Meanwhile, his partner took several rapid shots with the camera. The flashes lit up the dark parking lot.
“We're from the National Star. We want to talk to you, Detective Cross. ” I picked up a British accent. The National Star was an American tabloid based in Miami.
“What does this have to do with anything that's happened?” I said to the Brit. I was fingering Jezzie's silver comb in my pocket. “This is private. This isn't news. This isn't anybody else's business.”
“That's our job to decide,” he said. “I don't know, though, mate. Major communications breakthrough between the D.C. police and the Secret Service. Secret talks, and whatever. ”
The woman was already knocking at the motel door. Her voice was as loud as the metallic rapping. “This is the National Star!” she announced.
“Don't come out,” I shouted to Jezzie.
The door opened, and Jezzie stood there fully dressed. She stared at the frizzy-haired woman and didn't bother to conceal her contempt.
“This must be a really proud moment,” she said to the reporter. “This is probably as close as you'll ever get to a Pulitzer.”
Nah. “ The reporter had a comeback. ”I know Roxanne Pulitzer. And now I know you two."
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 65
PLAYED A MEDLEY of Keith Sweat, Bell Biv Devoe,
Hannner, and Public Enemy pop songs on the piano.
I stayed out on the porch entertaining Damon and Janelle until about eight that morning. It was Wednesday of the week Jezzie and I had gotten our little lurid surprise in Arlington.
Nana was in the kitchen reading a hot copy of the National Star, which I'd bought for her at Acme. I waited for her to call me inside.
I
When she didn't, I got up from my pumping piano and went to face her music. I told Damon and Janellc to stay put. “Stay just the way you are. Don't ever change. ”
Just like on any other morning, Nana was sipping tea. The remains of her poached egg and toast were still in evidence. The tabloid was casually folded over on the kitchen table. Read? Unread? I couldn't tell from her face, or the condition of the newspaper. “You read the story?” I had to ask.
“Well, I read enough to get the gist of it. Saw your picture on the front page, too,” she said to me. “I believe that's how people read that kind of paper. I always used,to be surprised, people buying a paper like that on Sunday morning after church.”
I sat down across from her at the breakfast table. A wave of powerful old feelings and memories came rushing over me. I recalled so many talks like this one in our collective past.
Nana took up a little crust of toast. She dipped it in marmalade. If birds could eat like humans, they would eat like Nana Mama. She is quite a piece of work.
“She's a beautiful and I'm sure a very interesting white woman. You're a very handsome black man, sometimes with a good head on your shoulders. A lot of people don't like that idea, that picture. You're not too surprised, are you?”
“How about you, Nana? Do you like it?” I asked her. Nana Mama sighed very softly. She put down her teacup with a clink. “Tell you what, now. I don't know the clinical terms for these things, Alex, but you never seemed to get over losing your mother. I saw that when you were a little boy. I think I still see it sometimes.”
“It's called post-traumatic stress syndrome,” I said to Nana. “If you're interested in the name.”
Nana smiled at my retreat into jargon. She'd seen that act before. “I would never make any judgments about what happened to you, but it's affected you since you arrived here in Washington. I also noticed that you didn't always fit in with the crowd. Not the way some kids do. You played sports, and you shoplifted with your friend Sampson, and you were always tough. But you read books, and you were moderately sensitive. You follow me? Maybe you got tough on the outside, but not on the inside.”
I didn't always buy into Nana's conclusions anymore, but her raw observations were still pretty good. I hadn't exactly fit in as a boy in Southeast D.C., but I knew I'd gotten a lot better at it. I was accepted okay now. Detective/Doctor Cross.
“I didn't want to hurt you, or disappoint you with this. ” I returned to the subject of the tabloid story.
“I'm not disappointed in you,” my grandmother said to me. “You are my pride, Alex. You bring me tremendous happiness almost every day of my life. When I see you with the kids, and see the work you do here in this neighborhood, and know that you still care enough to humor an old woman-”
“That last one is a chore,” I told her. “About the so-called news story, though. It's going to be impossible for a week or so. Then nobody will care very much.”
