Along Came a Spider

to be way better than this. I need to be challenged by the best and the brightest.”
    Soneji bent low and slid a single index card into the breast pocket of Agent Graham’s white shirt. He patted the dead man’s chest. “Now, would a
New York Times
reporter really be here at one in the morning, you arrogant fuck? Just to talk to your sorry ass?”
    Then Soneji drove away from the murder scene. The death of Agent Graham wasn’t a big deal to him. Not really. He’d killed over two hundred people before this one. Practice makes perfect. It wouldn’t be the last time, either.
    This one would wake everybody up, though. He just hoped they had somebody better waiting in the wings.
    Otherwise, where was the fun? The challenge? How could this get bigger than the Lindbergh kidnapping?

CHAPTER 12

    I WAS ALREADY BECOMING emotionally involved with the kidnapped children. My sleep was restless and agitated that first night. In my dreams, I replayed several bad scenes at the school. I saw Mustaf Sanders again and again. His sad eyes stared out at me, asking for help, getting none from me.

    I woke to find both my kids in bed with me. At some time during the early morning, they must have snuck aboard. It’s one of their favorite tricks, their little jokes on “Big Daddy.”

    Damon and Janelle were fast asleep on top of a patchwork quilt. I’d been too wasted to pull it off the bed the night before. We must have looked like two resting angels — and a fallen plowhorse.
    Damon is a beautiful little boy of six who always reminds me of how special his mother was. He has Maria’s eyes. Jannie is the other apple of my eye. She’s four, going on fifteen. She likes to call me “Big Daddy,” which sounds like some black slang she’s managed to invent. Maybe she knew the football star “Big Daddy” Lipscomb in some other life.
    Also on the bed was a copy of William Styron’s book on his depression,
Darkness Visible
, which I’d been reading. I was hoping it might give me some clue to help me get over my own depression — which had plagued me ever since Maria’s murder. Three years now, felt like twenty.
    What actually woke me that morning were headlights fanning across the window blinds. I heard a car door bang and the fast crunch of feet on gravel in the driveway. Careful not to wake the kids, I slipped over to the bedroom window.
    I peered down on two Metro D.C. patrol cars parked behind the old Porsche in our drive. It looked miserably cold outside. We were just entering the deepest hollow of D.C.’s winter.
    “Give me a break,” I mumbled into the chilly window blinds. “Go away.”
    Sampson was heading for the back door to our kitchen. It was twenty to five on the clock next to the bed. Time to go to work.

    Just before five that morning, Sampson and I pulled up in front of a crumbling prewar brownstone in Georgetown, a block west of M Street. We had decided to check out Soneji’s apartment ourselves. The only way to get stuff done right is to do it yourself.
    “Lights are all on. Looks like somebody’s home,” Sampson said as we climbed out of the car. “Now who could it be?”
    “Three guesses. The first two don’t count,” I mumbled. I was suffering from early-morning queasiness. A visit to the monster’s den wasn’t going to help.
    “The FBI. Maybe Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., is up there,” Sampson guessed. “Maybe they’re filming
Real Stories from the FBI
.”
    “Let’s go see.”
    We entered the building and took the narrow winding stairway up. On the second floor, yellow crime-scene tape had been placed in a crisscross pattern across the doorway to Soneji’s apartment. It didn’t look like the place where a “Mr. Chips” would live. More like a Richard Ramirez or a Green River killer.
    The scarred wooden door was open. I could see two FBI techies working inside. A local deejay called The Greaseman was screeching from a radio on the floor.
    “Hey, Pete, what’s doin’?” I called inside. I knew one of the FBI techies on the job, Pete Schweitzer. He looked up at the sound of my voice.
    “Well, look who’s here. Welcome to the Inner Sanctum.”
    “We came over to bother you. See how it’s done,” Sampson said. We’d both worked with Pete Schweitzer before, liked and trusted him as much as you could any FBI personnel.
    “Come in and make yourselves at home at Casa Soneji. This is my fellow flyshit finder and bagger, Todd Toohey. Todd likes to listen to The Greaseman in the A.M.