Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

“Yes. He watch my girlfriend Suzette’s house. I thought it real strange. Not many whites ’round here.”

“Did you see him in the daytime, or at night?” I asked the girl.

“Night. But I know it him. Sanderses’ porch light on bright. Missus Sanders afraid of everything, everybody. Poo ’fraid you say boo. That’s what Suzette, me, used to say she like.”

I turned to Sampson. “Puts him at the murder scene.” Sampson nodded and looked back at Nina. Her pouty mouth was open in a small “o.” Her hands constantly twirled her braided hair.

“Would you tell Detective Cross what else you saw?” he asked.

“Another white man with him,” Nina Cerisier said. “Man wait in his car while the other, he looking at Suzette’s house. Other white man here all the time. Two men.”

Sampson turned the kitchen chair around to face me. “They’re busy rushing him to trial,” he said. “They don’t have a clue what’s really going on. They’re going to finish it, anyway. Bury it. Maybe we have the answer, Alex.”

“So far, we’re the only ones who have a few of the answers,” I said.

Sampson and I left the Cerisier house and drove downtown in separate cars. My mind was racing through everything we knew so far, half-a-dozen possible scenarios culled from thousands. Police work. An inch at a time.

I was thinking about Bruno Hauptmann and the Lindbergh kidnapping. After he’d been caught, and possibly framed, Bruno Hauptmann had been rushed to trial, too. Hauptmann had been convicted, maybe wrongly.

Gary Soneji/Murphy knew all about that. Was it all part of one of his complex game plans? A ten-or twelve-year plan? Who was the other white man? The pilot down in Florida? Or someone like Simon Conklin, Gary’s friend from Princeton?

Could there have been an accomplice right from the beginning?

Later that night, I was with Jezzie. She insisted that I quit work at eight. For over a month, she’d had tickets for a Georgetown basketball game I wanted to see in the worst way. On our ride over there, we did something we rarely do: we talked about nothing but The Job. I dropped the latest bomb, the “accomplice theory,” on her.

“I don’t understand one beguiling aspect of all this,” Jezzie said after she had listened to me tell Nina Cerisier’s story. She was still nearly as hooked on the kidnapping case as I was. She was more subtle about it, but I could tell she was hooked.

“Ask the Shell Answer Man. I understand everything beguiling. I know beguiling up the wazoo.”

“Okay. This girl was friends with Suzette Sanders, right? She was close to the family. And still, she didn’t talk. Because relations with the police are that bad in the neighborhood? I don’t know if I buy it. All of a sudden, now, she comes forward.”

“I buy it,” I told Jezzie. “The Metro police are like rat poison with lots of folks in these neighborhoods. I live there, they know me, and I’m just barely accepted.”

“It’s still strange to me, Alex. It’s just too odd. The girls were supposed to be friends.”

“It sure is strange. The PLO would talk to the Israeli Army before some of the people in Southeast would talk to the police.”

“So what do you think now that you’ve heard the Cerisier girl and her supposed revelation? What do you make of this… accomplice?”

“It doesn’t quite track for me yet,” I admitted. “Which means that it tracks perfectly with everything that’s happened so far. I believe the Cerisier girl saw someone. The question is, who?”

“Well, I have to say it, Alex, this lead sounds like a wild goose chase. I hope you don’t become the Jim Garrison of this kidnapping.”

Just before eight, we arrived at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. Georgetown was playing St. John’s from New York City. Jezzie had choice tickets. That proved she knew everyone in town. It’s easier to get into an inauguration ball than certain Big East games.

We held hands as we strolled across the parking lot toward the glittery Cap Centre. I like Georgetown basketball, and I admire their coach, a black man named John Thompson. Sampson and I catch two or three home games a season.

“I’m psyched to see the Beast of the East,” Jezzie supplied some basketball lingo, with a wink, as we got close to the stadium.

“Versus the Hoyas,” I said to her.

“The Hoyas are the Beast of the East.” She popped her gum and made a face at me. “Don’t get cute with me.”

“You’re so smart about every goddamn thing.” I grinned. She was, too. It was difficult to bring up a subject she hadn’t read about, or experienced. “What’s the nickname for St. John’s?”

“The St. John’s Redmen. Chris Mullin came from there. They’re also called the Johnnies. Chris Mullin plays for Golden State in the pros now. They’re called the Warriors.”

We both stopped talking at the same time. Whatever I was about to say caught in my throat.