Cat and Mouse Read online

  The firing had stopped again. What was Soneji doing? And where was he? The temporary silence was maddening and spooky. There was supposed to be lots of noise here in the train terminal. Someone scraped a chair against the marble floor and the screeching sound echoed loudly.

  I palmed my detective’s badge at a uniformed patrolman who had barricaded himself behind an overturned cafi table. Sweat was pouring down the uniformed cop’s face to the rolls of fat at his neck. He was only a few feet inside one of the doorways to the front lobby. He was breathing hard.

  “You all right?” I asked as Sampson and I slid down behind the table. He nodded, grunted something, but I didn’t believe him. His eyes were open wide with fear. I suspected he’d never been involved with a sniper either.

  “Where’s he firing from?” I asked the uniform. “You seen him?”

  “Hard to tell. But he’s up in there somewhere, that general area.” He pointed to the south balcony that ran above the long line of doorways at the front of Union Station. Nobody was using the doors now. Soneji was in full control.

  “Can’t see him from down here.” Sampson snorted at my side. “He might be moving around, changing position. That’s how a good sniper would work it.”

  “Has he said anything? Made any announcements? Any demands?” I asked the patrolman.

  “Nothing. He just started shooting people like he was having target practice. Four vics so far. Sucker can shoot.”

  I couldn’t see the fourth body. Maybe somebody, a father, mother, or friend, had pulled one of the victims in off the floor. I thought of my own family. Soneji had come to our house once. And he had called me here — invited me to his coming-out party at Union Station.

  Suddenly, from up on the balcony above us, a rifle barked! The flat crack of the weapon echoed off the train station’s thick walls. This was a shooting gallery with human targets.

  A woman screamed inside the America restaurant. I saw her go down hard as if she’d slipped on ice. Then there were lots of moans from inside the cafi

  The firing stopped again. What the hell was he doing up there?

  “Let’s take him out before he goes off again,” I whispered to Sampson. “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 11

  OUR LEGS pumping in unison, our breath coming in harsh rasps, Sampson and I climbed a dark marble stairway to the overhanging balcony. Uniformed officers and a couple of detectives were crouched in shooting positions up there.

  I saw a detective from the train-station detail, which is normally a small-crimes unit. Nothing like this, nothing even close to dealing with a sharpshooting sniper.

  “What do you know so far?” I asked. I thought the detective’s name was Vincent Mazzeo, but I wasn’t sure. He was pushing fifty and this was supposed to be a soft detail for him. I vaguely remembered that Mazzeo was supposed to be a pretty good guy.

  “He’s inside one of those anterooms. See that door over there? The space he secured has no roof cover. Maybe we can get at him from above. What do you think?”

  I glanced up toward the high gilded ceiling. I remembered that Union Station was supposed to be the largest covered colonnade in the United States. It sure looked it. Gary Soneji had always liked a big canvas. He had another one now.

  The detective took something out of his shirt pocket. “I got a master key. This gets us into some of the antechambers. Maybe the room he’s in.”

  I took the key. He wasn’t going to use it. He wasn’t going to play the hero. He didn’t want to meet up with Gary Soneji and his sharpshooter’s rifle this morning.

  Another burst of gunfire suddenly came from the anteroom.

  I counted. There were six — just like the last time.

  Like a lot of psychos, Soneji was into codes, magical words, numbers. I wondered about sixes. Six, six, six? The number hadn’t come up in the past with him.

  The shooting abruptly stopped again. Once more it was quiet in the station. My nerves were on edge, badly strained. There were too many people at risk here, too many to protect.

  Sampson and I moved ahead. We were less than twenty feet from the anteroom where he was shooting. We pressed against the wall, Glocks out.

  “You okay?” I whispered. We had been here before, similar bad situation, but that didn’t make it any better.

  “This is fun shit, huh, Alex? First thing in the morning too. Haven’t even had my coffee and doughnut.”

