Also by James Patterson:
Available in eBook*
The Thomas Berryman Number
Season of the Machete
See How They Run
The Midnight Club
Along Came a Spider*
Kiss the Girls*
Hide & Seek
Jack & Jill*
Miracle on the 17th Green
(with Peter de Jonge)
Cat & Mouse*
When the Wind Blows*
Pop Goes the Weasel*
Black Friday
Cradle and All
Roses Are Red*
1st to Die*
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas*
Violets Are Blue*
2nd Chance*
The Beach House
The Jester*
The Lake House*
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by James Patterson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
First eBook Edition: February 2003
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2781-2
For Suzie and Diamond Jack
Contents
Copyright
Also by James Patterson
Prologue: Catch a Spider
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part One: Train Station Murders
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part Two: Monster Hunt
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Part Three: The Cellar of Cellars
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Part Four Thomas Pierce
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Part Five: Cat & Mouse
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Epilogue
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Prologue
Catch a Spider
Chapter 1
Washington, D.C.
THE CROSS house was twenty paces away and the proximity and sight of it made Gary Soneji’s skin prickle. It was Victorian-style, white shingled, and extremely well kept. As Soneji stared across Fifth Street, he slowly bared his teeth in a sneer that could have passed for a smile. This was perfect. He had come here to murder Alex Cross and his family.
His eyes moved slowly from window to window, taking in everything from the crisp, white lace curtains to Cross’s old piano on the sunporch, to a Batman and Robin kite stuck in the rain gutter of the roof. Damon’s kite, he thought.
On two occasions he caught sight of Cross’s elderly grandmother as she shuffled past one of the downstairs windows. Nana Mama’s long, purposeless life would soon be at an end. That made him feel so much better. Enjoy every moment—stop and smell the roses, Soneji reminded himself. Taste the roses, eat Alex Cross’s roses—flowers, stems, and thorns.
He finally moved across Fifth Street, being careful to stay in the shadows. Then he disappeared into the thick yews and forsythia bushes that ran like sentries alongside the front of the house.
He carefully made his way to a whitewashed cellar door, which was to one side of the porch, just off the kitchen. It had a Master padlock, but he had the door open in seconds.
He was inside the Cross house!
He was in the cellar: The cellar was a clue for those who collected them. The cellar was worth a thousand words. A thousand forensic pictures, too.
It was important to everything that would happen in the very near future. The Cross murders!
There were no large windows, but Soneji decided not to take any chances by turning on the lights. He used a Maglite flashlight. Just to look around, to learn a few more things about Cross and his family, to fuel his hatred, if that was possible.
The cellar was cleanly swept, as he had expected it would be. Cross’s tools were haphazardly arranged on a pegged Masonite board. A stained Georgetown ball cap was hung on a hook. Soneji put it on his own head. He couldn’t resist.
He ran his hands over folded laundry laid out on a long wooden table. He felt close to the doomed family now. He despised them more than ever. He felt around the hammocks of the old woman’s bra. He touched the boy’s small Jockey underwear. He
felt like a total creep, and he loved it.
Soneji picked up a small red reindeer sweater. It would fit Cross’s little girl, Jannie. He held it to his face and tried to smell the girl. He anticipated Jannie’s murder and only wished that Cross would get to see it, too.
He saw a pair of Everlast gloves and black Pony shoes tied around a hook next to a weathered old punching bag. They belonged to Cross’s son, Damon, who must be nine years old now. Gary Soneji thought he would punch out the boy’s heart.
Finally, he turned off the flashlight and sat all alone in the dark. Once upon a time, he had been a famous kidnapper and murderer. It was going to happen again. He was coming back with a vengeance that would blow everybody’s mind.
He folded his hands in his lap and sighed. He had spun his web perfectly.
Alex Cross would soon be dead, and so would everyone he loved.
Chapter 2
London
THE KILLER who was currently terrorizing Europe was named Mr. Smith, no first name. It was given to him by the Boston press, and then the police had obligingly picked it up all over the world. He accepted the name, as children accept the name given by their parents, no matter how gross or disturbing or pedestrian the name might be.
Mr. Smith—so be it.
Actually, he had a thing about names. He was obsessive about them. The names of his victims were burned into his mind and also into his heart.
First and foremost, there was Isabella Calais. Then came Stephanie Michaela Apt, Ursula Davies, Robert Michael Neel, and so many others.
He could recite the complete names backward and forward, as if they had been memorized for a history quiz or a bizarre round of Trivial Pursuit. That was the ticket—this case was trivial pursuit, wasn’t it?
So far, no one seemed to understand, no one got it. Not the fabled FBI. Not the storied Interpol, not Scotland Yard or any of the local police forces in the cities where he had committed murders.
No one understood the secret patten of the victims, starting with Isabella Calais in Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 22, 1993, and continuing today in London.
The victim of the moment was Drew Cabot. He was a chief inspector—of all the hopelessly inane things to do with your life. He was “hot” in London, having recently apprehended an IRA killer. His murder would electrify the town, drive everyone mad. Civilized and sophisticated London loved a gory murder as well as the next burg.
This afternoon Mr. Smith was operating in the tony, fashionable Knightsbridge section. He was there to study the human race—at least that was the way the newspapers described it. The press in London and across Europe also called him by another name—Alien. The prevailing theory was that Mr. Smith was an extraterrestrial. No human could do the things that he did. Or so they said.
Mr. Smith had to bend low to talk into Drew Cabot’s ear, to be more intimate with his prey. He played music while he worked— all kinds of music. Today’s selection was the overture to Don Giovanni. Opera buffa felt right to him.
Opera felt right for this live autopsy.
