Alex Cross 01 - Along Came a Spider Read online

  There were no sure things in life, he was thinking, but he couldn’t imagine how any policeman could get him now. Was it foolish and dangerous to be this confident? he wondered. Not really, because he was also being realistic. There was no way to trace him now. There wasn’t a single clue for them to follow.

  He had been planning to kidnap somebody famous since—well, since forever. Who that someone was had changed, and changed again, but never the clear, main objective in his mind. He’d been working at Washington Day School for months. This moment, right now, proved it had been worth every sucky minute.

  “Mr. Chips.” He thought of his nickname at the school. Mr. Chips! What a lovely, lovely bit of play-acting he’d done. Real Academy Award stuff. As good as anything he’d seen since Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy. And that performance was a classic. De Niro himself had to be a psychopath in real life.

  Gary Soneji finally pulled open the van’s sliding door. Back to work, work, work his fingers to the bone.

  One body at a time, he hauled the children out into the barn. First came Maggie Rose Dunne. Then little boy Goldberg. He laid the unconscious boy and girl beside each other on the dirt floor. He undressed each child, leaving them in their underwear. He carefully prepared doses of secobarbital sodium. Just your friendly local pharmacist hard at work. The dose was somewhere between a sleeping pill and a hospital anesthetic. It would last for about twelve hours.

  He took out preloaded one-shot needles called Tubex. This was a closed injection system that came prepackaged, complete with dose and needle. He set out two tourniquets. He had to be very careful. The exact dosage could be tricky with small children.

  Next, he pulled the black Saab forward about two yards. This move exposed a five-by-four-foot plot in the floor of the barn.

  He’d dug the hole during several previous visits to the deserted farm. Inside the open cavity was a homemade wooden compartment, a kind of shelter. It had its own oxygen tank supply. Everything but a color TV for watching reruns.

  He placed the Goldberg boy inside the wooden compartment first. Michael Goldberg weighed next to nothing in his arms, which was exactly what he felt about him. Nothing. Then came the little princess, the little pride and joy, Maggie Rose Dunne. All the way from La-la-land originally.

  He slid the Tubex needles into each child’s arm. He was extra careful to give each dose slowly, over a three-minute period.

  The doses were measured by weight, .25 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. He checked the breathing of each child. Sleep tight, my multimillion-dollar babies.

  Gary Soneji shut the trapdoor with a bang. Then he buried the wooden compartment under half a foot of fresh soil. Inside the deserted storage barn. In the middle of godforsaken Maryland farm country. Just like little Charlie Lindbergh, Jr., had been buried sixty years before.

  No one would find them out here. Not until he wanted them found. If he wanted them found. Big if.

  Gary Soneji trudged back up the dirt road to what remained of the ancient farmhouse. He wanted to wash up. He also wanted to start to enjoy this a little. He’d even brought a Watchman to see himself on TV.

  CHAPTER 10

  NEWS BULLETINS were flashing on the television screen every fifteen minutes or so. Gary Soneji was right there on the high and mighty tube. He saw photographs of “Mr. Chips” on every news bulletin. The news reports didn’t offer a clue about what was really going on, though.

  So this was fame! This was how fame felt. He liked it a lot. This was what he’d been practicing for all these years. “Hi, Mom! Look who’s on TV. It’s the Bad Boy!”

  There was only one glitch all afternoon, and that was the press conference given by the FBI. An agent named Roger Graham had spoken, and Agent Graham obviously thought he was hot shit. He wanted some fame for himself. “You think this is your movie, Graham? Wrong, baby!” Gary Soneji shouted at the TV. “I’m the only star here!”

  Soneji had been prowling around inside the farmhouse for several hours, watching the night slowly fall outside. He felt the different textures of darkness as they blanketed the farm. It was now seven o’clock and time to get on with his plan.

  “Let’s do it.” He pranced around the farmhouse like a prizefighter before a bout. “Let’s get it on.”

