Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

I went to my office and sat there all alone with a container of black coffee and stared at the four walls. They were covered with “clues” from the kidnapping. I was starting to feel guilty, and rebellious, and angry. I wanted to punch glass, which I’d actually done once or twice after Maria was shot.

I was at my government-issue, gunmetal desk, facing away from the door. I’d been staring at my work schedule for the week, but I wasn’t really seeing anything written on the sheet.

“You’re in this one all alone, motherfucker,” I heard Sampson say at my back. “You’re all by your lonesome this time. You are meat cooked on a barbecue spit.”

“Don’t you think you’re understating things a little?” I said without turning to him.

“I figured you’d talk when you wanted to talk about it,” Sampson said. “You knew that I knew about the two of you.”

A couple of coffee-cup rings on the work schedules held my eye. The Browning effect? What the hell was that? My memory and everything else were deserting me lately.

I finally turned around and faced him. He was decked out in leather pants, an old K

angol hat, a black nylon vest. His dark glasses were an effective mask. Actually, he was trying to be charming and softhearted.

“What do you figure is going on now?” I asked him. “What are they saying?”

“Nobody’s real happy about the way the holy-shit kidnapping case has gone down. Not enough ‘attaboys’ coming down from upstairs. I guess they’re lining up potential sacrificial lambs. You’re one of them for sure.”

“And Jezzie?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.

“She’s one, too. Associating with known Negroes,” Sampson said. “I take it you haven’t heard the news?”

“Heard what news?”

Sampson let out a short burst of breath, then he gave me the latest hot-breaking story.

“She took a leave of absence, or maybe she left the Service altogether. Happened about an hour ago, Alex. Nobody knows for sure if she jumped or was pushed.”

I called Jezzie’s office immediately. The secretary said that she was “gone for the day.” I called Jezzie’s apartment. No answer there.

I drove to her apartment, breaking a couple of speeding laws on the way. Derek McGinty was talking over WAMU radio. I like the sound of Derek’s voice even if I’m not listening to the words.

Nobody was home at Jezzie’s. At least no photographers were lurking around. I thought about driving down to her lake cottage. I called North Carolina from a pay phone down the street. The local operator told me the number had been disconnected.

“How recently was that?” I asked with surprise in my voice. “I called that number last night.”

“Just this morning,” the operator told me. “The local number was disconnected this very morning.”

Jezzie had disappeared.

CHAPTER 66

THE VERDICT in the Soneji/Murphy trial was coming down soon.

The jury went out on the eleventh of November. They returned after three days, amid nonstop rumors that they had been unable to decide either the guilt, or the innocence, of the defendant. The whole world seemed to be waiting.

Sampson picked me up that morning and we rode to the courthouse together. The weather had turned warm, after a brief cool spell that foreshadowed winter.

As we approached Indiana Avenue, I thought about Jezzie. I hadn’t seen her in over a week. I wondered if she would show up in court for the verdict. She’d called me. She told me she was down in North Carolina. That was all she’d really said. I was a loner again, and I didn’t like it.

I didn’t see Jezzie outside the courthouse, but Anthony Nathan was climbing out of a silver Mercedes stretch. This was his big moment. Reporters climbed all over Nathan. They were like city birds on stale bread crumbs.

The TV and print people tried to grab a little piece of me and Sampson before we could escape up the courthouse steps. Neither of us was too excited about being interviewed again.

“Dr. Cross! Dr. Cross, please,” one of them called out. I recognized the shrill voice. It belonged to a local TV news anchorwoman.

We had to stop. They were behind us, and up ahead. Sampson hummed a little Martha and the Vandellas, “Nowhere to Run.”