Nana shook her head. Her little white helmet of hair turned neatly in place. “No. People will care. Some people will remember this for the rest of your life. What's that saying? 'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' ”
I asked her, “What was the crime?”
Nana used the back of her knife to clear away toast crumbs. “You'll have to tell me that yourself. -Why are you and Jezzie Flanagan sneaking around if everything is aboveboard? If you love her, you love her. Do you love her, Alex?”
I didn't answer Nana right away. Of course I loved
Jezzie. But how much? And where was it going? Did it have to be going somewhere?
“I don't know for sure, at least not in the way I think you're asking the question,” I finally said. “That's what we're trying to find out now. We both know the consequences of what we're doing.”
“If you love her for sure, Alex,” my grandmother said to me, “then I love her. I love you, Alex. You just paint on a very large canvas. Sometimes you're too bright for your own good. And you can be very peculiar-by the ways of the white world.” “And that's why you like me so much,” I said to her. She said, “ It's just one of the reasons, sonny boy.” My grandmother and I held each other for a long 1. moment at the breakfast table that morning. I am big and strong; Nana is tiny, frail, but just as strong. It i i seemed like old times, in the sense that you never really i grow up completely, not around your parents or grandparents. Not around Nana Mama, certainly. “Thank you, old woman,” I said to her. “And proud of it.” As usual, she had the last word.
I called Jezzie a few times that morning, but she wasn't home, or she wasn't answering her phone. Her answering machine wasn't on, either. I thought about our night in Arlington. She'd been so wired. Even before the National Star had arrived on the scene.
I thought about driving over to her apartment, but I changed my mind. We didn't need any more tabloid photographs or news stories while the trial was winding down.
Nobody said much to me at work that day. If I'd had any doubts before, that showed me how serious the damage was. I'd taken a hit, all right.
I went to my office and sat there all alone with a container of black coffee and stared at the four walls. They were covered with “clues” from the kidnapping. I was starting to feel guilty, and rebellious, and angry. I wanted to punch glass, which I'd actually done once or twice after Maria was shot.
I was at my govemment-issue, gunmetal desk, facing away from the door. I'd been staring at my work schedule for the week, but I wasn't really seeing anything written on the sheet.
“You're in this one all alone, motherfucker,” I heard Sampson say at my back. “You're all by your lonesome this time. You are meat cooked on a barbecue spit.”
“Don't you think you're understating things a little?” I said without turning to him.
“I figured you'd talk when you wanted to talk about i It,” Sampson said. “You knew that I knew about the two of you.”
A couple of coffee-cup rings on the work schedules held my eye. The Browning effect? What the hell was that? My memory and everything else were deserting me lately. I finally turned around and faced him. He was decked out in leather pants, an old Kangol hat, a black nylon vest. His dark glasses were an effective mask. Actually, he was trying to be charming a
nd softhearted.
“What do you figure is going on now?” I asked him. “What are they saying?” “Nobody's real happy about the way the holy-shit case has gone down. Not enough 'attaboys' down from upstairs. I guess they're lining up potential sacrificial lambs. You're one of them for sure. ”
“And Jezzie?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.
“ She's one, too. Associating with known Negroes,” Sampson said. “I take it you haven't heard the news?”
“Heard what news?”
Sampson let out a short burst of breadi, then he gave me the latest hot-breaking story.
"She took a leave of absence, or maybe she left the Service altogether. Happened about an hour ago, Alex. Nobody knows for sure if she jumped or was pushed.
I called Jezzie's office immediately. The secretary said that she was “gone for the day.” I called Jezzie's apartment. No answer there.
I drove to her apartment, breaking a couple of speeding laws on the way. Derek McGinty was talking over WAMU radio. I like the sound of Derek's voice even if I'm not listening to the words.
