Cat & Mouse

Chapter 20

IT WAS rush hour in Penn Station in New York City when Soneji arrived. He was on time, right on schedule, for the next act. Man, he had lived this exact moment a thousand times over before today.

Legions of pathetic burnouts were on the way home, where they would drop onto their pillows (no goose down for these hard cases), sleep for what would seem like an instant, and then get back up the following morning and head for the trains again. Jesus-and they said he was crazy!

This was absolutely, positively, the best-he’d been dreaming of this moment for more than twenty years. This very moment!

He had planned to get to New York between five and five-thirty-and here he was. Heeere’s Gary! He’d imagined himself, saw himself, coming up out of the deep dark tunnels at Penn Station. He knew he was going to be out-of-his-head furious when he got upstairs, too. Knew it before he began to hear the piped-in circus music, some totally insane John Philip Sousa marching band ditty, with an overlay of tinny-sounding train announcements.

“You may now board through Gate A to Track 8, Bay Head Junction,” a fatherly voice proclaimed to the clueless.

All aboard to Bay Head Junction. All aboard, you pathetic morons, you freaking robots!

He checked out a poor moke porter who wore a dazed, flat look, as if life had left him behind about thirty years ago.

“You just can’t keep a bad man down,” Soneji said to the passing redcap. “You dig? You hear what I’m saying?”

“Fuck off,” the redcap said. Gary Soneji snorted out a laugh. Man, he got such a kick out of the surly downtrodden. They were everywhere, like a league these days.

He stared at the surly redcap. He decided to punish him-to let him live.

Today’s not your day to die. Your name stays in the Book of Life. Keep on walking.

He was furious-just as he knew he would be. He was seeing red. The blood rushing through his brain made a deafening, pounding sound. Not nice. Not conducive to sane, rational thought. The blood? Had the bloodhounds figured it out yet?

The train station was filled to the gills with shoving, pushing, and grumbling New Yorkers at their worst. These goddamn commuters were unbelievably aggressive and irritating.

Couldn’t any of them see that? Well, hell, sure they could. And what did they do about it? They got even more aggressive and obnoxious.

None of them came close to approaching his own seething anger, though. Not even close. His hatred was pure. Distilled. He was anger. He did the things most of them only fantasized about. Their anger was fuzzy and unfocused, bursting in their bubbleheads. He saw anger clearly, and he acted upon it swiftly.

This was so fine, being inside Penn Station, creating another scene. He was really getting into the spirit now. He was noticing everything in full-blast, touchy-feely 3-D. Dunkin’ Donuts, Knot Just Pretzels, Shoetrician Shoe Shine. The omnipresent rumble of the trains down below-it was just as he’d always imagined it.

He knew what would come next-and how it would all end.

Gary Soneji had a six-inch knife pressed against his leg. It was a real collector’s item. Had a mother-of-pearl handle and a tight serpentine blade on both sides. “An ornate knife for an ornate individual,” a greasy salesman had told him once upon a long time ago. “Wrap it up!” he’d said. Had it ever since. For special occasions like today. Or once to kill an FBI agent named Roger Graham.

He passed Hudson News, with all of its glossy magazine faces staring out at the world, staring at him, trying to work their propaganda. He was still being shoved and elbowed by his fellow commuters. Man, didn’t they ever stop?

Wow! He saw a character from his dreams, from way back when he was a kid. There was the guy. No doubt about it. He recognized the face, the way the guy held his body, everything about him. It was the guy in the gray-striped business getup, the one who reminded him of his father.

“You’ve been asking for this for a long time!” Soneji growled at Mr. Gray Stripes. “You asked for this.”

He drove the knife blade forward, felt it sink into flesh. It was just as he had imagined it.

The businessman saw the knife plunge near his heart. A frightened, bewildered look crossed his face. Then he fell to the station floor, stone cold dead, his eyes rolled back and his mouth frozen in a silent scream.

Soneji knew what he had to do next. He pivoted, danced to his left, and cut a second victim who looked like a slacker type. The guy wore a “Naked Lacrosse” T-shirt. The details didn’t matter, but some of them stuck in his mind. He cut a black man selling Street News. Three for three.

The thing that really mattered was the blood. Soneji watched as the precious blood spilled onto the dirty, stained, and mottled concrete floor. It spattered the clothes of commuters, pooled under the bodies. The blood was a clue, a Rorschach test for the police and FBI hunters to analyze. The blood was there for Alex Cross to try and figure out.

Gary Soneji dropped his knife. There was incredible confusion, shrieking everywhere, panic in Penn Station that finally woke the walking dead.

He looked up at the maze of maroon signs, each with neat Helvetic lettering: Exit 31st St., Parcel Checking, Visitor Information, Eighth Avenue Subway.

He knew the way out of Penn Station. It was all preordained. He had made this decision a thousand times before.

He scurried back down into the tunnels again. No one tried to stop him. He was the Bad Boy again. Maybe his stepmother had been right about that. His punishment would be to ride the New York subways.

Brrrr. Scar-ry!

Chapter 21

SEVEN P.M. that evening. I was caught in the strangest, most powerful epiphany. I felt that I was outside myself, watching myself. I was driving by the Sojourner Truth School, on my way home. I saw Christine Johnson’s car and stopped.

I got out of my car and waited for her. I felt incredibly vulnerable. A little foolish. I hadn’t expected Christine to be at the school this late.

At quarter past seven, she finally wandered out of the school. I couldn’t catch my breath from the instant I spotted her. I felt like a schoolboy. Maybe that was all right, maybe it was good. At least I was feeling again.

She looked as fresh and attractive as if she’d just arrived at the school. She had on a yellow-and-blue flowered dress cinched around her narrow waist. She wore blue sling-back heels and carried a blue bag over one shoulder. The theme song from Waiting to Exhale floated into my head. I was waiting, all right.

Christine saw me, and she immediately looked troubled. She kept on walking, as if she were in a hurry to be somewhere else, anywhere else but here.

Her arms were crossed across her chest. A bad sign, I thought. The worst possible body language. Protective and fearful. One thing was clear already: Christine Johnson didn’t want to see me.

I knew I shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have stopped, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to understand what had happened when we left Kinkead’s. Just that, nothing more. A simple, honest explanation, even if it hurt.

I sucked in a deep breath and walked up to her. “Hi,” I said, “you want to take a walk? It’s a nice night.” I almost couldn’t speak, and I am never at a loss for words.

“Taking a break in one of your usual twenty-hour workdays?” Christine half smiled, tried to anyway.

I returned the smile, felt queasy all over. I shook my head. “I’m off work.”

“I see. Sure, we can walk a little bit, a few minutes. It is a nice night, you’re right.”

We turned down F Street and entered Garfield Park, which was especially pretty in the early summer. We walked in silence. Finally we stopped near a ballfield swarming with little kids. A frenzied baseball game was in progress.

We weren’t far from the Eisenhower Freeway, and the whoosh of rush-hour traffic was steady, almost soothing. Tulip poplars were in bloom, and coral honey-suckle. Mothers and fathers were playing with their kids; everybody in a nice mood tonight.

This had been my neighborhood park for almost thirty years, and during the daylight hours it can almost be idyllic. Maria and I used to come here all the time when Damon was a toddler and she was pregnant with Jannie. Much of that is starting to fade away now, which is probably a good thing, but it’s also sad.

Christine finally spoke. “I’m sorry, Alex.” She had been staring at the ground, but now she raised her lovely eyes to mine. “About the other night. The bad scene at my car. I guess I panicked. To be honest, I’m not even sure what happened.”

“Let’s be honest,” I said. “Why not?”

I could tell this was hard for her, but I needed to know how she felt. I needed more than she’d told me outside the restaurant.

“I want to try and explain,” she said. Her hands were clenched. One of her feet was tapping rapidly. Lots of bad signs.

“Maybe it’s all my fault,” I said. “I’m the one who kept asking you to dinner until-”

Christine reached out and covered my hand with hers. “Please let me finish,” she said. The half smile came again. “Let me try to get this out once and for all. I was going to call you anyway. I was planning to call you tonight. I would have.

“You’re nervous now, and so am I. God, am I nervous,” she said quietly. “I know I’ve hurt your feelings, and I don’t like that. It’s the last thing I meant to do. You don’t deserve to be hurt.”

Christine was shivering a little. Her voice was shaking, too, as she spoke. “Alex, my husband died because of the kind of violence you have to live with every day. You accept that world, but I don’t think I can. I’m just not that kind of person. I couldn’t bear to lose someone else I was close to. Am I making sense to you? I’m feeling a little confused.”

Everything was becoming clearer to me now. Christine’s husband had been killed in December. She said that there had been serious problems in the marriage, but she loved him. She had seen him shot to death in their home, seen him die. I had held her then. I was part of the murder case.

I wanted to hold her again, but I knew it was the wrong thing to do. She was still hugging herself tightly. I understood her feelings.

“Please listen to me, Christine. I’m not going to die until probably in my late eighties. I’m too stubborn and ornery to die. That would give us longer together than either of us has been alive so far. Forty-plus years. It’s also a long time to avoid each other.”

Christine shook her head a little. She continued to look into my eyes. Finally, a smile peeked through.

“I do like the way your crazy mind works. One minute, you’re Detective Cross-the next minute you’re this very open, very sweet child.” She put her hands up to her face. “Oh, God, I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

Everything inside me said to do it, every instinct, every feeling. I slowly, carefully, reached out and took Christine into my arms. She fit so right. I could feel myself melting and I liked it. I even liked that my legs felt shaky and weak.

We kissed for the first time and Christine’s mouth was soft and very sweet. Her lips pushed against mine. She didn’t pull away, as I’d expected she might. I ran the tips of my fingers along one cheek, then the other.

Her skin was smooth and my fingers tingled at the tips. It was as if I had been without air for a long, long time and suddenly could breathe again. I could breathe. I felt alive.

Christine had shut her eyes, but now she opened them. Our eyes met, and held. “Just like I imagined it,” she whispered, “times about four hundred and fifty.”

Then the worst thing imaginable happened-my pager beeped.

Chapter 22

AT SIX o’clock in New York City, police cruisers and EMS van sirens were wailing everywhere in the always highly congested five-block radius around Penn Station. Detective Manning Goldman parked his dark blue Ford Taurus in front of the post office building on Eighth Avenue and ran toward the multiple-murder scene.

People stopped walking on the busy avenue to watch Goldman. Heads turned everywhere, trying to find out what was going on, and how this running man might fit in.

Goldman had long, wavy caramel-and-gray hair and a gray goatee. A gold stud glinted from one earlobe. Goldman looked more like an aging rock or jazz musician than a homicide detective.

Goldman’s partner was a first-year detective named Carmine Groza. Groza had a strong build and wavy black hair, and reminded people of a young Sylvester Stallone, a comparison he hated. Goldman rarely talked to him. In his opinion, Groza had never uttered a single word worth listening to.

Groza nonetheless followed close behind his fifty-eight-year-old partner, who was currently the oldest Manhattan homicide detective working the streets, possibly the smartest, and definitely the meanest, grumpiest bastard Groza had ever met.

Goldman was known to be somewhere to the right of Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh when it came to politics but, like most rumors, or what he called “caricature assassinations,” this one was off the mark. On certain issues-the apprehension of criminals, the rights of criminals versus the rights of other citizens, and the death penalty, Goldman was definitely a radical conservative. He knew that anyone with half a brain who worked homicide for a couple of hours would come to exactly the same conclusions that he had. On the other hand, when it came to women’s right to choose, same-sex marriages, or even Howard Stern, Goldman was as liberal as his thirty-year-old son, who just happened to be a lawyer with the ACLU. Of course, Goldman kept that to himself. The last thing he wanted was to ruin his reputation as an insufferable bastard. If he did that, he might have to talk to up-and-coming young assholes like “Sly” Groza.

Goldman was still in good shape-better than Groza, with his steady diet of fast foods and high-octane colas and sugary teas. He ran against the tide of people streaming out of Penn Station. The murders, at least the ones he knew about so far, had taken place in and around the main waiting area of the train station.

The killer had chosen the rush hour for a reason, Goldman was thinking as the train-station waiting area came into view. Either that, or the killer just happened to go wacko at a time when the station was jam-packed with victims-to-be.

So what brought the wacko to Penn Station at rush hour? Manning Goldman wondered. He already had one scary theory that he was keeping to himself so far.

“Manning, you think he’s still in here someplace?” Groza asked from behind.

Groza’s habit of calling people by their first name, as if they were all camp counselors together, really got under his skin.

Goldman ignored his partner. No, he didn’t believe the killer was still in Penn Station. The killer was on the loose in New York. That bothered the hell out of him. It made him sick to his stomach, which wasn’t all that hard these days, the past couple of years, actually.

Two pushcart vendors were artfully blocking the way to the crime scene. One cart was called Montego City Slickers Leather, the other From Russia With Love. He wished they would go back to Jamaica and Russia, respectively.

“NYPD. Make way. Move these ashcarts!” Goldman yelled at the vendors.

He pushed his way through the crowd of onlookers, other cops, and train-station personnel who were gathered near the body of a black man with braided hair and tattered clothing. Bloodstained copies of Street News were scattered around the body, so Goldman knew the dead man’s occupation and his reason for being at the train station.

As he got up close, he saw that the victim was probably in his late twenties. There was an unusual amount of blood. Too much. The body was surrounded by a bright red pool.

Goldman walked up to a man in a dark blue suit with a blue-and-red Amtrak pin prominent on his lapel.

“Homicide Detective Goldman,” he said, flashing his shield. “Tracks ten and eleven.” Goldman pointed at one of the overhead signs. “What train would have come in on those tracks-just before the knifings?”

The Amtrak manager consulted a thick booklet he kept in his breast pocket.

“The last train on ten…that would have been the Metroliner from Philly, Wilmington, Baltimore, originating in Washington.”

Goldman nodded. It was exactly what he’d been afraid of when he’d heard that a spree killer had struck at the train station, and that he was able to get away. That fact meant he was clearheaded. The killer had a plan in mind.

Goldman suspected that the Union Station and Penn Station killer might be one and the same-and that now the maniac was here in New York.

“You got any idea yet, Manning?” Groza was yapping again.

Goldman finally spoke to his partner without looking at him. “Yeah, I was just thinking that they’ve got earplugs, bunghole plugs, so why not mouth plugs.”

Then Manning Goldman went to scare up a public phone. He had to make a call to Washington, D.C. He believed that Gary Soneji had come to New York. Maybe he was on some kind of twenty- or thirty-city spree killer tour.

Anything was a possibility these days.

Chapter 23

I ANSWERED my pager and it was disturbing news from the NYPD. There had been another attack at a crowded train station. It kept me at work until well past midnight.

Gary Soneji was probably in New York City. Unless he had already moved on to another city he’d targeted for murder. Boston? Chicago? Philadelphia?

When I got home, the lights were off. I found lemon meringue pie in the refrigerator and finished it off. Nana had a story about Oseola McCarty attached to the fridge door. Oseola had washed clothes for more than fifty years in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She had saved $150,000 and donated it to the University of Southern Mississippi. President Clinton had invited her to Washington and given her the Presidential Citizens Medal.

