Alex Cross 01 - Along Came a Spider Read online

  Along comes the most talked about, the most gripping thriller in years…

  Clive Cussler:

  “As engrossing as it is graphic, Along Came a Spider is an incredibly suspenseful read with a one-of-a-kind villain who is as terrifying as he is intriguing. Has to be ONE OF THE BEST THRILLERS OF THE YEAR.”

  Ed McBain:

  “All at once comes Along Came a Spider, with TERROR AND SUSPENSE THAT GRAB THE READER AND WON’T LET GO. Just try running away from this one.”

  Washington Post Book World:

  “Along Came a Spider is written simply, powerfully, with shifting points of view. The book will satisfy mystery and thriller fans, as well as students of the human condition. In Patterson’s Washington, THERE’S NOT A CARTOONISH POWER BROKER OR MARBLE MONUMENT IN SIGHT. ULTIMATELY, THE NOVEL’S FOUNDATION IS THE CHARACTER OF ALEX CROSS, detective, psychologist, and family man. Here’s hoping Patterson will bring him back in future novels. It would be nice to have him around.”

  New York Times Book Review:

  “JAMES PATTERSON DOES EVERYTHING BUT STICK OUR FINGER IN A LIGHT SOCKET TO GIVE US A BUZZ IN ALONG CAME A SPIDER. This psycho-thriller opens with a nice jolt when a serial killer with grandiose designs (“I want the fame I so richly deserve”) kidnaps two children from the private school in Georgetown where he teaches math, and demands an enormous ransom from their celebrity parents.”

  New York Daily News:

  “When it comes to constructing a harrowing plot, author James Patterson can turn a screw all right…. JAMES PATTERSON IS TO SUSPENSE WHAT DANIELLE STEEL IS TO ROMANCE.”

  Milwaukee Journal:

  “CROSS IS A COMPELLING FIGURE. There’s a depth to him that so many protagonists lack today. He’s tough, vulnerable, sensitive, compassionate.”

  Ann Rule:

  “Along Came a Spider is that rarity—a psychological thriller that truly breaks new ground as James Patterson brilliantly explores dark crevices of the aberrant mind. Detective Alex Cross is real and fascinating! Patterson lets us soar and dip with roller coaster thrills, and this reader lost a good night’s sleep. When can I meet Cross again? Soon, I hope. Spider is a sure winner; Cross is the fictional detective of the nineties!”

  Nelson DeMille:

  “Along Came a Spider is the best thriller I’ve come across in many a year. It deserves to be this season’s #1 bestseller and should instantly make James Patterson a household name.”

  People magazine:

  “THREE STRONG CHARACTERS (CROSS, FLANAGAN, AND THE MURDERER) AS WELL AS A PRIME-TIME PLOT move Patterson’s sixth novel at far more than a spider’s pace. Patterson (The Midnight Club) knows how to sell thrills and suspense in clear, unwavering prose. In Alex Cross, who happens to be black, this Edgar Award winner has created a most compelling hero, a brainy cop afraid neither to bare his emotions (for his own two kids, for instance) nor to admit procedural error.”

  Library Journal:

  “ATTENTION GRABBING… PATTERSON’S STORYTELLING TALENT IS IN TOP FORM IN THIS GRISLY ESCAPIST YARN.”

  Kirkus Review:

  “MOVES BRISKLY… WITH A FINE NOIR TWIST WINDUP.”

  Oakland Press:

  “A tale with the polish of a master… MOVE OVER THOMAS HARRIS…. It’s the sort of tale that keeps your hands gripping the book and your heart pounding at any unusual noise in the house.”

  Buffalo News:

  “WILL RIVET EVEN THE MOST JADED READER. He creates a multilayered, convoluted plot that keeps readers off-balance, jolting them around narrative hairpin turns while transfixing them with an extraordinary sustained tension.”

  Willamette Week:

  “MORE THAN A MYSTERY. It’s a gripping retelling of one man’s struggle to unlock the secrets of a murderer’s mind—the first-person sections in the killer’s voice are especially effective—while keeping his own life together.”

  Mostly Murder:

  “Patterson has created a fast-moving, character-driven roller coaster of a thriller. The best thrillers leave the reader thinking about what scares them besides the obvious. The sublime terror beneath Along Came a Spider comes from our own system. Now that’s scary!”

