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

“When it started, down in Florida, I needed to know whatever you could find out. I wanted a connection inside the D.C. police. You were supposed to be a good cop. You were also your own man.” “So you used me to watch your flanks. You chose me to hand over the ransom. You couldn't trust the Bureau. Always the professional, Jezzie.”

“I knew you wouldn't do anything to endanger the little girl. I knew you'd deliver the ransom. The complications started after we got back from Miami. I don't know exactly when. I swear this is the truth.”

I felt numb and hollow inside as I listened to her. I was dripping with perspiration, and not because of the beating sun.

I wondered if Jezzie had brought a gun to the island? Always the professional, I reminded myself. “For what it's worth now, I fell in love with you, Alex. I did. You were so many of the things I'd given up looking for. Warm and decent. Loving. Understanding. Damon and Janelle touched me. When I was with you, I felt whole again.”

I was a little dizzy, and nauseated. It was exactly the way I'd felt for about a year after Maria died. “For what it's worth, I fell in love with you, too, Jezzie. I tried not to, but I did. I just couldn't have imagined anybody lying to me the way you did. Lying and deceiving. I still can't believe all the lies. What about Mike Devine?” I asked.

Jezzie shrugged her shoulders. That was her only answer.

“You committed the perfect crime. A masterpiece,” I told her then. “ ou created the master crime that Gary Soneji always wanted to commit.”

Jezzie peered into my eyes, but she seemed to be looking right through me. There was just one more piece to the puzzle now-one last thing that I had to know.

One unthinkable detail. “What really happened to the little girl? What did you, or Devine and Chakely, do with Maggie Rose?”

Jezzie shook her head. “No, Alex. That I can't tell you. You know that I can't.”

She had folded her arms across her chest when she'd begun to reveal the truth. Her arms remained tightly folded.

“How could you kill a little girl? How could you do it, Jezzie? How could you kill Maggie Rose Dunne?”

Jezzie suddenly whirled away- from me. It was too much, even for her. She headed back toward the beach umbrella and towels. I took a quick step and I caught her arm. I grabbed the crook of her- elbow.

“Get your hands off me!” she screamed. Her face contorted. “Maybe you can trade me the information about Maggie Rose,” I shouted back. “Maybe we can make a trade, Jezzie!”

She turned around. “They're not going to let you open this case again. Don't kid yourself, Alex. They don't have a thing on me. Neither do you. I'm not going to trade you information. ”

“Yeah. Yeah, you are,” I said. My voice had gone from loud to close to a whisper. “Yes, you are, Jezzie. You're going to trade information.... You definitely are. ”

I pointed up toward the barranca and the palm trees that thickened as you got farther from the sandy beach.

Sampson stood up from his hiding spot in the deep island brush. He waved something that looked like a silver wand. What he was actually holding was a longdistance microphone.

Two FBI agents got up and waved, too. They stood beside Sampson. They'd all been out in the bush since before seven that morning. The agents were as red as lobsters around the face and arms. Sampson probably had the tan of his life, also.

“My friend Sampson up there. He's recorded everything you said since we started our walk.”

Jezzie closed her eyes for several seconds. She hadn't expected I would go this far. She didn't think I had it in me. “You'll tell us now how you murdered Maggie Rose,” I demanded.

Her eyes opened and they looked small and black. “You don't get it. You just don't get it, do you?” she said.

"What don't I get, Jezzie? You tell me what I don't get. I I

“You keep looking for the good in people. But it's not there! Your case will get blown up. You'll look like a fool in the end, a complete and utter fool. They'll all turn on you again.”

“Maybe you're right,” I said, “but at least I'll have this moment.”

T

Jezzie moved to hit me, but I blocked her fist with a forearm. Her body twisted and she went down. The hard fall was a lot less than she deserved. Jezzie's face was a brittle mask of surprise. “That's a start, Alex,” she said from her sandy seat on the beach. “You're becoming a bastard, too. Congratulations. ”

“ Nah, ” I said to Jezzie. “I'm just fine. There's nothing wrong with me.” i I let the FBI agents and Sampson make the formal arrest of Jezzie Flanagan. Then I took a skiff back to the hotel. I packed and was on my way back to Washington within the hour.

Along Came A Spider

CHAPTER 86

WO DAys after we returned to D.C., Sampson and I were back on the road. We were headed for Uyuni, Bolivia. We had reason to hope and believe that we might have finally found Maggie Rose Dunne. Jezzie had talked and talked. Jezzie had traded information. She had refused to talk to the Bureau, though. She'd traded with me.

Uyuni is in the Andes Mountains, one hundred and ninety-one miles south of Oruro. The way to get there is to land a small plane in Rfo Mulato, then go by jeep or van to Uyuni.

A Ford Explorer held eight of us for the final leg of the difficult trip. I was in the minivan with Sampson, two special agents from Treasury, the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, our driver, and Thomas and Katherine Rose Dunne.

Charles Chakely and Jezzie had both been willing to trade information about Maggie Rose during the last grueling thirty-six hours. The butchered body of Mike

Devine had been found in his Washington apartment. The manhunt for Gary Soneji/Mu,-,phy had intensified after the body was discovered. But so far, nothing. Gary was certainly watching the story of our trip to Bolivia on TV. Gary was watching his story.

Chakely and Jezzie told virtually the same tale about the kidnapping. There had been an opportunity to take the ten-million-dollar ransom and get away with it. They couldn't return the girl. They needed us to believe that Soneji/Murphy was the kidnapper. The girl could dispute that. They'd drawn the line at killing Maggie Rose, though. Or so they said back in Washington.

Sampson and I were quiet inside the minivan for the last miles of the trip through the Andes. So was everyone else.

I watched the Dunnes as we approached Uyuni. They sat together quietly, a little distant from each other. As Katherine had told me, losing Maggie Rose had nearly destroyed their marriage. I was reminded of how much I had liked them in the beginning. I still liked Katherine Rose. We had talked for a while during the trip. She thanked me with genuine emotion and I would never forget that.

I hoped their little girl was waiting safely at the end of this long and horrible ordeal.... I thought about Maggie Rose Dunne-a little girl I had never met, and was about to meet soon. I thought about all the prayers said for her, the placards held outside a D.C. courthouse, the candles burning in so many windows. Sampson elbowed me as we drove through the village. “Look up the hill there, Alex. I won't say this makes it all worthwhile. But maybe it comes close.”

The minivan was climbing a steep hill in the village of Uyuni. Tin and wood shacks lined both sides of what was virtually an alleyway cut into rock. Smoke spiraled from a couple of the tin rooftops. The narrow lane seemed to continue straight up into the Andes Mountains.

Maggie Rose was there waiting for us halfway up the road.

The eleven-year-old girl stood in front of one of the nearly identical shacks. She was with several other members of a family called Patino. She had been with them for nearly two years. It looked as if there were a dozen other children in the family.