Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(83)

Jezzie got off the bike and quickly went inside. The front door was unlocked. No one was in the living room.

“Hello?” she called out.

Jezzie checked the kitchen, then both bedrooms. No one there. There, was no sign that anyone had been in either room. Except for the lights.

“Hey, who’s here?”

The kitchen screen door was unlatched. She walked outside and down toward the dock.

Nothing.

Nobody.

The sudden burr of a wing beat sounded off to the left. Blurred wings flapped just over the surface of the water.

Jezzie stood at the edge of the dock and let out a long sigh. The Billy Joel song still played in her head. Self-mocking and taunting. “Pressure. Pressure.” She could feel it in every inch of her body.

Someone grabbed her. Extremely strong arms like a vise were around Jezzie. She held back a scream.

Then something was being put into her mouth.

Jezzie inhaled. She recognized Colombian Gold. Very good dope. She inhaled a second time. Relaxed a little in the strong arms that held her.

“I’ve missed you,” she heard a voice say.

Billy Joel screamed inside her head.

“What are you doing here?” she finally asked.





Part Five


The Second Investigation





CHAPTER 68


MAGGIE ROSE DUNNE was in darkness again.

She could see shapes all around her. Sheknew what they were, and where she was, even why she was there.

She was thinking about escaping again. But the warning jumped into her head. Always the warning.

If you try to escape, you won’t be killed, Maggie. That would be too easy. You’ll be put under the ground again. You’ll go back in your little grave. So don’t ever try to escape, Maggie Rose. Don’t even think about it.

She was starting to forget so much now. Sometimes she couldn’t even remember who she was. It all seemed like a bad dream, like lots of nightmares, one after the other.

Maggie Rose wondered if her mother and father were still looking for her. Why would they be? It was so long ago that she’d been kidnapped. Maggie understood that. Mr. Soneji had taken her from the Day School. But then she never saw him again. There was only the warning.

Sometimes, she felt as if she were only a story character she’d made up.

Tears filled her eyes. It wasn’t so dark now. Morning was coming. She wouldn’t try to escape again. She hated this, but she never wanted to go under the ground again.

Maggie Rose knew what all the shapes were.

They were children.

All in just one room of the house.

From which there was no escape.





CHAPTER 69


JEZZIE CAME BACK to Washington the week after the trial ended. It seemed like a good time for beginnings. I was ready. God Almighty, was I ready to move on with life.

We’d talked over the phone some, but not too much, about her state of mind. Jezzie did tell me one thing. She said it was really bizarre that she had invested so much in her career, and now she didn’t care about it at all.

I had missed Jezzie even more than I thought I could. My mind was on her while I investigated the murder of two thirteen-year-olds over a pair of Pump sneakers. Sampson and I caught the killer, a fifteen-year-old from “Black Hole.” That same week, I was offered a job in Washington as VICAP coordinator between the D.C. police department and the FBI. It was a bigger, higher-paying job than the one I had, but I turned it down flat. It was my buyout from Carl Monroe. No thanks.

I couldn’t sleep at night. The storm that had begun inside my head the very first day of the kidnapping was still there. I couldn’t get Maggie Rose Dunne completely out of my head. I couldn’t give up on the case. I wouldn’t let myself. I watched anything and everything on ESPN, sometimes at three and four in the morning. I played Alex the Shrink in the old prefab trailer over at St. A’s. Sampson and I drank a few cases of beer together. Then we tried to work it off at the gym. In between, we spent long hours at work.

I drove to Jezzie’s apartment the day she came back. On the way over there, I listened to Derek McGinty on WAMU again. My talk-show brother. His voice calmed my nervous stomach. One time, I’d actually called in to his night show. Disguised my voice. Talked about Maria, the kids, being on the edge for too long.

When Jezzie opened the door, I was startled by the way she looked. She’d let her hair grow and fan out so that it looked like a sunburst. She was tan, and looked as healthy as a California lifeguard in August. She looked as if nothing could ever be wrong in her life.

“You look rested and all,” I told her. I was feeling a little resentful, actually. She had taken off before the trial had ended. No good-byes. No explanations. What did that tell me about who she was?

Jezzie had always been trim, but she was leaner and tighter now. The circles that had been under her eyes so many times during the kidnapping investigation were gone. She had on denim shorts and an old T-shirt that said IF YOU CAN’T DAZZLE THEM WITH BRILLIANCE, BAFFLE THEM WITH BULLSHIT. She was dazzling in all ways.

She smiled gently. “I’m a lot better, Alex. I think I’m almost healed.”

She came out on the porch and into my arms, and I felt a little healed myself. I held her and thought that I had been on this strange planet, all alone for a while. I could see myself on this barren moonscape. It had been up to me to find someone new to be with, someone to love again.