Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross, #1)

by James Patterson

Then he was running away, down a tight row of alleys between the houses. Nobody but kids used the little alleyway, which was overgrown with high weeds and littered with soda cans. He felt as if he had tunnel vision.

He ran through backyard after backyard, down good old Central Avenue. Then into the deep woods of Downing Park. He didn’t see a soul on the way. Only when he glanced back once could he see them moving toward his house. Saw the big black Kaffirs Cross and Sampson. The vastly overrated Manhunt. The Federal Bureau in all its glory.

He was sprinting now, full out toward the Metro train station, which was four blocks from the house. This was his link to Philly, Washington, New York, the outside world. He must have made it in ten flat—something like that. He kept himself in good shape. Powerful legs and arms, a washboard-flat stomach. An old VW was parked at the station. It was always parked there—the trusty Bug from his unholy youth. The “scene of past crimes,”

boy had innocently mentioned the police car to Mr. Murphy. He had escaped through sheer luck! We’d missed catching him by a few minutes at most.

“Gary is not a violent person. He can’t even bear to discipline Roni,” Missy Murphy was saying to us. That interested me. It fit a pattern of bell curves I had been studying for years: reports on sociopaths and their children. Sociopaths often had difficulty disciplining their children.

“Has he told you why he has difficulty disciplining your daughter?” I asked her. “Gary didn’t have a happy childhood himself. He wants only the best for Roni. He knows that he’s compensating. He’s a very bright man. He could easily have his Ph.D. in math.” “Did Gary grow up right here in Wilmington?” Sampson asked Missy. He was soft spoken and down to earth with the woman. “No, he grew up in Princeton, New Jersey.

“Not very much. He keeps a lot inside. The Murphys lived several miles from town, I know. Their closest neighbor was two or three miles. Gary didn’t have friends until he went to school. Even then he was often the odd man out. He can be very shy.”

Scorse asked me. I had noticed that whenever things got really weird, he asked for my opinion. “Exactly what I said about the sneaker in Washington. He left it for us. He’s playing a game now. He wants us to play with him.”

Actually, we got along well. “The team.” We got loud, played liar’s poker, raised some hell in the Tony Delaware Room that night. Sampson talked to Jezzie Flanagan for a while. He thought she was a good cop, too.

Klepner’s room was on the second floor. “I’m going to go watch some soft-core pornography,” he said as he split off from us. “That usually helps me get right to sleep.” “Sweet dreams,” Jezzie said.

There was a gentle bend in the hallway. Ornate signs on the wall listed room numbers and their direction. A few guests had their shoes out to be shined overnight.

I kissed those puffy lips again. They were perfect as far as I could tell. There’s a lot of myth about black men desiring white women; about some white women wanting to experiment with black men. Jezzie Flanagan was a smart, extremely desirable woman. She was somebody I could talk to, somebody I wanted to be around. And there we were, snuggled in each other’s arms at around three in the morning. We’d both had a little too much to drink, but not a lot too much. No myths involved. Just two people alone, in a strange town, on a very strange night in both of our lives. I wanted to be held by somebody right then. I think Jezzie did, too. The look in her eyes was sweet and comfortable. But there was

I studied Jezzie’s face in a way I couldn’t have before, and never thought that I would. I ran a finger lightly over her cheeks. Her skin was soft and smooth. Her blond hair was like silk between my fingers. Her perfume was subtle, like wildflowers.

A scraggly country laborer looked back at him from the mirror. Another Gary, completely. He had all the country-hick mannerisms down cold; modified cowboy walk as if he’d been kicked by a horse; hands in pockets, or thumbs in belt loops. Finger-comb your hair all the time. Spit whenever you get the chance.

Talk to me nice and beg me not to. What are you—twenty one, twenty? Use that as your emotional argument. You’re too young to die, unfulfilled, in a 7-Eleven. Gary finally decided to let her live. The amazing thing was that she had no idea how close she’d come to being killed. “You have a nice day. Come back soon,” she said. “You pray I don’t.”

loved McDonald’s, right? Food, folks, and fun. He was still pretty much on schedule. The “Bad Boy” was dependable in that regard—you could set your watch by him. There was the usual meandering lunchtime crowd of dopes and mopes moving in and out of Mickey D’s. All of them were stuck in their daily ruts and daily rutting. Shoveling down those Quarter Pounders and greasy string fries.

Ronald McDonald was there, too, in the form of a six-foot cutout shilling stale cookies to the kiddies. What a day! Ronald McDonald meets Mr. Chips.

He downed both hot coffees as he continued on through the restaurant. Through the restaurant. Through any people in his way. Through the cheesy Formica tables. Through the walls, if he really wanted to. Gary Soneji/Murphy pulled a snub-nosed revolver from under his Windbreaker.

“That man has a gun!” said one of the rocket scientists eating a dripping Big Mac. Amazing that he could see through the greasy fog rising from his food.

Gary fired a round into the face of a burger-chomping patron. The man clutched his forehead and wheeled heavily off his chair onto the floor. Now that got everybody’s attention. Real gun, real bullets, real life.

“You have to do something!” a man in a light green Dolphins parka yelled at the state trooper. You’re telling me, Officer Mick Fescoe muttered to himself. People were always real brave with cops’ lives. You first, officer. You’re the one getting twenty-five hundred a month for this.

