James Patterson - Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross)

Along Came A Spider

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES PAST TEN, well within range he'd set during his dry runs from Washington, Gary Soneji turned his van onto an unmarked drive. The side road was badly potholed and densely overgrown with weeds. A blackberry bramble was on either shoulder.

Less than fifty yards in from the main highway, he couldn't see anything but the dirt road and a mess of overhanging bushes. No one could see his van from the highway.

The van bumped along past a ramshackle, faded white farmhouse. The building looked as if it were shrinking, collapsing right back into its foundation. No more than forty yards past the house was what remained of an equally run-down storage barn.

Soneji drove the van inside. He'd done it; he'd pulled it off.

A black 1985 Saab was parked in the barn. Unlike

55 the rest of the deserted farm, the barn had a lived-in feel.

It had a dirt floor. Cheesecloth was taped over three broken windows in the hayloft. There were no rusting tractors or other farm machinery. The barn had the smell I of damp earth and gasoline.

Gary Soneji pulled two Cokes from a cooler on the passenger seat. He polished off both sodas, letting out a satisfied belch after downing the second cold one.

Either of you guys want a Coke? he called out to the drugged, comatose children. No? Okay then, but you're going to be real thirsty soon.

There were no sure things in life, he was thinking, but he couldn't imagine how any policeman could get him now. Was it foolish and dangerous to be this confident? he wondered. Not really, because he was also being realistic. There was no way to trace him now. There wasn't a single clue for them to follow.

He had been planning to kidnap somebody famous since-well, since forever. Who that someone was had changed, and changed again, but never the clear, main objective in his mind. He'd been working at Washington Day School for months. This moment, right now, proved it had been worth every sucky minute.

Mr. Chips. He thought of his nickname at the school. Mr. Chips! What a lovely, lovely bit of playacting he'd done. Real Academy Award stuff. As good as anything he'd seen since Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy. And that performance was a classic. De Niro himself had to be a psychopath in real life.

Gary Soneji finally pulled open the van's sliding door. Back to work, work, work his fingers to the bone.

One body at a time, he hauled the children out into the barn. First came Maggie Rose Dunne. Then little boy Goldberg. He laid the unconscious boy and girl beside each other on the dirt floor. He undressed each child, leaving them in their underwear. He carefully prepared doses of secobarbital sodium. Just your friendly local pharmacist hard at work. The dose was somewhere between a sleeping pill and a hospital anesthetic. It would last for about twelve hours.

He took out preloaded one-shot needles called Tubex. This was a closed injection system that came prepackaged, complete with dose and needle. He set out two tourniquets. He had to be very careful. The exact dosage could be tricky with small children.

Next, he pulled the black Saab forward about two yards. This move exposed a five-by-four-foot plot in the floor of the barn.

He'd dug the hole during several previous visits to the deserted farm. Inside the open cavity was a homemade wooden compartment, a kind of shelter. It had its own oxygen tank supply. Everything but a color TV for watching reruns. He placed the Goldberg boy inside the wooden compartment first. Michael Goldberg weighed next to nothing in his arms, which was exactly what he felt about him. Nothing. Then came the little princess, the little pride and joy, Maggie Rose Dunne. All the way from La-la-land originally.

He slid the Tubex needles into each child's arm. He was extra careful to give each dose slowly, over a three minute period.

The doses were measured by weight,.25 milligrams kilogram of body weight. He checked the breathing each child. Sleep tight, my multimillion-dollar babies.

Gary Soneji shut the trapdoor with a bang. Then he buried the wooden compartment under half a foot of fresh soil. Inside the deserted storage barn. In the middle of God forsaken Maryland farm country. Just like little 9 Charlie Lindbergh, Jr., had been buried sixty years before.

No one would find them out here. Not until he wanted them found. If he wanted them found. Big if.

Gary Soneji trudged back up the dirt road to what remained of the ancient farmhouse. He wanted to wash up. He also wanted to start to enjoy this a little. He'd even brought a Watchman to see himself on TV.

NEWS BULLETINS were flashing on the television screen every fifteen minutes or so. Gary Soneji was right there on the high and mighty tube. He saw photographs of Mr. Chips on every news bulletin. The news reports didn't offer a clue about what was really going on, though.

So this was fame! This was how fame felt. He liked it a lot. This was what he'd been practicing for all these years. Hi, Mom! Look who's on TV. It's the Bad Boy!

There was only one glitch all afternoon, and that was the press conference given by the FBI. An agent named Roger Graham had spoken, and Agent Graham obviously thought he was hot shit, He wanted some fame for himself. You think this is your movie, Graham? Wrong, baby! Gary Soneji shouted at the TV. I'm the only star here!

Soneji had been prowling around inside the farmhouse for several hours, watching the night slowly fall inside. He felt the different textures of darkness as they ted the farm. It was now seven o'clock and time to get on with his plan.

Let's do it. He pranced around the farmhouse like a prizefighter before a bout. Let's get it on.

For a while, he thought about Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, his all-time favorite couple. That calmed him some. He thought about Baby Charles; and about that poor fool, Bruno Hauptmann, who had obviously been framed for the brilliantly conceived and executed crime. He was convinced that the Lindbergh affair was the century's most elegant crime, not just because it remained unsolved-many, many crimes went unsolved-but because it was important and unsolved.

Soneji was confident, realistic, and, most of all, pragmatic about his own masterpiece. A fluke was always possible. A lucky accident by the police could occur. The actual exchange of money would be tricky. It meant contact, and contact was always highly dangerous in life.

To his knowledge, and his knowledge was encyclopedic, no modern kidnapper had satisfactorily solved the ransom-exchange problem. Not if they wanted to be paid for their labors, and he needed a huge payday for his multimillion-dollar kids.

Wait until they hear how much money.

The thought brought a smile to his lips. Of course, the world-beater Dunnes and the all-powerful Goldbergs could, and would, pay. It was no accident he had chosen those two families-with their pampered little snot nosed brats, and their unlimited supply of wealth and power.

Soneji lit one of the white candles he kept in a side pocket of his jacket. He sniffed a pleasant whiff of beeswax. Then he made his way to the small bathroom off the kitchen.

He was remembering an old Chambers Brothers song, 'Time." It was time... time... time to pull the rug out from under everybody's feet. Time... time... time for his first little surprise, the first of many. Time... time... time to start to build his own legend. This was his movie.

The room, the whole house, was freezing cold in late December. Gary Soneji could see his breath wisping out as he set up shop in the bathroom.

Fortunately, the abandoned house had well water, which was still running in the bathroom. Very cold water indeed. Gary Soneji lit some candles, and began to work. It would take him a full half-hour before he was through.