  “Next time he fires,” I said, “we go get him. He’s been firing six shots each time.”

  “I noticed,” Sampson said without looking at me. He patted my leg. We took in big sips of air.

  We didn’t have to wait long. Soneji began another volley of shots. Six shots. Why six shots each time?

  He knew we’d be coming for him. Hell, he’d invited me to his shooting spree.

  “Here we go,” I said.

  We ran across the marble-and-stone corridor. I took out the key to the anteroom, squeezed it between my index finger and thumb.

  I turned the key.

  Click!

  The door wouldn’t open! I jiggled the handle. Nothing.

  “What the hell?” Sampson said behind me, anger in his voice. “What’s wrong with the door?”

  “I just locked it,” I told him. “Soneji left it open for us.”

  Chapter 12

  DOWNSTAIRS, a couple and two small children started to run. They rushed toward the glass doors and possible freedom. One of the kids tripped and went down hard on his knee. The mother dragged him forward. It was terrifying to watch, but they made it.

  The firing started again!

  Sampson and I burst into the anteroom, both of us crouched low, our guns drawn.

  I caught a glimpse of a dark gray trap straight ahead.

  A sniper rifle pointed out from the cover and camouflage of the trap. Soneji was underneath, hidden from view.

  Sampson and I fired. Half a dozen gunshots thundered in the close quarters. Holes opened in the tarp. The rifle was silent.

  I rushed across the small anteroom and ripped away the trap. I groaned — a deep, gut-wrenching sound.

  No one was underneath the tarp. No Gary Soneji!

  A Browning automatic rifle was strapped on a metal tripod. A timing device was attached to a rod and the trigger. The whole thing was customized. The rifle would fire at a programmed interval. Six shots, then a pause, then six more shots. No Gary Soneji.

  I was already moving again. There were metal doors on the north and south walls of the small room. I yanked open the one closest to me. I expected a trap.

  But the connecting space was empty. There was another gray metal door on the opposing wall. The door was shut. Gary Soneji still loved to play games. His favorite trick: He was the only one with the rules.

  I rushed across the second room and opened door number two. Was that the game? A surprise? A booby prize behind either door one, two, or three?

  I found myself peering inside another small space, another empty chamber. No Soneji. Not a sign of him anywhere.

  The room had a metal stairway — it looked as if it went to another floor. Or maybe a crawl space above us.

  I climbed the stairs, stopping and starting so he wouldn’t get a clear shot from above. My heart was pounding, my legs trembling. I hoped that Sampson was close behind. I needed cover.

  At the top of the stairway, a hatchway was open. No Gary Soneji here either. I had been lured deeper and deeper into some kind of trap, into his web.

  My stomach was rolling. I felt a sharp pain building up behind my eyes. Soneji was still somewhere in Union Station. He had to be. He’d said he wanted to see me.

  Chapter 13

  SONEJI SAT as calm as a small-town banker, pretending to read the Washington Post on the 8:45 A.M. Metroliner to Penn Station in New York. His heart was still palpitating, but none of the excitement showed on his face. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, striped blue tie — he looked just like all the rest of the commuter assholes.

 
He had just tripped the light fantastic, hadn’t he? He had gone where few others ever would have dared. He had just outdone the legendary Charles Whitman, and this was only the beginning of his prime-time exposure. There was a saying he liked a lot. Victory belongs to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

  Soneji drifted in and out of a reverie in which he returned to his beloved woods around Princeton, New Jersey. He could see himself as a boy again. He remembered everything about the dense, uneven, but often spectacularly beautiful terrain. When he was eleven, he had stolen a .22-caliber rifle from one of the surrounding farms. He kept it hidden in a rock quarry near his house. The gun was carefully wrapped in an oilcloth, foil, and burlap bags. The .22-caliber rifle was the only earthly possession that he cared about, the only thing that was truly his.

