Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

I felt numb and hollow inside as I listened to her. I was dripping with perspiration, and not because of the beating sun.

I wondered if Jezzie had brought a gun to the island? Always the professional, I reminded myself.

“For what it’s worth now, I fell in love with you, Alex. I did. You were so many of the things I’d given up looking for. Warm and decent. Loving. Understanding. Damon and Janelle touched me. When I was with you, I felt whole again.”

I was a little dizzy, and nauseated. It was exactly the way I’d felt for about a year after Maria died. “For what it’s worth, I fell in love with you, too, Jezzie. I tried not to, but I did. I just couldn’t have imagined anybody lying to me the way you did. Lying and deceiving. I still can’t believe all the lies. What about Mike Devine?” I asked.

Jezzie shrugged her shoulders. That was her only answer.

“You committed the perfect crime. A masterpiece,” I told her then. “You created the master crime that Gary Soneji always wanted to commit.”

Jezzie peered into my eyes, but she seemed to be looking right through me. There was just one more piece to the puzzle now—one last thing that I had to know.

One unthinkable detail.

“What really happened to the little girl? What did you, or Devine and Chakely, do with Maggie Rose?”

Jezzie shook her head. “No, Alex. That I can’t tell you. You know that I can’t.”

She had folded her arms across ber chest when she’d begun to reveal the truth. Her arms remained tightly folded.

“How could you kill a little girl? How could you do it, Jezzie? How could you kill Maggie Rose Dunne?”

Jezzie suddenly whirled away from me. It was too much, even for her. She headed back toward the beach umbrella and towels. I took a quick step and I caught her arm. I grabbed the crook of her elbow.

“Get your hands off me!” she screamed. Her face contorted.

“Maybe you can trade me the information about Maggie Rose,” I shouted back. “Maybe we can make a trade, Jezzie!”

She turned around. “They’re not going to let you open this case again. Don’t kid yourself, Alex. They don’t have a thing on me. Neither do you. I’m not going to trade you information.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you are,” I said. My voice had gone from loud to close to a whisper. “Yes, you are, Jezzie. You’re going to trade information….

You definitely are.”

I pointed up toward the barranca and the palm trees that thickened as you got farther from the sandy beach.

Sampson stood up from his hiding spot in the deep island brush. He waved something that looked like a silver wand. What he was actually holding was a long-distance microphone.

Two FBI agents got up and waved, too. They stood beside Sampson. They’d all been out in the bush since before seven that morning. The agents were as red as lobsters around the face and arms. Sampson probably had the tan of his life, also.

“My friend Sampson up there. He’s recorded everything you said since we started our walk.”

Jezzie closed her eyes for several seconds. She hadn’t expected I would go this far. She didn’t think I had it in me.

“You’ll tell us now how you murdered Maggie Rose,” I demanded.

Her eyes opened and they looked small and black. “You don’t get it. You just don’t get it, do you?” she said.

“What don’t I get, Jezzie? You tell me what I don’t get.”

“You keep looking for the good in people. But it’s not there! Your case will get blown up. You’ll look like a fool in the end, a complete and utter fool. They’ll all turn on you again.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, “but at least I’ll have this moment.”

Jezzie moved to hit me, but I blocked her fist with a forearm. Her body twisted and she went down. The hard fall was a lot less than she deserved. Jezzie’s face was a brittle mask of surprise.

“That’s a start, Alex,” she said from her sandy seat on the beach. “You’re becoming a bastard, too. Congratulations.”