Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross, #1)

by James Patterson

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

The call turned out to be from my partner in crime, John Sampson.

“There’s been another murder. Looks like our boy again,” Sampson

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.

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

Special Investigator Team. S.I.T.

Butchie Dykes. He was a sensitive young cop I’d seen around the station.

A porter, a black man named Emmett Everett, was the only person who saw the trio as they left the school building.

“You’re driving us home?” Michael asked. “I know it’s no Mercedes stretch, but it’ll have to do, Sir Michael. I’m just following the instructions we got on the phone. I spoke to a Mr. Chakely.” “Jolly Chollie.”

When he turned again, Gary Soneji was wearing a scary, rubbery-looking black mask.

He was planning to be America’s first serial kidnapper, among other things.

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. “Either of you guys want a Coke?” he called out to the drugged, comatose children. “No? Okay then, but you’re going to be real thirsty soon.”

Weirdo.

Then came the little princess, the little pride and joy, Maggie Rose Dunne.

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

“You think this is your movie, Graham? Wrong, baby!” Gary Soneji shouted at the TV. “I’m the only star here!”

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

Soneji bent low and slid a single index card into the breast pocket of Agent Graham’s white shirt.

He’d killed over two hundred people before this one. Practice makes perfect. It wouldn’t be the last time, either.

Was he remorseful about Michael Goldberg’s death? Or was he entering a state of rage?

accidental,”

His heart wasnt taken into consideration when giving the sleeping drug...

inflicted after the boy was dead.

Be still..oh my heart...

Evidently, he had flown into an angry rage when he discovered that Michael Goldberg was dead.

Dumb fantasies in a lonely Miami Beach hotel room. We sure weren’t going anywhere together, but I liked her.

Yeah, okay... Ill beleive that in five books...

CAREFUL, be oh so careful now, Gary boy.

He watched the blubbery blob the way a lizard watches an insect—just before mealtime.

XD

So much for “massive police dragnets” and your basic “nationwide manhunt.”

Proclaim. Look real close. Take a good look at me. Be a goddamn hero for once in your life. Be something besides a fat black zero on the Freeway of Love. Look at me, will you! Look at me!

Pretty sure hes split personality or just Breaking... Possibly doing the killings alex was originally on...

He loved Stephen King, identified with His Weirdness, and wished The King would write about all the smiley fools in America.

Do serial killers actually like Steven King???

“I’m fine. He’s not going to hurt me. I’m used to psychos, remember?” “You are a psycho, my man.”

“This is where they kept those two kids,” he finally spoke to his partner. “We found it, Chesty.” And they had.

The really weird part was that the sneaker looked as if it had been left there to be found.

Well of course...

A daydream about a crime committed twenty-five years before he was born.

Ever since he was first sent down to the cellar. “Where bad boys go to think about what they did wrong.”

No one had figured out any of the other murders he’d done, had they?

They got John Wayne Gacy, Jr., after over thirty murders in Chitown. Jeffrey Dahmer went down after seventeen in Milwaukee.

“The cellar is an acquired taste,” he’d once told his stepmother to make her angry.

She was making cookies for their daughter, Roni, and the other neighborhood kids.

Her best friend, Michelle Lowe, believed in tarot cards, reincarnation, all that stuff. She’d done their horoscopes, Gary’s and hers. “Call it off, Missy,” she’d said. “Don’t you ever look in his eyes?”

Who could possibly be more sympathetic than his current boss—her own brother, Marty?

Is he even going to work!?

Show them who the man of the house really was.

Fuck you, asshole, he was thinking to himself. You’re on your own this time.

She even wished the old woman would come back and scream at her.

Maggie Rose Dunne’s second sneaker was lying on Vivian Kim’s bedroom floor.

So he is the same killer!!!

Soneji was the project killer, too.

He didn’t even want to think about that—what had really happened to her.

Zig when the world expects you to zag.

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.

“Thank you for saving my life,” he said. “Someday, I’ll kill you for it, Detective Cross.”

Our room

The fire crackled. The champagne was ice-cold. Fire and ice. Yin and yang. All kinds of opposites attracting. Wildfire in the wilds.