cushy conference room. All the walls and most of the furnishings were dark blue, very sober and severe. The room reminded me of the cockpit of a foreign car. Yellow pads and pencils were laid out for us.

It was clearly Weithas's meeting from the start. “What we'd like to accomplish is twofold, Detective Cross.” Weithas spoke and acted like a very successful, very cool Capitol Hill lawyer. In a manner of speaking, that's what he was. He wore a brilliant white shirt with a Herrn6s tie. He slipped off his wire-rimmed reading glasses when I entered the room. He appeared to be in a dark mood.