Nobody was home at Jezzie's. At least no photographers were lurking around. I thought about driving down to her lake cottage. I called North Carolina from a r)av phone down the street. The local operator told me the number had been disconnected.
“How recently was that?” I asked with surprise in my voice. “I called that number last night.”
“Just this morning,” the operator told me. "The local number was disconnected this very morning.
Jezzie had disappeared.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 66
HE VERDICT in the Soneji/Murphy trial was coming down soon.
The jury went out on the eleventh of November. They returned after three days, amid nonstop rumors that they had been unable to decide either the guilt, or the innocence, of the defendant. The whole world seemed to be waiting.
Sampson picked me up that morning and we rode to the courthouse together. The weather had turned warin, after a brief cool spell that foreshadowed winter.
As we approached Indiana Avenue, I thought about Jezzie. I hadn't seen her in over a week. I wondered if she would show up in court for the verdict. She'd called me. She told me she was down in North Carolina. That was all she'd really said. I was a loner again, and I didn't like it.
I didn't see Jezzie outside the courthouse, but Anthony Nathan was climbing out of a silver Mercedes stretch. This was his big moment. Reporters climbed all
361 over Nathan. They were like city birds on stale bread crumbs. The TV and print people tried to grab a little piece of me and Sampson before we could escape up the courthouse steps. Neither of us was too excited about being interviewed again.
“Dr. Cross! Dr. Cross, please,” one of them called out. I recognized the shrill voice. It belonged to a local TV news anchorwoman.
We had to stop. They were behind us, and up ahead. Sampson hummed a little Martha and the Vandellas, “Nowhere to Run.”
“Dr. Cross, do you feel that your testimony might actually help to get Gary Murphy off the hook for murder one? That you may have inadvertently helped him to get away with murder?”
Something finally snapped inside me. “We're just happy to be in the Super Bowl,” I said straight-faced into the glare of several minicam lenses. “Alex Cross is going to concentrate on his game. The rest will take care of itself. Alex Cross just thanks Almighty God for the opportunity to play at this level. ” I leaned in toward the reporter who'd asked the question. “You understand what I'm saying? You're clear now?”
Sampson smiled and said, “As for me, I'm still open for lucrative endorsements in the sneaker and the softdrink categories.” Then we continued up the steep stone steps and into the federal courthouse.
As Sampson and I entered the cavernous federal courthouse lobby, the noise level might have done real damage to our eardrums. Everyone was pushing and milling about, but in a sort of civilized manner, the way folks in evening wear push into your back at the Kennedy Center.
Soneji/Murphy wasn't the first criminal trial where multiple personality was the center of the defense. It was by far the most celebrated case, though. It had raised emotional questions about guilt and innocence, and those questions genuinely left the verdict in doubt.... If Gary Murphy was innocent, how could he be convicted of kidnapping and murder? His lawyer had planted that question in all of our minds.
I saw Nathan again upstairs. He had accomplished everything he'd hoped for with his courtroom session. “Clearly, there are two personalities battling each other inside the defendant's mind,” he'd told the jurors during his summation. “One of them is as innocent as you are. You cannot convict Gary Murphy of kidnapping or murder. Gary Murphy is a good man. Gary Murphy is a husband and a father. Gary Murphy is innocent!”
It was a difficult problem and dilemma for the jurors. Was Gary Soneji/Murphy a brilliant and evil sociopath? Was he aware, and in control, of his actions? Had there been an “accomplice” to the kidnapping and at least one child-murder? Or had he acted alone from the beginning?
No one knew the truth except maybe Gary himself. Not the psychology experts. Not the police. Not the press. And not me.
Now how would the jury of Gary's “peers” decide? The first real event of the morning occurred when
Gary was escorted into the packed, noisy courtroom. He looked his usual clean-cut and characteristically boyish self in a plain blue suit. He looked as if he worked in some small-town bank, not like someone on trial for kidnapping and murder.
