Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

Sampson showed some of his teeth. It was halfway between a smile and a growl. “Sounds like your head’s a little below water to me.”

“Sounds like it to me, too,” I admitted. “I’ve had better days. But I’ve had worse. Let’s have that beer.”

Sampson gave the gunner’s salute to the punks on the corner. They laughed and gave us the high sign. Cops and robbers in the ’hood. We crossed the street to Faces. A little oblivion was in order.

The bar was crowded, and would be that way until closing. People who knew Sampson and me said hello. A woman I’d gone out with was at the bar. A real pretty, real nice social worker who had worked with Maria.

I wondered why nothing had come of it. Because of some deep-down character flaw I have? No. Couldn’t be that.

“You see Asahe over there?” Sampson gestured.

“I’m a detective. I see everything, right. Don’t miss a trick,” I said to him.

“You soundin’ a little sorry for yourself. Little ironic, I’d say. Two beers. Nah, make it four,” he told the bartender.

“I’ll get over it,” I said to Sampson. “You just watch. I just had never put her on our suspect list. My mistake.”

“You’re tough, man. Got your nasty old grandma’s genes. We gonna fix you up,” he said to me. “Fix her ass, too. Ms. Jezzie’s.”

“Did you like her, John? Before any of this came up?”

“Oh yeah. Nothing not to like. She lies real good, Alex. She’s got talent. Best I’ve seen since that movie Body Heat,” said Sampson. “And no, I never lie to you, my brother. Not even when I should.”

The hard part came after Sampson and I left Faces that night. I’d had a few beers, but was mostly coherent, and nearly dulled to the worst of the pain. And yet it was such a shock that Jezzie had been part of it all this time. I remembered how she’d led me away from Devine and Chakely as suspects. She’d pumped me for anything new the D.C. police had picked up. She’d been the ultimate insider. So confident and cool. Perfect in her part.

Nana was still up when I got back to the house. So far I hadn’t told her about Jezzie. Now was about as awful a time as any. The beers helped some. Our history together helped even more. I told Nana the truth straight out. She listened without interrupting, which was an indication of how she was taking the news.

After I had finished, the two of us sat there in the living room, just looking at each other. I was on the hassock, with my long legs spread out in her general direction. Screaming silence was everywhere around us.

Nana was bunched under an old oatmeal-colored blanket in her easy chair. She was still nodding gently, biting her upper lip, thinking over what I’d told her.

“I have to start someplace,” she finally said, “so let me start here. I will not say, ‘I told you so,’ because I had no idea it would be this bad. I was afraid for you, that’s all. But not about anything like this. I could never have imagined this terrible thing. Now please give me a hug before I go up and say my prayers. I will pray for Jezzie Flanagan tonight. I really will. I’ll pray for us all, Alex.”

“You know what to say.” I told her the bottom-line truth. She knew when to slap you down and when to give a needed pat on the rear end.

I gave Nana a hug, and then she trudged upstairs. I stayed downstairs and thought about what Sampson had said earlier—we were going to fix Jezzie’s ass. Not because of anything that had happened between the two of us, though. Because of Michael Goldberg and Maggie Rose Dunne. Because of Vivian Kim, who didn’t have to die. Because of Mustaf Sanders.

We were going to get Jezzie, somehow.

CHAPTER 77

ROBERT FISHENAUER was a supervisor at Fallston Prison. Today, he thought, that was a very good thing. Fishenauer believed that he just might know where the ten million dollars in kidnap money was hidden. At least a large part of the ransom. He was going to take a little peekaboo right now.

He also had a pretty good idea that Gary Soneji/Murphy was still messing with everybody’s head. Big time. And nonstop.

As Fishenauer drove his Pontiac Firebird down Route 50 in Maryland, a host of questions was circulating through his head. Was Soneji/Murphy the kidnapper? Did he really know where the ransom money was? Or was Gary Soneji/Murphy full of shit? Just one more tutti-frutti nut case out at Fallston.

Fishenauer figured he would know everything pretty soon. Another few miles of state road, and he’d know more than anybody, except for Soneji/Murphy himself.

The turnoff was the seldom-used back way into the old farm. The road was almost completely gone now. Fishenauer saw this as he made the right turn off the main highway.

Cattails and sunflowers grew the length of what had obviously once been a road. There weren’t even wheel ruts in the crusted-over dirt.

The vegetation was knocked down. Someone had come crashing through here in the past few months. Was it the FBI and local police? They had probably searched the farmhouse grounds a dozen times.

But had they searched the grounds of the deserted farm well enough? Robert Fishenauer wondered to himself. That was the ten-million-dollar question now, wasn’t it?

Around five-thirty in the afternoon, Fishenauer pulled his dusty red Firebird up alongside a dilapidated garage just to the left of the main farmhouse. The adrenaline was really pumping now. Nothing like a treasure hunt to get the juices flowing.