Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(71)

“I promise you this. You will all meet Soneji, and once you have, you will not be able to convict Gary Murphy. You will end up liking Gary Murphy, and rooting for him in his personal battle with Soneji. Gary Murphy cannot be convicted of murders and a kidnapping… that were committed by Gary Soneji….”

Anthony Nathan now proceeded to call character witness after character witness. Surprisingly, they included staff members at Washington Day, as well as some students. They included neighbors of the Murphys from Delaware.

Nathan was always gentle with the witnesses, always articulate. They seemed to like Nathan and to trust him.

“Would you please state your name for everyone?”

“Dr. Nancy Temkin.”

“And your occupation, please.”

“I teach art at Washington Day School.”

“You knew Gary Soneji at the Day School?”

“Yes I did.”

“Was Mr. Soneji a good teacher during his time at Washington Day School? Did you ever observe anything that would make you think he wasn’t a good teacher?”

“No, I did not. He was a very good teacher.”

“Why would you say that, Dr. Temkin?”

“Because he had a passion both for his subject matter and for communicating it to the students. He was a favorite teacher at school. His nickname was ‘Chips,’ as in ‘Mr. Chips.’ ”

“You’ve heard some medical experts say that he is insane, a severe split personality? How does that strike you?”

“Frankly, it is the only way I can comprehend what happened.”

“Dr. Temkin, I know this is a hard question under the circumstances, but was the defendant a friend of yours?”

“Yes. He was a friend of mine.”

“Is he still a friend of yours?”

“I want to see Gary get the help he needs.”

“And so do I,” said Nathan. “So do I.”

Anthony Nathan fired his first real salvo late on Friday of the trial’s second week. It was as dramatic as it was unexpected. It started with a side-bench conference Nathan and Mary Warner had with Judge Kaplan.

During the conference, Mary Warner raised her voice for one of the few times during the trial. “Your Honor, I object! I must object to this… stunt. This is a stunt!”

The courtroom was already buzzing. The press, in front-row seats, was alert. Judge Kaplan had apparently ruled in favor of the defense.

Mary Warner returned to her seat, but she had lost some of her composure. “Why weren’t we informed of this beforehand?” she called out. “Why wasn’t this revealed in pretrial?”

Nathan held up his hands and actually quieted the room. He gave everyone the news. “I call Dr. Alex Cross as a defense witness. I am calling him as a hostile and uncooperative witness, but a witness for the defense nonetheless.”

I was the “stunt.”





Part Four


Remember Maggie Rose





CHAPTER 60


“LET’S WATCH the movie again, Daddy,” Damon said to me. “I’m serious about this now.”

“Shush up. We’re going to watch the news,” I told him. “Maybe you’ll learn something about life beyond Batman.”

“The movie’s funny.” Damon tried to talk some sense into me.

I let my son in on a little secret. “So is the news.”

What I didn’t tell Damon was that I was unbelievably tense about testifying in court on Monday, testifying for the defense.

On television that night, I had seen a news piece reporting that Thomas Dunne was expected to run for the Senate in California. Was Thomas Dunne trying to piece together his life again? Or could Thomas Dunne somehow be involved in the kidnapping himself? By now I was ruling nothing out. I’d become paranoid about too many things related to the kidnapping case. Was there more to the report from California than what it seemed? Twice, I had requested permission to go to California to investigate. Both times the request was denied. Jezzie was helping me out. She had a contact in California, but so far nothing had come of it.

We watched the news from the living-room floor. Janelle and Damon were snuggled up beside me. Before the news, we had reviewed our tape of Kindergarten Cop for the tenth, or twelfth, or maybe it was the twentieth time.

The kids thought I should be in the movie instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I thought Arnold was turning into a pretty good comic actor myself. Or maybe I just preferred Schwarzenegger to another turn with Benji or The Lady and the Tramp.

Nana was out in the kitchen, playing pinochle with Aunt Tia. I could see the phone on the kitchen wall. The receiver was dangling off the hook to stop calls from coming in from reporters and other cranks du jour.

The phone calls I had taken from the press that night all eventually got around to the same questions. Could I hypnotize Soneji/Murphy in a crowded courtroom? Would Soneji ever tell us what had happened to Maggie Rose Dunne? Did I think he was psychotic, or a sociopath? No, I wouldn’t comment.

Around one in the morning, the front doorbell sounded. Nana had gone upstairs long before that. I’d put Janelle and Damon to bed around nine, after we’d shared some more of David Macaulay’s magical book Black and White.

I went into the darkened dining room and pulled back the chintz curtains. It was Jezzie. She was right on time.