Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)
PART TWO
THE SON OF LINDBERGH
CHAPTER 26
WHEN GARY WAS VERY UPSET, he retreated into his beloved boyhood stories and powerful fantasies. He was very upset now. His master plan seemed to be racing out of control. He didn’t even want to think about it.
Speaking in a whisper, he repeated the magical words from memory. “The Lindbergh farmhouse glowed with bright orangish lights. It looked like a fiery castle…. But now, the taking of Maggie Rose is the Crime of the Century. It simply is!”
He’d had a fantasy about committing the Lindbergh kidnapping as a boy. Gary had even committed it to memory.
That was the beginning of everything: a story he had made up when he was twelve years old. A story he told himself over and over to keep from going insane. A daydream about a crime committed twenty-five years before he was born.
It was pitch-black in the basement of his house now. He had gotten used to the dark. It was livable. It could even be great.
It was 6:15 P.M., a Wednesday, January 6, in Wilmington, Delaware.
Gary was letting his mind wander now, letting his mind fly. He was able to visualize every intimate detail of Lucky Lindy and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s farmhouse in Hopewell. He’d been obsessed with the world famous kidnapping for so long. Ever since his stepmother had arrived with her two spoiled bastard kids. Ever since he was first sent down to the cellar. “Where bad boys go to think about what they did wrong.”
He knew more than anyone alive about the thirties kidnapping. Baby Lindbergh had eventually been dredged up from a shallow grave only four miles from the New Jersey estate. Ah, but was it really Baby Lindbergh? The corpse they’d found had been too tall—thirty-three inches, to only twenty-nine for Charles Jr.
No one understood the sensational, unsolved kidnapping. To this day. And that was the way it would be with Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg.
No one was ever going to figure it out. That was a definite promise.
No one had figured out any of the other murders he’d done, had they? They got John Wayne Gacy, Jr., after over thirty murders in Chitown. Jeffrey Dahmer went down after seventeen in Milwaukee. Gary had murdered more than both of them put together. But no one knew who he was, or where he was, or what he planned to do next.
It was dark down in his cellar, but Gary was used to it. “The cellar is an acquired taste,” he’d once told his stepmother to make her angry. The cellar was like your mind would be after you died. It could be exquisite, if you had a really great mind. Which he certainly did.
Gary was thinking about his plan of action, and the thought was simple: they hadn’t really seen anything yet.
They better not blink.
Upstairs in the house, Missy Murphy was trying her best not to be too angry at Gary. She was making cookies for their daughter, Roni, and the other neighborhood kids. Missy was really trying to be understanding and supportive. One more time.
She had been trying not to think of Gary. Usually when she baked, it worked. This time it didn’t. Gary was incorrigible. He was also lovable, sweet, and bright as a thousand-watt bulb. That was why she had been attracted to him in the first place.
She’d met him at a University of Delaware mixer. Gary had been slumming at Delaware. He’d come down there from Princeton. She’d never talked to anyone so smart in her life; not even her professors at school were as smart as Gary.
The really endearing part of him was why she had married him in 1982. Against the advice of everybody. Her best friend, Michelle Lowe, believed in tarot cards, reincarnation, all that stuff. She’d done their horoscopes, Gary’s and hers. “Call it off, Missy,” she’d said. “Don’t you ever look in his eyes?” But Missy had gone ahead with the wedding, gone against everybody’s advice. Maybe that was why she’d stuck with him through thin, and thinner. Thinner than anyone had a right to expect her to put up with. Sometime
s, it was as if there were a couple of Garys to put up with. Gary and his unbelievable mind games.
Something real bad was coming now, she was thinking as she spilled in a full bag of morsels. Any day now he was going to tell her he’d been fired from his job. The old, awful pattern had started up again.
Gary had already told her he was “smarter than anybody” at work. (Undoubtedly, this was true.) He’d told her he was “zooming ahead” of everybody. He’d told her his bosses loved him. (This had probably been true in the beginning.) He’d told her they were going to make him a district sales manager soon. (This was definitely one of Gary’s “stories.”) Then, trouble. Gary said his boss was starting to get jealous of him. The hours were impossible. (That was true enough. He was away all week and some weekends.) The danger pattern was in full gear. The sad part was that if he couldn’t make it at this job, with this boss, how could he possibly make it anywhere?
Missy Murphy was certain that Gary would come home any day now and tell her he’d been asked to leave again. His days as a traveling sales rep for the Atlantic Heating Company were definitely numbered. Where would he find work after that? Who could possibly be more sympathetic than his current boss—her own brother, Marty.
Why did it have to be so hard all the time? Why was she such an all-day sucker for the Gary Murphys of this world?
Missy Murphy, wondered if tonight was the night. Had Gary already been fired again? Would he tell her that when he got home from work tonight? How could such a smart man be such an unbelievable loser? she wondered. The first tear fell into the cookie mix, then Missy let the rest of Niagara Falls come. Her whole body began to tremble and heave.
CHAPTER 27
I’D NEVER HAD MUCH TROUBLE laughing at my frustrations as a cop or a psychologist. This time it was a lot tougher to take in stride. Soneji had beaten us down South, in Florida and Carolina. We hadn’t gotten Maggie Rose back. We didn’t know if she was alive or dead.
After I was debriefed for five hours by the Federal Bureau, I was flown up to Washington where I got to answer all the same questions from my own department. One of the last inquisitors was Chief of Detectives Pittman. The Jefe appeared at midnight. He was all showered and shaved for the occasion of our special meeting.