Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross, #1)

by James Patterson

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.

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 kissed my grandmother on the way out the kitchen door. We’ve done that since I was eight years old.

The sergeant was a jelly-roll-belly Irish type, probably left over from the Civil War. His face looked like a wedding cake left out in the rain. He didn’t seem to be buying my tweed jacket ensemble.

nodded. “Was the kitchen door open when you came?” I turned to the patrolman. He was white, baby-faced, growing a little mustache to compensate for it. He was probably twenty-three or twenty-four, frightened that morning. I couldn’t blame him. “Uh. No. No sign of forced entry. It was unlocked, sir.” The patrolman was very nervous. “It’s a real bad mess in there, sir. It’s a family.”

Just as Nana Mama had said, it was a bad part of what somebody had let become a bad city. In this big bad country of ours.

first- through sixth-grade classes, were singing “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. Before she played the folk/rock song on the auditorium’s gleaming black Steinway, Ms. Kaminsky had tried to explain the message of it for everybody. “This moving song, by a young black woman from Massachusetts, is about being dirt poor in the richest country in the world. It’s about being black in the nineteen nineties.” The petite, rail-thin music and visual arts teacher was always so intense.

Michael was being ironic, of course. As always. That was his East Coast way of dealing with people who weren’t as smart as he was—which meant just about everybody in the free world.

Soneji climbed into the front and fired up the blue van. As he drove from the parking area, he sang “Magic Bus” by The Who. He was in an awfully good mood today. He was planning to be America’s first serial kidnapper, among other things.

The mouthpiece smelled of cheap musk perfume. Poo’s or Suzette’s fragrance, maybe both of theirs.

Christmas tree up.” “Sure it is. Don’t bullshit me, Alex. Not today. Not right now.” If he was trying to get a rise out of me, he got one. “One victim is a three-year-old little boy in his pajamas. He may have been dealing. I’ll check into it.” I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t say a lot of things. Lately, I’d been feeling I was on the edge of exploding. Lately means for about three years or so.

they would logically be the very last people in the South to give up religion, morals, and even formal manners. She said that I was a true Southern man, having been born in North Carolina. She also questioned why it was that we idolize near-psychotic detectives in films, TV, books, and newspaper articles. The title of the piece, which ran over my brooding photograph, was, “The Last Southern Gentleman.” The story caused big problems inside our very uptight department.

I gave a one-two-three rap on the door of the headmaster’s office and Sampson and I walked in. Before I could say a word, Pittman held up his right hand. “Cross, you just listen to what I have to say,” he said as he came over to us. “There’s been a kidnapping at this school. It’s a major kidnapping—” “That’s a real bad thing,” I butted in immediately. “Unfortunately, a killer has also struck the Condon Terrace and Langley neighborhoods.

“What about Sampson? At least leave him on the project murders,” I said to the chief of detectives. “You got any complaints, take them up with the mayor. You’re both working on this kidnapping. That’s all I have to say to you at this time.” Pittman turned his back and walked away. We were on the Dunne-Goldberg kidnapping case, like it or not. We didn’t like it.

She had come straight to the school from her lake cottage, not to mention her first vacation in twenty-nine months. That latter fact helped to explain her style of dress that morning: the leather bike jacket, the faded black jeans with leg warmers, thick leather belt, the red-and-black checkered lumberman’s shirt, and the worn engineering boots.

She was an immediate supervisor of the Secret Service agents who guarded just about everyone other than the president. Key cabinet members and their families, about a half dozen senators, including Ted Kennedy. She reported to the secretary of the treasury himself. She had worked unbelievably hard to get all that trust and responsibility, and she was responsible. Hundred-hour weeks; no vacation year after year, no life to speak of.

He was clearly heartbroken. The secretary looked ten years older than his actual age, which was forty-nine. His face was as white as the school’s stucco walls.

Graham asked the group. He and I had worked closely together before. Graham was extremely smart, and had been a star in the Bureau for years. He’d co-written a book about busting up organized crime in New Jersey. It had been made into a hit movie. We respected and liked each other, which is rare between the Bureau and local police. When my wife had been killed in Washington, Roger had gone out of his way to involve the Bureau in the investigation. He’d given me more help than my own department.

“How could a potential kidnapper possibly get on the teaching staff of this kind of school?” the special agent asked. A pair of sunglasses peeked from the breast pocket of his suit. Winter shades. Harrison Ford had played him in the movie made from his book.

Jezzie Flanagan stayed behind. “I’ve heard about you, Detective Cross, now that I think of it. You’re the psychologist. There was an article in the Washington Post.” She smiled nicely, a demi-smile. I didn’t smile back. “You know newspaper articles,” I told her. “Usually a pack of half-truths. In that case, definitely some tall tales.” “I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “Nice to meet you, anyway.”

We were feeling pissy. I kept seeing the face of little Mustaf Sanders. Who was going to go and find this killer? No one. Mustaf had already been forgotten. I knew that would never happen with the two private-school children. A little later

No one had been able to pick these kids up yet, and they were frightened. Some of the children at the school had wet their pants, and there was one case of severe vomiting. There was the possibility of crisis trauma, a condition I had some experience treating.

