Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(85)

She wanted to know what it was like being on TV. Like many people, she was curious about the actress, Katherine Rose. Glory Cerisier even had her own private theory about the kidnapping.

“That man didn’t do it. That Gary Soneji, or Murphy, or whoever he is. Somebody set him up, you see,” she said and laughed. I suppose she thought it funny that she was sharing her crazy ideas with a crazy D.C. policeman.

“Humor me one last time,” I said, finally getting around to what I really wanted to talk to her about. “Run me through what Nina said she saw that night. Tell me what Nina told you. As close as you remember it.”

“Why you doin’ this to yourself?” Glory wanted to know from me first. “Why you here, ten o’clock at night?”

“I don’t know why, Glory.” I shrugged and sipped the truly bad-tasting coffee. “Maybe it’s because I need to know why I was chosen down in Miami. I don’t know for sure, but here I am.”

“It’s made you crazy, hasn’t it? The kidnapping of those children.”

“Yes. It’s made me crazy. Tell me again what Nina saw. Tell me about the man in the car with Gary Soneji.”

“Nina, ever since she been little, she love the window seat on our stairway,” Glory began the story again. “That’s Nina’s window on the world, always has been. She curl up there and read a book or just pet one of her cats. Sometimes, she just stare out at nothing. She was at the window seat when she saw that white man, Gary Soneji. We get few white men in the neighborhood. Black, some Hispanic, sometimes. So he caught her eye. The more she watched, the stranger it seemed to her. Like she told you. He was watching the Sanderses’ house. Like he was spying on the house or something. And the other man, the one in the car, he was watching him watch the house.”

Bingo. My tired, overloaded mind somehow managed to catch the key phrase in what she’d just said.

Glory Cerisier was all set to go on, but I stopped her. “You just said the man in the car was watching Gary Soneji. You said he was watching him.”

“I did say that, didn’t I? I forgot all about it. Nina been saying the men was together. Like a salesman team or something. You know, the way they come stake out a street, sometimes. But way back, she told me the man in the car was watching the other one. I believe that what she said. I’m almost sure. Let me get Nina. I’m not so sure anymore.”

Soon, the three of us were sitting together and talking. Mrs. Cerisier helped me with Nina, and Nina finally cooperated. Yes, she was sure the man in the car had been watching Gary Soneji. The man wasn’t there with Soneji. Nina Cerisier definitely remembered the man in the car watching the other man.

She didn’t know whether it had been a white or a black man watching. She hadn’t mentioned it before because it didn’t seem important, and the police would have asked even more questions. Like most kids in Southeast, Nina hated the police and was afraid of them.

The man in the car had been watching Gary Soneji.

Maybe there hadn’t been an “accomplice” after all, but someone watching Gary Soneji/Murphy as he staked out potential murder victims? Who could it have been?





CHAPTER 71


I WAS ALLOWED to visit Soneji/Murphy, but only in connection with the Sanders and Turner murder investigations. I could see him about crimes that would probably never go to trial, but not about one that could possibly remain unsolved. So goes the tale of the red tape.

I had a friend out at Fallston, where Gary was imprisoned. I’d known Wallace Hart, the chief of psychiatry at Fallston, since I’d joined the D.C. police force. Wallace was waiting for me in the lobby of the ancient facility.

“I like this kind of personal attention,” I said as I shook his hand. “First time I’ve ever got any, of course.”

“You’re a celebrity now, Alex. I saw you on the tube.”

Wallace is a small scholarly looking black man who wears round bottle glasses and baggy blue business suits. He reminds people of George Washington Carver, maybe crossed with Woody Allen. He looks as if he were black and Jewish.

“What do you think about Gary so far?” I asked Wallace as we took a prison elevator up to the maximum-security floor. “Model prisoner?”

“I’ve always had a soft spot for psychopaths, Alex. They keep shit interesting. Imagine life without the real bad guys. Very boring.”

“You’re not buying the possibility of multiple personalities, I take it?”

“I think it’s a possibility, but very slim. Either way, the bad boy in him is really bad. I’m surprised he got his ass in a sling, though. I’m surprised he got caught.”

I said, “Want to hear one off-the-wall theory? Gary Murphy caught Soneji. Gary Murphy couldn’t handle Soneji, so he turned him in.”

Wallace grinned at me. He had a big toothy smile for such a little face. “Alex, I do like your crazy mind. But do you really buy that? One side turning in the other?”

“Nope. I just wanted to see if you would. I’m beginning to think he’s a psycho all the way. I just need to know how far all the way is. I observed a definite paranoid personality disorder when I was seeing him.”

“I agree with that. He’s mistrustful, demanding, arrogant, driven. Like I say, I love the guy.”

I was a little shocked when I finally saw Gary this time. His eyes appeared to be sunken into his skull. The orbs were red-rimmed, as if he were suffering from conjunctivitis. The skin was pulled tight all around his face. He’d lost a lot of weight, maybe thirty pounds, and he’d been fit and trim to begin with.