The pie was excellent, but I needed something else, another kind of nourishment. I went to see my shaman.

“You awake, old woman?” I whispered at Nana’s bedroom door. She always keeps it ajar in case the kids need to talk or cuddle with her during the night. Open twenty-four hours, just like 7-Eleven, she always says. It was like that when I was growing up, too.

“That depends on your intentions,” I heard her say in the dark. “Oh, is that you, Alex?” she cackled and had a little coughing spell.

“Who else would it be? You tell me that? In the middle of the night at your bedroom door?”

“It could be anyone. Hugger-mugger. Housebreaker in this dangerous neighborhood of ours. Or one of my gentlemen admirers.”

It goes like that between us. Always has, always will.

“You have any particular boyfriends you want to tell me about?”

Nana cackled again. “No, but I suspect you have a girlfriend you want to talk to me about. Let me get decent. Put on some water for my tea. There’s lemon meringue pie in the fridge, at least there was pie. You do know that I have gentlemen admirers, Alex?”

“I’ll put on the tea,” I said. “The lemon meringue has already gone to pie heaven.”

A few minutes passed before Nana appeared in the kitchen. She was wearing the cutest housedress, blue stripes with big white buttons down the front. She looked as if she were ready to begin her day at half past twelve in the morning.

“I have two words for you, Alex. Marry her.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s not what you think, old woman. It’s not that simple.”

She poured some steaming tea for herself. “Oh, it is absolutely that simple, granny son. You’ve got that spring in your step lately, a nice gleam in your eyes. You’re long gone, mister. You’re just the last one to hear about it. Tell me something. This is a serious question.”

I sighed. “You’re still a little high from your sweet dreams. What? Ask your silly question.”

“Well, it’s this. If I was to charge you, say, ninety dollars for our sessions, then would you be more likely to take my fantastic advice?”

We both laughed at her sly joke, her unique brand of humor.

“Christine doesn’t want to see me.”

“Oh, dear,” Nana said.

“Yeah, oh, dear. She can’t see herself involved with a homicide detective.”

Nana smiled. “The more I hear about Christine Johnson, the more I like her. Smart lady. Good head on those pretty shoulders.”

“Are you going to let me talk?” I asked.

Nana frowned and gave me her serious look. “You always get to say what you want, just not at the exact moment you want to say it. Do you love this woman?”

“From the first time I saw her, I felt something extraordinary. Heart leads head. I know that sounds crazy.”

She shook her head and still managed to sip steaming hot tea. “Alex, as smart as you are, you sometimes seem to get everything backwards. You don’t sound crazy at all. You sound like you’re better for the first time since Maria died. Will you look at the evidence that we have here? You have a spring back in your step again. Your eyes are bright and smiling. You’re even being nice to me lately. Put it all together-your heart is working again.”

“She’s afraid that I could die on the job. Her husband was murdered, remember?”

Nana rose from her chair at the kitchen table. She shuffled around to my side, and she stood very close to me. She was so much smaller than she used to be, and that worried me. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.

“I love you, Alex,” she said. “Whatever you do, I’ll still love you. Marry her. At least live with Christine.” She laughed to herself. “I can’t believe I said that.”

Nana gave me a kiss, and then headed back to bed.

“I do too have suitors,” she called from the hall.

“Marry one,” I called back at her.

“I’m not in love, lemon meringue man. You are.”

Chapter 24

FIRST THING in the morning, 6:35 to be the exact, Sampson and I took the Metroliner to New York ’s Penn Station. It was almost as fast as driving to the airport, parking, finagling with the airlines-and besides, I wanted to do some thinking about trains.

A theory that Soneji was the Penn Station slasher had been advanced by the NYPD. I’d have to know more about the killings in New York, but it was the kind of high-profile situation that Soneji had been drawn to in the past.

The train ride was quiet and comfortable, and I had the opportunity to think about Soneji for much of the trip. What I couldn’t reconcile was why Soneji was committing crimes that appeared to be acts of desperation. They seemed suicidal to me.

I had interviewed Soneji dozens of times after I had apprehended him a few years ago. That was the Dunne-Goldberg case. I certainly didn’t believe he was suicidal then. He was too much of an egomaniac, even a megalomaniac.

Maybe these were copycat crimes. Whatever he was doing now didn’t track. What had changed? Was it Soneji who was doing the killings? Was he pulling some kind of trick or stunt? Could this be a clever trap? How in hell had he gotten my blood on the sniper’s rifle in Union Station?

What kind of trap? For what reason? Soneji obsessed on his crimes. Everything had a purpose with him.

So why kill strangers in Union and Penn Stations? Why choose railroad stations?

“Oh ho, smoke’s curling out of your forehead, Sugar. You aware of that?” Sampson looked over at me and made an announcement to the nice folks seated around us in the train car.

“Little wisps of white smoke! See? Right here. And here.”

He leaned in close and started hitting me with his newspaper as if he were trying to put out a small fire.

Sampson usually favors a cool deadpan delivery to slapstick. The change of pace was effective. We both started to laugh. Even the people sitting around us smiled, looking up from their newspapers, coffees, laptop computers.

“Phew. Fire seems to be out,” Sampson said and chuckled deeply. “Man, your head is hot as Hades to the touch. You must have been brainstorming some powerful ideas. Am I right about that?”

“No, I was thinking about Christine,” I told Sampson.

“You lying sack. You should have been thinking about Christine Johnson. Then I would have had to beat the fire out someplace else. How you two doing? If I might be so bold as to ask.”

“She’s great, she’s the best, John. Really something else. She’s smart and she’s funny. Ho ho, ha ha.”

“And she’s almost as good-looking as Whitney Houston, and she’s sexy as hell. But none of that answers my question. What’s happening with you two? You trying to hide your love on me? My spy, Ms. Jannie, told me you had a date the other night. Did you have a big date and not tell me about it?”

“We went to Kinkead’s for dinner. Had a good time. Good food, great company. One little minor problem, though: She’s afraid I’m going to get myself killed, so she doesn’t want to see me anymore. Christine’s still mourning her husband.”

Sampson nodded, slid down his shades to check me out sans light filtration. “That’s interesting. Still mourning, huh? Proves she’s a good lady. By the by, since you brought up the forbidden topic, something I should tell you, all-star. You ever get capped in action, your family will mourn you for an indecent length of time. Myself, I would carry the torch of grief up to and through the funeral services. That’s it, though. Thought you should know. So, are you two star-crossed lovers going to have another date?”

Sampson liked to talk as if we were girlfriends in a Terry McMillan novel. We could be like that sometimes, which is unusual for men, especially two tough guys like us. He was on a roll now. “I think you two are so cute together. Everybody does. Whole town is talking. The kids, Nana, your aunties.”

“They are, are they?”

I got up and sat down across the aisle from him. Both seats were empty. I spread out my notes on Gary Soneji and started to read them again.

“Thought you would never get the hint,” Sampson said as he stretched his wide body across both seats.

As always, there was nothing like working a job with him. Christine was wrong about my getting hurt. Sampson and I were going to live forever. We wouldn’t even need DHEA or melatonin to help.

“We’re going to get Gary Soneji’s ass in a sling. Christine’s going to fall hard for you, like you obviously already fell for her. Everything will be beautiful, Sugar. Way it has to be.”

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t quite make myself believe that.

“I know you’re thinking negative shit already,” Sampson said without even looking over at me, “but just watch. Nothing but happy endings this time.”

Chapter 25

SAMPSON AND I arrived in New York City around nine o’clock in the morning. I vividly remembered an old Stevie Wonder tune about getting off the bus in New York for the first time. The mixture of hopes and fears and expectations most people associate with the city seems a universal reaction.

As we climbed the steep stone steps from the underground tracks in Penn Station, I had an insight about the case. If it was right, it would definitely tie Soneji to both train-station massacres.

“I might have something on Soneji,” I told Sampson as we approached the bright lights gleaming at the top of the stairs. He turned his head toward me but kept on climbing.

“I’m not going to guess, Alex, because my mind doesn’t ever go where yours does.” Then he mumbled, “Thank the Lord and Savior Jesus for that. Addlehead brother.”

“You trying to keep me amused?” I asked him. I could hear music coming from the main terminal now-it sounded like Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

“Actually, I’m trying not to let the fact that Gary Soneji is on this current mad-ass rampage upset my equilibrium or otherwise depress the hell out of me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“When Soneji was at Lorton Prison, and I interviewed him, he always talked about how his stepmother kept him in the cellar of their house. He was obsessed about it.”

Sampson’s head bobbed. “Knowing Gary as we do, I can’t completely blame the poor woman.”

“She would keep him down there for hours at a time, sometimes a whole day, if his father happened to be away from home. She kept the lights off, but he learned to hide candles. He would read by candlelight about kidnappers, rapists, mass murderers, all the other bad boys.”

“And so, Dr. Freud? These mass killers were his boyhood role models?”

“Something like that. Gary told me that when he was in the cellar, he would fantasize about committing murders and other atrocities-as soon as he was let out. His idée fixe was that release from the cellar would give him back his freedom and power. He’d sit in the cellar obsessing on what he was going to do as soon as he got out. You happen to notice any cellarlike locations around here? Or maybe at Union Station?”

Sampson showed his teeth, which are large and very white, and can give you the impression that he likes you maybe more than he does. “The train tunnels represent the cellar of Gary ’s childhood house, right? When he gets out of the tunnels, all hell breaks loose. He finally takes his revenge on the world.”

“I think that’s part of what’s going on,” I said. “But it’s never that simple with Gary. It’s a start anyway.”

We had reached the main level of Penn Station. This was probably how it had been when Soneji arrived here the night before. More and more I was thinking that the NYPD had it right. Soneji could definitely be the Penn Station killer, too.

I saw a mob of travelers lingering beneath the flipping numbers of the Train Departures board. I could almost see Gary Soneji standing where I was now, taking it all in-released from the cellar to be the Bad Boy again! Still wanting to do famous crimes and succeeding beyond his craziest dreams.

“Dr. Cross, I presume.”

I heard my name as Sampson and I wandered into the brightly lit waiting area of the station. A bearded man with a gold ear stud was smiling at his small joke. He extended his hand.

“I’m Detective Manning Goldman. Good of you to come. Gary Soneji was here yesterday.” He said it with absolute certainty.

Chapter 26

SAMPSON AND I shook hands with Goldman and also his partner, a younger detective who appeared to defer to Goldman. Manning Goldman wore a bright blue sport shirt with three of the buttons undone. He had on a ribbed undershirt that exposed silver and reddish gold chest hairs sprouting toward his chin. His partner was dressed from head to toe in black. Talk about your odd couples, but I still preferred Oscar and Felix.

Goldman started in on what he knew about the Penn Station stabbings. The New York detective was high energy, a rapid-fire talker. He used his hands constantly, and appeared confident about his abilities and opinions. The fact that he’d called us in on his case was proof of that. He wasn’t threatened by us.

“We know that the killer came up the stairs at track ten here, just like the two of you just did. We’ve talked to three witnesses who may have seen him on the Metroliner from Washington,” Goldman explained. His swarthy, dark-haired partner never said a word. “And yet, we don’t have a good ID of him-each witness gave a different description-which doesn’t make any sense to me. You have any ideas on that one?”

“If it’s Soneji, he’s good with makeup and disguises. He enjoys fooling people, especially the police. Do you know where he got on the train?” I asked.

Goldman consulted a black leather notebook. “The stops for that particular train were D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Princeton Junction, and New York. We assumed he got on in D.C.”

I glanced at Sampson, then back at the NYPD detectives. “Soneji used to live in Wilmington with his wife and little girl. He was originally from the Princeton area.”

“That’s information we didn’t have,” Goldman said. I couldn’t help noticing that he was talking only to me, as if Sampson and Groza weren’t even there. It was peculiar, and made it uncomfortable for the rest of us.

“Get me a schedule for yesterday’s Metroliner, the one that arrived at five-ten. I want to double-check the stops,” he barked at Groza. The younger detective skulked off to do Goldman’s bidding.

“We heard there were three stabbings, three deaths?” Sampson finally spoke. I knew that he’d been sizing up Goldman. He’d probably come to the conclusion that the detective was a New York asshole of the first order.

“That’s what it says on the front pages of all the daily newspapers,” Goldman cracked out of the side of his mouth. It was a nasty remark, delivered curtly.

“The reason I was asking-” Sampson started to say, still keeping his cool.

Goldman cut him off with a rude swipe of the hand. “Let me show you the sites of the stabbings.” He turned his attention back to me. “Maybe it will jog something else you know about Soneji.”

“Detective Sampson asked you a question,” I said.

“Yeah, but it was a pointless question. I don’t have time for PC crap or pointless questions. Like I said, let’s move on. Soneji is on the loose in my town.”

“You know much about knives? You cover a lot of stabbings?” Sampson asked. I could tell that he was starting to lose it. He towered over Manning Goldman. Actually, both of us did.

“Yeah, I’ve covered quite a few stabbings,” Goldman said. “I also know where you’re going. It’s extremely unlikely for Soneji to kill three out of three with a knife. Well, the knife he used had a double serpentine blade, extremely sharp. He cut each victim like some surgeon from NYU Medical Center. Oh yeah, he tipped the knife with potassium cyanide. Kill you in under a minute. I was getting to that.”

Sampson backed off. The mention of poison on the knife was news to us. John knew we needed to hear what Goldman had to say. We couldn’t let this get personal here in New York. Not yet anyway.

“Soneji have any history with knives?” Goldman asked. He was talking to me again. “Poisons?”

I understood that he wanted to pump me, to use me. I didn’t have a problem with it. Give and take is as good as it gets on most multijurisdictional cases.

“Knives? He once killed an FBI agent with a knife. Poisons? I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised. He also shot an assortment of handguns and rifles while he was growing up. Soneji likes to kill, Detective Goldman. He’s a quick study, so he could have picked it up. Guns and knives, and poisons, too.”

“Believe me, he did pick it up. He was in and out of here in a couple of minutes. Left three dead bodies just like that.” Goldman snapped his fingers.

“Was there much blood at the scene?” I asked Goldman. It was the question I’d had on my mind all the way from Washington.

“There was a helluva lot of blood. He cut each victim deep. Slashed two of their throats. Why?”

“There could be an angle connected with all the blood.” I told Goldman one of my findings at Union Station. “The sniper in D.C. made a mess. I’m pretty sure Soneji did it on purpose. He used hollow-points. He also left traces of my blood on his weapon,” I revealed to Goldman.

He probably even knows I’m here in New York, I thought. And I’m not completely sure who is tracking whom.

Chapter 27

FOR THE next hour, Goldman, with his partner practically walking up his heels, showed us around Penn Station, particularly the three stabbing sites. The body markings were still on the floor, and the cordoned-off areas were causing more than the usual congestion in the terminal.

After we finished with a survey of the station, the NYPD detectives took us up to the street level, where it was believed Soneji had caught a cab headed uptown.

I studied Goldman, watched him work. He was actually pretty good. The way he walked around was interesting. His nose was poised just a little higher than those belonging to the rest of the general population. His posture made him look haughty, in spite of the odd way he was dressed.

“I would have guessed he’d use the subway to escape,” I offered as we stood out on noisy Eighth Avenue. Above our heads, a sign announced that Kiss was appearing at Madison Square Garden. Shame I’d have to miss it.

