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 p
aranoia. 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 & 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 turn-down 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. H
e 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.
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