Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(81)

“I figured you’d talk when you wanted to talk about it,” Sampson said. “You knew that I knew about the two of you.”

A couple of coffee-cup rings on the work schedules held my eye. The Browning effect? What the hell was that? My memory and everything else were deserting me lately.

I finally turned around and faced him. He was decked out in leather pants, an old Kangol hat, a black nylon vest. His dark glasses were an effective mask. Actually, he was trying to be charming and softhearted.

“What do you figure is going on now?” I asked him. “What are they saying?”

“Nobody’s real happy about the way the holy-shit kidnapping case has gone down. Not enough ‘attaboys’ coming down from upstairs. I guess they’re lining up potential sacrificial lambs. You’re one of them for sure.”

“And Jezzie?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.

“She’s one, too. Associating with known Negroes,” Sampson said. “I take it you haven’t heard the news?”

“Heard what news?”

Sampson let out a short burst of breath, then he gave me the latest hot-breaking story.

“She took a leave of absence, or maybe she left the Service altogether. Happened about an hour ago, Alex. Nobody knows for sure if she jumped or was pushed.”

I called Jezzie’s office immediately. The secretary said that she was “gone for the day.” I called Jezzie’s apartment. No answer there.

I drove to her apartment, breaking a couple of speeding laws on the way. Derek McGinty was talking over WAMU radio. I like the sound of Derek’s voice even if I’m not listening to the words.

Nobody was home at Jezzie’s. At least no photographers were lurking around. I thought about driving down to her lake cottage. I called North Carolina from a pay phone down the street. The local operator told me the number had been disconnected.

“How recently was that?” I asked with surprise in my voice. “I called that number last night.”

“Just this morning,” the operator told me. “The local number was disconnected this very morning.”

Jezzie had disappeared.





CHAPTER 66


THE VERDICT in the Soneji/Murphy trial was coming down soon.

The jury went out on the eleventh of November. They returned after three days, amid nonstop rumors that they had been unable to decide either the guilt, or the innocence, of the defendant. The whole world seemed to be waiting.

Sampson picked me up that morning and we rode to the courthouse together. The weather had turned warm, after a brief cool spell that foreshadowed winter.

As we approached Indiana Avenue, I thought about Jezzie. I hadn’t seen her in over a week. I wondered if she would show up in court for the verdict. She’d called me. She told me she was down in North Carolina. That was all she’d really said. I was a loner again, and I didn’t like it.

I didn’t see Jezzie outside the courthouse, but Anthony Nathan was climbing out of a silver Mercedes stretch. This was his big moment. Reporters climbed all over Nathan. They were like city birds on stale bread crumbs.

The TV and print people tried to grab a little piece of me and Sampson before we could escape up the courthouse steps. Neither of us was too excited about being interviewed again.

“Dr. Cross! Dr. Cross, please,” one of them called out. I recognized the shrill voice. It belonged to a local TV news anchorwoman.

We had to stop. They were behind us, and up ahead. Sampson hummed a little Martha and the Vandellas, “Nowhere to Run.”

“Dr. Cross, do you feel that your testimony might actually help to get Gary Murphy off the hook for murder one? That you may have inadvertently helped him to get away with murder?”

Something finally snapped inside me. “We’re just happy to be in the Super Bowl,” I said straight-faced into the glare of several minicam lenses. “Alex Cross is going to concentrate on his game. The rest will take care of itself. Alex Cross just thanks Almighty God for the opportunity to play at this level.” I leaned in toward the reporter who’d asked the question. “You understand what I’m saying? You’re clear now?”

Sampson smiled and said, “As for me, I’m still open for lucrative endorsements in the sneaker and the soft-drink categories.”

Then we continued up the steep stone steps and into the federal courthouse.

As Sampson and I entered the cavernous federal courthouse lobby, the noise level might have done real damage to our eardrums. Everyone was pushing and milling about, but in a sort of civilized manner, the way folks in evening wear push into your back at the Kennedy Center.

Soneji/Murphy wasn’t the first criminal trial where multiple personality was the center of the defense. It was by far the most celebrated case, though. It had raised emotional questions about guilt and innocence, and those questions genuinely left the verdict in doubt…. If Gary Murphy was innocent, how could he be convicted of kidnapping and murder? His lawyer had planted that question in all of our minds.

I saw Nathan again upstairs. He had accomplished everything he’d hoped for with his courtroom session. “Clearly, there are two personalities battling each other inside the defendant’s mind,” he’d told the jurors during his summation. “One of them is as innocent as you are. You cannot convict Gary Murphy of kidnapping or murder. Gary Murphy is a good man. Gary Murphy is a husband and a father. Gary Murphy is innocent!”