Goldman smiled broadly. “I had the same thought. Witnesses are split on which way he went. I was curious whether you’d have an opinion. I think Soneji used the subway, too.”

“Trains have a special significance for him. I think trains are part of his ritual. He wanted a set of trains as a kid, but never got it.”

“Ah, quod erat demonstrandum,” Goldman said and smirked. “So now he kills people in train stations. Makes perfect sense to me. Wonder he didn’t blow up the whole fucking train.”

Even Sampson laughed at Goldman’s delivery on that one.

After we had finished the tour of Penn Station and the surrounding streets, we made a trip downtown to One Police Plaza. By four o’clock I knew what the NYPD had going-at least everything that Manning Goldman was prepared to tell me at this time.

I was almost sure that Gary Soneji was the Penn Station killer. I personally contacted Boston, Philly, and Baltimore and suggested tactfully that they pay attention to the train terminals. I passed on the same advice to Kyle Craig and the FBI.

“We’re going to head back to Washington,” I finally told Goldman and Groza. “Thanks for calling us in on this. This helps a lot.”

“I’ll call if there’s anything. You do the same, hey?” Manning Goldman put out his hand, and we shook. “I’m pretty sure we haven’t heard the last of Gary Soneji.”

I nodded. I was sure of it, too.

Chapter 28

IN HIS mind, Gary Soneji lay down beside Charles Joseph Whitman on the roof of the University of Texas tower, circa 1966.

All in his goddamn incredible mind!!

He had been up there with Charlie Whitman many, many times before-ever since 1966, when the spree killer had become one of his boyhood idols. Over the years, other killers had captured his imagination, but none were like Charlie Whitman. Whitman was an American original, and there weren’t many of those left.

Let’s see now, Soneji ran down the names of his favorites: James Herberty, who had opened fire without warning inside the McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California. He had killed twenty-one, killed them at an even faster clip than they could dish out greasy hamburgers. Soneji had actually copycatted the McDonald’s shootings a few years earlier. That was when he’d first met Cross face to face.

Another of his personal favorites was postman Patrick Sherill, who’d blown away fourteen coworkers in Edmond, Oklahoma, and also probably started the postman-as-madman paranoia. More recently, he had admired the handiwork of Martin Bryant at the Port Arthur penal colony in Tasmania. Then there was Thomas Watt Hamilton, who invaded the mind space of virtually everyone on the planet after his shooting spree at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland.

Gary Soneji desperately wanted to invade everybody’s mind space, to become a large, disturbing icon on the world’s Internet. He was going to do it, too. He had everything figured out.

Charlie Whitman was still his sentimental favorite, though. Whitman was the original, the “madman in the tower.” A Bad Boy down there in Texas.

God, how many times had he lain on that same tower, in the blazing August sun, along with Bad Boy Charlie?

All in his incredible mind!

Whitman had been a twenty-five-year-old student of architectural engineering at the University of Texas when he’d gone tapioca pudding. He’d brought an arsenal up onto the observation deck of the limestone tower that soared three hundred feet above the campus, and where he must have felt like God.

Just before he’d gone up in the clock tower, he had murdered his wife and mother. Whitman had made Charlie Starkweather look like a piker and a real chump that afternoon in Texas. The same could be said for Dickie Hickock and Perry Smith, the white-trash punks Truman Capote immortalized in his book In Cold Blood. Charles Whitman made those two look like crap, too.

Soneji never forgot the actual passage from the Time magazine story on the Texas tower shootings. He knew it word for word: “Like many mass murderers, Charles Whitman had been an exemplary boy, the kind that neighborhood mothers hold up as a model to their own recalcitrant youngsters. He was a Roman Catholic altar boy, and a newspaper delivery boy.”

Cool goddamn beans.

Another master of disguise, right. Nobody had known what Charlie was thinking, or what he was ultimately going to pull off.

He had carefully positioned himself under the “VI” numeral of the tower’s clock. Then Charles Whitman opened fire at 11:48 in the morning. Beside him on the six-foot runway that went around the tower were a machete, a Bowie knife, a 6mm Remington bolt-action rifle, a 35mm Remington, a Luger pistol, and a.357 Smith amp; Wesson revolver.

The local and state police fired thousands of rounds up onto the tower, almost shooting out the entire face of the clock-but it took over an hour and a half to bring an end to Charlie Whitman. The whole world marveled at his audacity, his unique outlook and perspective. The whole goddamn world took notice.

Someone was pounding on the door of Soneji’s hotel room! The sound brought him back to the here and now. He suddenly remembered where he was.

He was in New York City, in Room 419 of the Plaza, which he always used to read about as a kid. He had always fantasized about coming by train to New York and staying at the Plaza. Well, here he was.

“Who’s out there?” he called from the bed. He pulled a semi-automatic from under the covers. Aimed it at the peephole in the door.

“Maid service,” an accented Spanish female voice said. “Would you like your bed turned down?”

“No, I’m comfortable as is,” Soneji said and smiled to himself. Well actually, senorita, I’m preparing to make the NYPD look like the amateurs that cops usually are. You can forget the bed turndown and keep your chocolate mints, too. It’s too late to try and make up to me now.

On second thought-“Hey! You can bring me some of those chocolate mints. I like those little mints. I need a little sweet treat.”

Gary Soneji sat back against the headboard and continued to smile as the maid unlocked the door and entered. He thought about doing her, boffing the scaggy hotel maid, but he figured that wasn’t such a good idea. He wanted to spend one night at the Plaza. He’d been looking forward to it for years. It was worth the risk.

The thing that he loved the most, what made it so perfect, was that nobody had any idea where this was going.

Nobody would guess the end to this one.

Not Alex Cross, not anybody.

Chapter 29

I VOWED I would not let Soneji wear me down this time. I wouldn’t let Soneji take possession of my soul again.

I managed to get home from New York in time for a late dinner with Nana and the kids. Damon, Jannie, and I cleaned up downstairs and then we set the table in the dining room. Keith Jarrett was playing ever so sweetly in the background. This was nice. This was the way it was supposed to be and there was a message in that for me.

“I’m so impressed, Daddy,” Jannie commented as we circled the table, putting out the “good” silverware, and also glasses and dinner plates I’d picked out years ago with my wife, Maria. “You went all the way to New York. You came all the way back again. You’re here for dinner. Very good, Daddy.”

She beamed and giggled and patted me on my arm as we worked. I was a good father tonight. Jannie approved. She bought my act completely.

I took a small formal bow. “Thank you, my darling daughter. Now this trip to New York I was on, about how far would you say that might be?”

“Kilometers or miles?” Damon broke in from the other side of the table, where he was folding napkins like fans, the way they do in fancy restaurants. Damon can be quite the little scene stealer.

“Either measurement would be fine,” I told him.

“Approximately two hundred forty-eight miles, one way,” Jannie answered. “Howzat?”

I opened my eyes as wide as I could, made a funny face, and let my eyes roll up into my forehead. I can still steal a scene or two myself. “Now, I’m impressed. Very good, Jannie.”

She took a little bow and then did a mock curtsy. “I asked Nana how far it was this morning,” she confessed. “Is that okay?”

“That’s cool,” Damon offered his thought on his sister’s moral code. “It’s call research, Velcro.”

“Yeah, that’s cool, Baby,” I said and we all laughed at her cleverness and sense of fun.

“Round-trip, it’s four hundred ninety-six miles,” Damon said.

“You two are…smart!” I exclaimed in a loud, playful voice. “You’re both smarty-pants, smartalecks, smarties of the highest order!”

“What’s going on in there? What am I missing out on?” Nana finally called from the kitchen, which was overflowing with good smells from her cooking. She doesn’t like to miss anything. Ever. To my knowledge, she just about never has.

“ G.E. College Bowl,” I called out to her.

“You will lose your shirt, Alex, if you play against those two young scholars,” she warned. “Their hunger for knowledge knows no bounds. Their knowledge is fast becoming encyclopedic.”

“En-cy-clo-pedic!” Jannie grinned.

“Cakewalk!” she said then, and did the lively old dance that had originated back in plantation times. I’d taught it to her one day at the piano. The cakewalk music form was actually a forerunner of modern jazz. It had fused polyrhythms from West Africa with classical melodies and also marches from Europe.

Back in plantation days, whoever did the dance best on a given night won a cake. Thus the phrase “that takes the cake.”

All of this Jannie knew, and also how to actually do the damn dance in high style, and with a contemporary twist or two. She can also do James Brown’s famous Elephant Walk and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk.

After dinner, we did the dishes and then we had our biweekly boxing lesson in the basement. Damon and Jannie are not only smart, they’re tough little weasels. Nobody in school picks on those two. “Brains and a wicked left hook!” Jannie brags to me sometimes. “Hard combination to beat.”

We finally retired to the living room after the Wednesday-night fights. Rosie the cat was curled up on Jannie’s lap. We were watching a little of the Orioles baseball game on television when Soneji slid into my head again.

Of all the killers I had ever gone up against, he was the scariest. Soneji was single-minded, obsessive, but he was also completely whacked-out, and that’s the proper medical term I learned years ago at Johns Hopkins. He had a powerful imagination fueled by anger, and he acted on his fantasies.

Months back, Soneji had called to tell me that he’d left a cat at our house, a little present. He knew that we had adopted her, and loved little Rosie very much. He said that every time I saw Rosie the cat, I should think: Gary ’s in the house, Gary is right there.

I had figured that Gary had seen the stray cat at our house, and just made up a nasty story. Gary loved to lie, especially when his lies hurt people. That night, though, with Soneji running out of control again, I had a bad thought about Rosie. It frightened the hell out of me.

Gary is in the house. Gary is right here.

I nearly threw the cat out of the house, but that wasn’t an option, so I waited until morning to do what had to be done with Rosie. Goddamn Soneji. What in hell did he want from me? What did he want from my family?

What could he have done to Rosie before he left her at our house?

Chapter 30

I FELT like a traitor to my kids and also to poor little Rosie. I was feeling subhuman as I drove thirty-six miles to Quantico the next morning. I was betraying the kids’ trust and possibly doing a terrible thing, but I didn’t see that I had any other choice.

At the start of our trip, I had Rosie trapped in one of those despicable, metal-wire pet carriers. The poor thing cried and meowed and scratched so hard at the cage and at me that I finally had to let her out.

“You be good now,” I gave her a mild warning. Then I said, “Oh, go ahead and raise hell if you want to.”

Rosie proceeded to lay a huge guilt trip on me, to make me feel miserable. Obviously, she’d learned this lesson well from Damon and Jannie. Of course, she had no idea how angry she ought to be at me. But maybe she did. Cats are intuitive.

I was fearful that the beautiful red-and-brown Abyssinian would have to be destroyed, possibly this morning. I didn’t know how I could ever explain it to the kids.

“Don’t scratch up the car seats. And don’t you dare jump on top of my head!” I warned Rosie, but in a pleasant, conciliatory voice.

She meowed a few times, and we had a more or less peaceful and pleasant ride to the FBI quarters in Quantico. I had already spoken to Chet Elliott in the Bureau’s SAS, or Scientific Analysis Section. He was waiting for Rosie and me. I was carrying the cat in one arm, with her cage dangling from the other.

Now things were going to get very hard. To make things worse, Rosie got up on her hind legs and nuzzled my face. I looked into her beautiful green eyes and I could hardly stand it.

Chet was outfitted in protective gear: a white lab coat, white plastic gloves, even gold-tinted goggles. He looked like the king of the geeks. He peered at Rosie, then at me and said, “Weird science.”

“Now what happens?” I asked Chet. My heart had sunk to the floorboards when I’d spotted him in his protective gear. He was taking this seriously.

“You go over to Admin,” he said. “Kyle Craig wants to see you. Says it’s important. Of course, everything with Kyle is important as hell and can’t wait another second. I know he’s crazed about Mr. Smith. We all are. Smith is the craziest fucker yet, Alex.”

“What happens to Rosie?” I asked.

“First step, some X rays. Hopefully, little Red here isn’t a walking bomb, compliments of our friend Soneji. If she isn’t, we’ll pursue toxicology. Examine her for the presence of drugs or poison in the tissues and fluids. You run along. Go see Uncle Kyle. Red and I will be just fine. I’ll try to do right by her, Alex. We’re all cat people in my family. I’m a cat person, can’t you tell? I understand about these things.”

He nodded his head and then flipped down his swimmer-style goggles. Rosie rubbed up against him, so I figured she knew he was okay. So far, anyway.

It was later that worried me, and almost brought tears to my eyes.

Chapter 31

I WENT to see what Kyle had on his mind, though I thought I knew what it was. I dreaded the confrontation, the war of the wills that the two of us sometimes get into. Kyle wanted to talk about his Mr. Smith case. Smith was a violent killer who had murdered more than a dozen people in America and Europe. Kyle said it was the ugliest, most chilling spree he had ever seen, and Kyle isn’t known for hyperbole.

His office was on the top floor of the Academy Building, but he was working out of a crisis room in the basement of Admin. From what he’d told me, Kyle was practically camping out inside the war room, with its huge Big Board, state-of-the-art computers, phones, and a whole lot of FBI personnel, none of whom looked to happy on the morning of my visit.

The Big Board read: MR. SMITH 19-GOOD GUYS 0, in bright red letters.

“Looks like you’re in your glory again. Nowhere to go but up,” I said. Kyle was sitting at a big walnut desk, lost in study of the evidence board, at least he seemed to be.

I already knew about the case-more than I wanted to. “Smith” had started his string of gory murders in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had then moved on to Europe, Where he was currently blazing a bewildering trail. The latest victim was a policeman in London, a well-known inspector who had just been assigned to the Mr. Smith case.

Smith’s work was so strange and kinky and unhinged that it was seriously discussed in the media that he might be an alien, as in a visitor from outer space. At any rate, “Smith” definitely seemed inhuman. No human could have committed the monstrosities that he had. That was the working theory.

“I thought you’d never get here,” Kyle said when he saw me.

I raised my hands defensively, “Can’t help. Won’t do it, Kyle. First, because I’m already overloaded with Soneji. Second, because I’m losing my family on account of my work habits.”

Kyle nodded. “All right, all right. I hear you. I see the larger picture. I even understand and sympathize, to a degree. But since you’re here, with a little time on your hands, I do need to talk to you about Mr. Smith. Believe me, Alex, you’ve never seen anything like this. You’ve got to be a little curious.”

“I’m not. In fact, I’m going to leave now. Walk right out that door I came in.”

“We’ve got an unbelievably ugly problem on our hands, Alex. Just let me talk, and you listen. Just listen,” Kyle pleaded.

I relented, but just a litte. “I’ll listen. That’s all. I’m not getting involved with this.”

Kyle made a small, ceremonial bow in my direction. “Just listen,” Kyle said. “Listen and keep an open mind, Alex. This is going to blow your mind, I guarantee it. It’s blown mine.”

Then Kyle proceeded to tell me about an agent named Thomas Pierce. Pierce was in charge of the Mr. Smith case. What was intriguing was that Smith had brutally murdered Pierce’s fiancée some years back.