  For a while, he thought about Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, his all-time favorite couple. That calmed him some. He thought about Baby Charles; and about that poor fool, Bruno Hauptmann, who had obviously been framed for the brilliantly conceived and executed crime. He was convinced that the Lindbergh affair was the century’s most elegant crime, not just because it remained unsolved—many, many crimes went unsolved—but because it was important and unsolved.

  Soneji was confident, realistic, and, most of all, pragmatic about his own masterpiece. A “fluke” was always possible. A “lucky accident” by the police could occur. The actual exchange of money would be tricky. It meant contact, and contact was always highly dangerous in life.

  To his knowledge, and his knowledge was encyclopedic, no modern kidnapper had satisfactorily solved the ransom-exchange problem. Not if they wanted to be paid for their labors, and he needed a huge payday for his multimillion-dollar kids.

  Wait until they hear how much money.

  The thought brought a smile to his lips. Of course, the world-beater Dunnes and the all-powerful Goldbergs could, and would, pay. It was no accident he had chosen those two families—with their pampered little snot-nosed brats, and their unlimited supply of wealth and power.

  Soneji lit one of the white candles he kept in a side pocket of his jacket. He sniffed a pleasant whiff of beeswax. Then he made his way to the small bathroom off the kitchen.

  He was remembering an old Chambers Brothers song, “Time.” It was time… time… time to pull the rug out from under everybody’s feet. Time… time… time for his first little surprise, the first of many. Time… time… time to start to build his own legend. This was his movie.

  The room, the whole house, was freezing cold in late December. Gary Soneji could see his breath wisping out as he set up shop in the bathroom.

  Fortunately, the abandoned house had well water, which was still running in the bathroom. Very cold water indeed. Gary Soneji lit some candles, and began to work. It would take him a full half-hour before he was through.

  First, he removed the dark brown, balding half-wig. He’d purchased it three years before, at a theatrical costume store in New York City. That same night, he’d gone to see Phantom of the Opera. He’d loved the Broadway musical. He identified with the Phantom so much that it frightened him. It sent him off to read the original novel, first in French, then in English.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” he spoke to the face in the mirror.

  With the glue and other schmutz off, a full head of blond hair was revealed. Long and wavy blond curls.

  “Mr. Soneji? Mr. Chips? Is that you, fella?”

  Not a bad-looking sort, actually. Good prospects? On a roll, maybe? Clearly on a roll, yes.

  And nothing at all like Chips. Nothing like our Mr. Soneji!

  Away came the thick mustache that Gary Soneji had worn since the day he’d arrived to interview at the Washington Day School. Then the contact lenses were removed. His eyes changed from green back to chestnut brown.

  Gary Soneji held the dwindling candle up to the dingy, cracked bathroom mirror. He rubbed one corner of the glass clean with the sleeve of his jacket.

  “There. Just look at you. Look at you now. Genius is in the details, right?”

  That insipid nerd from the private school was almost completely eradicated. The wimp and the do-gooder. Mr. Chips was dead and gone forever.

  What a wondrous farce it had been. What a daring plan of action, and how well executed. A shame no one would ever know what had really happened. But whom could he tell?

  Gary Soneji left the farmhouse around 11:30 P.M., right on his schedule. He walked to a detached garage that was north of the house.

  In a special place in the garage, very special, he hid five thousand dollars from his savings, his secret cache, money he’d stolen over the years. That was part of the plan, too. Long-range thinking.

  Then he headed down to the barn, and his car. Once he was inside the barn, he checked on the kids again. So far, so great.

  No complaints from the kiddies.

  The Saab started right up. He drove out to the main road, using only the dimmers.

  When he finally reached the highway, he flicked on the headlights. He still had work to do tonight. Masterpiece Theatre continued.

  Cool beans.

  CHAPTER 11

  FBI SPECIAL AGENT ROGER GRAHAM lived in Manassas Park, midway between Washington and the FBI Academy in Quantico. Graham was tall and physically impressive, with short, sandy brown hair. He’d worked on several major kidnappings, but nothing quite as disturbing as this current nightmare.

