Along Came a Spider

These two are ghouls like us, Toddie.”
    “The best,” I told Todd Toohey. I had already started to nose around the apartment. Everything was feeling unreal again. There was this cold, damp spot inside my head. Eerie-time.
    The small studio apartment was a mess. There wasn’t much furniture — a bare mattress on the floor, an end table and lamp, a sofa that looked as if it had been picked up off the street — but the floor was covered with things.
    Wrinkled sheets and towels and underwear were a large part of the general chaos. Two or three loads of laundry were spilled out on the floor. Most of the clutter was books and magazines, though. Several hundred books, and at least that many magazines, were piled in the single small room.
    “Anything interesting so far?” I asked Schweitzer. “You look through his library?”
    Schweitzer talked to me without looking up from a pile of books he was dusting. “Everything is interesting. Check out the books along the wall. Also, consider the fact that our fine-feathered friend
wiped down this whole fucking apartment
before he split.”
    “He do a good job? Up to your standards?”
    “Excellent job. I couldn’t have done much better myself. We haven’t found a partial print anywhere. Not even on any of those goddamn books.”
    “Maybe he reads with plastic gloves on,” I offered.
    “I think he might. I shit you not. Place was dusted by a pro, Alex.”
    I was crouched near several stacks of the books now. I read the titles on several of the spines. Most of it was nonfiction from the last five years or so.
    “True-crime fan,” I said.
    “Lots and lots of kidnapping stories,” Schweitzer said. He looked up and pointed. “Right side of the bed, near the reading lamp. That’s the kidnapping section.”
    I walked over and looked at the volumes. Most of the books had been stolen from the library at Georgetown. I figured he must have had an I.D. to get into the stacks there. Was he a past student? Maybe a professor?
    Several computer printouts were taped to the bare wall over his private library on kidnapping. I started to read down the lists.
    Aldo Moro. Kidnapped in Rome. Five bodyguards killed during abduction. Moro’s body found in a parked car
.
    Jack Teich, released after payment of $750,000
.
    J. Reginald Murphy, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, released after payment of $700,000
.
    J. Paul Getty 3rd, released in southern Italy after $2.8 million ransom paid
.
    Mrs. Virginia Piper of Minneapolis, released after her husband paid $1,000,000.
    Victor E. Samuelson, released in Argentina after payment of $14.2 million ransom
.
    I whistled as I spotted the amounts on his list. What was he going to ask for Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg?
    It was a really small place, and there hadn’t been much room for Soneji to wipe off fingerprints. Still, Schweitzer said he hadn’t left anything. I wondered if Soneji could have been a cop. That was one way to plan a crime, and maybe improve your chances of getting away with it.
    “Come in here for a minute.” Sampson was in the bathroom that was off to one side of the tiny studio.
    The walls were papered with photos from magazines, newspapers, record albums, book jackets.
    He’d left a final surprise for us. There were no fingerprints, but he had scrawled a message.
    Just over the mirror was a typeset headline:
I WANT TO BE SOMEBODY
!
    Up on the walls was an exhibition. I saw River Phoenix. And Matt Dillon. There were photos from Helmut Newton books. I recognized Lennon’s murderer, Mark David Chapman. And Axl Rose. Pete Rose was up on the wall, too. And Neon Deion Sanders. Wayne Williams was there. And newspaper stories. The Happy Land Social Club fire in New York City. A
New York Times
story of the Lindbergh kidnapping. A story about the kidnapping of Samuel Bronfman, the Seagram’s heir, and a story about the missing child Etan Patz.
    I thought about Soneji the kidnapper, all alone in his desolate apartment. He had carefully wiped every inch of space for fingerprints. The room itself was so small, so monkish.
He was a reader, or at least liked to have books around. Then there was his photo gallery. What did it tell us? Leads? Misdirections
?
    I stood in front of the mirror that was over the sink and stared into it as I knew he had many, many times. What was I supposed to see? What had Gary Soneji seen?
    “This was
his
picture on the wall — the face in this mirror,” I offered a theory to Sampson.