Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

Monroe shook his head. “Why don’t you go slow for a change?”

“I’m not going to be able to run for public office, am I?” I said to the mayor. “Not much of a politician.”

Monroe shrugged, but he continued to smile. “I don’t know about that, Alex. Sometimes a man changes to a more effective style as he gains experience. Sees what works, what doesn’t. It’s definitely more satisfying to be confrontational. Doesn’t always serve the greater good, though.”

“Is that what this is about? The greater good? That’s the topic for this morning’s breakfast?” Sampson asked the group.

“I think so. Yes, I believe it is.” Monroe nodded and bit into one of the sweetcakes.

Chief Pittman poured coffee into an expensive china cup that was too small and delicate for his hand. It made me think of little watercress sandwiches. Rich people’s lunches.

“We’re bumping into the FBI, Justice, the Secret Service, on this kidnapping case. It’s no good for anybody. We’ve decided to pull back completely. To take you off the case again,” Pittman finally said.

Bingo. The other shoe had dropped. The truth was out at our little working breakfast.

All of a sudden, everybody in the office was talking at once. At least two of us were shouting. Neat party.

“This is total bullshit,” Sampson told the mayor to his face. “And you know it. You do know it, don’t you?”

“I’ve begun sessions with Soneji/Murphy,” I said to Pittman and Monroe and Captain Clouser. “I hypnotized him yesterday. Jesus fucking Christ, no. Don’t do this. Not now.”

“We’re aware of your progress with Gary Soneji. We had to make a decision, and we’ve made it.”

“You want the truth, Alex?” Carl Monroe’s voice suddenly rang out in the room. “You w

ant to hear the truth about this?”

I looked at him. “Always.”

Monroe stared right into my eyes. “A great deal of pressure has been used by the attorney general on a lot of people in Washington. A huge trial will begin, I believe, within six weeks at the most. The Orient Express has already left the station, Alex. You’re not on it. I’m not on it. It’s gotten much bigger than either of us. Soneji/Murphy is on it….

“The prosecutor, the Justice Department, has decided to stop your sessions with Soneji/Murphy. A team of psychiatrists has been formally assigned to him. That’s the way it will work from here on. That’s the way it’s going to be. This case has moved into a new phase, and our involvement won’t be needed.”

Sampson and I walked out on our own party. Our involvement was no longer needed.

CHAPTER 52

FOR THE NEXT WEEK, I got home from work at a sane hour, usually between six and six-thirty. No more eighty- and hundred-hour work weeks. Damon and Janelle couldn’t have been happier if I’d been fired from the job outright.

We rented Walt Disney and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles videos, listened to the three-disc set Billie Holiday: The Legacy 1933–1958, fell asleep on the couch together. All sorts of amazing good stuff.

One afternoon, the kids and I visited Maria’s grave site. Neither Jannie nor Damon had completely gotten over losing their mom. On the way out of the cemetery, I stopped at another grave, Mustaf Sanders’s final place. I could still see his sad little eyes staring at me. The eyes were asking, Why? No answer yet, Mustaf. But I wasn’t ready to give up.

On a Saturday toward the end of summer, Sampson and I made the long drive to Princeton, New Jersey. Maggie Rose Dunne still hadn’t been found. Neither had the ten-million-dollar ransom. We were rechecking everything on our own time.

We talked to several neighbors of the Murphys. The Murphy family had all perished in a fire, but no one had suspected Gary. Gary Murphy had been a model student as far as everyone around Princeton knew. He’d graduated fourth in his class at the local high school, though he never seemed to study or compete. Nor did he get into any kind of trouble, at least none that his neighbors in Princeton knew about. The young man they described was similar to the Gary Murphy I’d interviewed at Lorton Prison.

Everyone agreed—except for a single boyhood friend whom we located with some difficulty. The friend, Simon Conklin, now worked at one of the local produce markets as a greengrocer. He lived alone, about fifteen miles outside Princeton Village. The reason we went looking for him was that Missy Murphy had mentioned Conklin to me. The FBI had interviewed him, and gotten little for their efforts.

At first Simon Conklin refused to talk to us, to any more cops. When we threatened to haul him down to Washington, he finally opened up a little.

“Gary always had everybody fooled,” Conklin told us in the disheveled living room of his small house. He was a tall unkempt man. He seemed frazzled and his clothes were hopelessly mismatched. He was very smart, though. He’d been a National Merit student, just like his friend Gary Murphy. “Gary said the great ones always fooled everybody. Great Ones in caps, you understand. Thus spake Gary!”

“What did he mean, the ‘great ones’?” I asked Conklin. I thought I could keep him talking, as long as I played to his ego. I could get what I needed out of Conklin.

“He called them the Ninety-ninth Percentile,” Conklin confided to me. “The crème de la crème. The best of the best. The World-beaters, man.”

“The best of what?” Sampson wanted to know. I could tell he wasn’t too fond of Simon Conklin. His shades were steaming up. But he was playing along, being the good listener so far.