  He remembered how he would scale down a steep, very rocky ravine to a quiet place where the forest floor leveled off, just past a thick tangle of bayberry prickers. There was a clearing in the hollow, and this was the site of his secret, forbidden target practice in those early years. One day he brought a rabbit’s head and a calico cat from the nearby Ruocco farm. There wasn’t much that a cat liked more than a fresh rabbit’s head. Cats were such little ghouls. Cats were like him. To this day, they were magical for him. The way they stalked and hunted was the greatest. That was why he had given one to Dr. Cross and his family.

  Little Rosie.

  After he had placed the severed bunny’s head in the center of the clearing, he untied the neck of the burlap bag and let the kitty free. Even though he had punched a few airholes in the bag, the cat had almost suffocated. “Sic ’em. Sic the bunny!” he commanded. The cat caught the scent of the fresh kill and took off in a pouncing run. Gary put the .22 rifle on his shoulder and watched. He sighted on the moving target. He caressed the trigger of his deuce-deuce, and then he fired. He was learning how to kill.

  You’re such an addict! He chastised himself now, back in the present, on the Metroliner train. Little had changed since he’d been the original Bad Boy in the Princeton area. His stepmother — the gruesome and untalented whore of Babylon — used to lock him in the basement regularly back then. She would leave him alone in the dark, sometimes for as long as ten to twelve hours. He learned to love the darkness, to be the darkness. He learned to love the cellar, to make it his favorite place in the world.

  Gary beat her at her own game.

  He lived in the underworld, his own private hell. He truly believed he was the Prince of Darkness.

  Gary Soneji had to keep bringing himself back to the present, back to Union Station and his beautiful plan. The Metro police were searching the trains.

  The police were outside right now! Alex Cross was probably among them.

  What a great start to things, and this was only the beginning.

  Chapter 14

  HE COULD see the police jackasses roaming the loading platforms at Union Station. They looked scared, lost and confused, and already half beaten. That was good to know, valuable information. It set a tone for things to come.

  He glanced toward a businesswoman sitting across the aisle. She looked frightened, too. White knuckles showing on her clenched hands. Frozen and stiff, shoulders thrown back like a military school cadet.

  Soneji spoke to her. He was polite and gentle, the way he could be when he wanted to. “I feel like this whole morning has to be a bad dream. When I was a boy, I used to go — one, two, three, wake up! I could bring myself out of a nightmare that way. It’s sure not working today.”

  The woman across the aisle nodded as if he’d said something profound. He’d made a connection with her. Gary had always been able to do that, reach out and touch somebody if he needed to. He figured he needed to now. It would look better if he was talking to a travel companion when the police came through the train car.

  “One, two, three, wake up,” she said in a low voice across the aisle. “God, I hope we’re safe down here. I hope they’ve caught him by now. Whoever, whatever he is.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Soneji said. “Don’t they always? Crazy people like that have a way of catching themselves.”

  The woman nodded once, but didn’t sound too convinced. “They do, don’t they. I’m sure you’re right. I hope so. That’s my prayer.”

  Two D.C. police detectives were stepping inside the club car. Their faces were screwed tight. Now it would get interesting. He could see more cops approaching through the dining car, which was just one car ahead. There had to be hundreds of cops inside the terminal now. It was showtime. Act Two.

  “I’m from Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington’s home.” Soneji kept talking to the woman. “Otherwise I’d have left the station already. That’s if they let us back upstairs.”

  “They won’t. I tried,” the woman told him. Her eyes were frozen, locked in an odd place. He loved that look. It was hard for Soneji to glance away, to focus on the approaching policemen and the threat they might present.

  “We need to see identifications from everyone,” one of the detectives was announcing. He had a deep, no-nonsense voice that got everybody’s attention. “Have IDs with pictures out when we come through. Thank you.”

  The two detectives got to his row of seats. This was it, wasn’t it? Funny, he didn’t feel much of anything. He was ready to take both cops out.