  Also by James Patterson

  The Thomas Berryman Number

  Virgin

  Black Friday (originally published as Black Market)

  The Midnight Club

  Along Came a Spider

  Kiss the Girls

  Hide &Seek

  Jack &Jill

  Cat &Mouse

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1992 by James Patterson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration by Joe Ivies

  This Warner Books Edition is published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: February 2001

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2030-1

  Contents

  Along comes the most talked about, the most gripping thriller in years…

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part One: Maggie Rose and Shrimpie Goldberg (1992)

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  Part Two: The Son of Lindbergh

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  Part Three: The Last Southern Gentleman

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  Part Four: Remember Maggie Rose

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  Part Five: The Second Investigation

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

&n
bsp; CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  Part Six: The Cross House

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Peter Kim, who helped me learn about the private lives, the secrets, and the taboos that still exist all across America. Anne Pough-Campbell, Michael Ouweleen, Holly Tippett, and Irene Markocki gave me more of a feeling for Alex and his life in the Southeast section of D.C. Liz Delle and Barbara Groszewski kept me honest. Maria Pugatch (my Lowenstein) and Mark and MaryEllen Patterson put me back in touch with my half-dozen years working psych at McLean Hospital. Carole and Brigid Dwyer and Midgie Ford helped tremendously with Maggie Rose. Richard and Artie Pine ran with this like the banshees they can be. Finally, Fredrica Friedman was my partner in crime from beginning to end.

  Prologue

  Let’s Play

  Make-Believe

  (1932)

  New Jersey, near Princeton;

  March 1932

  The Charles Lindbergh farmhouse glowed with bright, orangish lights. It looked like a fiery castle, especially in that gloomy, fir-wooded region of Jersey. Shreds of misty fog touched the boy as he moved closer and closer to his first moment of real glory, his first kill.

  It was pitch-dark and the grounds were soggy and muddy and thick with puddles. He had anticipated as much. He’d planned for everything, including the weather.

  He wore a size nine man’s work boot. The toe and heel of the boots were stuffed with torn cloth and strips of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

  He wanted to leave footprints, plenty of footprints. A man’s footprints. Not the prints of a twelve-year-old boy. They would lead from the county highway called the Stoutsburg-Wertsville Road, up to, then back from, the farmhouse.

  He began to shiver as he reached a stand of pines, not thirty yards from the sprawling house. The mansion was just as grand as he’d imagined: seven bedrooms and four baths on the second floor alone. Lucky Lindy and Anne Morrow’s place in the country.

  Cool beans, he thought.

  The boy inched closer and closer toward the dining-room window. He was fascinated by this condition known as fame. He thought a lot about it. Almost all the time. What was fame really like? How did it smell? How did it taste? What did fame look like close up?

  “The most popular and glamorous man in the world” was right there sitting at the table. Charles Lindbergh was tall, elegant, and fabulously golden haired, with a fair complexion. “Lucky Lindy” truly seemed above everyone else.

  So did his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Anne had short hair. It was curly and black, and it made her skin look chalky white. The light from the candles on the table appeared to be dancing around her.

  Both of them sat very straight in their chairs. Yes, they certainly looked superior, as if they were God’s special gifts to the world. They kept their heads high, delicately eating their food. He strained to see what was on the table. It looked like lamb chops on their perfect china.

  “I’ll be more famous than either of you pitiful stiffs,” the boy finally whispered. He promised that to himself. Every detail had been thought through a thousand times, at least that often. He very methodically went to work.

  The boy retrieved a wooden ladder left near the garage by workingmen. Holding the ladder tightly against his side, he moved toward a spot just beyond the library window. He climbed silently up to the nursery. His pulse was racing, and his heart was pounding so loud he could hear it.

  Light cast from a hallway lamp illuminated the baby’s room. He could see the crib and the snoozing little prince in it. Charles Jr., “the most famous child on earth.”

  On one side, to keep away drafts, was a colorful screen with illustrations of barnyard animals.

  He felt sly and cunning. “Here comes Mr. Fox,” the boy whispered as he quietly slid open the window.

  Then he took another step up the ladder and was inside the nursery at last.

  Standing over the crib, he stared at the princeling. Curls of golden hair like his father’s, but fat. Charles Jr. was gone to fat at only twenty months.

  The boy could no longer control himself. Hot tears streamed from his eyes. His whole body began to shake, from frustration and rage—only mixed with the most incredible joy of his life.

  “Well, daddy’s little man. It’s our time now,” he muttered to himself.

  He took a tiny rubber ball with an attached elastic band from his pocket. He quickly slipped the odd-looking looped device over Charles Jr.’s head, just as the small blue eyes opened.