“Ten minutes or so after your death,” Mr. Smith said, “flies will already have picked up the scent of gas accompanying the decomposition of your tissue. Green flies will lay the tiniest eggs within the orifices of your body. Ironically, the language reminds me of Dr. Seuss—‘green flies and ham.’ What could that mean? I don’t know. It’s a curious association, though.”
Drew Cabot had lost a lot of blood, but he wasn’t giving up. He was a tall, rugged man with silver-blond hair. A never-say-never sort of chap. The inspector shook his head back and forth until Smith finally removed his gag.
“What it is, Drew?” he asked. “Speak.”
“I have a wife and two children. Why are you doing this to me? Why me?” he whispered.
“Oh, let’s say because you’re Drew. Keep it simple and unsentimental. You, Drew, are a piece of the puzzle.”
He tugged the inspector’s gag back into place. No more chitchat from Drew.
Mr. Smith continued with his observations as he made his next surgical cuts and Don Giovanni played on.
“Near the time of death, breathing will become strained, intermittent. It’s exactly what you’re feeling now, as if each breath could be your last. Cessation will occur within two or three minutes,” whispered Mr. Smith, whispered the dreaded Alien. “Your life will end. May I be the first to congratulate you. I sincerely mean that, Drew. Believe it or not, I envy you. I wish I were Drew.”
Part One
Train Station Murders
Chapter 3
“I AM the great Cornholio! Are you challenging me? I am Cornholio!” the kids chorused and giggled. Beavis and Butt-head strike again—in my neighborhood.
I bit my lip and decided to let it go. Why fight it? Why fan the fires of preadolescence?
Damon, Jannie, and I were crowded into the front seat of my old black Porsche. We needed to buy a new car, but none of us wanted to part with the Porsche. We were schooled in tradition, in the classics. We loved the old car, which we had named “The Sardine Can” and “Old Paintless.”
Actually, I was preoccupied at twenty to eight in the morning. Not a good way to start the day.
The night before, a thirteen-year-old girl from Ballou High School had been found in the Anacostia River. She had been shot, and then drowned. The gunshot had been to her mouth. What the coroners call a “hole in one.”
A bizarre statistic was creating havoc with my stomach and central nervous system. There were now more than a hundred unsolved murders of young, inner-city women committed in just the past three years. No one had called for a major investigation. No one in power seemed to care about dead black and Hispanic girls.
As we drove up in front of the Sojourner Truth School, I saw Christine Johnson welcoming kids and their parents as they arrived, reminding everyone that this was a community with good, caring people. She was certainly one of them.
I remembered the very first time we met. It was the previous fall and the circumstances couldn’t have been any worse for either of us.
We had been thrown together—smashed together someone said to me once—at the homicide scene of a sweet baby girl named Shanelle Green. Christine was the principal of the school that Shanelle attended, and where I was now delivering my own kids. Jannie was new to the Truth School this semester. Damon was a grizzled veteran, a fourth grader.
“What are you mischief makers gawking at?” I turned to the kids, who were looking back and forth from my face to Christine’s as if they were watching a championship tennis match.
“We’re gawking at you, Daddy, and you’re gawking at Christine!” Jannie said and laughed like the wicked child-witch of the North that she can be sometimes.
“She’s Mrs. Johnson to you,” I said as I gave Jannie my best squinting evil eye.
Jannie shrugged off my baleful look and frowned at me as only she can. “I know that, Daddy. She’s the principal of my school. I know exactly who she is.”
My daughter already understood many of life’s important connections and mysteries. I was hoping that maybe someday she would explain them to me.
“Damon, do you have a point of view we should hear?” I asked. “Anything you’d like to add? Care to share some good fellowship and wit with us this morning?”
My son shook his head no, but he was smiling, too. He liked Christine Johnson just fine. Everybody did. Even Nana Mama approved, which is unheard of, and actually worried me some. Nana and I never seemed to agree about anything, and it’s getting worse with age.
The kids were already climbing out of the car, and Jannie gave me a kiss good-bye. Christine waved and walked over.
“What a fine, upstanding father you are,” she said. Her brown eyes twinkled. “You’re going to make some lady in the neighborhood very happy one of these days. Very good with children, reasonably handsome, driving a classy sports car. My, my, my.”
“My, my, back at you,” I said. To top everything off, it was a be
autiful morning in the early June. Shimmering blue skies, temperature in the low seventies, the air crisp and relatively clean. Christine was wearing a soft beige suit with a blue shirt, and beige flat-heeled shoes. Be still my heart.
A smile slid across my face. There was no way to stop it, to hold it back, and besides I didn’t want to. It fit with the fine day I was starting to have.
“I hope you’re not teaching my kids that kind of cynicism and irony inside that fancy school of yours.”
“Of course I am, and so are all my teachers. We speak Educanto with the best of them. We’re trained in cynicism, and we’re all experts in irony. More important, we’re excellent skeptics. I have to get inside now, so we don’t miss a precious moment of indoctrination time.”
“It’s too late for Damon and Jannie. I’ve already programmed them. A child is fed with milk and praise. They have the sunniest dispositions in the neighborhood, probably in all of Southeast, maybe in the entire city of Washington.”
“Oh we’ve noticed that, and we accept the challenge. Got to run. Young minds to shape and change.”
“I’ll see you tonight?” I said as Christine was about to turn away and head toward the Sojourner Truth School.
“Handsome as sin, driving a nice Porsche, of course you’ll see me tonight,” she said. Then she turned away and headed toward the school.
We were about to have our first “official” date that night. Her husband, George, had died the previous winter, and now Christine felt she was ready to have dinner with me. I hadn’t pushed her in any way, but I couldn’t wait. Half a dozen years after the death of my wife, Maria, I felt as if I were coming out of a deep rut, maybe even a clinical depression. Life was looking as good as it had in a long, long time.