Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(78)

Sampson and I returned to Washington Day School one more time to interview some of the school’s teachers. To put it mildly, most of them weren’t overjoyed to see us again. We were still testing the “accomplice” theory. It was definitely a possibility that Gary Soneji had been working with someone from the start. Could it be Simon Conklin, his friend from around Princeton? If not Conklin, then who? No one at the school had seen anyone to support the notion of an “accomplice” for Gary Soneji.

We left the private school before noon and had lunch at a Roy Rogers in Georgetown. Roy’s chicken is better than the Colonel’s, and Roy has those swell “hot wings.” Lots of zing in those babies. Sampson and I settled on five orders of wings and two thirty-two-ounce Cokes. We sat at a tiny picnic table by Roy’s kiddie playground. After lunch maybe we’d go on the see-saw.

We finished our lunch and decided to drive out to Potomac, Maryland. For the rest of the afternoon, we canvassed Sorrell Avenue and the surrounding streets. We visited a couple of dozen houses, and were about as welcome as Woodward and Bernstein would be. Not that the cold reception stopped us.

No one had noticed any strange cars or people in the neighborhood. Not in the days before or after the kidnapping. No one could remember seeing an unusual delivery truck. Not even the usual kind—utility repairs, flower, and grocery deliveries.

Late that afternoon, I went for a drive by myself. I headed out toward Crisfield, Maryland, where Maggie Rose and Michael Goldberg had been kept underground during the first days of the kidnapping. In a crypt? In a cellar? Gary Soneji/Murphy had mentioned “the basement” under hypnosis. He’d been kept in a dark cellar as a child. He’d been friendless for long stretches of his life.

I wanted to see the farm all by myself this time. All the “disconnects” in the case were bothering the hell out of me. Loose fragments were flying around inside my head as disconcerting as shrapnel. Could someone else have taken Maggie Rose from Soneji/Murphy? I couldn’t have cared less if Einstein was investigating the case—the possibilities would have made his head spin and maybe straightened his hair.

As I wandered around the grounds of the eerie, deserted farm, I let the facts of the case run freely through my mind. I kept coming back to the Son of Lindbergh and the fact that the Lindbergh baby had been abducted from a “farmhouse.”

Soneji’s so-called accomplice. That was one unresolved problem.

Soneji had also been “spotted” near the Sanders murder house—if we could believe Nina Cerisier. That was a second loose end.

Was this really a case of split personality? The psychology community remained divided over whether there was such a phenomenon. Multiple-personality cases are rare. Was all of this a Byzantine scheme by Gary Murphy? Could he be acting out both personas?

What had happened to Maggie Rose Dunne? It always came back to her. What had happened to Maggie Rose?

On the battered dashboard of the Porsche, I still kept one of the tiny candles that had been handed out around the courthouse in Washington. I lit it. I drove back to Washington with it burning against the gathering night. Remember Maggie Rose.





CHAPTER 64


I HAD A DATE to see Jezzie that night, and it had kept me going with anticipation through most of the day. We met at an Embassy Suites motel in Arlington. Because of all the press in town for the trial, we were being especially cautious about being seen together.

Jezzie arrived at the room after I did. She looked absolutely alluring and sexy in a low-cut black tunic. She had on black seamed stockings and high-heeled pumps. She wore red lipstick and a scarlet blush. A silver comb was set in her hair. Be still my heart.

“I had a power lunch,” she said by way of explanation. She kicked off her high heels. “Do I make the social register or not?”

“Well, you’re definitely having a positive effect on my social register.”

“I’ll just be a minute, Alex. One minute.” Jezzie disappeared into the bathroom.

She peeked out of the bathroom after a few minutes. I was on the bed. The tension in my body was draining into the mattress. Life was good again.

“Let’s take a bath. Okay? Wash away the road dust,” Jezzie said.

“That’s not dust,” I said to her. “That’s just me.”

I got up and went into the bathroom. The tub was square and unusually large. There was a lot of gleaming white and blue tile, all mounted a foot or so higher than the rest of the bathroom. Jezzie’s fancy clothes were strewn on the floor.

“You in a hurry?” I asked her.

“Yep.”

Jezzie had filled the tub to the brim. A few independent-minded soap bubbles floated up and popped against the ceiling. Wisps of steam rose steadily. The room smelled like a country garden.

She stirred the bathwater with her fingertips. Then she came over to me. She still had the silver comb in her hair.

“I’m a little wired,” she said.

“I could tell. I can tell about these things.”

“I think it might be time for a little healing.”

We went for it. Jezzie’s hands played with the buttons on my trousers, then the zipper. Our mouths came together, lightly at first, then hard.

Suddenly, Jezzie took me inside her as we stood beside the steamy tub. Just two or three quick strokes—then she moved away from me again. Her face, neck, and chest were flushed. For a moment, I thought something was wrong.