“Thomas Pierce is the most thorough investigator and the most brilliant person I’ve ever met,” Kyle told me. “At first, we wouldn’t let him anywhere near the Smith case, for obvious reasons. He worked it on his own. He made progress where we hadn’t. Finally, he made it clear that if he couldn’t work on Smith, he’d leave the Bureau. He even threatened to try and solve the case on his own.”

“You put him on the case?” I asked Kyle.

“He’s very persuasive. In the end, he made in case to the Director. He sold Burns. Pierce is logical, and he’s creative. He can analyze a problem like nobody I’ve ever seen. He’s been fanatical on Mr. Smith. Works eighteen-and twenty-hour days.”

“But even Pierce can’t crack this case,” I said and pointed at the Big Board.

Kyle nodded. “We’re finally getting close, Alex. I desperately need your input. And I want you to meet Thomas Pierce. You have to meet Pierce.”

“I said I’d listen,” I told Kyle. “But I don’t have to meet anyone.”

Nearly four hours later, Kyle finally let me out of his clutches. He had blown my mind, all right-about Mr. Smith and about Thomas Pierce-but I wasn’t getting involved. I couldn’t.

I finally made my way back to SAS to check on Rosie. Chet Elliott was able to see me right away. He was still wearing his lab coat, gloves, and the gold-tinted goggles. His slow-gaited walk toward me said bad news. I didn’t want to hear it.

Then he surprised me and grinned. “We don’t see anything wrong with her. Alex. I don’t think Soneji did anything to her. He was just mind-humping you. We checked her for volatile compounds-nada. Then for nonvolatile organic compounds that would be unusual in her system-also negative. Forensic serology took some blood. You ought to leave Red with us for a couple of days, but I doubt we’ll find anything. You can leave her here, period, if you like. She’s really cool cat.”

“I know.” I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. “Can I see her?” I asked Chet.

“Sure can. She’s been asking for you all morning. I don’t know why, but she seems to like you.”

“She knows I’m a cool cat, too.” I smiled.

He took me back to see Rosie. She was being kept in a small cage, and she looked pissed as hell. I’d brought her here, hadn’t I? I might as well have administered the lab tests myself.

“Not my fault,” I explained as best I could. “Blame that nutcase Gary Soneji, not me. Don’t look at me like that.”

She finally let me pick her up and she even nuzzled my cheek. “You’re being a very brave good girl,” I whispered. “I owe you one, and I always pay my debts.”

She purred and finally licked my cheek with her sandpaper tongue. Sweet lady, Rosie O’Grady.

Chapter 32

London, England

MR. SMITH was dressed like an anonymous street person in a ripped and soiled black anorak. The killer was walking quickly along Lower Regent Street in the direction of Piccadilly Circus.

Going to the Circus, oh boy, oh boy! he was thinking. His cynicism was as thick and heavy as the air in London.

No one seemed to notice him in the late-afternoon crowds. No one paid much attention to the poor in any of the large, “civilized” capitals. Mr. Smith had noticed that, and used it to his advantage.

He hurried along with his duffel bag until he finally reached Piccadilly, where the crowds were even denser.

His attentive eyes took in the usual traffic snarl, which could be expected at the hub of five major streets. He also saw Tower Records, McDonald’s, the Trocadero, far too many neon ads. Backpackers and camera hounds were everywhere on the street and sidewalks.

And a single alien creature-himself.

One being who didn’t fit in any way with the others.

Mr. Smith suddenly felt so alone, incredibly lonely in the middle of all these people in London town.

He set down the long, heavy duffel bag directly under the famous statue in the Circus-Eros. Still, no one was paying attention to him.

He left the bag sitting there, and he walked along Piccadilly and then onto Haymarket.

When he was a few blocks away, he called the police, as he always did. The message was simple, clear, to the point. Their time was up.

“Inspector Drew Cabot is in Piccadilly Circus. He’s in a gray duffel bag. What’s left of him. You blew it. Cheers.”

Chapter 33

SONDRA GREENBERG of Interpol spotted Thomas Pierce as he walked toward the crime scene at the center of Piccadilly Circus. Pierce stood out in a crowd, even one like this.

Thomas Pierce was tall; his long blond hair was pulled back in ponytail; and he usually wore dark glasses. He did not look like your typical FBI agent, and, in fact, Pierce was nothing like any agent Greenberg had ever met or worked with.

“What’s all the excitement about?” he asked as he got up close. “Mr. Smith out for his weekly kill. Nothing so unusual.” His habitual sarcasm was at work.

Sondra looked around at the packed crowd at the homicide scene and shook her head. There were press reporters and television news trucks everywhere.

“What’s being done by the local geniuses? The police?” said Pierce.

“They’re canvassing. Obviously, Smith has been here.”

“The bobbies want to know if anyone saw a little green man? Blood dripping from his little green teeth?”

“Exactly, Thomas. Have a look?”

Pierce smiled and it was entirely captivating. Definitely not the American FBI’s usual style. “You said that like, spot of tea?…Have a look?”

Greenberg shook her head of dark curls. She was nearly as tall as Pierce, and pretty in a tough sort of way. She always tried to be nice to Pierce. Actually, it wasn’t hard.

“I guess I’m finally becoming jaded,” she said. “I wonder why.”

They walked toward the crime scene, which was almost directly under the towering, waxed aluminum figure of Eros. One of London ’s favorite landmarks, Eros was also the symbol for the Evening Standard newspaper. Although people believed the statue was a representation of erotic love, it had actually been commissioned as a symbol for Christian charity.

Thomas Pierce flashed his ID and walked up to the “body bag” that Mr. Smith had used to transport the remains of Chief Inspector Cabot.

“It’s as if he’s living a Gothic novel,” Sondra Greenberg said. She was kneeling beside Pierce. Actually, they looked like a team, even like a couple.

“Smith called you here, too-to London? Left a voice mail?” Pierce asked her.

Greenberg nodded. “What do you think of the body? The latest kill? Smith packed the bag with body parts in the most careful and concise way. Like you would if you had to get everything into a suitcase.”

Thomas Pierce frowned. “Freak, goddamn butcher.”

“Why Piccadilly? A hub of London. Why under Eros?”

“He’s leaving clues for us, obvious clues. We just don’t understand,” Thomas Pierce said and continued to shake his head.

“Right you are, Thomas. Because we don’t speak Martian.”

Chapter 34

CRIME MARCHES on and on.

Sampson and I drove to Wilmington, Delaware, the following morning. We had visited the city made famous by the Du Ponts during the original manhunt for Gary Soneji a few years before. I had the Porsche floored the entire ride, which took a couple of hours.

I had already received some very good news that morning. We’d solved one of the case’s nagging mysteries. I had checked with the blood bank at St. Anthony’s. A pint of my blood was missing from our family’s supply. Someone had taken the trouble to break in and take my blood. Gary Soneji? Who else? He continued to show me that nothing was safe in my life.

“Soneji” was actually a pseudonym Gary had used as part of a plan to kidnap two children in Washington. The strange name had stuck in news stories, and that was the name the FBI and media used now. His real name was Gary Murphy. He had lived in Wilmington with his wife, Meredith, who was called Missy. They had one daughter, Roni.

Actually, Soneji was the name Gary had appropriated when he fantasized about his crimes as a young boy locked in the cellar of his house. He claimed to have been sexually abused by a neighbor in Princeton, a grade-school teacher named Martin Soneji. I suspected serious problems with a relative, possibly his paternal grandfather.

We arrived at the house on Central Avenue at a little past ten in the morning. The pretty street was deserted, except for a small boy with Rollerblades. He was trying them out on his front lawn. There should have been local police surveillance here, but, for some reason, there wasn’t. At least I didn’t see any sign of it yet.

“Man, this perfect little street kills me,” Sampson said. “I still keep looking for Jimmy Stewart to pop out of one of these houses.”

“Just as long as Soneji doesn’t,”I muttered.

The cars parked up and down Central Avenue were almost all American makes, which seemed quaint nowadays: Chevys, Olds, Fords, some Dodge Ram pickup trucks.

Meredith Murphy wasn’t answering her phone that morning, which didn’t surprise me.

“I feel sorry for Mrs. Murphy and especially the little girl,” I told Sampson as we pulled up in front of the house. “Missy Murphy had no idea who Gary really was.”

Sampson nodded. “I remember they seemed nice enough. Maybe too nice. Gary fooled them. Ole Gary the Fooler.”

There were lights burning in the house. A white Chevy Lumina was parked in the driveway. The street was as quiet and peaceful as I remembered it from our last visit, when the peacefulness had been short-lived.

We got out of the Porsche and headed toward the front door of the house. I touched the butt of my Glock as we walked. I couldn’t help thinking that Soneji could be waiting, setting some kind of trap for Sampson and me.

The neighborhood, the entire town, still reminded me of the 1950s. The house was well kept and looked as if it had recently been painted. That had been part of Gary ’s careful facade. It was the perfect hiding place: a sweet little house on Central Avenue, with a white picket fence and a stone walkway bisecting the front lawn.

“So what do you figure is going on with Soneji?” Sampson asked as we came up to the front door. “He’s changed some, don’t you think? He’s not the careful planner I remember. More impulsive.”

It seemed that way. “Not everything’s changed. He’s still playing parts, acting. But he’s on a rampage like nothing I’ve seen before. He doesn’t seem to care if he’s caught. Yet everything he does is planned. He escapes.”

“And why is that, Dr. Freud?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out. And that’s why we’re going to Lorton Prison tomorrow. Something weird is going on, even for Gary Soneji.”

I rang the front doorbell. Sampson and I waited for Missy Murphy on the porch. We didn’t fit into the small-town-America neighborhood, but that wasn’t so unusual. We didn’t exactly fit into our own neighborhood back in D.C. either. That morning we were both wearing dark clothes and dark glasses, looking like musicians in somebody’s blues band.

“Hmm, no answer,” I muttered.

“Lights blazing inside,” Sampson said. “Somebody must be here. Maybe they just don’t want to talk to Men In Black.”

“Ms. Murphy,” I called out in a loud voice, in case someone was inside but not answering the door. “Ms. Murphy, open the door. It’s Alex Cross from Washington. We’re not leaving without talking to you.”

“Nobody home at the Bates Motel,” Sampson grunted.

He wandered around the side of the house, and I followed close behind. The lawn had been cut recently and the hedges trimmed. Everything looked so neat and clean and so harmless.

I went to the back door, the kitchen, if I remembered. I wondered if he could be hiding inside. Anything was possible with Soneji-the more twisted and unlikely the better for his ego.

Things about my last visit were flashing back. Nasty memories. It was Roni’s birthday party. She was seven. Gary Soneji had been inside the house that time, but he had managed to escape. A regular Houdini. A very smart, very creepy creep.

Soneji could be inside now. Why did I have the unsettling feeling that I was walking into a trap?

I waited on the back porch, not sure what to do next. I rang the bell. Something was definitely wrong about the case, everything about it was wrong. Soneji here in Wilmington? Why here? Why kill people in Union and Penn Stations?

“Alex!” Sampson shouted. “Alex! Over here! Come quick. Alex, now!”

I hurried across the yard with my heart in my throat. Sampson was down on all fours. He was crouched in front of a doghouse that was painted white and shingled to look like the main residence. What in hell was inside the doghouse?

As I got closer, I could see a thick black cloud of flies.

Then I heard the buzzing.

Chapter 35

“OH, GODDAMN it, Alex, look at what that madman did. Look at what he did to her!”

I wanted to avert my eyes, but I had to look. I crouched down low beside Sampson. Both of us were batting away horse-flies and other unpleasant swarming insects. White larvae were all over everything-the doghouse, the lawn. I held a handkerchief bunched over my nose and mouth, but it wasn’t enough to stifle the putrid smell. My eyes began to water.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Sampson said. “Where does he get his insane ideas?”

Propped up inside the doghouse was the body of a golden retriever, or what remained of it. Blood was spattered everywhere on the wooden walls. The dog had been decapitated.

Firmly attached to the dog’s neck was the head of Meredith Murphy. Her head was propped perfectly, even though it was too large proportionately for the retriever’s body. The effect was beyond grotesque. It reminded me of the old Mr. Potato Head toys. Merdith Murphy’s open eyes stared out at me.

I had met Meredith Murphy only once, and that had been almost four years before. I wondered what she could have done to enrage Soneji like this. He had never talked much about his wife during our sessions. He had despised her, though. I remembered his nicknames for her: “Simple Cipher,” “The Headless Hausfrau,” “Blonde Cow.”

“What the hell is going on inside that sick, sorry son of a bitch’s head? You understand this?” Sampson muttered through his handkerchief-covered mouth.

I thought that I understood psychotic rage states, and I had seen a few of Soneji’s, but nothing had prepared me for the past few days. The current murders were extreme, and bloody. They were also clustered, happening much too frequently.

I had the grim feeling Soneji couldn’t turn off his rage, not even after a new kill. None of the murders satisfied his need anymore.

“Oh, God.” I rose to my feet. “John, his little girl,” I said. “His daughter, Roni. What has he done with her?”

The two of us searched the wooded half lot, including a copse of bent, wind-battered evergreens on the northeast side of the house. No Roni. No other bodies, or grossly severed parts, or other grisly surprises.

We looked for the girl in the two-car garage. Then in the tight, musty crawl space under the back porch. We checked the trio of metal garbage cans neatly lined alongside the garage. Nothing anywhere. Where was Roni Murphy? Had he taken her with him? Had Soneji kidnapped his daughter?

I headed back toward the house, with Sampson a step or two behind me. I broke the window in the kitchen door, unlocked it, and rushed inside. I feared the worst. Another murdered child?

“Go easy, man. Take it slow in here,” Sampson whispered from behind. He knew how I got when children were involved. He also sensed this could be a trap Soneji had set. It was a perfect place for one.

“Roni!” I called out. “Roni, are you in here? Roni, can you hear me?”

I remembered her face from the last time I’d been in this house. I could have drawn her picture if I had to.

Gary had told me once that Roni was the only thing that mattered in his life, the only good thing he’d ever done. At the time, I believed him. I was probably projecting my feelings for my own kids. Maybe I was fooled into thinking that Soneji had some kind of conscience and feelings because that was what I wanted to believe.

“Roni! It’s the police. You can come out now, honey. Roni Murphy, are you in here? Roni?”

“Roni!” Sampson joined in, his deep voice just as loud as mine, maybe louder.

Sampson and I covered the downstairs, throwing open every door and closet as we went. Calling out her name. Dear God, I was praying now. It was sort of a prayer anyway. Gary -not your own little girl. You don’t have to kill her to show us how bad you are, how angry. We get the message. We understand.

I ran upstairs, taking the creaking wooden steps two at a time. Sampson was close behind me, a shadow. It usually doesn’t show on his face, but he gets as upset as I do. Neither of us is jaded yet.

I could hear it in his voice, in the shallow way he was breathing. “Roni! Are you up here? Are you hiding somewhere?” he called out.

“Roni! It’s the police. You’re safe now, Roni! You can come out.”

Someone had ransacked the master bedroom. Someone had invaded this space, desecrated it, broken every piece of furniture, overturned beds and bureaus.

“You remember her, John?” I asked as we checked the rest of the bedrooms.

