John Sampson asked me point-blank, challenging me. He was dressed all in black, and he wore Ray-Ban sunglasses. He looked as if he were already in mourning. The two of us were flying in an FBI Bell Jet helicopter from Washington to Princeton, New Jersey. We were supposed to work together for a while.
“You think Gary Soneji did this somehow? Think he’s Houdini? You think maybe he’s still alive?” Sampson went on. “What the hell do you think?”
“I don’t know yet.” I sighed. “I’m still collecting data. It’s the only way I know how to work. No, I don’t think Soneji did it. He’s always worked alone before this. Always.”
I knew that Gary Soneji had grown up in New Jersey, then gone on to become one of the most savage murderers of the times. It didn’t seem as if his run were over yet. Soneji was part of the ongoing mystery.
Alex Cross’s notes on Soneji were extensive. I was finding useful and interesting insights all through the notes, and I was less than a third of the way through. I had already decided that Cross was a sharp police detective but an even better psychologist. His hypotheses and hunches weren’t merely clever and imaginative; they were often right. There’s an important difference in that, which many people fail to see, especially people in medium-high places.
I looked up from my reading.
“I’ve had some luck with difficult killers before. All except the one I really want to catch,” I told Sampson.
He nodded, but his eyes stayed locked onto mine. “This Mr. Smith something of a cult hero now? Over in Europe, especially, the Continent, London, Paris, Frankfurt.”
I wasn’t surprised that Sampson was aware of the ongoing case. The tabloids had made Mr. Smith their latest icon. The stories were certainly compelling reading. They played up the angle that
Smith might be an alien. Even newspapers like the New York Times and the Times of London had run stories stating that police authorities believed Smith might be an extraterrestrial being who had come here to study humans. To grok, as it were.
“Smith has become the evil E.T. Something for X-Files fans to contemplate between TV episodes. Who knows, perhaps Mr. Smith is a visitor from outer space, at least from some other parallel world. He doesn’t have anything in common with human beings, I can vouch for that. I’ve visited the murder scenes.”
Sampson nodded. “Gary Soneji didn’t have much in common with the human race,” he said in his deep, strangely quiet voice. “Soneji was from another planet, too. He’s an ALF, alien life-form.”
“I’m not sure he fits the same psychological profile as Smith.”
“Why is that?” he asked. His eyes narrowed. “You think your mass killer is smarter than our mass killer?”
“I’m not saying that. Gary Soneji was very bright, but he made mistakes. So far, Mr. Smith hasn’t made any.”
“And that’s why you’re going to solve this hinky mystery? Because Gary Soneji makes mistakes?”
“I’m not making predictions,” I told Sampson. “I know better than that. So do you.”
“Did Gary Soneji make a mistake at Alex’s house?” he suddenly asked, his dark eyes penetrating.
I sighed out loud. “I think someone did.”
The helicopter was settling down to land outside Princeton. A thin line of cars silently streamed past the airfield on a state highway. People watched us from the cars. It could safely be assumed that everything had started here. The house where Gary Soneji had been raised was less than six miles away. This was the monster’s original lair.
“You’re sure Soneji’s not still alive?” John Sampson asked one more time. “Are you absolutely sure about that?”
“No,” I finally said. “I’m not sure of anything yet.”
Chapter 85
ASSUME NOTHING, question everything.
As we set down in the small private airfield, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. What was wrong here? What was I feeling about the Cross case?
Beyond the thin ribbons of landing strip were acre upon acre of pine forests and hills. The beauty of the countryside, the incredible shades of green, reminded me of something Cézanne had once said: “When color is at its richest, form is at its fullest.” I never looked at the world in quite the same way after hearing that.
Gary Soneji was brought up near here, I thought to myself. Was it possible that he could still be alive? No, I didn’t believe that. But could there be connections?
We were met in New Jersey by two field agents who brought a blue Lincoln sedan for our use. Sampson and I proceeded from Princeton to Rocky Hill and then over to Lambertville, to see his grandfather. I knew that Sampson and Alex Cross had been to Princeton less than a week ago. Still, I had questions of my own, theories that needed field-testing.
I also wanted to see the entire area where Gary Soneji had grown up, where his madness had been inflicted and nurtured. Mostly I wanted to talk with someone neither Cross nor Sampson had spent much time investigating, a brand-new suspect.
Assume nothing, question everything…and everyone.
Seventy-five-year-old Walter Murphy, Gary’s grandfather, was waiting for us on a long, whitewashed porch. He didn’t ask us inside his house.
The porch had a nice view out from the farmhouse. I saw multiflora rose everywhere, an impenetrable bramble. The nearby barn was also overrun by sumac and poison ivy. I guessed that the grandfather was letting this happen.
I could feel Gary Soneji at his grandfather’s farm, I felt him everywhere.
According to Walter Murphy, he’d had no inkling that Gary was capable of murder. Not at any time. Not a clue.
“Some days I think I’ve gotten used to what’s happened, but then suddenly it’s fresh and incomprehensible to me all over again,” he told us as the midday breeze ruffled his longish white hair.
“Did you stay close to Gary as he got older?” I asked cautiously. I was studying his build, which was large. His arms were thick and looked as if they could still do physical damage.