  At a little past one that morning, Graham finally got home. Home was a sprawling Colonial, on an average street in Manassas Park. Six bedrooms, three baths, a big yard that covered nearly two acres.

  Unfortunately, this had not been a normal day. Graham was drained and beaten up and bone-tired. He often wondered why he didn’t just settle down and write another book. Take early retirement from the Bureau. Get to know his three children before they fled from the house.

  The street in Manassas Park was deserted. Porch lights glowed down the line of the road, and they were a comforting, friendly sight. Lights appeared in the rearview mirror of Graham’s Ford Bronco.

  A second car had stopped on the street in front of his house, its headlamps gleaming. A man got out, and waved a notepad that was clutched in his hand.

  “Agent Graham? Martin Bayer, New York Times,” the man called out as he walked up the driveway. He flashed a press credential.

  Jesus Christ. Son-of-a-bitching New York Times, Graham thought to himself. The reporter wore a dark suit, pin-striped shirt, rep tie. He was your basic up-and-coming New York yuppie on assignment. All these assholes from the Times and the Post looked the same to Graham. Not a real reporter among them anymore.

  “You’ve come a long way at this hour for a ‘no comment,’ Mr. Bayer. I’m sorry,” Roger Graham said. “I can’t give you anything on the kidnapping. Frankly, there isn’t anything to give.”

  He wasn’t sorry, but who needed enemies at the New York Times. Those bastards could stick their poison pens in one of your ears and out the other.

  “One question, and one question only. I understand that you don’t have to answer, but it’s that important to me—for me. For me to be here at one in the morning.”

  “Okay. Let’s have it. What’s your question?” Graham shut the door of his Bronco. He locked up for the night, flipped the car keys, and caught them.

  “Are all of you this incredibly insipid and stupid?” Gary Soneji asked him. “That’s my question, Grahamcracker.”

  A long, sharp knife flashed forward once. Then flashed again. The blade sliced back and forth across Roger Graham’s throat.

  The first slashing motion pinned him back against his Ford Bronco. The second slashed his carotid artery. Graham dropped dead in his driveway. There had been no time to duck, run, or even say a prayer.

  “You’re supposed to be a freaking star, Roger. You wanted to be the star, right? I see no evidence of that. None, zero,” Soneji said. “You’re supposed to be way better than this. I need to be challenged by the best and the brightest.”

  Soneji bent low and slid a single index card into the breast pocket of Agent Graham’s white shirt. He patted the dead man’s chest. “Now, would a New York Times reporter really be here at one in the morning, you arrogant fuck? Just to talk to your sorry ass?”

  Then Soneji drove away from the murder scene. The death of Agent Graham wasn’t a big deal to him. Not really. He’d killed over two hundred people before this one. Practice makes perfect. It wouldn’t be the last time, either.

  This one would wake everybody up, though. He just hoped they had somebody better waiting in the wings.

  Otherwise, where was the fun? The challenge? How could this get bigger than the Lindbergh kidnapping?

  CHAPTER 12

  I WAS ALREADY BECOMING emotionally involved with the kidnapped children. My sleep was restless and agitated that first night. In my dreams, I replayed several bad scenes at the school. I saw Mustaf Sanders again and again. His sad eyes stared out at me, asking for help, getting none from me.

  I woke to find both my kids in bed with me. At some time during the early morning, they must have snuck aboard. It’s one of their favorite tricks, their little jokes on “Big Daddy.”

  Damon and Janelle were fast asleep on top of a patchwork quilt. I’d been too wasted to pull it off the bed the night before. We must have looked like two resting angels—and a fallen plowhorse.

  Damon is a beautiful little boy of six who always reminds me of how special his mother was. He has Maria’s eyes. Jannie is the other apple of my eye. She’s four, going on fifteen. She likes to call me “Big Daddy,” which sounds like some black slang she’s managed to invent. Maybe she knew the football star “Big Daddy” Lipscomb in some other life.

  Also on the bed was a copy of William Styron’s book on his depression, Darkness Visible, which I’d been reading. I was hoping it might give me some clue to help me get over my own depression—which had plagued me ever since Maria’s murder. Three years now, felt like twenty.