“I remember her pretty good,” Sampson said in a soft voice. “Cute little girl.”

“Oh, no-nooo-”

Suddenly I was running down the hallway, back down the stairs. I raced through the kitchen and pulled open a hollow-core door between the refrigerator and a four-burner stove.

We both hurried down into the basement, into the cellar of the house.

My heart was out of control, beating, banging, thuding loudly inside my chest. I didn’t want to be here, to see any more of Soneji’s handiwork, his nasty surprises.

The cellar of his house.

The symbolic place of all Gary ’s childhood nightmares.

The cellar.

Blood.

Trains.

The cellar in the Murphy house was small and neat. I looked around. The trains were gone! There had been a train set down here the first time we came to the house.

I didn’t see any signs of the girl, though. Nothing looked out of place. We threw open work cabinets. Sampson yanked open the washer, then the clothes dryer.

There was an unpainted wooden door to one side of the water heater and a fiberglass laundry sink. There was no sign of blood in the sink, no bloodstained clothes. Was there a way outside? Had the little girl run away when her father came to the house?

The closet! I yanked open the door.

Roni Murphy was bound with rope and gagged with old rags. Her blue eyes were large with fear. She was alive!

She was shaking badly. He didn’t kill her, but he had killed her childhood, just as his had been killed. A few years before, he had done the same thing with a girl called Maggie Rose.

“Oh, sweet girl,” I whispered as I untied her and took out the cloth gag her father had stuffed into her mouth. “Everything is all right now. Everything is okay, Roni. You’re okay now.”

What I didn’t say was, Your father loved you enough not to kill you-but he wants to kill everything and everyone else.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, baby. Everything is okay,” I lied to the poor little girl. “Everything is okay now.”

Sure it is.

Chapter 36

ONCE UPON a long time ago, Nana Mama had been the one who had taught me to play the piano.

In those days, the old upright sat like a constant invitation to make music in our family room. One afternoon after school, she heard me trying to play a little boogie-woogie. I was eleven years old at the time. I remember it well, as if it were yesterday. Nana swept in like a soft breeze and sat next to me on the piano bench, just the way I do now with Jannie and Damon.

“I think you’re a little ahead of yourself with that cool jazz stuff, Alex. Let me show you something beautiful. Let me show you where you might start your music career.”

She made me practice my Czerny finger exercises every day until I was ready to play and appreciate Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn-all from Nana Mama. She taught me to play from age eleven until I was eighteen, when I left for school at Georgetown and then Johns Hopkins. By that time, I was ready to play that cool jazz stuff, and to know what I was playing, and even know why I liked what I liked.

When I came home from Delaware, very late, I found Nana on the porch and she was playing the piano. I hadn’t heard her play like that in many years.

She didn’t hear me come in, so I stood in the door way and watched her for several minutes. She was playing Mozart and she still had a feeling for the music that she loved. She’d once told me how sad it was that no one knew where Mozart was buried.

When she finished, I whispered, “Bravo. Bravo. That’s just beautiful.”

Nana turned to me. “Silly old woman,” she said and wiped away a tear I hadn’t been able to see from where I was standing.

“Not silly at all,” I said. I sat down and held her in my arms on the piano bench. “Old yes, really old and cranky, but never silly.”

“I was just thinking,” she said, “about that third movement in Mozart’s Concerto No. 21, and then I had a memory of how I used to be able to play it, a long, long time ago.” She sighed. “So I had myself a nice cry. Felt real good, too.”

“Sorry to intrude,” I said as I continued to hold her close.

“I love you, Alex,” my grandmother whispered. “Can you still play ‘Clair de Lune’? Play Debussy for me.”

And so with Nana Mama close beside me, I played.

Chapter 37

THE GROAN-and-grunt work continued the following morning.

First thing, Kyle faxed me several stories about his agent, Thomas Pierce. The stories came from cities where Mr. Smith had committed murders: Atlanta, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, London, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Rome. Pierce had helped to capture a murderer in Fort Lauderdale in the spring, unrelated to Smith.

Other headlines:

FOR THOMAS PIERCE, THE CRIME SCENE IS IN THE MIND

MURDER EXPERT HERE IN ST. LOUIS

THOMAS PIERCE-GETTING INTO KILLERS’ HEADS

NOT ALL PATTERN KILLERS ARE BRILLIANT-BUT AGENT

THOMAS PIERCE IS

MURDERS OF THE MIND, THE MOST CHILLING

MURDERS OF ALL.

If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought Kyle was trying to make me jealous of Pierce. I wasn’t jealous. I didn’t have the time for it right now.

A little before noon, I drove out to Lorton Prison, one of my least favorite places in the charted universe.

Everything moves slowly inside a high-security federal prison. It is like being held underwater, like being drowned by unseen human hands. It happens over days, over years, sometimes over decades.

At an administrative max facility, prisoners are kept in their cells twenty-two to twenty-three hours a day. The boredom is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t served time. It is not imaginable. Gary Soneji told me that, created the drowning metaphor when I interviewed him years back at Lorton.

He also thanked me for giving him the experience of being in prison, and he said that one day he would reciprocate if he possibly could. More and more, I had the sense that my time had come, and I had to guess what the excruciating payback might be.

It was not imaginable.

I could almost feel myself drowning as I paced inside a small administrative room near the warden’s office on the fifth floor at Lorton.

I was waiting for a double murderer named Jamal Autry. Autry claimed to have important information about Soneji. He was known inside Lorton as the Real Deal. He was a predator, a three-hundred-pound pimp who had murdered two teenage prostitutes in Baltimore.

The Real Deal was brought to me in restraints. He was escorted into the small, tidy office by two armed guards with billy clubs.

“You Alex Cross? Gah-damn. Now ain’t that somethin’,” Jamal Autry said with a middle-South twang.

He smiled crookedly when he spoke. The lower half of his face sagged like the mouth and jaw of a bottom feeder. He had strange, uneven piggy eyes that were hard to look at. He continued to smile as if he were about to be paroled today, or had just won the inmates’ lottery.

I told the two guards that I wanted to talk to Autry alone. Even though he was in restraints, they departed reluctantly. I wasn’t afraid of this big load, though. I wasn’t a helpless teenage girl he could beat up on.

“Sorry, I missed the joke,” I finally said to Autry. “Don’t quite know why it is that you’re smiling.”

“Awhh, don’t worry ’bout it, man. You get the joke okay. Eventually,” he said with his slow drawl. “You’ll get the joke, Dr. Cross. See, it’s on you.”

I shrugged. “You asked to see me, Autry. You want something out of this and so do I. I’m not here for your jokes or your private amusement. You want to go back to your cell, just turn the hell around.”

Jamal Autry continued to smile, but he sat down on one of two chairs left for us. “We boff want somethin’,” he said. He began to make serious eye contact with me. He had the don’t-mess-with-me look now. His smile evaporated.

“Tell me what you’ve got to trade. We’ll see where it goes,” I said. “Best I can do for you.”

“Soneji said you a hard-ass. Smart for a cop. We’ll see what we see,” he drawled.

I ignored the bullshit that flowed so easily from his overlarge mouth. I couldn’t help thinking about the two sixteen-year-old girls he’d murdered. I imagined him smiling at them, too. Giving them the look. “The two of you talked sometimes? Soneji was a friend of yours?” I asked him.

Autry shook his head. The look stayed fixed. His piggy eyes never left mine. “Naw, man. Only talked when he needed somethin’. Soneji rather sit in his cell, stare out into far space, like Mars or someplace. Soneji got no friends in here. Not me, not anybody else.”

Autry leaned forward in his chair. He had something to tell me. Obviously, he thought it was worth a lot. He lowered his voice as if there were someone in the room besides the two of us.

Someone like Gary Soneji, I couldn’t help thinking.

Chapter 38

“LOOKIT, SONEJI didn’t have no friends in here. He didn’t need nobody. Man had a guest in his attic. Know what I mean? Only talked to me when he wanted something.”

“What kind of things did you do for Soneji?” I asked.

“Soneji had simple needs. Cigars, fuck-books, mustard for his Froot Loops. He paid to keep certain individuals away. Soneji always had money.”

I thought about that. Who gave Gary Soneji money while he was in Lorton? It wouldn’t have come from his wife-at least I didn’t think so. His grandfather was still alive in New Jersey. Maybe the money had come from his grandfather. He had only one friend that I knew of, but that had been way back when he was a teenager.

Jamal Autry continued his bigmouthed spiel. “Check it out, man. Protection Gary bought from me was good-the best. Best anybody could do in here.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” I said. “Spell it out for me, Jamal. I want all the details.”

“You can protect some of the people some of the time. That’s all it is. There was another prisoner here, name of Shareef Thomas. Real crazy nigger, originally from New York City. Ran with two other crazy niggers-Goofy and Coco Loco. Shareef’s out now, but when he inside, Shareef did whatever the hell he wanted. Only way you control Shareef, you cap him. Twice, just to make sure.”

Autry was getting interesting. He definitely had something to trade. “What was Gary Soneji’s connection with Shareef?” I asked.

“Soneji tried to cap Shareef. Paid the money. But Shareef was smart. Shareef was lucky, too.”

“Why did Soneji want to kill Shareef Thomas?”

Autry stared at me with his cold eyes. “We have a deal, right? I get privileges for this?”

“You have my full attention, Jamal. I’m here, I’m listening to you. Tell me what happened between Shareef Thomas and Soneji.”

“Soneji wanted to kill Shareef ’cause Shareef was fuckin’ him. Not just one time either. He wanted Gary to know he was the man. He was the one man even crazier than Soneji in here.”

I shook my head and leaned forward to listen. He had my attention, but something wasn’t tracking for me. “ Gary was separated from the prison population. Maximum security. How the hell did Thomas get to him?”

“Gah-damn, I told you, things get done in here. Things always get done. Don’t be fooled what you hear on the outside, man. That’s the way it is, way it’s always been.”

I stared into Autry’s eyes. “So you took Soneji’s money for protection, and Shareef Thomas got to him anyway? There’s more, isn’t there?”

I sensed that Autry was relishing his own punch line, or maybe he just liked having the power over me.

“There’s more, yeah. Shareef gave Gary Soneji the Fever. Soneji has the bug, man. He’s dying. Your old friend Gary Soneji is dying. He got the message from God.”

The news hit me like a sucker punch. I didn’t let it show, didn’t give away any advantage, but Jamal Autry had just made some sense of everything Soneji had done so far. He had also shaken me to the quick. Soneji has the Fever. He has AIDS. Gary Soneji is dying. He has nothing to lose anymore.

Was Autry telling the truth or not? Big question, important question.

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you, Autry. Why the hell should I?” I said.

He looked offended, which was part of his act. “Believe what you want. But you ought to believe. Gary got the message to me in here. Gary contacted me this week, two days ago. Gary let me know he has the Fever.”

We had come full circle. Autry knew that he had me from the minute he walked into the room. Now I got to hear the punch line of his joke-the one he’d promised at the start. First, though, I had to be his straight man for a little while longer.

“Why? Why would he tell you he’s dying?” I played my part.

“Soneji said you’d come here asking questions. He knew you were coming. He knows you, man-better than you know him. Soneji wanted me to give you the message personally. He gave me the message, just for you. He said to tell you that.”

Jamal Autry smiled his crooked smile again. “What do you say now, Dr. Cross? You get what you come here for?”

I had what I needed all right. Gary Soneji was dying. He wanted me to follow him into hell. He was on a rampage with nothing to lose, nothing to fear from anyone.

Chapter 39

WHEN I got home from Lorton Prison I called Christine Johnson. I needed to see her. I needed to get away from the case. I held my breath as I asked her to dinner at Georgia Brown’s on McPherson Square. She surprised me-she said yes.

Still on pins and needles, but kind of liking the feeling, I showed up at her place with a single red rose. Christine smiled beautifully, took the rose and put it in water as if it were an expensive arrangement.

She was wearing a gray calf-length skirt and a matching soft gray V-necked blouse. She looked stunning again. We talked about our respective days on the drive to the restaurant. I liked her day a lot better than mine.

We were hungry, and started with hot buttermilk biscuits slathered with peach butter. The day was definitely improving. Christine ordered Carolina shrimp and grits. I got the Carolina Perlau-red rice, thick chunks of duck, shrimp, and sausage.

“No one has given me a rose in a long time,” she told me. “I love that you thought to do that.”

“You’re being too nice to me tonight,” I said as we started to eat.

She tilted her head to one side and looked at me from an odd angle. She did that now and again. “Why do you say that I’m being too nice?”

“Well, you can tell I’m not exactly the best company tonight. It’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That I can’t turn off my job.”

She took a sip of wine. Shook her head. Finally she smiled, and the smile was so down-to-earth. “You’re so honest. But you have a good sense of humor about it. Actually, I hadn’t noticed that you weren’t operating at one hundred and ten percent.”

“I’ve been distant and into myself all night,” I said. “The kids say I get twilight zoned.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Stop it, stop it. You are the least into-yourself man I think I’ve ever met. I’m having a very nice time here. I was planning on a bowl of Sugar Puffs for my dinner at home.”

“Sugar Puffs and milk are good. Curl up in bed with a movie or book. Nothing wrong with that.”

“That was my plan. I finally gave in and started The Horse Whisperer. I’m glad you called and spoiled it for me, took me out of my own twilight zone.”

“You must really think I’m crazy,” Christine said and smiled a little later during dinner. “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, I believe I am crazy.”

I laughed. “For going out with me? Absolutely crazy.”

“No, for telling you I didn’t think we should see each other, and now late dinner at Georgia Brown’s. Forsaking my Sugar Puffs and Horse Whisperer.”

I looked into her eyes, and I wanted to stay right there for a very long time, at least until Georgia Brown’s asked us to leave. “What happened? What changed?” I asked.

“I stopped being afraid,” she said, “Well, almost stopped. But I’m getting there.”

“Yeah, maybe we both are. I was afraid, too.”

“That’s nice to hear. I’m glad you told me. I couldn’t imagine that you get afraid.”

I drove Christine home from Georgia Brown’s around midnight. As we rode on the John Hansen Highway, all I could think about was touching her hair, stroking the side of her cheek, maybe a few other things. Yes, definitely a few other things.

I walked Christine to her front door and I could hardly breathe. Again. My hand was lightly on her elbow. She had her house key clasped in her hand.

I could smell her perfume. She told me it was called Gardenia Passion, and I liked it a lot. Our shoes softly scraped the cement.

Suddenly, Christine turned and put her arms around me. The movement was graceful, but she took me by surprise.

“I have to find something out,” she said.

Christine kissed me, just as we had a few days before. We kissed sweetly at first, then harder. Her lips were soft and moist against mine, then firmer, more urgent. I could feel her breasts press against me; then her stomach, her strong legs.

She opened her eyes, looked at me, and she smiled. I loved that natural smile-loved it. That smile-no other one.

She gently pulled herself away from me. I felt the separation and I didn’t want her to go. I sensed, I knew, I should leave it at that.

Christine opened her front door and slowly backed inside. I didn’t want her to go in just yet. I wanted to know what she was thinking, all her thoughts.

“The first kiss wasn’t an accident,” she whispered.

“No, it wasn’t an accident,” I said.

