Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross 1)

I could just about picture Charles Chakely as I spoke to him. I remembered him from the days right after the kidnapping. He was only fifty-one, but he looked over sixty. Beer belly. Most of his hair gone. Sad, kind of withdrawn eyes. Chakely was physical evidence of the harm The Job could do to you, if you let it.

“Unfortunately, I’m still assigned to a couple of murders,” I said to him, hoping he’d understand. “They involved Gary Soneji/Murphy, too. He came back to kill one of the teachers at the school. Vivian Kim?”

“I thought you didn’t want to bother me. Why don’t you pretend you never called, huh? Then I’ll pretend I never picked up the phone. I’m getting good at playing ‘let’s pretend’ out here on the painted desert.”

“Listen, I could get a subpoena. You know I can do that. We could have this conversation in Washington. Or I could fly out there and come over to your house in Tempe. Show up for a barbecue some night.”

“Hey, what the fuck’s the matter with you? What’s with you, Cross? The goddamn case is over. Leave it alone, and leave me the fuck alone.”

There was something very strange in Chakely’s tone. He sounded ready to explode.

“I talked to your partner tonight,” I said. That kept him on the line.

“So. You talked to Mickey Devine. I talk to him myself now and then.”

“I’m happy for both of you. I’ll even get out of your hair in a minute. Just answer a question or two.”

“One question. That’s it,” Chakely finally said.

“Do you remember seeing a dark late-model sedan parked on Sorrell Avenue? Anywhere around the Goldberg or Dunne house? Maybe a week or so prior to the kidnapping?”

“Hell, no; Christ, no. Anything out of the ordinary would have gone in our log. The kidnapping case is closed. It’s over in my book. So are you, Detective Cross.”

Chakely hung up on me.

The tone of the conversation had been too weird. The unsolved “watcher” angle was driving me a little crazy. It was a big loose end. Too important to ignore if you were any kind of detective. I had to talk to Jezzie about Mike Devine and Charlie Chakely, and the logs they had kept. Something wasn’t checking out about the two of them. They were definitely holding back.

CHAPTER 72

JEZZIE AND I spent the day at her lake cottage. She needed to talk. She needed to tell me how she had changed, what she’d found out about herself on her sabbatical. Two very, very strange things happened down there In the Middle of Nowhere, North Carolina.

We left Washington at five in the morning and got to the lake just before eight-thirty. It was the third of December, but it could have been the first of October. The temperature was in the seventies all afternoon, and there was a sweet mountain breeze. The chirp and warble of dozens of different birds filled the air.

The summer people were gone for the season, so we had the lake to ourselves. A single speedboat swooped around the lake for an hour or so, its big engine sounding like a race car from

NASCAR. Otherwise, it was just the two of us.

By mutual agreement, we didn’t push into any heavy subjects too quickly. Not about Jezzie, or Devine and Chakely, or my latest theories on the kidnappings.

Late in the afternoon, Jezzie and I went for a long trek into the surrounding pine forests. We followed the spoor of a perfectly crystalline stream that climbed into the surrounding mountain range. Jezzie wore no makeup and her hair was loose and wild. She was in jean cutoffs, and a University of Virginia sweatshirt missing the sleeves. Her eyes were a beautiful blue that rivaled the color of the sky.

“I told you that I found out a lot about myself down here, Alex,” Jezzie said as we hiked deeper and deeper into the forest. She was talking softly. She seemed almost childlike. I listened carefully to every word. I wanted to know all about Jezzie.

“I want to tell you about me. I’m ready to talk now,” she said. “I need to tell you why, and how, and everything else.”

I nodded, and let her go on.

“My father… my father was a failure. In his eyes. He was street-smart. He could get along so beautifully socially—when he wanted to. But he came from the shanty side, and he let it put a huge chip on his shoulder. My father’s negative attitude got him in trouble all the time. He didn’t care how it affected my mother or me. He got to be a heavy drinker in his forties and fifties. At the end of his life, he didn’t have one friend. Or really any family. I imagine that’s why he killed himself…. My father killed himself, Alex. He did it in his unmarked car. There wasn’t any heart attack in Union Station. That’s a lie I’ve been telling ever since my college days.”

We were both silent as we walked on. Jezzie had only talked about her mother and father once or twice. I’d known about their drinking problem, but I wouldn’t push her—especially because I couldn’t be Jezzie’s doctor. When she was ready, I’d thought that she would talk about it.

“I didn’t want to be a failure like my father or my mother. That’s the way they saw themselves, Alex. That’s how they talked all the time. Not low esteem—no esteem. I couldn’t let myself be like that.”

“How do you see them?”

“As failures, I guess.” A tiny smile came with the admission. A painfully honest smile.

“They were both so unbelievably smart, Alex. They knew everything about everything. They read every book in the universe. They could talk to you about any subject. Have you ever been to Ireland?”