  What actually woke me that morning were headlights fanning across the window blinds. I heard a car door bang and the fast crunch of feet on gravel in the driveway. Careful not to wake the kids, I slipped over to the bedroom window.

  I peered down on two Metro D.C. patrol cars parked behind the old Porsche in our drive. It looked miserably cold outside. We were just entering the deepest hollow of D.C.’s winter.

  “Give me a break,” I mumbled into the chilly window blinds. “Go away.”

  Sampson was heading for the back door to our kitchen. It was twenty to five on the clock next to the bed. Time to go to work.

  Just before five that morning, Sampson and I pulled up in front of a crumbling prewar brownstone in Georgetown, a block west of M Street. We had decided to check out Soneji’s apartment ourselves. The only way to get stuff done right is to do it yourself.

  “Lights are all on. Looks like somebody’s home,” Sampson said as we climbed out of the car. “Now who could it be?”

  “Three guesses. The first two don’t count,” I mumbled. I was suffering from early-morning queasiness. A visit to the monster’s den wasn’t going to help.

  “The FBI. Maybe Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., is up there,” Sampson guessed. “Maybe they’re filming Real Stories from the FBI.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  We entered the building and took the narrow winding stairway up. On the second floor, yellow crime-scene tape had been placed in a crisscross pattern across the doorway to Soneji’s apartment. It didn’t look like the place where a “Mr. Chips” would live. More like a Richard Ramirez or a Green River killer.

  The scarred wooden door was open. I could see two FBI techies working inside. A local deejay called The Greaseman was screeching from a radio on the floor.

  “Hey, Pete, what’s doin’?” I called inside. I knew one of the FBI techies on the job, Pete Schweitzer. He looked up at the sound of my voice.

  “Well, look who’s here. Welcome to the Inner Sanctum.”

  “We came over to bother you. See how it’s done,” Sampson said. We’d both worked with Pete Schweitzer before, liked and trusted him as much as you could any FBI personnel.

  “Come in and make yourselves at home at Casa Soneji. This is my fellow flyshit finder and bagger, Todd Toohey. Todd likes to listen to The Greaseman in the A.M. These two are ghouls like us, Toddie.”

  “The best,” I told Todd Toohey. I had already started to nose around the apartment. Everything was feeling unreal again. There was this cold, damp spot inside my head. Eerie-time.

  The small studio apartment was a mess. There wasn’t much furniture—a bare mattress on the floor, an end table and lamp, a sofa that looked as if it had been picked up off the street—but the floor was covered with things.

  Wrinkled sheets and towels and underwear were a large part of the general chaos. Two or three loads of laundry were spilled out on the floor. Most of the clutter was books and magazines, though. Several hundred books, and at least that many magazines, were piled in the single small room.

  “Anything interesting so far?” I asked Schweitzer. “You look through his library?”

  Schweitzer talked to me without looking up from a pile of books he was dusting. “Everything is interesting. Check out the books along the wall. Also, consider the fact that our fine-feathered friend wiped down this whole fucking apartment before he split.”

  “He do a good job? Up to your standards?”

  “Excellent job. I couldn’t have done much better myself. We haven’t found a partial print anywhere. Not even on any of those goddamn books.”

  “Maybe he reads with plastic gloves on,” I offered.

  “I think he might. I shit you not. Place was dusted by a pro, Alex.”

  I was crouched near several stacks of the books now. I read the titles on several of the spines. Most of it was nonfiction from the last five years or so.

  “True-crime fan,” I said.

  “Lots and lots of kidnapping stories,” Schweitzer said. He looked up and pointed. “Right side of the bed, near the reading lamp. That’s the kidnapping section.”

  I walked over and looked at the volumes. Most of the books had been stolen from the library at Georgetown. I figured he must have had an I.D. to get into the stacks there. Was he a past student? Maybe a professor?

  Several computer printouts were taped to the bare wall over his private library on kidnapping. I started to read down the lists.