  As the baby started to cry, the boy plopped the rubber ball right into the little drooly mouth. He reached down into the crib and took Baby Lindbergh into his arms and went swiftly back down the ladder. All according to plan.

  The boy ran back across the muddy fields with the precious, struggling bundle in his arms and disappeared into the darkness.

  Less than two miles from the farmhouse, he buried the spoiled-rotten Lindbergh baby—buried him alive.

  That was only the start of things to come. After all, he was only a boy himself.

  He, not Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was the Lindbergh baby kidnapper. He had done it all by himself.

  Cool beans.

  Part One

  Maggie Rose and

  Shrimpie Goldberg

  (1992)

  CHAPTER 1

  EARLY ON THE MORNING of December 21, 1992, I was the picture of contentment on the sun porch of our house on 5th Street in Washington, D.C. The small, narrow room was cluttered with mildewing winter coats, work boots, and wounded children’s toys. I couldn’t have cared less. This was home.

  I was playing Gershwin on our slightly out-of-tune, formerly grand piano. It was just past 5 A.M., and cold as a meat locker on the porch. I was prepared to sacrifice a little for “An American in Paris.”

  The phone jangled in the kitchen. Maybe I’d won the D.C., or Virginia, or Maryland lottery and they’d forgotten to call the night before. I play all three games of misfortune regularly.

  “Nana? Can you get that?” I called from the porch.

  “It’s for you. You might as well get it yourself,” my testy grandmother called back. “No sense me gettin’ up, too. No sense means nonsense in my dictionary.”

  That’s not exactly what was said, but it went something like that. It always does.

  I hobbled into the kitchen, sidestepping more toys on morning-stiff legs. I was thirty-eight at the time. As the saying goes, if I’d known I was going to live that long, I would have taken better care of myself.

  The call turned out to be from my partner in crime, John Sampson. Sampson knew I’d be up. Sampson knows me better than my own kids.

  “Mornin’, brown sugar. You up, aren’t you?” he said. No other I.D. was necessary. Sampson and I have been best friends since we were nine years old and took up shoplifting at Park’s Corner Variety store near the projects. At the time, we had no idea that old Park would have shot us dead over a pilfered pack of Chesterfields. Nana Mama would have done even worse to us if she’d known about our crime spree.

  “If I wasn’t up, I am now,” I said into the phone receiver. “Tell me something good.”

  “There’s been another murder. Looks like our boy again,” Sampson said. “They’re waitin’ on us. Half the free world’s there already.”

  “It’s too early in the morning to see the meat wagon,” I muttered. I could feel my stomach rolling. This wasn’t the way I wanted the day to start. “Shit. Fuck me.”

  Nana Mama looked up from her steaming tea and runny eggs. She shot me one of her sanctimonious, lady-of-the-house looks. She was already dressed for school, where she still does volunteer wor
k at seventy-nine. Sampson continued to give me gory details about the day’s first homicides.

  “Watch your language, Alex,” Nana said. “Please watch your language so long as you’re planning to live in this house.”

  “I’ll be there in about ten minutes,” I told Sampson. “I own this house,” I said to Nana.

  She groaned as if she were hearing that terrible news for the first time.

  “There’s been another bad murder over in Langley Terrace. It looks like a thrill killer. I’m afraid that it is,” I told her.

  “That’s too bad,” Nana Mama said to me. Her soft brown eyes grabbed mine and held. Her white hair looked like one of the doilies she puts on all our living-room chairs. “That’s such a bad part of what the politicians have let become a deplorable city. Sometimes I think we ought to move out of Washington, Alex.”

  “Sometimes I think the same thing,” I said, “but we’ll probably tough it out.”

  “Yes, black people always do. We persevere. We always suffer in silence.”

  “Not always in silence,” I said to her.

  I had already decided to wear my old Harris Tweed jacket. It was a murder day, and that meant I’d be seeing white people. Over the sport coat, I put on my Georgetown warm-up jacket. It goes better with the neighborhood.

  On the bureau, by the bed, was a picture of Maria Cross. Three years before, my wife had been murdered in a drive-by shooting. That murder, like the majority of murders in Southeast, had never been solved.

  I kissed my grandmother on the way out the kitchen door. We’ve done that since I was eight years old. We also say good-bye, just in case we never see each other again. It’s been like that for almost thirty years, ever since Nana Mama first took me in and decided she could make something of me.

  She made a homicide detective, with a doctorate in psychology, who works and lives in the ghettos of Washington, D.C.

  CHAPTER 2