Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(44)

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,” to put it mildly. Driven just enough to keep the battery alive. It was time for more fun, more games. The Son of Lindbergh was on the move again.





CHAPTER 39


SAMPSON AND I were still at the Murphy house at well past eleven o’clock. The press was gathered behind bright yellow ropes outside. So were a couple of hundred close friends and neighbors from around the community of Wilmington. The town had never had a bigger night.

Another massive manhunt had already been set in motion along the Eastern Seaboard, but also west into Pennsylvania and Ohio. It seemed impossible that Gary Soneji/Murphy could get away a second time. We didn’t believe he could have planned this escape the way he’d planned the one out of Washington.

One of the kids at the party had spotted a local police cruiser doing a ride-by minutes before we arrived in the neighborhood. The 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.

Sampson and I questioned Missy Murphy for more than an hour. We were finally going to learn something about the real Soneji/Murphy.

Missy Murphy would have fit in with the mothers of the children at Washington Day School. She wore her blond hair in a no-frills flip. She had on a navy skirt, white blouse, boaters. She was a few pounds overweight, but pretty.

“None of you seem to believe this, but I know Gary. I know who he is,” she told us. “He is not a kidnapper.”

She chain-smoked Marlboro Lights as she spoke. That was the only gesture that betrayed anxiety and pain. We talked with Mrs. Murphy in the kitchen. It was orderly and neat, even on party day. I noted Betty Crocker cookbooks stacked beside Silver Palate cookbooks and a copy of Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much. A snapshot of Gary Soneji/Murphy in a bathing suit was stuck up on the fridge. He looked like the all-American father.

“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. Gary lived there until he was nineteen.”

Sampson jotted a note, then he glanced my way. Princeton was near Hopewell, where the Lindbergh kidnapping had taken place in the 1930s. The Son of Lindbergh, Soneji had signed the ransom notes. We still didn’t know why.

“His family is still in Princeton?” I asked Mrs. Murphy. “Can we contact them there?”

“There’s no family left now. There was a fire while Gary was at school. Gary’s stepmom and dad, his stepbrother and stepsister all died in the tragedy.”

I wanted to probe deeply into everything Missy Murphy was saying. I resisted for the moment. A fire in the house of a disturbed young man, though? Another family dead; another family destroyed. Was that Gary Soneji/Murphy’s real target? Families? If so, what about Vivian Kim? Did he kill her just to show off?

“Did you know any of the family?” I asked Missy.

“No. They died before Gary and I got together. The two of us met our senior year in college. I was at Delaware.”

“What did your husband tell you about his years around Princeton?”

“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.”

“What about the brother and sister you mentioned?” Sampson asked.

“Actually, they were his stepbrother and stepsister. That was part of Gary’s problem. He wasn’t close to them.”

“Did he ever mention the Lindbergh kidnapping? Does he have any books on Lindbergh?” Sampson continued. His technique is to go for the jugular in Q A.

Missy Murphy shook her head back and forth. “No. Not that I know of. There’s a room filled with his books down in the cellar. You can look.”

“Oh, we will,” Sampson said to her.

This was rich material, and I was relieved to hear it. Before this, there had been nothing, or very little, for us to go on.

“Is his real mother alive?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Gary just won’t talk about her. He won’t discuss her at all.”

“What about the stepmother?”

“Gary didn’t like his stepmother. Apparently she was very attached to her own children. He called her ‘The Whore of Babylon.’ I believe she was originally from West Babylon in New York. I think it’s out on Long Island somewhere.”