Along Came a Spider

wind up as the big star. Slow start, but a hell of a finish for me.”
    Soneji/Murphy started to laugh. His laughter went on for a while. Was he manic? Depressive?
    “You finally got me figured out?” he shouted at me. “
Have
you? Do you know who I am now? Do you know what I want?”
    “I doubt it. I know that you’re hurt. I know you think you’re dying. Otherwise” — I stopped to make this sound as dramatic as it would be to him — “otherwise,
you wouldn’t have let us catch you again
.”
    Directly across Pennsylvania Avenue, Soneji/Murphy stood up behind the bright red Jeep. Both children lay on the sidewalk behind him. Neither seemed to be hurt so far.
    Gary took a theatrical bow in my direction. He looked like the all-American boy, just as he did in court.
    I was walking toward him now. Getting closer and closer.
    “Nice touch,” he called to me. “Well said. But
I’m
the star.” He suddenly shifted his gun in my direction.
    A shot rang out behind me.
    Gary Soneji/Murphy flew back in the direction of the shoe-repair shop. He landed on the sidewalk, then rolled over. Both young hostages started to scream. They scrambled up and ran away.
    I sprinted as fast as I could across Pennsylvania Avenue. “Don’t shoot!” I yelled. “Hold your fire.”
    I turned and saw Sampson standing there. His service revolver was still aimed at Gary Murphy. He turned the revolver up toward the sky. He kept his eyes on me. He’d finished it for both of us.
    Gary lay in a crumpled heap on the sidewalk. A stream of bright red blood flowed steadily from his head and mouth. He wasn’t moving. The automatic rifle was still clutched in his hand.
    I reached out and took the gun away first. I heard cameras clicking away behind us. I touched his shoulder. “Gary?”
    Very carefully, I turned the body over. There was still no movement. No sign of life. He looked like the all-American boy again. He’d come to this party as himself, as Gary Murphy.
    As I looked down, Gary’s eyes suddenly opened and rolled back. He looked straight up at me. His lips parted slowly.
    “Help me,” he finally whispered in a soft, choked voice. “Help me, Dr. Cross. Please help me.”
    I knelt down close beside him. “Who are you?” I asked him.
    “I’m Gary… Gary Murphy,” he said.
    Checkmate
.

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Epilogue
Frontier Justice
(1994)
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    WHEN THE FATEFUL DAY finally arrived, I couldn’t sleep, not even a couple of hours. I couldn’t play the piano out on our porch. I didn’t want to see anyone to talk about what was going to happen in just a few hours. I slipped in and kissed Damon and Jannie while they slept. Then I left the house around two in the morning.
    I arrived at Lorton Federal Prison at three. The marchers were back, carrying their homemade placards under a moonlit sky. Some were singing protest songs from the 1960s. Many prayed. There were several nuns, priests, ministers. A majority of the protesters were women, I noticed.
    The execution chamber at Lorton was a small, ordinary room with three windows. One window was reserved for the press. One was for official observers from the state. The third window was reserved for friends and family of the prisoner.
    There were dark blue curtains over each of the three windows. At three-thirty in the morning, a prison official opened them one by one. The prisoner was finally revealed, strapped down on a hospital gurney. The gurney had a makeshift extension panel for the left arm.
    Jezzie had been staring up at the room’s ceiling, but she became alert and seemed to tense as two technicians walked to the gurney. One of them carried the needle on a stainless-steel hospital tray. The insertion of the catheter needle was the only physical pain involved if the execution by lethal injection was done correctly.
    I had been coming out to Lorton to visit both Jezzie and Gary Murphy for several months. I was on leave from the D.C. police force, and although I was writing this book, I had plenty of time for visits.
    Gary appeared to be coming apart. It was in all his workup reports. He spent most days lost in his complex fantasy world. It became harder and harder to coax him back to the real one.
    Or so it appeared. And that saved him another trial, that saved him from the possibility of death row. I was certain that he was playing games, but nobody wanted to listen. I was sure he was making up another plan.
    Jezzie had agreed to talk to me. We had always been able to talk. She