Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

“What about the brother and sister you mentioned?” Sampson asked.

“Actually, they were his stepbrother and stepsister. That was part of Gary’s problem. He wasn’t close to them.”

“Did he ever mention the Lindbergh kidnapping? Does he have any books on Lindbergh?” Sampson continued. His technique is to go for the jugular in Q & A.

Missy Murphy shook her head back and forth. “No. Not that I know of. There’s a room filled with his books down in the cellar. You can look.”

“Oh, we will,” Sampson said to her.

This was rich material, and I was relieved to hear it. Before this, there had been nothing, or very little, for us to go on.

“Is his real mother alive?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Gary just won’t talk about her. He won’t discuss her at all.”

“What about the stepmother?”

“Gary didn’t like his stepmother. Apparently she was very attached to her own children. He called her ‘The Whore of Babylon.’ I believe she was originally from West Babylon in New York. I think it’s out on Long Island somewhere.”

After months without any information, I couldn’t get the questions out fast enough. Everything I’d heard so far was tracking. An important question loomed: Had Gary Soneji/Murphy been telling the truth to his wife? Was he capable of telling the truth to another person?

“Mrs. Murphy, do you have any idea where he might have gone?” I asked now.

“Something really frightened Gary,” she said. “I think maybe it relates to his job somehow. And to my brother, who’s his employer. I can’t imagine that he went home to New Jersey, but maybe he did. Maybe Gary went back home. He is impulsive.”

One of the FBI agents, Marcus Connor, peeked into the kitchen where we were talking. “Can I see both of you for a minute?… I’m sorry, this will just be one minute,” he said to Mrs. Murphy.

Connor escorted us down into the basement of the house. Gerry Scorse, Reilly, and Kyle Craig from the FBI were already down there, waiting.

Scorse held up a pair of Fido Dido socklets, I recognized them from descriptions of what Maggie Rose Dunne had been wearing the day of the kidnapping. Also from visits to the little girl’s room, where I’d seen her collection of clothes and trinkets.

“So, what do you think, Alex?” Scorse asked me. I had noticed that whenever things got really weird, he asked for my opinion.

“Exactly what I said about the sneaker in Washington. He left it for us. He’s playing a game now. He wants us to play with him.”

CHAPTER 40

THE OLD DU PONT HOTEL in downtown Wilmington was a convenient place to get some sleep. It had a nice quiet bar, and Sampson and I planned on doing some quiet drinking there. We didn’t think we’d have company, but we were surprised when Jezzie Flanagan, Klepner, and some of the FBI agents joined us for nightcaps.

We were tired and frustrated after the near-miss with Gary Soneji/Murphy. We drank a lot of hard liquor in a short time. Actually, we got along well. “The team.” We got loud, played liar’s poker, raised some hell in the Tony Delaware Room that night. Sampson talked to Jezzie Flanagan for a while. He thought she was a good cop, too.

The drinking finally tailed down, and we wandered off to find our rooms, which were scattered throughout the spacious Du Pont.

Jeb Klepner, Jezzie, and I climbed the thickly carpeted stairs to our rooms on two and three. The Du Pont was a mausoleum at quarter to three in the morning. There wasn’t any traffic outside on the main drag through Wilmington.

Klepner’s room was on the second floor. “I’m going to go watch some soft-core pornography,” he said as he split off from us. “That usually helps me get right to sleep.”

“Sweet dreams,” Jezzie said. “Lobby at seven.”

Klepner groaned as he trudged down the hallway to his room. Jezzie and I climbed the winding flight to the next floor. It was so quiet you could hear the stoplight outside, making clicking noises as it changed from green to yellow to red.

“I’m still wound tight,” I said to her. “I can see Soneji/Murphy. Two faces. They’re both very distinct in my head.”

“I’m wired, too. It’s my nature. What would you do if you were home instead of here?” Jezzie asked.

“I’d probably go play the piano out on our porch. Wake the neighborhood with a little blues.”

Jezzie laughed out loud. “We could go back down to the Delaware Room. There was an old upright in there. Probably belonged to one of the Du Ponts. You play, I’ll have one more drink.”