There was a smattering of applause. It proved that even kidnappers can have a cult following these days. The trial had definitely attracted its share of weirdos and sick creeps.
“Who says America doesn't have any more heroes?” Sampson said to me. "They like his crazy ass. You can see it in their shiny, beady little eyes. He's the new and improved Charlie Manson. Instead of a berserk hippie, a berserk yuppie
“The Son of Lindbergh,” I reminded Sampson. “I wonder if this is how he wanted it to turn out. All part of his master plan for fame?”
The jury filed into the courtroom. The men and women looked dazed and unbearably tense. What had they decided-probably very late the night before?
One of the jurors stumbled as they moved one by one into the dark mahogany jury box. The man went down on one knee and the procession behind him stopped. That one brief moment seemed to underscore the frailty and humanity of the whole trial process.
I glanced at Soneji/Murphy and thought I saw a faint smile cross his lips. Had I witnessed a tiny slipup? What thoughts were racing through his head now? What verdict did he expect?
In any event, the persona known as Gary Soneji, the “Bad Boy,” would have appreciated the irony of the moment. Everything was ready now. An incredible extravaganza. With him at center stage. No matter what, this was the biggest day of his life. I want to be somebody!
“Has the jury reached a verdict?” Judge Kaplan asked once they were seated.
A small, folded slip of paper was passed to the judge. Judge Kaplan's face was expressionless as she read the verdict. Then it went back to the jury foreman. The process of due process.
The foreman, who had remained standing, began to speak in a clear but shaky voice. He was a postal worker named James Heekin. He was fifty-five, and had ruddy, almost crimson, coloring that suggested high blood pressure, or maybe just the stress of the trial.
James Heekin proclaimed, “On two charges of kidnapping, we find the defendant guilty. On the charge of the murder of Michael Goldberg, we find the defendant guilty. ” James Heekin never used the name Murphy, just the defendant.
Chaos broke out all over the courtroom. The noise was deafening as it echoed off the stone pillars and marble walls. Reporters raced for the telephones in the hallway. Mary Warner was emotionally congratulated by all the young associates on her staff. Anthony Nathan and his defense team quickly left the room, avoiding questions.
There was a strangely poignant moment in the front of the courtroom.
As court officers were leading Gary away, his wife, Missy, and his little girl, Roni, ran up to him. The three of them fiercely hugged. They sobbed openly.
I had never seen Gary cry before. If it was a perfor mance, it was another brilliant one. If he was acting in front of the courtroom, the scene was entirely believable.
I couldn't take my eyes off him. Not until a pair of court officers finally pried Gary away and led him out of the courtroom.
If he was acting, there hadn't been a single false move. He was completely absorbed with his wife and little girl. He never once looked around the courtroom to see if he had an audience.
He played it perfectly.
Or was Gary Murphy an innocent man who had just been convicted of kidnapping and murder?
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 67
RESSURE, pressure," Jezzie sang along with the tune playing loudly inside her head.
The skin was tight against her forehead as Jezzie maneuvered down the winding mountain road without caution or fear. She leaned into every curve, keeping the powerful bike in fourth gear. The fir trees, jutting boulders, and ancient telephone wires were a blur as she sped along. Everything was fuzzy. She felt as if she'd been in free-fall for over a year, maybe for her whole life. She was going to explode soon.
Nobody understood what it was like to be under so much pressure for so long. Even when she was a kid, she had always been afraid of making a single mistake, afraid that if she wasn't perfect little Jezzie, she would never be loved by her mother and father.
Perfect Little Jezzie.
“Good is not good enough,” and “Good is the enemy of great,” her father used to tell her almost every day. And so she was a calculating, straight-A student; she
367 was Miss Popular; she was on every fast track she could find. Billy Joel had recorded a song a few years back, “Pressure. ” That was an approximation for the way she felt every day of her life. She had to make it stop somehow, and now maybe she had a way.
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