Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

THE HOUSE was two-story, white-painted brick, on a wooded half-lot. It was already surrounded by cars, station wagons, Jeeps, the family vehicles of suburbia.

“This can’t be his house,” Sampson said as we parked on a side street. “The Thing doesn’t live here. Jimmy Stewart does.”

We had found Gary Soneji—but it didn’t feel right. The monster’s house was a perfect suburban beauty, a gingerbread house on a well-maintained street in Wilmington, Delaware. It was a little less than twenty-four hours since we’d spoken to Mrs. Scott in D.C. In that time, we had tracked down Atlantic Heating in Wilmington. We had gathered the original Hostage Rescue Team together.

Lights were shining through most of the house windows. A Domino’s delivery truck arrived at almost the same time that we did. A lanky blond kid ran to the door with four big pizza boxes in his outstretched arms.

The delivery kid got paid, then the truck was gone as quickly as it had come.

The fact that it was a nice house in a nice neighborhood made me nervous, even more leery about the next few minutes. Soneji had always been two steps ahead of us—somehow.

“Let’s move,” I said to Special Agent Scorse. “This is it, folks. The front gates of hell.”

Nine of us rushed the house—Scorse, Reilly, Craig, and two others from the Bureau, Sampson, myself, Jeb Klepner, Jezzie Flanagan. We were heavily armed and wore bulletproof vests. We wanted to end this. Right here. Right now.

I entered through the kitchen. Scorse and I came in together. Sampson was a step behind. He didn’t look like a neighborhood dad arriving late for the party, either.

“Who are you men? What’s going on?” a woman at the kitchen counter screamed as we burst inside.

“Where is Gary Murphy?” I asked in a loud voice. I flashed my I.D. at the same time. “I’m Alex Cross. Police. We’re here in connection with the Maggie Rose Dunne kidnapping.”

“Gary’s in the dining room,” a second woman, standing over a blender, said in a trembling voice. “Through here.” She pointed.

We ran down the connecting hallway. Family pictures were up on the walls. A pile of unopened presents lay on the floor. We had our revolvers drawn.

It was a terrifying moment. The children we saw were afraid. So were their mothers and fathers. There were so many innocent people here—just like Disney World, I was thinking. Just like the Washington Day School.

Gary Soneji wasn’t anywhere in the dining room. Just more police, kids in birthday hats, pets, mothers and dads with their mouths open in disbelief.

“I think Gary went upstairs,” one of the fathers finally said. “What’s going on here? What the hell is going on?”

Craig and Reilly were already crashing back down the stairs into the front hallway.

“Not up there,” Reilly yelled.

One of the kids said, “I think Mr. Murphy went down to the cellar. What’d he do?”

We ran back to the kitchen and down to the cellar. Scorse, Reilly, and myself. Sampson went back upstairs to double-check.

No one was anywhere in the two small cellar rooms. There was a storm door to the outside. It was closed and locked from the outside.

Sampson came down a moment later, two stairs at a clip. “I checked over the whole upstairs. He’s not there!”

Gary Soneji had disappeared again.

CHAPTER 38

OKAY, let’s dial it up a notch! Let’s do some serious rock and roll. Let’s play for keeps now, Gary thought as he ran for it.

He’d had escape plans in mind since he’d been fifteen or sixteen years old. He’d known the so-called authorities would come for him someday, somehow, somewhere. He’d seen it all in his mind, in his elaborate daydreams. The only question was when. And maybe, for what? For which of his crimes?

Then they were there on Central Avenue in Wilmington! The end of the celebrated manhunt. Or was it the beginning?

Gary was like a programmed machine from the moment he spotted the police. He almost couldn’t believe that what he’d fantasized so many times was actually happening. They were there, though. Special dreams do come true. If you’re young at heart.

He had calmly paid the pizza delivery boy. Then he went down the stairs and out through the cellar. He used a special half-hidden door and went into the garage. He relocked the door from the outside. Another side door led to a tiny alley into the Dwyers’ yard. He relocked that door, also. Jimmy Dwyer’s snow boots were sitting on the porch steps. Snow was on the ground. He took his neighbor’s boots.

He paused between his house and the Dwyers’. He thought about letting them catch him then and there—getting cau