Chapter 40

GARY SONEJI was in the cellar again.

Whose dank, dark cellar was it, though?

That was the $64,000 question.

He didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be very early in the morning. The house upstairs was as quiet as death. He liked that image, the rub of it inside his mind.

He loved it in the dark. He went back to being a small boy. He could still feel it, as if it had happened only yesterday. His stepmother’s name was Fiona Morrison, and she was pretty, and everybody believed she was a good person, a good friend and neighbor, a good mother. It was all a lie! She had locked him away like a hateful animal-no, worse than an animal! He remembered shivering in the cellar, and peeing in his pants in the beginning, and sitting in his own urine as it turned from warm to icy cold. He remembered the feeling that he wasn’t like the rest of his family. He wasn’t like anybody else. There was nothing about him that anybody could love. There was nothing good about him. He had no inner core.

He sat in the dark cellar now and wondered if he was where he thought he was.

Which reality was he living in?

Which fantasy?

Which horror story?

He reached around on the floor in the dark. Hmmm. He wasn’t in the cellar in the old Princeton house. He could tell he wasn’t. Here the cold cement floor was smooth. And the smell was different. Dusty and musty. Where was he?

He turned on his flashlight. Ahhh!

No one was going to believe this one! No one would guess whose house this was, whose cellar he was hiding in now.

Soneji pushed himself up off the floor. He felt slightly nauseated and achy, but he ignored the feeling. The pain was incidental. He was ready to go upstairs now.

No one would believe what he was going to do next. How outrageous.

He was several steps ahead of everybody else.

He was way ahead.

As always.

Chapter 41

SONEJI ENTERED the living room and saw the correct time on the Sony television’s digital clock. It was 3:24 in the morning. Another witching hour.

Once he reached the upstairs part of the house, he decided to crawl on his hands and knees.

The plan was good. Damn it, he wasn’t worthless and useless. He hadn’t deserved to be locked in the cellar. Tears welled in his eyes and they felt hot and all too familiar. His stepmother always called him a crybaby, a little pansy, a fairy. She never stopped calling him names, until he fried her mouth open in a scream.

The tears burned his cheeks as they ran down under his shirt collar. He was dying, and he didn’t deserve to die. He didn’t deserve any of this. So now someone had to pay.

He was silent and careful as he threaded his way through the house, slithering on his belly like a snake. The floorboards underneath him didn’t even creak as he moved forward. The darkness felt charged with electricity and infinite possibilities.

He thought about how frightened people were of intruders inside their houses and apartments. They ought to be afraid, too. There were monsters preying just outside their locked doors, often watching their windows at night. There were Peeping Garys in every town, small and large. And there were thousands more, twisted perverts, just waiting to come inside and feast. The people in their so-called safe houses were monster fodder.

He noticed that the upstairs part of the house had green walls. Green walls. What luck! Soneji had read somewhere that hospital operating walls were often painted green. If the walls were white, doctors and nurses sometimes saw ghost images of the ongoing operation, the blood and gore. It was called the “ghosting effect,” and green walls masked the blood.

No more intruding thoughts, no matter how relevant, Soneji told himself. No more interruptions. Be perfectly calm, be careful. The next few minutes were the dangerous ones.

This particular house was dangerous-which was why the game was so much fun, such a mind trip.

The bedroom door was slightly ajar. Soneji slowly, patiently, inched it open.

He heard a man softly snoring. He saw another digital clock on a bedside table. Three-twenty-three. He had lost time.

He rose to his full height. He was finally out of the cellar, and he felt an incredible surge of anger now. He felt rage, and it was justified.

Gary Soneji angrily sprang forward at the figure in bed. He clasped a metal pipe tightly in both his hands. He raised it like an ax. He swung the pipe down as hard as he could.

“Detective Goldman, so nice to meet you,” he whispered.

Chapter 42

THE JOB was always there, waiting for me to catch up, demanding everything I could give it, and then demanding some more.

The next morning I found myself hurrying back to New York. The FBI had provided me with a helicopter. Kyle Craig was a good friend, but he was also working his tricks on me. I knew it, and he knew I did. Kyle was hoping that I would eventually get involved in the Mr. Smith case, that I would meet agent Thomas Pierce. I knew that I wouldn’t. Not for now anyway, maybe not ever. I had to meet Gary Soneji again first.

I arrived before 8:30 A.M. at the busy New York City heliport in the East Twenties. Some people call it “the New York Hellport.” The Bureau’s black Bell Jet floated in low over the congested FDR Drive and the East River. The craft dropped down as if it owned the city, but that was just FBI arrogance. No one could own New York -except maybe Gary Soneji.

Detective Carmine Groza was there to meet me and we got into his unmarked Mercury Marquis. We sped up the FDR Drive to the exit for the Major Deegan. As we crossed over into the Bronx, I remembered a funny line from the poet Ogden Nash: “The Bronx, no thonx.” I needed some more funny lines in my life.

I still had the irritating noise of the helicopter’s propellers roaring inside my head. It made me think of the nasty buzzing in the doghouse in Wilmington. Everything was happening too fast again. Gary Soneji had us off balance, the way he liked it, the way he always worked his nastiness.

Soneji got in your face, applied intense pressure, and then waited for you to make a crucial mistake. I was trying not to make one right now, not to end up like Manning Goldman.

The latest homicide scene was up in Riverdale. Detective Groza talked nervously as he drove the Deegan. His chattering reminded me of an old line I try to live by-never miss a good chance to shut up.

Logically, the Riverdale area should be part of Manhattan, he said, but it was actually part of the Bronx. To confuse matters further, Riverdale was the site of Manhattan College, a small private school having no affiliation with either Manhattan or the Bronx. New York ’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, had attended Manhattan, Groza said.

I listened to the detective’s idle chitchat until I felt he had talked himself out. He seemed a different man from the one I’d met earlier in the week at Penn Station when he was partnered with Manning Goldman.

“Are you okay?” I finally asked him. I had never lost a partner, but I had come close with Sampson. He had been stabbed in the back. That happened in North Carolina, of all places. My niece, Naomi, had been kidnapped. I have counseled detectives who have lost partners, and it’s never an easy thing.

“I didn’t really like Manning Goldman,” Groza admitted, “but I respected things he did as a detective. No one should die the way he did.”

“No, no one should die like that,” I agreed No one was safe. Not the wealthy, certainly not the poor, and not even the police. It was a continuing refrain in my life, the scariest truth of our age.

We finally turned off the crowded Deegan Expressway and got onto an even busier, much noisier Broadway. Detective Groza was clearly shook up that morning. I didn’t show it, but so was I.

Gary Soneji was showing us how easy it was for him to get into a cop’s home.

Chapter 43

MANNING GOLDMAN’S house was located in an upscale part of Riverdale known as Fieldston. The area was surprisingly attractive-for the Bronx. Police cruisers and a flock of television vans and trucks were parked on the narrow and pretty residential streets. A FOX-TV helicopter hovered over the trees, peeking through the branches and leaves.

The Goldman house was more modest than the Tudors around it. Still, it seemed a nice place to live. Not a typical cop’s neighborhood, but Manning Goldman hadn’t been a typical cop.

“Goldman’s father was a big doctor in Mamaroneck,” Groza continued to chatter. “When he passed away, Manning came into some money. He was the black sheep in his family, the rebel-a cop. Both of his brothers are dentists in Florida.”

I didn’t like the look and feel of the crime scene, and I was still two blocks away. There were too many blue-and-whites and official-looking city cars. Too much help, too much interference.

“The mayor was up here early. He’s a pisser. He’s all right, though,” Groza said. “A cop gets killed in New York, it’s a huge thing. Big news, lots of media.”

“Especially when a detective gets killed right in his own home,” I said.

Groza finally parked on the tree-lined street, about a block from the Goldman house. Birds chattered away, oblivious to death.

As I walked toward the crime scene, I enjoyed one aspect of the day, at least: the anonymity I felt in New York. In Washington, many reporters know who I am. If I’m at a homicide scene, it’s usually a particularly nasty one, a big case, a violent crime.

Detective Carmine Groza and I were ignored as we walked through the crowd of looky-loos up to the Goldman house. Groza introduced me around inside and I was allowed to see the bedroom where Manning Goldman had been brutally murdered. The NYPD cops all seemed to know who I was and why I was there. I heard Soneji’s name muttered a couple of times. Bad news travels fast.

The detective’s body had already been removed from the house, and I didn’t like arriving at the murder scene so late. Several NYPD techies were working the room. Goldman’s blood was everywhere. It was splattered on the bed, the walls, the beige-carpeted floor, the desk and bookcases, and even on a gold menorah. I already knew why Soneji was so interested in spilling blood now-his blood was deadly.

I could feel Gary Soneji here in Goldman’s room, I could see him, and it stunned me that I could imagine his presence so strongly, physically and emotionally. I remembered a time when Soneji had entered my home in the night and with a knife. Why would he come here? I wondered. Was he warning me, playing with my head?

“He definitely wanted to make a high-profile statement,” I muttered, more to myself than to Carmine Groza. “He knew that Goldman was running the case in New York. He’s showing us that he’s in complete control.”

There was something else, though. There had to be more to this than I was seeing so far. I paced around the bedroom. I noticed that the computer on the desk was turned on.

I spoke to one of the techies, a thin man with a small, grim mouth. Perfect for homicide scenes. “The computer was on when they found Detective Goldman?” I asked.

“Yeah. The Mac was on. It’s been dusted.”

I glanced at Groza. “We know he’s looking for Shareef Thomas, and that Thomas was originally from New York. He’s supposed to be back here now. Maybe he made Goldman pull up Thomas’s file before he killed him.”

For once Detective Groza didn’t answer. He was quiet and unresponsive. I wasn’t completely certain myself. Still, I trusted my instincts, especially when it came to Soneji. I was following in his bloody footsteps and I didn’t think I was too far behind.

Chapter 44

THE SURPRISINGLY hospitable New York police had gotten me a room for the night at the Marriot Hotel on Forty-second Street. They were already checking on Shareef Thomas for me. What could be done was being taken care of, but Soneji was on the loose for another night on the town.

Shareef Thomas had lived in D.C., but he was originally from Brooklyn. I was fairly certain Soneji had followed him here. Hadn’t he told me as much through Jamal Autry at Lorton Prison? He had a score to settle with Thomas, and Soneji settled his old scores. I ought to know.

At eight-thirty I finally left Police Plaza, and I was physically whipped. I was driven uptown in a squad car. I’d packed a duffel bag, so I was set for a couple of days, if it came to that. I hoped that it wouldn’t. I like New York City under the right circumstances, but this was hardly Fifth Avenue Christmas shopping in December, or a Yankees World Series game in the fall.

Around nine, I called home and got our automatic answering machine-Jannie. She said, “is this E.T.? You calling home?”

She’s cute like that. She must have known the phone call would be from me. I always call, no matter what.

“How are you, my sweet one? Light of my life?” Just the sound of her voice made me miss her, miss being home with my family.

“Sampson came by. He was checking on us. We were supposed to do boxing tonight. Remember, Daddy?” Jannie played her part with a heavy hand, but it worked. “Bip, bip, bam. Bam, bam, bip.” she said, creating a vivid picture out of sound.

“Did you and Damon practice anyway?” I asked. I was imagining her face as we talked. Damon’s face. Nana’s, too. The kitchen where Jannie was talking. I missed having supper with my family.

“We sure did. I knocked his block right off. I put out his lights for the night. But it’s not the same without you. Nobody to show off for.”

“You just have to show off for yourself,”I told her.

“I know, Daddy. That’s what I did. I showed off for myself, and myself said, ‘Good show.’”

I laughed out loud into the phone receiver. “I’m sorry about missing the boxing lesson with you two pit bulls. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I said in a bluesy, singsong voice. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“That’s what you always say,” Jannie whispered, and I could hear the crackle of hurt in her voice. “someday, it’s not going to work anymore. Mark my words. Remember where you heard it first. Remember, remember, remember.”

I took her counsel to heart in the lonely New York City hotel room as I ate a room-service burger and looked out over Times Square. I remembered an old joke among shrinks: “Schizophrenia beats eating alone.” I thought about my kids, and about Christine Johnson, and then about Soneji and Manning Goldman, murdered in his own house. I tried to read a few pages of Angela’s Ashes, which I’d packed in my bag. I couldn’t handle the beautifully described Limerick ghetto that night.

I called Christine when I thought I had my head screwed on straight. We talked for almost an hour. Easy, effortless talk. Something was changing between us. I asked her if she wanted to spend some time together that weekend, maybe in New York if I still had to be here. It took some nerve for me to ask. I wondered if she could hear it in my voice.

Christine surprised me again. She wanted to come to New York. She laughed and said she could do some early Christmas shopping in July, but I had to promise to make time for her.

I promised.

I must have slept some finally, because I woke in a strange bed, in a stranger town, wrapped in my bedsheets as if I were trapped in a straitjacket.

I had a strange, discomforting thought. Gary Soneji is tracking me. It’s not the other way round.

Chapter 45

HE WAS the Angel of Death. He had known that since he was eleven or twelve years old. He had killed someone back then, just to see if he could do it. The police had never found the body. Not to this day. Only he knew where all the bodies were buried, and he wasn’t telling.

Suddenly, Gary Soneji drifted back to reality, to the present moment in New York City.

Christ, I’m snickering and laughing to myself inside this bar on the East Side. I might have even been talking to myself.

The bartender at Dowd amp; McGoey’s had already spotted him, talking to himself, nearly in a trance. The sneaky, red-haired Irish prick was pretending to polish beer glasses, but all the time he was watching out of the corner of his eye. When Irish eyes are spying.

Soneji immediately beckoned the barmon over with a wave and a shy smile. “Don’t worry. I’m cutting myself off. Starting to get a little out of control here. What do I owe you. Michael?” The name was emblazoned on the barmon’s shirt tag.

The phony, apologetic act seemed to work okay, so he settled his bill and left. He walked south for several blocks on First Avenue, then west on East Fiftieth Street.

He saw a crowded spot called Tatou. It looked promising. He remembered his mission: He needed a place to stay the night in New York, someplace safe. The Plaza hadn’t really been such a good idea.

Tatou was filled to the rafters with a lively crowd come to talk, rubberneck, eat and drink. The first floor was a supper club; the second floor was set up for dancing. What was the scene here about? he wondered. He needed to understand. Attitude was the answer he came up with. Stylish businessmen and professional women in their thirties and forties came to Tatou, probably straight from work in midtown. It was a Thursday night. Most of them were trying to set up something interesting for the weekend.

Soneji ordered a white wine and he began to eye the men and women lined up along the bar. They looked so perfectly in tune with times, so desperately cool. Pick me, choose me, somebody please notice me, they seemed to plead.

He chatted up a pair of lady lawyers who, unfortunately, were joined at the hip. They reminded him of the strange girls in the French movie La Ceremonie. He learned that Theresa and Jessie had been roommates for the past eleven years. Jesus! They were both thirty-six. Their clocks were ticking very loudly. They worked out religiously at the Vertical Club on Sixty-first Street. Summered in Bridgehampton, a mile from the water. They were all wrong for him and, apparently, for everyone else at the bar.