“I remember long talks with Gary from the time he was a boy right up until it was alleged he’d kidnapped those two children in Washington.” Alleged.
“And you were taken by surprise?” I said. “You had no idea?”
Walter Murphy looked directly at me—for the first time. I knew that he resented my tone, the irony in it. How angry could I make him? How much of a temper did the old man have?
I leaned in and listened more closely. I watched every gesture, every tic. Collected the data.
“Gary always wanted to fit in, just like everybody else does,” he said abruptly. “He trusted me because he knew I accepted him for what he was.”
“What was it about Gary that needed to be accepted?”
The old man shifted his eyes to the peaceful-looking pine woods surrounding the farm. I could feel Soneji in those woods. It was as if he were watching us.
“He could be hostile at times, I’ll admit. His tongue was sharp, double-barbed. Gary had an air of superiority that ruffled some tail feathers.”
I kept at Walter Murphy, didn’t give him space to breathe. “But not when he was around you?” I asked. “He didn’t ruffle your feathers?”
The old man’s clear blue eyes returned from their trip into the woods. “No, we were always close. I know we were, even if the expensive shrinks say it wasn’t possible for Gary to feel love, to feel anything for anybody. I was never the target for any of his temper explosions.”
That was a fascinating revelation, but I sensed it was a lie. I glanced at Sampson. He was looking at me in a new way.
“These explosions at other people, were they ever premeditated?” I asked.
“Well, you know damn well he burned down his father and stepmother’s house. They were in it. So were his stepbrother and stepsister. He was supposed to be away at school. He was an honor student at the Peddie School in Hightstown. He was making friends there.”
“Did you ever meet any of the friends from Peddie?” The quicke
ning tempo of my questions made Walter Murphy uneasy. Did he have his grandson’s temper?
A spark flared in the old man’s eyes. Unmistakable anger was there now. Maybe the real Walter Murphy was appearing.
“No, he never brought his friends from school around here. I suppose you’re suggesting that he didn’t have friends, that he just wanted to seem more normal than he was. Is that your two-bit analysis? Are you a forensic psychologist, by the way? Is that your game?”
“Trains?” I said.
I wanted to see where Walter Murphy would go with it. This was important, a test, a moment of truth and reckoning.
C’mon, old man. Trains?
He looked off into the woods again, still serene and beautiful. “Mmm. I’d forgotten, hadn’t thought of the trains in a while. Fiona’s son, her real son, had an expensive set of Lionel trains. Gary wasn’t allowed to even be in the same room with them. When he was ten or eleven, the train set disappeared. The whole damn set, gone.”
“What happened to the train set?”
Walter Murphy almost smiled. “They all knew Gary had taken it. Destroyed it, or maybe buried it somewhere. They spent an entire summer questioning him as to the train set’s whereabouts, but he never told them squat. They grounded him for the summer and he still never told.”
“It was his secret, his power over them,” I said, offering a little more “two-bit analysis.”
I was beginning to feel certain disturbing things about Gary and his grandfather. I was starting to know Soneji and, maybe in the process, getting closer to whoever had attacked the Cross house in Washington. Quantico was researching possible copycat theories. I liked the partner angle—except for the fact that Soneji had never had one before.
Who had crept into Cross’s house? And how?
“I was reading some of Dr. Cross’s detective logs on the way here,” I told the grandfather. “Gary had a recurring nightmare. It took place here on your farm. Are you aware of it? Gary’s nightmare at your farm?”
Walter Murphy shook his head. He was blinking his eyes, twitching. He knew something.
“I’d like your permission to do something here,” I finally said. “I’ll need two shovels. Picks, if you have them.”
“And if I say no?” he raised his voice suddenly. It was the first time he’d been openly uncooperative.
And then it struck me. The old man is acting, too. That’s why he understood so much about Gary. He looks off into the trees to set his mind and gain control for the next few lines he has to deliver. The grandfather is an actor! Just not as good as Gary.
“Then we’ll get a search warrant,” I told him. “Make no mistake. We will do the search anyway.”
Chapter 86
“WHAT THE hell is this all about?” Sampson asked as we trudged from the ramshackle barn to a gray fieldstone fireplace that stood in an open clearing. “You think this is how we catch the Bug-Eyed Monster? Beating up on this old man?”
Both of us carried old metal shovels, and I had a rusted pickax also.
“I told you—data. I’m a scientist by training. Trust me for about half an hour. The old man is tougher than he looks.”
The stone fireplace had been built for family cookouts a long time ago, but apparently had not been used in recent years. Sumac and other vines were creeping over the fireplace, as if to make it disappear.
Just beyond the fireplace was a rotting, wooden-plank picnic table with splintered benches on either side. Pines, oaks, and sugar maples were everywhere.
“Gary had a recurring dream. That’s what brought me here. This is where the dream takes place. Near the fireplace and the picnic table at Grandpa Walter’s farm. It’s quite horrible. The dream comes up several times in the notes Alex made on Soneji when he was inside Lorton Prison.”
“Where Gary should have been cooked, until he was crispy on the outside, slightly pink toward the center,” Sampson said.