“We’re new kids in your school,” Sampson joked with the children. He had actually taken his sunglasses off, though I wasn’t sure if he had to. Kids usually take to Sampson. He fits into their “friendly monster” grouping. “No you’re not!” said Mary-Berry. Sampson had gotten her to smile already. A good sign. “That’s right, we’re really policemen,” I told the kids. “We’re here to make sure everybody’s okay now. I mean, phew, what—a—morning!”

“Are they going to hurt Maggie Rose and Michael Goldberg?” Jonathan the Serious wanted to know. It was a good, fair question. It deserved an answer.

“Of course it is. We both know that.” Monroe nodded agreement. “Those dumb bastards will be tripping all over one another. Listen to me, Alex. Will you just listen?” When Carl Monroe wants something from you, he’ll talk you into submission if he has to. I had seen this before and now he started up with me again.

“You know, I saw you in a play once at St. A’s. You can act, too. You have real presence.” “Athol Fugard’s The Blood Knot.” I remembered the time. Maria had lured me into her theater group. “The play is powerful. It can make anybody look all right.” “You follow what I’m saying? You listening to me at all?” “You want to marry me.” I laughed out loud at Monroe. “You want to go out on a date with me first, though.” “Something like that,” Monroe roared back. “You’re doing it just the right way, Carl. I like to be sweet-talked before I get fucked.” Monroe laughed some more, a little harder than he should have. He could be buddies with you, then stare right through you the next time you met. Some people called him “Coconut” around the department. I was one of them. “Brown on the outside, white inside.” I had the feeling that he was actually a lonely man. I still wondered exactly what he wanted from me.

Less than fifty yards in from the main highway, he couldn’t see anything but the dirt road and a mess of overhanging bushes. No one could see his van from the highway. The van bumped along past a ramshackle, faded white farmhouse. The building looked as if it were shrinking, collapsing right back into its foundation. No more than forty yards past the house was what remained of an equally run-down storage barn.

Unlike the rest of the deserted farm, the barn had a lived-in feel. It had a dirt floor. Cheesecloth was taped over three broken windows in the hayloft. There were no rusting tractors or other farm machinery. The barn had the smell of damp earth and gasoline. Gary Soneji pulled two Cokes from a cooler on the passenger seat. He polished off both sodas, letting out a satisfied belch after downing the second cold one.

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.

“Mr. Chips.” He thought of his nickname at the school. Mr. Chips! What a lovely, lovely bit of playacting 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 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.

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.

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.

“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?”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Maggie wondered if she might be strapped or tied down. Was that what they really did to you inside a casket? Did they strap you down? Why would they do that? To stop you from getting out of the ground? To keep your spirit under the earth forever and ever? Suddenly, she remembered

“Lower your voice, or I’m leaving,” I said. I try to act in a reasonable and considerate manner most of the time. It’s one of my character flaws.

“The initial phone call was made from the Arlington area. Soneji made it clear he had nothing to say about the children, except that both Maggie Dunne and Michael Goldberg are doing well. What else would he say? He wouldn’t allow us to speak to either of the children, so we don’t know that for sure. He sounded lucid and very much in control.” “Has the voice tape been analyzed yet?” Pittman asked from his seat near the front.

It’s difficult to shake up an experienced group like the ones gathered at the Dunnes’. The news of Roger Graham’s murder did it: I know that it buckled my knees. Roger and I had shared some tight spaces together over the past few years. Whenever I worked with him, I’d always known my back would be covered. Not that I needed another reason to want to get Gary Soneji, but he’d given me a good one.

The news gossip that morning was about how Secret Service agents Charles Chakely and Michael Devine had left their posts at the private school. Actually, they had gone out for breakfast during classes. It was pretty standard for this kind of duty. The coffee break, however, would be expensive. It would probably cost Chakely and Devine their jobs, possibly their careers.

Sampson went to the Georgetown library, but no one there had seen Soneji. They weren’t even aware of the book thefts from their stacks. Soneji had successfully disappeared. More disturbing, he seemed to have never existed before taking the job at Washington Day School. Not surprisingly, he had falsified his employment records and faked several recommendations. He’d completed each step as expertly as any of us have seen in fraud or bunco cases. He’d left no trail.

After two impressive interviews, the school wanted the personable and eager teacher so badly (and had been led to believe they were in competition with other D.C. private schools), they had simply hired him.

I met with Katherine and Thomas Dunne in the backyard of their house. A ten-foot-high graystone wall effectively kept out the outside world. So did a row of huge linden trees. Actually, the backyard consisted of several gardens separated by stone walls and a wandering stream. The gardens had their own plantsmen, a young couple from Potomac who apparently made a very nice living tending gardens around town. The plantsmen definitely made more money than I did.

Katherine Rose had thrown an old camel’s hair steamer over jeans and a V-necked sweater. She could probably get away with wearing anything she wanted, I thought as we all walked outside. I’d read somewhere, recently, that Katherine Rose was still considered among the most beautiful women in the world. She had made only a handful of movies since she’d had Maggie Rose, but she’d lost none of her beauty, not so far as I could see. Not even in her time of terrible anxiety.

Her husband, Thomas Dunne, had been a prominent entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles when they met. He’d been involved with Greenpeace and Save the Earth out there. The family had moved to Washington after he became director of the American Red Cross. “Have you been involved with other kidnappings, Detective?” Thomas Dunne wanted to know. He was trying to figure out where I fit in. Was I important? Could I help t...