He saw the gunman immediately. A white guy, already turned toward him. As if he’d been expecting him. As if he’d planned on this. “Boom!” Gary Soneji yelled. At the same time, he pulled the trigger.

Across the street from the restaurant, on the roof of a Kmart, I could see police or army snipers. They had high-powered rifles aimed in the direction of the golden arches on the front window.

I remembered something the philosopher Spinoza once wrote: “I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.”

took Jezzie in my arms and we kissed very gently in her living room. I was finding tenderness where I hadn’t expected it; I was discovering sensuality that surprised me. It was the whole package I’d been searching for, only with one little catch.

Jezzie moved a finger gently down and around my jawline, exploring my face. “I don’t want to have any secrets. That’s what I’d like. Okay?” I said yes. That was exactly the way I wanted it, too. It was time to open up to someone again. It was way past time, probably for both of us.

Jezzie dropped me exactly where she’d picked me up. I leaned close against her and the warm, vibrating bike. I kissed her again. Her cheeks, her throat, finally her lips. I thought I could stay there all morning. Just like that, on the mean streets of Southeast. I had the passing thought that it should always be like this. Why not? “I have to get inside,” I finally said. “Yep. I know you do. Go home, Alex,” Jezzie said. “Give your babies a kiss for me.” She looked a little sad as I turned away and headed in, though. Don’t start something you can’t finish, I remembered.

It’s all right to put the weight of the world on your shoulders sometimes, if you know how to take it off.

Everything we knew about Gary Soneji depicted the opposite persona: high energy, positive attitude, an extremely high opinion of himself.

Over and over, he described how he was forced to split himself off from the anxiety and conflict that surrounded him.

I needed to keep praising Gary for his efforts. It was important that he look forward to my visits.

Several complex jurisdictional questions had already been raised by the case. One lawyer had told me the issues would make for an excellent bar-exam question.

“Very funny, Alex. What’s on your mind? Why didn’t you call me when this story was hot? Before this sucker got caught?” “Would you give this man some hot, very black coffee,” I said to the counterman. “I need to wake him up.” I turned back to Lee.

The coffee came in a beautiful old diner cup. Light brown with a thin blue line under the rim. Lee slurped the java, thoughtful as hell. He seemed amused that I was trying to manipulate the established order in D.C. It appealed to his bleeding heart.

Nana Mama is the first one up at our house every day. Probably, she’s the first one up in the entire universe. That’s what Sampson and I used to believe when we were ten or eleven, and she was the assistant principal of the Garfield North Junior High School.

Whether I wake up at seven, or six, or five, I always come down to the kitchen to find a light blazing and Nana already eating breakfast, or firing it up over her stove. Most mornings, it is the very same breakfast. A single poached egg; one corn muffin, buttered; weak tea with cream and double

and she recognizes the variety of our palates. The house menu might include pancakes and either pork sausage or bacon; melon in season; grits, or oatmeal, or farina, with a thick pat of butter and a generous mound of sugar on top; eggs in ...

Nana does the omelet too brown on the outside, and, as I’ve told her, eggs and jelly make about as much sense to me as pancakes and ketchup. Nana disagrees, though she never eat...

read Lee’s story while eating two morning prunes. It said that certain unnamed “sources were skeptical about the opinions of psychologists assigned to the kidnapper”; that “medical findings may have an effect on the trial”;

His breathing had slowed noticeably. In the beginning of the session, he was more relaxed than I had seen him before.

“Mmmm… It was crowded. No one in particular comes to mind. I recall thinking that some people dress so badly it’s comical. You see it in any mall. All the time at places like HoJo’s and McDonald’s.” In his mind, he was still inside the McDonald’s. He’d come that far with me.

He smiled. “Please. Don’t condescend.” He had cocked his head a little oddly. Then, Gary started to laugh. A peculiar laugh, deeper than usual. Strange, though not completely alarming. His voice patterns were coming more rapid, and very clipped. His foot was tapping faster and faster.

The guards lifted him onto his cot and wrapped him in a restraining jacket. I waited until they locked him in the cell. Who was in the cell? Gary Soneji? Gary Murphy? Or both of them?

Actually, it’s hard not to like Carl sometimes. He’s totally aware of who and what he’s become as a politician. He reminds me of the prostitutes on 14th Street who will tell you a raunchy joke or two when you have to pull them in for soliciting.

“They can wait until after. There’s coffee and sweetcakes first.” “I think we ought to discuss everything now,” I said. I shifted my eyes to Monroe. “Put it out on the table with the sweetcakes.”

Bingo. The other shoe had dropped. The truth was out at our little working breakfast. All of a sudden, everybody in the office was talking at once. At least two of us were shouting. Neat party. “This is total bullshit,” Sampson told the mayor to his face. “And you know it. You do know it,

Sampson and I walked out on our own party. Our involvement was no longer needed.

On a Saturday toward the end of summer, Sampson and I made the long drive to Princeton, New Jersey.

“I did it just for you.” Jezzie smiled. “And I’d like to do something else for you. I’d like you to do something for me, too.” And so we did one another.

“All right—I’ll take guilty, two counts of kidnapping. Guilty, murder one.” Sampson took another victory puff. “You want to pay me now? Fifty be an acceptable amount for you to lose?” “Fifty’s fine with me. You got a bet.” “Get it on. I love to take what little money you have.”