Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

“Isn’t there a possibility that he’s created this apparently psychotic condition for our benefit?” Dowd asked. “That he’s a psychopath, and nothing more than that?”

I glanced around the table before answering his questions. Dowd clearly wanted to hear our answers; he wanted to learn the truth. The representative from the governor’s office seemed skeptical and unconvinced, but open-minded. The attorney general’s group was neutral so far. Dr. Walsh had already heard enough from me and Campbell.

“That’s a definite possibility,” I said. “It’s one of the reasons I’d like to try the regressive hypnosis. For one thing, we can see if his stories remain consistent.”

“If he’s susceptible to hypnosis,” Walsh interjected. “And if you can tell whether or not he’d been hypnotized.”

“I suspect that he is susceptible,” I answered quickly.

“And I have my doubts that he is. Frankly, I have my doubts about you, Cross. I don’t care that he likes to talk to you. Psychiatry isn’t about liking your doctor.”

“What he likes is that I listen.” I glared across the table at Walsh. It took a lot of self-control not to jump on the officious bastard.

“What are the other reasons for hypnotizing the prisoner?” the governor’s representative spoke up.

“Frankly, we don’t know enough about what he’s done during these fugue states,” Dr. Campbell said. “Neither does he. Neither do his wife and family, whom I’ve interviewed several times now.”

I added, “We’re also not sure how many personalities might be operating…. The other reason for hypnosis”—I paused to let what I was about to say sink in—“is that I do want to ask him about Maggie Rose Dunne. I want to try and find out what he did with Maggie Rose.”

“Well, we’ve heard your arguments, Dr. Cross. Thank you for your time and efforts here,” James Dowd said at the end of the presentation. “We’ll have to let you know.”

I decided to take things into my own hands that evening.

I called a reporter I knew and trusted at the Post. I asked him to meet me at Pappy’s Diner on the edge of Southeast. Pappy’s was one place where we would never be spotted, and I didn’t want anyone to know we’d met. For both our sakes.

Lee Kovel was a graying yuppie, and kind of an asshole, but I liked him. Lee wore his emotions on his sleeve. His petty jealousies, his bitterness about the sad state of journalism, his b

leeding-heart tendencies, his occasional arch-conservative traits. It was all out there for the world to see and react to.

Lee plopped down next to me at the counter. He was wearing a gray suit and light blue running shoes. Pappy’s draws a real nice cross-section: black, Hispanic, Korean, working-class whites who service Southeast in some way or other. But no one anything like Lee.

“I stick out like a sore thumb in here,” he complained. “I’m way too cool for this place.”

“Now who’s going to see you here? Bob Woodward? Evans and Novak?”

“Very funny, Alex. What’s on your mind? Why didn’t you call me when this story was hot? Before this sucker got caught?”

“Would you give this man some hot, very black coffee,” I said to the counterman. “I need to wake him up.” I turned back to Lee. I’m going to hypnotize Soneji inside the prison. I’m going looking for Maggie Rose Dunne in his subconscious. You can have the exclusive. But you owe me one,” I told Lee.

Lee Kovel almost spit out his reaction. “Bullshit! Let’s hear it all, Alex. I think you left out some parts.”

“Right. I’m working to get permission to hypnotize Soneji. There are a lot of petty politics involved. If you leak the story in the Post, I think it will happen. The theory of self-fulfilling prophecies. I’ll get permission. Then you get an exclusive.”

The coffee came in a beautiful old diner cup. Light brown with a thin blue line under the rim. Lee slurped the java, thoughtful as hell. He seemed amused that I was trying to manipulate the established order in D.C. It appealed to his bleeding heart.

“And if you do hear something from Gary Soneji, I’ll be the second to know. After yourself, Alex.”

“You drive a hard bargain, but yeah. That’ll be our deal. Think about it Lee. It’s for a worthy cause. Finding out about Maggie Rose, not to mention your career.”

I left Kovel to finish his Pappy’s coffee and begin to shape his story. Apparently, that’s what he did. It appeared in the morning edition of the Post.

Nana Mama is the first one up at our house every day. Probably, she’s the first one up in the entire universe. That’s what Sampson and I used to believe when we were ten or eleven, and she was the assistant principal of the Garfield North Junior High School.

Whether I wake up at seven, or six, or five, I always come down to the kitchen to find a light blazing and Nana already eating breakfast, or firing it up over her stove. Most mornings, it is the very same breakfast. A single poached egg; one corn muffin, buttered; weak tea with cream and double sugar.

She will also have begun to make breakfast for the rest of us, and she recognizes the variety of our palates. The house menu might include pancakes and either pork sausage or bacon; melon in season; grits, or oatmeal, or farina, with a thick pat of butter and a generous mound of sugar on top; eggs in every shape and form.

Occasionally a grape jelly omelet appears, the only dish of hers that I don’t care for. Nana does the omelet too brown on the outside, and, as I’ve told her, eggs and jelly make about as much sense to me as pancakes and ketchup. Nana disagrees, though she never eats the jelly omelets herself. The kids love them.