  Soneji controlled his breathing and also his heartbeat. Control, that was the ticket. He had control over the muscles in his face, and especially his eyes. He’d changed the color of his eyes for today. Changed his fair color from blond to gray. Changed the shape of his face. He looked soft, bloated, as harmless as your average traveling salesman.

  He showed a driver’s license and Amex card in the name of Neil Stuart from Wilmington, Delaware. He also had a Visa card and a picture ID for the Sports Club in Wilmington. There was nothing memorable about the way he looked. Just another business sheep.

  The detectives were checking his ID when Soneji spotted Alex Cross outside the train car. Make my day.

  Cross was coming his way, and he was peering in through the windows at passengers. Cross was still looking pretty good. He was six three and well built. He carried himself like an athlete, and looked younger than forty-one.

  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, what a mindblower. Trip the goddamn light fantastic. I’m right here, Cross. You could almost touch me if you wanted to. Look in at me. Look at me, Cross. I command you to look at me now!

  The tremendous anger and fury growing inside him was dangerous, Soneji knew. He could wait until Alex Cross was right on top of him, then pop up and put half a dozen shots into his face.

  Six head shots. Each of the six would be well deserved for what Cross had done to him. Cross had ruined his life — no, Alex Cross had destroyed him. Cross was the reason all of this was happening now. Cross was to blame for the murders in the train station. It was all Alex Cross’s fault.

  Cross, Cross, Cross! Was this the end now? Was this the big finale? How could it be?

  Cross looked so almighty as he walked, so above-the-fray. He had to give that to Cross. He was two or three inches taller than the other cops, smooth brown skin. Sugar — that’s what his friend Sampson called him.

  Well — he had a surprise for Sugar. Big unexpected surprise. Mindscrewer for the ages surprise.

  If you catch me, Dr. Cross — you catch yourself. Do you understand that? Don’t worry — you will soon enough.

  “Thank you, Mr. Stuart,” said the detective as he handed Soneji back his credit card and the Delaware driver’s license.

  Soneji nodded and offered a thin smile to the detective, and then his eyes flicked back to the window.

  Alex Cross was right there. Don’t look so humble, Cross. You’re not that great.

  He wanted to start shooting now. He was in heat. He experienced something like hot flashes. He could do Alex Cross right now. There was no doubt about it. He hated that face, that walk, everything about the doctor-detective.

  Alex Cross slowe
d his step. Then Cross looked right in at him. He was five feet away.

  Gary Soneji slowly moved his eyes up to Cross, then very naturally over to the other detectives, then back to Cross.

  Hello, Sugar.

  Cross didn’t recognize him. How could he? The detective looked right at his face — then he moved on. He kept on walking down the platform, picking up speed.

  Cross had his back to him and it was an almost irresistibly inviting target. A detective up ahead was calling to him, motioning for Cross to come. He loved the idea of shooting Cross in the back. A cowardly murder, that was the best. That’s what people really hated.

  Then Soneji relaxed back into his train seat.

  Cross didn’t recognize me. I’m that good. I’m the best he’s ever faced by far. I’ll prove it, too.

  Make no mistake about it. I will win.

  I am going to murder Alex Cross and his family, and no one can stop it from happening.

  Chapter 15

  IT WAS past five-thirty in the evening before I even got to think about leaving Union Station. I’d been trapped inside all day, talking to witnesses, talking to Ballistics, the medical examiner, making rough sketches of the murder scene in my notepad. Sampson was pacing from about four o’clock on. I could see he was ready to blow out of there, but he was used to my thoroughness.

  The FBI had arrived, and I’d gotten a call from Kyle Craig, who had stayed down in Quantico working on Mr. Smith. There was a mob of news reporters outside the terminal. How could it get any worse? I kept thinking, the train has left the station. It was one of those wordplays that gets in your head and won’t leave.

  I was bleary-eyed and bone weary by day’s end, but also as sad as I remembered being at a homicide scene. Of course this was no ordinary homicide scene. I had put Soneji away, but somehow I felt responsible that he was out again.