Soneji moved on. He was starting to feel a little pressure. The police knew he was using disguises. Only not what he might look like on a given day. Yesterday, he was a dark-haired Spanish-looking man in his mid-forties. Today, he was blond, bearded, and fit right in at Tatou. Tomorrow, who knew? He could make a dumb mistake, though. He could be picked up and everything would end.

He met an advertising art director, creative director in a large ad factory on Lexington Avenue. Jean Summerhill was originally from Atlanta, she told him. She was small and very slim, with blond hair, lots of it. She wore a single trendy braid down one side, and he could tell she was full of herself. In an odd way, she reminded him of his Meredith, his Missy. Jean Summerhill had her own place, a condo. She lived alone, in the Seventies.

She was too pretty to be in here alone, looking for company in all the wrong places, Soneji understood why once they’d talked: Jean Summerhill was too smart, too strong and individualistic for most men. She scared men off without meaning to, or even knowing that she had.

She didn’t scare him, though. They talked easily, the way strangers sometimes do at a bar. Nothing to lose, nothing to risk. She was very down-to-earth. A woman with a need to be seen as “nice”; unlucky in love, though. He told her that and, since it was what she wanted to hear, Jean Summerhill seemed to believe him.

“You’re easy to talk to,” she said over their third or fourth drink. “You’re very calm. Centered, right?”

“Yeah, I am a little boring,” Soneji said. He knew he was anything but that. “Maybe that’s why my wife left me. Missy fell for a rich man, her boss on Wall Street. We both cried the night that she told me. Now she lives in a big apartment over on Beekman Place. Real fancy digs.” He smiled. “We’re still friends. I just saw Missy recently.”

Jean looked into his eyes. There was something sad about the look. “You know what I like about you.” she said, “it’s that you’re not afraid of me.”

Gary Soneji smiled. “No, I guess I’m not.”

“And I’m not afraid of you either,” Jean Summerhill whispered.

“That’s the way it should be,” Soneji said. “Just don’t lose your head over me. Promise?”

“I’ll do my best.”

The two of them left Tatou and went to her condo together.

Chapter 46

I STOOD all alone on Forty-second Street in Manhattan, anxiously waiting for Carmine Groza to show. The homicide detective finally picked me up at the front entrance of the Marriott. I jumped into his car and we headed to Brooklyn. Something good had finally happened on the case, something promising.

Shareef Thomas had been spotted at a crackhouse in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Did Gary Soneji know where Thomas was, too? How much, if anything, had he learned from Manning Goldman’s computer files?

At seven on Saturday morning, traffic in the city was a joy to behold. We raced west to east across Manhattan in less than ten minutes. We crossed the East River on the Brooklyn Bridge. The sun was just coming up over a group of tall apartment buildings. It was a blinding yellow fireball that gave me an instant headache.

We arrived in Bed-Stuy a little before seven-thirty. I’d heard of the Brooklyn neighborhood and its tough reputation. It was mostly deserted at that time of the morning. Racist cops in D.C. have a nasty way of describing this kind of inner-city area. They call them “self-cleaning ovens.” You just close the door and let it clean itself. Let it burn. Nana Mama has another word for America ’s mostly neglectful social programs for the inner cities: genocide.

The local bodega had a handpainted sign scrawled in red letters on yellow: FIRST STREET DELI AND TOBACCO, OPEN 24 HOURS. The store was closed. So much for the sign.

Parked in front of the deserted deli was a maroon-and-tan van. The vehicle had silver-tinted windows and a “moonlight over Miami ” scene painted on the side panels. A lone female addict slogged along in a knock-kneed swaying walk. She was the only person on the street when we arrived.

The building that Shareef Thomas was in turned out to be two-storied, with faded gray shingles and some broken windows. It looked as if it had been condemned a long time ago. Thomas was still inside the crackhouse. Groza and I settled in to wait. We were hoping Gary Soneji might show up.

I slid down into a corner of the front seat. In the distance, I could see a peeling billboard high above a red-brick building: COP SHOT $10,000 REWARD. Not a good omen, but a fair warning.

The neighborhood began to wake up and show its character around nine or so. A couple of elderly women in blousy white dresses walked hand in hand toward the Pentecostal church up the street. They made me think of Nana and her buddies back in D.C. Made me miss being home for the weekend, too.

A girl of six or seven was playing jump rope down the street. I noticed she was using salvaged electrical wire. She moved in a kind of listless trance.

It made me sad to watch the little sweetheart play. I wondered what would become of her? What chance did she have to make it out of here? I thought of Jannie and Damon and how they were probably “disappointed” in me for being away on Saturday morning. Saturday is our day off, Daddy. We only have Saturdays and Sundays to be together.

Time passed slowly. It almost always does on surveillance. I had a thought about the neighborhood-tragedy can be addictive, too. A couple of suspicious-looking guys in sleeveless T-shirts and cutoff shorts pulled up in an unmarked black truck around ten-thirty. They set up shop, selling watermelons, corn on the cob, tomatoes, and collard greens on the street. The melons were piled high in the scummy gutter.

It was almost eleven o’clock now and I was worried. Our information might be wrong. Paranoia was starting to run a little wild in my head. Maybe Gary Soneji had already visited the crackhouse. He was good at disguises. He might even be in there now.

I opened the car door and got out. The heat rushed at me and I felt as if I were stepping into a blast oven. Still, it was good to be out of the car, the cramped quarters.

“What are you doing?” Groza asked. He seemed prepared to sit in the car all day, playing everything by the book, waiting for Soneji to show.

“Trust me,” I said.

Chapter 47

I TOOK OFF my white shirt and tied it loosely around my waist. I narrowed my eyes, let them go in and out of focus.

Groza called out: “Alex.” I ignored him and I began to shuffle toward the dilapidated crackhouse. I figured I looked the street-junkie part okay. It wasn’t too hard. God knows I’d seen it played enough times in my own neighborhood. My older brother was a junkie before he died.

The crackhouse was being operated out of an abandoned building on a dead-end corner. It was pretty much standard operating procedure in all big cities I have visited: D.C., Baltimore, Philly, Miami, New York. Makes you wonder.

As I opened the graffiti-painted front door, I saw that the place was definitely bottom of the barrel, even for crackhouses. This was end-of-the-line time. Shareef Thomas had the Virus, too.

Debris was scattered everywhere across the grimy, stained floor. Empty soda cans and beer bottles. Fast-food wrappers from Wendy’s and Roy’s and Kentucky Fried. Crack vials. Hanger wires used to clean out crack pipes. Hot time, summer in the city.

I figured that a down-and-out dump like this would be run by a single “clerk.” You pay the guy two or three dollars for a space on the floor. You can also buy syringes, pipes, papers, butane lighters, and maybe even a soda pop or cerveza.

“Fuck it” and “AIDS” and “Junkies of the World” were scrawled across the walls. There was also a thick, smoky fog that seemed allergic to the sunlight. The stink was fetid, worse than walking around in a city dump.

It was incredibly quiet, strangely serene, though. I noticed everything at a glance, but no Shareef Thomas. No Gary Soneji either. At least I did’t see him yet.

A Latino-looking man with a shoulder holster over a soiled Bacardi T-shirt was in charge of the early-morning shift. He was barely awake, but still managed to look in control of the place. He had an ageless face and a thick mustache.

It looked as if Shareef Thomas had definitely fallen down a few notches. If he was here, he was hanging with the low end of the low. Was Shareef dying? Or just hiding? Did he know Soneji might be looking for him?

“What do you want, chief?” the Latino man asked in a low grumble. His eyes were thin slits.

“Little peace and quiet,” I said. I kept it respectful. As if this were church, which it was for some people.

I handed him two crumpled bills and he turned away with the money. “In there,” he said.

I looked past him into the main room, and I felt as if a hand were clutching my heart and squeezing it tight.

About ten or twelve men and a couple of women were sitting or sprawled on the floor and on a few soiled, incredibly thin mattresses. The pipeheads were mostly staring into space, doing nothing, and doing it well. It was as if they were slowly fading or evaporating into the smoke and dust.

No one noticed me, which was okay, which was good. Nobody much cared who came or left this hell-hole. I still hadn’t spotted Shareef. Or Soneji.

It was as dark as a moonless night in the main room of the crackhouse. No lights except for an occasional match being struck. The sound of the match-head strike, then a long, extended hiss.

I was looking for Thomas, but I was also carefully playing my part. Just another strung-out junkie pipehead. Looking for a spot to smoke, to nod out in peace, not here to bother anyone.

I spotted Shareef Thomas on one of the mattresses, near the rear of the dark, dingy room. I recognized him from pictures I’d studied at Lorton. I forced my eyes away from him.

My heart started to pump like crazy. Could Soneji be here, too? Sometimes he seemed like a phantom or ghost to me. I wondered if there was a door back out. I had to find a place to sit down before Thomas became suspicious.

I made it to a wall and started to slide down to the floor. I watched Shareef Thomas out of the corner of my eye. Then all kinds of unexpected madness and chaos broke out inside the crackhouse.

The front door was thrown open and Groza and two uniforms burst in. So much for trust. “Muhfucker,” a man near me woke up and in the smoky shadows.

“Police! Don’t move!” Carmine Groza yelled. “Nobody move. Everybody stay cool!” He sounded like a street cop anyway.

My eyes stayed glued to Shareef Thomas. He was already getting up off the mattress, where he’d been content as a cat just a few seconds ago. Maybe he wasn’t stoned at all. Maybe he was hiding.

I grabbed for the Glock under my rolled-up shirt, tucked at the small of my back. I brought it around in front of me. I hoped against hope I wouldn’t have to use it in these close quarters.

Thomas raised a shotgun that must have been hidden alongside his mattress. The other pipeheads seemed unable to move and get out of the way. Every red-rimmed eye in the room was opened wide with fear.

Thomas’s Street Sweeper exploded! Groza and the uniformed cops hit the floor, all three of them. I couldn’t tell if anyone had been hit up front.

The Latino at the door yelled, “Cut this shit out! Cut the shit!” He was down low on the floor himself, screaming without raising his head into the line of fire.

“Thomas!” I yelled at the top of my voice.

Shareef Thomas was moving with surprising speed and alertness. Quick, sure reflexes, even under the influence. He turned the shotgun on me. His dark eyes glared.

There is nothing to compare with the sight of a shotgun pointed right at you. I had no choice now. I squeezed the trigger of the Glock.

Shareef Thomas took a thunderbolt in his right shoulder. He spun hard left, but he didn’t go down. He pivoted smoothly. He’d been here before. So had I.

I fired a second time, hit him in the throat or lower jaw. Thomas flew back and crashed into the paper-thin walls. The whole building shook. His eyeballs flipped back and his mouth sagged open wide. He was gone before he hit the crackhouse floor.

I had killed our only connection to Gary Soneji.

Chapter 48

I HEARD CARMINE Groza shouting into his radio. The words chilled me. “Officer down at 412 Macon. Officer down!”

I had never been on the scene when another officer was killed. As I got to the front of the crackhouse, though, I was certain one of the uniforms was going to die. Why had Groza come in here like that? Why had he brought in patrolmen with him? Well, it didn’t matter much now.

The uniformed man lay on his back on the littered floor near the front door. His eyes were already glazed and I thought he was in shock. Blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth.

The shotgun had done its horrifying work, just as it would have done me. Blood was splashed on the walls and across the scarred wooden floor. A scorched pattern of bullet holes was tattooed in the wall above the patrolman’s body. There was nothing any of us could do for him.

I stood near Groza, still holding my Glock. I was clenching and unclenching my teeth. I was trying not to be angry with Groza for overreacting and causing this to happen. I had to get myself under control before I spoke.

A uniformed cop to my left was muttering, “Christ, Christ,” over and over again. I could see how traumatized he was. The uniformed man kept wiping his hand across his forehead and over his eyes, as if to wipe out the bloody scene.

EMS arrived in a matter of minutes. We watched while two medics tried desperately to save the patrolman’s life. He was young and looked to be only in his mid-twenties. His reddish hair was in a short brush cut. The front of his blue shirt was soaked with blood.

In the rear of the crackhouse another medic was trying to save Shareef Thomas, but I already knew that Thomas was gone.

I finally spoke to Groza, low and serious. “We know that Thomas is dead, but there’s no reason Soneji has to know. This could be how we get to him. If Soneji thought Thomas was alive at a New York hospital.”

Groza nodded. “Let me talk to somebody downtown. Maybe we could take Thomas to a hospital. Maybe we could get the word to the press. It’s worth a shot.”

Detective Groza didn’t sound very good and he didn’t look too good. I was sure I didn’t either. I could still see the ominous billboard in the distance: COP SHOT $10,000 REWARD.

Chapter 49

NO ONE in the police manhunt would ever guess the beginning, the middle, but especially the end. None of them could imagine where this was heading, where it had been going from the first moment inside Union Station.

Gary Soneji had all the information, all the power. He was getting famous again. He was somebody. He was on the news at ten-minute intervals.

It didn’t much matter that they were showing pictures of him. Nobody knew what he looked like today, or yesterday, or tomorrow. They couldn’t go around and arrest everyone in New York, could they?

He left the late Jean Summerhill’s apartment around noon. The pretty lady had definitely lost her head over him. Just like Missy in Wilmington. He used her key and locked up tight. He walked west on Seventy-third Street until he got to Fifth, then he turned south. The train was back on the track again.

He bought a cup of black coffee in a cardboard container with Greek gods all over the sides. The coffee was absolute New York City swill, but he slowly slipped it anyway. He wanted to go on another rampage right here on Fifth Avenue. He really wanted to go for it. He imagined a massacre, and he could already see the live news stories on CBS, ABC, CNN, FOX.

Speaking of news stories, Alex Cross had been on TV that morning. Cross and the NYPD had nabbed Shareef Thomas. Well hooray for them. It proved they could follow instructions at least.

As he passed chic, well-dressed New Yorkers, Soneji couldn’t help thinking how smart he was, how much brighter than any of these uptight assholes. If any of these snooty bastards could get inside his head, just for a minute, then they’d know.

No one could, though, no one had ever been able to. No one could guess.

Not the beginning, the middle, or the end.

He was getting very angry now, almost uncontrollably so. He could feel the rage surging as he walked the overcrowded streets. He almost couldn’t see straight. Bile rose in his throat.

He flung his coffee, almost a full cup of the steamy liquid, at a passing businessman. He laughed right in the shocked, outraged face. He howled at the sight of coffee dripping from the New Yorker’s aquiline nose, his squarish chin. Dark coffee stained the expensive shirt and tie.

Gary Soneji could do anything he wanted to, and most often, he did.

Just you watch.

Chapter 50

AT SEVEN that night, I was back in Penn Station. It wasn’t the usual commuter crowd, so it wasn’t too bad on Saturdays. The murders that had taken place at Union Station in Washington, and here, were spinning around in my mind. The dark train tunnels were the “cellar” to Soneji, symbols of his tortured boyhood. I had figured out that much of the delusionary puzzle. When Soneji came up out of the cellar, he exploded at the world in a murderous rage…

I saw Christine coming up the stairs from the train tunnels.

I began to smile in spite of the locale. I smiled, and shifted my weight from foot to foot, almost dancing. I felt light-headed and excited, filled with a hope and desire that I hadn’t felt in a long time. She had really come.

