Along Came a Spider

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 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.
    Jezzie downshifted into third as she approached the lake cottage. All the lights were on. Otherwise, everything around the lake seemed at peace. The water was a sleek black table that seemed to merge with the mountains.
But the lights were on
. She hadn’t left them on.
    Jezzie got off the bike and quickly went inside. The front door was unlocked. No one was in the living room.
    “Hello?” she called out.
    Jezzie checked the kitchen, then both bedrooms. No one there. There, was no sign that anyone had been in either room. Except for the lights.
    “Hey, who’s here?”
    The kitchen screen door was unlatched. She walked outside and down toward the dock.
    Nothing.
    Nobody.
    The sudden burr of a wing beat sounded off to the left. Blurred wings flapped just over the surface of the water.
    Jezzie stood at the edge of the dock and let out a long sigh. The Billy Joel song still played in her head. Self-mocking and taunting. “Pressure. Pressure.” She could feel it in every inch of her body.
    Someone
grabbed
her. Extremely strong arms like a vise were around Jezzie. She held back a scream…
    Then something was being put into her mouth.
    Jezzie inhaled. She recognized Colombian Gold. Very good dope. She inhaled a second time. Relaxed a little in the strong arms that held her.
    “I’ve missed you,” she heard a voice say.
    Billy Joel screamed inside her head.
    “What are you doing here?” she finally asked.

----
Part Five
The Second
Investigation
----

CHAPTER 68

    MAGGIE ROSE DUNNE was in darkness again. She could see shapes all around her. She knew what they were, and where she was, even why she was there.
    She was thinking about escaping again. But the
warning
jumped into her head. Always the warning.
    If you try to escape, you won’t be killed, Maggie. That would be too easy. You’ll be put under the ground again. You’ll go back in your little grave. So don’t ever try to escape, Maggie Rose. Don’t even think about it
.
    She was starting to forget so much now. Sometimes she couldn’t even remember who she was. It all seemed like a bad dream, like lots of nightmares, one after the other.
    Maggie Rose wondered if her mother and father were still looking for her. Why would they be? It was so long ago that she’d been kidnapped. Maggie understood that. Mr. Soneji had taken her from the Day School. But then she never saw him again. There was only the
warning
.
    Sometimes, she felt as if she were only a story character she’d made up.
    Tears filled her eyes. It wasn’t so dark now. Morning was coming. She wouldn’t try to escape again. She hated this, but she never wanted to go under the ground again.
    Maggie Rose knew what all the shapes were.
    They were
children
.
    All in just one room of the house.
    From which there was no escape.

CHAPTER 69

    JEZZIE CAME BACK to Washington the week after the trial ended. It seemed like a good time for beginnings. I was ready. God Almighty, was I ready to move on with life.
    We’d talked over the phone some, but not too much, about her state of mind. Jezzie did tell me one thing. She said it was really bizarre that she had invested so much in her career, and now she didn’t care about it at all.
    I had missed Jezzie even more than I thought I could. My mind was on her while I investigated the murder of two thirteen-year-olds over a pair of Pump sneakers. Sampson and I caught the killer, a fifteen-year-old from “Black Hole.” That same week, I was offered a job in Washington as VICAP coordinator between the D.C. police department and the FBI. It was a bigger, higher-paying job than the one I had, but I turned it down flat. It was my buyout from Carl Monroe. No thanks.
    I couldn’t sleep at night. The storm that had begun inside my head the very first day of the kidnapping was still there. I couldn’t get Maggie Rose Dunne completely out of my head. I couldn’t give up on the case. I wouldn’t let myself. I watched anything and everything on ESPN, sometimes at three and four in the morning. I