Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(15)

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.”