Along Came a Spider

kept going back to the pronouncement over Gary Soneji’s bathroom mirror:
I want to be somebody
! He had probably wanted to take credit from the very beginning.
    “I had always planned to murder
both
children. I couldn’t wait. I have this love-hate thing with childhood, you know. Cut-off breasts and shaved genitals, so my adult victims are more like kiddies. Anyway, killing the little bunions would be the logical and safe conclusion of the whole affair.” Soneji smiled again. It was such a weird, inappropriate smile, as if he were confessing a white lie. “You’re still interested in why I really decided on the kidnapping, aren’t you? Why I chose Maggie Rosebud and her friend Shrimpie Goldberg?”
    He was using the nicknames to be provocative — and flip. He loved the “Bad Boy” act. He had revealed a very dark sense of humor over the months.
    “I’m interested in everything you have to say, Gary. Go right on.”
    “You know,” he said, “one time I figured out that I’ve killed over two hundred people. A lot of children, too. I do what I feel like. Whatever hits me at the moment.”
    The greasy, automatic little smile appeared again. He was no longer Gary Murphy. No longer the all-American-looking yuppie husband and father from Wilmington, Delaware. Had he been killing since he was a boy?
    “Is that true? Are you still trying to shock me?”
    He shrugged. “Why should I?… When I was a boy, I read volumes about the Lindbergh kidnapping case. Then, all the big crimes! I made copies of all the clippings I could find in the Princeton library. I’ve told you some of this, haven’t I? How I was fascinated, absolutely enthralled, obsessed with kidnapping children. Having them completely under my control… I wanted to torture them like helpless little birds. I practiced with a
friend
. You met him, I believe.
Simon Conklin
. Just a small-time psycho, Doctor. Not worth your time…
not
a partner.
Not
an accomplice. I especially like the idea that kidnapping gets
the parents
so upset. They will destroy other adults, but God forbid if someone takes one little child.
Unthinkable! Unspeakable crimes
! they shriek. What rubbish. What utter hypocrisy. Think about it. A million dark-skinned children die in Bangladesh, Dr. Cross. Nobody cares. Nobody rushes to save them.”
    “Why did you murder the black families in the projects?” I asked him. “What’s the connection?”
    “Who says there has to be a connection? Is that what you learned at Johns Hopkins? Maybe those were my good deeds. Who says I can’t have a social conscience, hmmm? There must be
balance
in every life. I believe that.
I Ching
. Think about those victims I chose. Hopeless drug users. A teenage girl who was already a prostitute. A small boy who was already doomed.”
    I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He was flying. “Do you have a warm spot for us?” I asked him. “I find that real moving.”
    He chose to ignore my irony. “Actually, I had a black friend once, yes. A maid. Woman who took care of me, if you must know, while my father was divorcing my real mother. Laura Douglas was her nameo-nameo. She went back to Detroit, though, deserted me. Big fat lady, with a howling laugh
I adored
. After she left for Motown was when Mommy Terror started locking troublesome, hyperkinetic me in the basement.
    “You’re looking at the original latch-key kid. Meantime, my stepbrother and stepsister were upstairs
in my father’s house
! They were playing with
my
toys. They used to taunt me down through the floorboards. I was locked in the basement for weeks at a time. That’s the way I recall it. Are little light bulbs and warning bells going off in your head, Dr. Cross? Tortured boy in the cellar. Pampered children buried in a barn. Such nice, neat parallels. All the pieces starting to fit? Is our boy Gary telling the truth now?”
    “
Are
you telling the truth?” I asked him again. I thought that he was. It all fit.
    “Oh, yes. Scout’s honor… The murders in Southeast D.C. Actually, I rather liked the concept of being the first celebrated serial killer of blacks. I don’t count the clod in Atlanta, if indeed they have the right man down there. Wayne Williams was an amateur all the way. What’s with all these serial killer
Waynes
, anyway? Wayne Williams. John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Patrick Wayne Hearney, who dismembered thirty-two human beans on the West Coast.”
    “You
didn’t
murder Michael Goldberg?” I went back to