Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

His eyes opened halfway. He watched me through narrow slits.

I wasn’t sure how much more he could take. I had to be careful. I needed to ease him into the tougher parts of his history, with the feeling that I cared, that he could trust me, that I was listening.

“Was it for a whole day sometimes? Overnight?”

“Oh, no. No. It was f

or a long, long time. So I wouldn’t forget anymore. So I’d be a good boy. Not the Bad Boy.”

He looked at me, but said nothing more. I sensed that he was waiting to hear something from me.

I tried praise, which seemed the appropriate response. “That was good, Gary, a good start. I know how hard this is for you.”

As I looked at the grown man I imagined a small boy kept in a darkened cellar. Every day. For weeks that must have seemed even longer than that. Then I thought about Maggie Rose Dunne. Was it possible that he was keeping her somewhere and that she was still alive? I needed to get the darkest secrets out of his head, and needed to do it faster than it’s ever done in therapy. Katherine Rose and Thomas Dunne deserved to know what had happened to their little girl.

What happened to Maggie Rose, Gary? Remember Maggie Rose?

This was a very risky time in our session. He could become frightened and refuse to see me again if he sensed that I was no longer a “friend.” He might withdraw. There was even a chance of a complete psychotic break. He could become catatonic. Then everything would be lost.

I needed to keep praising Gary for his efforts. It was important that he look forward to my visits. “What you’ve told me so far should be extremely helpful,” I said to him. “You really did a great job. I’m impressed by how much you’ve forced yourself to remember.”

“Alex,” he said as I started to leave, “honest to God, I didn’t do anything horrible or bad. Please help me.”

A polygraph test had been scheduled for him that afternoon. Just the thought of the lie detector made Gary nervous, but he swore he was glad to take it.

He told me I could stay and wait for the results if I wanted to. I wanted to very much.

The polygraph operator was a particularly good one who had been brought from D.C. for the testing. Eighteen questions were to be asked. Fifteen of those were “controls.” The other three were to be used for scoring the lie detector test.

Dr. Campbell met with me about forty minutes after Soneji/Murphy had been taken down for his polygraph. Campbell was flushed with excitement. He looked as if he might have jogged from wherever they had staged the test. Something big had happened.

“He got the highest score possible,” Campbell told me. “He passed with flying colors. Plus tens. Gary Murphy could be telling the truth!”

CHAPTER 49

GARY MURPHY could be telling the truth!

I held a command performance in the boardroom inside Lorton Prison the following afternoon. The important audience included Dr. Campbell from the prison, federal District Attorney James Dowd, a representative from the governor of Maryland’s office, two more attorneys from the attorney general’s office in Washington, and Dr. James Walsh, from the state’s health board, as well as the prison’s advisory staff.

It had been an ordeal to get them together. Now that I had succeeded, I couldn’t lose them. I wouldn’t get another chance to ask for what I needed.

I felt as if I were back taking my orals at Johns Hopkins. I was dancing fast on the high wire. I believed the entire Soneji/Murphy investigation was at stake, right here in this room.

“I want to try regressive hypnosis on him. There’s no risk, but there’s a chance for high reward,” I announced to the group. “I’m certain Soneji/Murphy will be a good subject, that we’ll find out something we can use. Maybe we’ll learn what happened to the missing girl. Certainly something about Gary Murphy.”

Several complex jurisdictional questions had already been raised by the case. One lawyer had told me the issues would make for an excellent bar-exam question. Since state lines had been crossed, the kidnapping and murder of Michael Goldberg had fallen under federal jurisdiction and would be tried in federal court. The killings in McDonald’s would be tried in a Westmoreland court. Soneji/Murphy could also be tried in Washington for one or more of the killings he had apparently committed in Southeast.

“What would you ultimately hope to accomplish?” Dr. Campbell wanted to know. He’d been supportive, and was continuing to be so. Like me, he read skepticism on several faces, especially Walsh’s. I could see why Gary didn’t care for Walsh. He seemed mean-spirited, petty, and proud of it.

“A lot of what he’s told us so far suggests a severe dissociative reaction. He appears to have suffered a pretty horrible childhood. There was physical abuse, maybe sexual abuse as well. He may have begun to split off his psyche to avoid pain and fear back then. I’m not saying that he’s a multiple, but it’s a possibility. He had the kind of childhood that could produce such a rare psychosis.”

Dr. Campbell picked up. “Dr. Cross and I have talked about the possibility that Soneji/Murphy undergoes ‘fugue states.’ Psychotic episodes that relate to both amnesia and hysteria. He talks about ‘lost days,’ ‘lost weekends,’ even ‘lost weeks.’ In such a fugue state, a patient can wake in a strange place and have no idea how he got there, or what he had been doing for a prolonged period. In some cases, the patients have two separate personalities, often antithetical personalities. This can also happen in temporal lobe epilepsy.”

“What are you guys, a tag team?” Walsh grumped from his seat. “Lobe epilepsy. Give me a break, Marion. The more you fool around like this, the better his chance of getting off in a courtroom,” Walsh warned.

“I’m not fooling around,” I said to Walsh. “Not my style.”

The D.A. spoke up, intervening between Walsh and me. James Dowd was a serious man in his late thirties or early forties. If Dowd got to try the case of Soneji/Murphy, he would soon be an extremely famous attorney.