Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(52)

If I followed him, what he was telling me was that he was a multiple personality… truly Gary Soneji/ Murphy.

“But do you believe him, Alex? Jesus Christ, man. That’s the sixty-four-dollar question.”

Scorse, Craig, and Reilly from the Bureau, Klepner and Jezzie Flanagan from the Secret Service, and Sampson and I were in a cramped conference room at FBI headquarters downtown. It was old home week for the Hostage Rescue Team.

The question had come from Gerry Scorse. Not surprisingly, he didn’t believe Soneji/Murphy. He didn’t buy the multiple-personality bit.

“What does he really gain from telling a lot of outrageous lies?” I asked everyone to consider. “He says he didn’t kidnap the children. He says he didn’t shoot anyone at the McDonald’s.” I looked from face to face around the conference table. “He claims to be this pleasant enough nobody from Delaware named Gary Murphy.”

“Temp insanity plea.” Reilly offered the obvious. “He goes to some cushy asylum in Maryland or Virginia. Out in seven to ten years, maybe. You can bet he knows that, Alex. Is he clever enough, a good enough actor, to pull it off?”

“So far, I’ve spoken to him only once. Less than an hour with him. I’ll say this: he’s very convincing as Gary Murphy. I think he’s legitimately VFC.”

“What the hell is VFC?” Scorse asked. “I don’t know VFC. You’ve lost me.”

“It’s a common enough psych term,” I told him. “All of us shrinks talk about VFC when we get together. Very fucking crazy, Gerry.”

Everybody around the table laughed except Scorse. Sampson had nicknamed him the Funeral Director—Digger Scorse. He was dedicated and professional, but usually not a lot of laughs.

“Very fucking funny, Alex,” Scorse finally said. “That’s VFF.”

“Can you get in to see him again?” Jezzie asked me. She was as professional as Scorse, but a lot nicer to be around.

“Yeah, I can. He wants to see me. Maybe I’ll even find out why in hell he asked for me down in Florida. Why I’m the chosen one in his nightmare.”





CHAPTER 47


TWO DAYS LATER, I wangled another hour with Gary Soneji/Murphy. I’d been up the previous two nights rereading multiple-personality cases. My dining room looked like a carrel at a psych library. There are tomes written about multiples, but few of us really agree on the material. There is even serious disagreement about whether there are any real multiple-personality cases at all.

Gary was sitting on his hospital cot, staring into space, when I arrived. His shoulder sling was gone. It was hard to come and talk to this kidnapper, child-killer, serial killer. 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.” So far, I didn’t understand.

“Hello Gary,” I said softly, not wanting to startle him. “Are you ready to talk?”

He turned around and seemed glad to see me. He pulled a chair over for me by his cot.

“I was afraid they wouldn’t let you come,” he said. “I’m glad they did.”

“What made you think they wouldn’t let me come?” I wanted to know.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just… I felt you were someone I might be able to talk to. The way my luck’s been going, I thought they would shut you right off.”

There was a na?veté about him that was troubling to me. He was almost charming. He was the man his neighbors in Wilmington had described.

“What were you just thinking about? A minute ago?” I asked. “Before I interrupted.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t even know. What was I thinking about? Oh, I know what it was. I was remembering it’s my birthday this month. I keep thinking that I’m suddenly going to wake up out of this. That’s one recurring thought, a leitmotif through all my thinking.”

“Go back a little for me. Tell me how you were arrested again,” I said, changing the subject.

“I woke up, I came to in a police car outside a McDonald’s.” He was consistent on that point. He’d told me the same thing two days before. “My arms were handcuffed behind my back. Later on, they used leg-irons, too.”

“You don’t know how you got into the police car?” I asked. Boy, was he good at this. Soft-spoken, very nice, believable.

“No, and I don’t know how I got to a McDonald’s in Wilkinsburg, either. That is the most freakish thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I can see how it would be.”

A theory had occurred to me on the ride down from Washington. It was a long shot, but it might explain a few things that didn’t make any sense so far.

“Has anything like this ever happened to you before?” I asked. “Anything vaguely like it, Gary?”

“No. I’ve never been in any trouble. Never been arrested. You can check that, can’t you? Of course you can.”

“I mean have you ever woken up in a strange place before? No idea how you got there?”

Gary gave me a strange look, his head cocked slightly. “Why would you ask that?”

“Did you, Gary?”

“Well… yes.”