Christine was carrying a small black bag with “ Sojourner Truth School ” printed on it. She was traveling light. She looked beautiful, proud, more desirable than ever, if that was possible. She was wearing a white short-sleeved dress with a jewel neckline and her usual flats in black patent leather. I noticed people looking at her. They always did.

We kissed in a corner of the train station, keeping our privacy as best we could. Our bodies pressed together and I could feel her warmth, her bones, her flesh. I heard the bag she was carrying drop at her feet.

Her brown eyes looked into mine and they were wide and questioning at first, but then became very soft and light. “I was a little afraid you wouldn’t be here,” she said. “I had visions of you off on some police emergency, and me standing here alone in the middle of Penn Station.”

“There’s no way I would let that happen,” I said to her. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

We kissed again, pressing even harder together. I didn’t want to stop kissing Christine, holding her tightly. I wanted to take her where we could be alone. My body nearly convulsed. It was that bad, that good.

“I tried,” she said and grinned, “but I couldn’t stay away from you. New York scares me a little, but here I am.”

“We’re going to have a great time. You’ll see.”

“You promise? Will it be unforgettable?” she teased me.

“Unforgettable, I promise,” I said.

I held her tightly in my arms. I couldn’t let her go.

Chapter 51

THE BEGINNING of “unforgettable” felt like this, looked like this, sounded like this.

The Rainbow Room at eight-thirty on a Saturday night. Christine and I waltzed off the glitzy elevator, arm in arm. We were immediately swept into another era, another lifestyle, maybe another life. A fancy silver-on-black placard near the elevator door read: “The Rainbow Room, Step into an MGM Musical.” Hundreds of minispotlights kicked off from the dazzling chrome and crystal. It was over the top, and just about perfect.

“I’m not sure if I’m dressed right for an MGM musical, but I don’t particularly care. What a wonderful idea,” Christine said as we made our way past overdone, outrageous-looking ushers and usherettes. We were directed to a desk that looked down onto the deco ballroom but also had panoramic views of New York. The room was jam-packed on a Saturday night; every table and the dance floor was filled.

Christine was dressed in a simple black sheath. She wore the same necklace, made from an old-fashioned brooch, that she wore at Kinkead’s. It had belonged to her grandmother. Because I’m six three, she wasn’t afraid to wear dressier shoes with high heels, rather than her comfortable flats. I had never realized it before, but I liked being with a woman who was nearly as tall as I am.

I had dressed up, too. I’d chosen a charcoal gray, summerweight suit, crisp white shirt, blue silk tie. For tonight anyway, I was definitely not a police detective from D.C. I didn’t look like Dr. Alex Cross from Southeast. Maybe more like Denzel Washington playing the part of Jay Gatsby. I liked the feeling, for a night on the town anyway. Maybe even for a whole weekend.

We were escorted to a table in front of a large window that overlooked the glittering East Side of Manhattan. A five-piece Latin band was onstage, and they were cooking pretty good. The slowly revolving dance floor was still full. People were having a fine time, lots of people dancing the night away.

“It’s funny, beautiful, and ridiculous, and I think it’s as special as anywhere I’ve been,” Christine said once we were seated. “That’s about all the superlatives you’re going to hear from me tonight.”

“You haven’t even seen me dance,” I said.

“I already know that you can dance.” Christine laughed and told me, “Women always know which men can dance, and which men can’t.”

We ordered drinks, straight Scotch for me, Harvey ’s sherry for Christine. We picked out a bottle of sauvignon blanc, and then spent a few delicious minutes just taking in the spectacle of the Rainbow Room.

The Latin combo was replaced by a “big band combo,” which played swing and even took a swipe at the blues. A whole lot of people still knew how to jitterbug and waltz and even tango, and some of them were pretty good.

“You ever been here before?” I asked Christine as the waiter came with our drinks.

“Only while I was watching The Prince of Tides alone in my bedroom at home,” she said, and smiled again. “How about you? Come here often, sailor?”

“Just the one time I was chasing down this split-personality ax murderer in New York. He went right out that picture window over there. Third from the left.”

Christine laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true, Alex. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

The band started to play “Moonglow,” which is a pretty song, and we had to get up and dance. Gravity just pulled us. At that moment, I couldn’t think of too many things in the world I wanted to do more than hold Christine in my arms. Actually, I couldn’t think of anything at all.

At some point in time, Christine and I had agreed to take a risk and see what would happen. We’d both lost people we loved. We knew what it meant to be hurt, and yet here we were, ready to go out on the dance floor of life again. I think I’d wanted to slow-dance with Christine from the very first time I saw her at the Sojourner Truth School.

Now, I tucked her in close and my left arm encircled her waist. My right hand clasped hers. I felt her soft intake of breath. I could tell she was a little nervous, too.

I started to hum softly. I might have been floating a little, too. My lips touched hers and my eyes closed. I could feel the silk of her dress under my fingers. And yes, I could dance pretty well, but so could she.

“Look at me,” she whispered, and I opened my eyes. She was right. It was much better that way.

“What’s going on here? What is this? I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this, Alex.”

“Neither have I. But I could get used to it. I know that I like it.”

I lightly brushed her cheek with my fingers. The music was working and Christine seemed to flow with me. Graceful, moonlit choreography. All my body parts were moving. I was finding it hard to breathe.

Christine and I were in harmony together. We both could dance well enough, but together it was something special. I moved slowly and smoothly with her. The palm of her hand felt magnetized to mine. I spun her slowly, a playful half turn underneath my arm.

We came back together and our lips were inches apart. I could feel the warmth of her body right through my clothes. Our lips met again, just for an instant, and the music stopped. Another song began.

“Now that is a hard act to follow,” she said as we sashayed back to our table after the slow dance. “I knew you could dance. Never a doubt in my mind. But I didn’t know you could dance.”

“You haven’t seen anything. Wait until they play a samba,” I told her. I was still holding her hand, couldn’t let go. Didn’t want to.

“I think I can samba,” she said.

We danced a lot, we held hands constantly, and I think we even ate dinner. We definitely danced some more, and I could not let go of Christine’s hand. She couldn’t let go of mine. We talked nonstop, and later, I couldn’t remember most of what had been said. I think that happens high above New York City in the Rainbow Room.

The first time I looked at my watch all night it was nearly one o’clock and I couldn’t believe it. That same mysterious time-loss thing had happened a couple of times when I’d been with Christine. I paid our bill, our big bill, and I noticed that the Rainbow Room was nearly empty. Where had everybody gone?

“Can you keep a secret?” Christine whispered as we were going down to the lobby in the walnut-paneled elevator. We were alone in the car with its soft yellow light. I was holding her in my arms.

“I keep lots of secrets,” I said.

“Well, here it is,” Christine said as we reached the bottom floor with just the lightest bump. She held me inside after the door had opened. She wasn’t going to let me out of the softly lit elevator until she finished saying what she had to say.

“I really like that you got me my own room at the Astor,” she said. “But Alex, I don’t think I’ll be needing it. Is that okay?”

We stood very still in the elevator and began to kiss again. The doors shut, and the elevator slowly climbed back up to the roof. So we kissed going up, and we kissed on the way back down to the lobby, and it wasn’t nearly a long enough round-trip.

“You know what, though?” she finally said as we reached the ground floor of Rockefeller Center a second time.

“What, though?” I asked her.

“That’s what’s supposed to happen when you go to the Rainbow Room.”

Chapter 52

IT WAS unforgettable. Just like the magical Nat King Cole song, and the more recent version with Natalie Cole.

We were standing at the door to my hotel room, and I was completely lost in the moment. I had let go of Christine’s hand to open the door-and I was lost. I fumbled the key slightly and missed the lock. She gently placed her hand on mine and we glided the key into the lock, turned the tumblers together.

An eternity of seconds passed, at least it seemed that way. I knew that I would never forget any of this. I wouldn’t let skepticism or cynicism diminish it either.

I knew what was happening to me. I was feeling the dizzying effect of a return to intimacy. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. I had let myself be numb, let myself live numb for the past few years. It’s easy enough to do, so easy that you don’t even realize your life has become a deep rut.

The hotel door slowly opened, and I had the thought that the two of us were giving up something of our past now. Christine turned to me at the threshold. I heard the faint swish of her silk dress.

Her beautiful face tilted toward mine. I reached for her and balanced her chin with my fingertips. I felt as if I hadn’t been able to breathe properly all night, not from the moment she’d arrived at Penn Station.

“Musician’s hands. Piano player fingers,” she said. “I love the way you touch me. I always knew I would. I’m not afraid anymore, Alex.”

“I’m glad. Neither am I.”

The heavy wooden door of the hotel room seemed to close all by itself.

It didn’t really matter where we were right now, I was thinking. The twinkling lights outside, or maybe a boat gliding by on the river, gave the impression that the floor was gently moving, much as the dance floor at the Rainbow Room had moved under our feet.

I had switched hotels for the weekend, moving to the Astor on Manhattan ’s East Side. I’d wanted someplace special. The room was on the twelfth floor, facing out on the river.

We were drawn to the picture window, attracted by the strobing lights of the New York skyline to the southeast. We watched the silent, strangely beautiful movement of traffic passing the United Nations, moving toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

I remembered taking the bridge earlier today on our way to a crackhouse in Brooklyn. It seemed so long ago. I saw the face of Shareef Thomas, then the dead policeman’s then Soneji’s, but I shut down those images immediately. I wasn’t a police detective here. Christine’s lips were on my skin, lightly bussing my throat.

“Where did you go just now? You went away, didn’t you?” she whispered. “You were in a dark place.”

“Just for a few seconds.” I confessed the truth, my flaw. “A flashback from work. It’s gone.” I was holding her hand again.

She kissed me lightly on the cheek, a paper-thin kiss, then very lightly on the lips. “You can’t lie, can you, Alex? Not even tiny white lies.”

“I try not to. I don’t like lies. If I lie to you, then who am I?” I said and smiled. “What’s the point?”

“I love that about you,” she whispered. “Lots of other things, too. I find something else every time I’m with you.”

I nuzzled the top of her head, then I kissed Christine’s forehead, her cheek, her lips, and finally the sweet hollow of her throat. She was trembling a little. So was I. Thank God that neither of us was afraid, right. I could feel the pulse tripping under her skin.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whispered. “Do you know that?”

“I’m way too tall, too thin. You’re the beautiful one. You are, you know. Everybody says so.”

Everything felt electric and so right. It seemed a miracle that we had found each other, and now we were here together. I was so glad, felt so lucky, that she had decided to take a chance with me, that I had taken a chance, too.

“Look in the mirror there. See how beautiful you are,” she said. “You have the sweetest face. You are trouble, though, aren’t you, Alex?”

“I won’t give you too much trouble tonight,” I said.

I wanted to undress her, to do everything for and to Christine. A funny word, strange word in my head, rapture. She slid her hand over the front of my pants and felt how hard I was.

“Hmmm,” she whispered and smiled.

I began to unzip her dress. I couldn’t remember wanting to be with someone like this, not for a long time anyway. I ran my hand over her face, memorizing every part, every feature. Christine’s skin was so soft and silky underneath my fingers.

We started to dance again, right there in the hotel room. There wasn’t any music, but we had our own. My hand pressed just below her waist, folding her in close to me.

Moonlit choreography again. We slowly rocked back and forth, back and forth, a sensuous cha-cha-cha next to the broad picture window. I held her buttocks in the palms of my hands. She wiggled into a position she liked. I liked it, too. A whole lot.

“You dance real good, Alex. I just knew you would.”

Christine reached down and tugged at my belt until the prong came free. She unzipped me, lightly fondled me. I loved her touch, anywhere, everywhere. Her lips were on my skin again. Everything about her was erotic, irresistible, unforgettable.

We both knew to do this slowly, no need to hurry anything tonight. Rushing would spoil this, and it mustn’t be spoiled in any way.

I held the thought that we’d both been here before, but never like this. We were in this very special place for the first time. This would only happen one time.

My kisses slowly swept over her shoulders and I could feel her breasts rising and falling against me. I felt the flatness of her stomach, and her legs pressing. I cupped Christine’s breasts in my hands. Suddenly I wanted everything, all of her at once.

I sank to my knees. I ran my hands up and down her soft legs, along her waist.

I rose to my feet. I unzipped her black sheath the rest of the way, and it trailed down her long arms to the floor. It made a shimmering black puddle surrounding her ankles, her slender feet.

Finally, when there were no more clothes, we looked at each other. Christine watched my eyes and I watched hers. Her eyes shamelessly traveled down my chest, past my waist. I was still highly aroused. I wanted to be inside her so much.

She took a half step back. I couldn’t breathe. I could hardly bear this. But I didn’t want to stop. I was feeling again, remembering how to feel, remembering how good it could be.

She pulled her hair to one side, behind one ear. Such a simple, graceful movement.

“Do that again.” I smiled.

She laughed and repeated the movement with her hair. “Anything that you want.”

“Stay there,” she whispered. “Don’t move, Alex. Don’t come closer-we might both catch fire. I mean it.”

“This could take the rest of the weekend,” I said and started to laugh.

“I hope it does.”

I heard the tiniest click.

Was that the door to our room?

Had I closed it?

Was someone out there?

Jesus, no.

Chapter 53

SUDDENLY NERVOUS and paranoid, I peered back at the door to the hotel room. It was closed and locked tight. Nobody there, nothing to worry about. Christine and I were safe here. Nothing bad was going to happen to either of us tonight.

Still, the moment of fear and doubt had raised the hairs on my neck. Soneji has a habit of doing that to me. Damn it, what did he want from me?

“What’s wrong, Alex? You just left me.” Christine touched me, brought me back. Her fingers were like feathers on the side of my cheek. “Just be here with me, Alex.”

“I’m here. I just thought I heard something.”

“I know you did. No one is there. You locked the door behind us. We’re fine. It’s okay, it’s okay.”

I pulled Christine close against my body again and she felt electric and incredibly warm. I drew her down onto the bed and rolled over her, holding my weight on the palms of my hands. I dipped and kissed her sweet face again, then each of her breasts; I pulled at the nipples with my lips, licked them with my tongue. I kissed between her legs, down her long legs, her slender ankles, her toes. Just be here with me, Alex.

She arched herself toward me and she gasped, but she was smiling radiantly. She was moving her body against me and we had already found a nice rhythm. We were both breathing faster and faster.

“Please, do it now,” she whispered, her teeth biting into my shoulder near the clavicle. “Please now, right now. I want you inside.” She rubbed my sides with the palms of her hands. She rubbed me like kindling sticks.

A fire ignited. I could feel it spreading through my body. I entered her for the first time. I slid inside slowly, but I went as deep as I could go. My heart was pounding, my legs felt weak. My stomach was taut and I was so hard it hurt.

I was all the way inside Christine. I knew I’d wanted to be here for a long time. I had the thought that I was made for this, for being in this bed with this woman.

Gracefully and athletically, she rolled on top of me and sat up proud and tall. We began to rock slowly like that. I felt our bodies surge and peak, surge and peak, surge.

I heard my own voice crying yes, yes, yes. Then I realized it was both our voices.

Then Christine said something so magical. She whispered, “You’re the one.”