I laughed at his dark humor. It was the first light moment I’d had in a long time and it felt good to share it with someone.
I picked out a spot midway between the old fireplace and a towering oak tree that canted toward the farmhouse. I drove the pickax into the ground, drove it hard and deep. Gary Soneji. His aura, his profound evil. His paternal granddaddy. More data.
“In his bizarre dreams,” I told Sampson, “Gary committed a gruesome murder when he was a young boy. He may have buried the victim out here. He wasn’t sure himself. He felt he couldn’t separate dreams from reality sometimes. Let’s spend a little time searching for Soneji’s ancient burial ground. Maybe we’re about to enter Gary’s earliest nightmare.”
“Maybe I don’t want to enter Gary Soneji’s earliest nightmare,” Sampson said laughing again. The tension between us was definitely breaking some. This was better.
I lifted the pickax high and swung down with great force. I repeated the action again and again, until I found a smooth, comfortable, working rhythm.
Sampson looked surprised as he watched me handle the pick. “You’re done this kind of fieldwork before, boy,” he said, and began to dig at my side.
“Yes, I lived on a farm in El Toro, California. My father, his father, and my grandfather’s were all small-town doctors. But they continued to live on our family horse farm. I was supposed to go back there to set up practice, but then I never finished my medical training.”
The two of us were hard at work now. Good, honest work: looking for old bodies, searching for ghosts from Gary Soneji’s past. Trying to goad Grandfather Murphy.
We took off our shirts, and soon both of us were covered with sweat and dust.
“This was like a gentleman’s farm? Back in California? The one you lived on as a boy?”
I snorted out a laugh as I pictured the gentleman’s farm. “It was a very small farm. We had to struggle to keep it going. My family didn’t believe a doctor should get rich taking care of other people. ‘You shouldn’t take a profit from other people’s misery,’ my father said. He still believes that.”
“Huh. So your whole family’s weird?”
“That’s reasonably accurate portrait.”
Chapter 87
AS I continued to dig in Walter Murphy’s yard, I thought back to our farm in Southern California. I could still vividly see the large red barn and two small corrals.
When I lived there we owned six horses. Two were breeding stallions, Fadl and Rithsar. Every morning I took rake, pitchfork, and wheelbarrow, and I cleared the stalls; and then made my trip to the manure pile. I put down lime and straw, washed out and refilled the water buckets, made minor repairs. Every single morning of my youth. So yes, I knew how to handle a shovel and pickax.
It took Sampson and me half an hour before we had a shallow ditch stretching toward the ancient oak tree in the Murphy yard. The sprawling tree had been mentioned several times in Gary’s recounting of his dreams.
I had almost expected Walter Murphy to call the local police on us, but it didn’t happen. I half expected Soneji to suddenly appear. That didn’t happen either.
“Too bad old Gary didn’t just leave us a map.” Sampson grunted and groaned under the hot, beating sun.
“He was very specific about his dream. I think he wanted Alex to come out here. Alex, or somebody else.”
“Somebody else did. The two of us. Hot shit, there’s something down here. Something under my feet,” Sampson said.
I moved around toward his spot in the trench. The two of us continued to dig, picking up the pace. We worked side by side, sweating profusely. Data, I reminded myself. It’s all just data on the way to an answer. The beginning of a solution.
And then I recognized the fragments we had uncovered in the shallow grave, in Gary’s hiding place near the fireplace.
“Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it. Oh God, Jesus!” Sampson said.
“Animal bones. Looks like the skull and upper thigh bone of a medium-sized dog,” I said to Sampson.
“Lots of bones!” he added.
“Shit! Here we go again. You recognize this from any of your med-school anatomy classes?” Sampson asked.
We were looking down at fragments from a human skeleton. “It’s the scapula and mandible. It could be a young boy or girl,” I told him.
“So this is the handiwork of young Gary? This Gary’s first kill? Another kid?”
“I don’t know for sure. Let’s not forget about Grandpa Walter. Let’s keep looking. If it is Gary, maybe he left a sign. These would be his earliest souvenirs. They would have been precious to him.”
We kept on digging and, minutes later, we found another cache. Only the sound of our labored breathing broke the silence.
There were more bones, possibly from a large animal, possibly a deer, but probably human.
And there was something else, a definite sign from young Gary. It had been wrapped in tinfoil, which I now carefully removed.
It was a Lionel locomotive, undoubtedly the one he had stolen from his stepbrother.
The toy train that launched a hundred deaths.
Chapter 88
CHRISTINE JOHNSON knew she had to go to the Sojourner Truth School, but once she got there, she wasn’t sure she was ready for work yet. She was nervous, distracted, and not herself. Maybe school would help to get her mind off Alex, though.
She stopped at Laura Dixon’s first-grade class on her morning walk. Laura was one of her best friends in the world, and her classes were stimulating and fun. Besides, first graders were so damn cute to be around. “Laura’s babies,” she called them. Or, “Laura’s cuddly kittens and perky puppies.”
“Oh, look who it is, look who’s come to visit. Aren’t we the luckiest first-grade class in the whole world!” the teacher cried when she spotted Christine at the door.
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