Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

Neither of the Goldbergs had ever met Mr. Soneji, although Michael had talked a lot about him. Soneji was the only person, child or adult, who had ever beaten Michael at Nintendo games like “Ultima” and “Super Mario Brothers.” It suggested that Soneji might be a brainiac himself, another whiz kid, but not willing to let a nine-year-old beat him at video games for the sake of the cause. Not willing to lose at any game.

I was back in the library with the Goldbergs, looking out a window, when everything went completely and forever crazy on the kidnapping case.

I saw Sampson running down the street from the Dunnes’. Each of his strides covered about a third of a block. I raced out of the Goldberg’s front door at the same time that Sampson made it to the lawn. He broke stride like the San Francisco 49ers’ Jerry Rice in the end zone.

“He called again?”

Sampson shook his head. “No! There’s been a break, though. Something happened, Alex. The FBI’s keeping it under wraps,” Sampson said. “They’ve got something. C’mon.”

A police roadblock had been set up just off Sorrell Avenue at the end of nearby Plately Bridge Lane. The roadblock of half-a-dozen wooden horses effectively stopped the press from following cars that had left the Dunnes’ just past two that afternoon. Sampson and I rode in the third car.

Seventy minutes later, the three sedans were speeding through the low hills surrounding Salisbury, Maryland. The cars circled down a winding road, to an industrial park nestled in thick pine woods.

The contemporary-looking complex was deserted on Christmas Eve. It was eerily quiet. Snow-blanketed lawns led the way to three separate whitestone office buildings. Half-a-dozen local police cars and ambulances had already arrived at the mysterious scene.

Some minor tributary that had to empty into Chesapeake Bay flowed behind the cluster of office buildings. The water was brownish-red, and looked polluted. Royal blue signs on the building read: J. Cad Manufacturing, The Raser/Becton Group, Techno-Sphere.

Not a clue so far, not a word had been uttered about what had happened in the industrial park.

Sampson and I joined the group that headed down toward the river. Four more FBI agents were at the site, and they looked worried.

There was a patch of winter-thin pale yellow weeds between the industrial park and the water. Then came a thirty- or forty-yard barren strip to the river itself. The sky overhead was cardboard gray, threatening more snow.

Down one muddy bank, sheriff’s deputies were pouring casting compound, trying to get some footprints. Had Gary Soneji been here?

“Have they told you anything?” I asked Jezzie Flanagan as we sidestepped down the steep, muddy embankment together. Her work shoes were getting ruined. She didn’t seem to notice.

“No. Not yet. Not a thing!” She was as frustrated as Sampson and I were. This was the first opportunity for the “Team” not to act like one. The Federal Bureau had their chance to cooperate. They blew it. Not a good sign. Not a promising beginning.

“Please don’t let it be those kids,” Jezzie Flanagan muttered as we reached flatter ground.

Two Bureau agents, Reilly and Gerry Scorse, were at the riverside. Snow flurries drifted down. A bracing cold wind blew over the slate gray water, which smelled like burning linoleum.

My heart was in my throat the whole time. I couldn’t see anything down along the shoreline.

Agent Scorse made a short speech, which I think was meant to mollify the rest of us. “Listen, this ‘close to the vest’ approach has nothing to do with any of you. Because of the wide press coverage this case has received, we were asked—ordered, actually—not to say anything until we all got out here. Until we could see for ourselves.”

“See what?” Sampson asked the FBI special agent. “You going to tell us what the hell is going on? Let’s cut down on the verbal diarrhea.”

Scorse signaled to one of the FBI agents, and spoke to him briefly. His name was McGoey and he was from the director’s office in D.C. He’d been in and out of the Dunne house. We all thought that he was the replacement for Roger Graham, but that was never verified.

McGoey nodded at whatever Scorse had told him, then stepped forward. He was a solemn looking fat man with big teeth and a short white crewcut. He looked like an old military man who was close to retirement.

“The local police out here found a child floating in the river around one o’clock today,” McGoey announced. “They have no way of knowing if it’s one of the two kidnapped children or not.”

Agent McGoey then walked all of us about seventy yards farther down the muddy riverbank. We stopped past a hump covered with moss and cattails. There wasn’t a sound from anyone, just the bitter wind whistling over the water.

We finally knew why we had been brought here. A small body had been covered over with gray wool blankets from one of the EMS wagons. It was the tiniest, loneliest bundle in the universe.

One of the local policemen was asked to give us the necessary details. When he began to speak, his voice was thick and unsteady.

“I’m Lieutenant Edward Mahoney. I’m with the force here in Salisbury. About an hour and twenty minutes ago, a security guard with Raser/Becton discovered the body of a child down here.”

We walked closer to the spread of blankets. The body was laid on a mound of grass that sloped into the brackish water. Beyond the grass, and to the left, was a black-looking tamarack swamp.

Lieutenant Mahoney knelt down beside the tiny body. His gray uniformed knee sank into the wet mud. Flecks of snow floated around his face, sticking to his hair and cheeks.

Almost reverently, he pulled back the wool blankets. It seemed as if he were a father, gently waking a child for some early-morning fishing trip.