Along Came a Spider

I couldn’t blame him.
    “Uh. No. No sign of forced entry. It was unlocked, sir.”
    The patrolman was very nervous. “It’s a real bad mess in there, sir. It’s a family.”
    One of the patrolmen switched on a powerful milled-aluminum flashlight and we all peered inside the kitchen.
    There was a cheap Formica breakfast table with matching lime green vinyl chairs. A black Bart Simpson clock was on one wall. It was the kind you see in the front windows of all the People’s drugstores. The smells of Lysol and burnt grease melded into something strange to the nose, though not entirely unpleasant. There were a lot worse smells in homicide cases.
    Sampson and I hesitated, taking it all in the way the murderer might have just a few hours earlier.
    “He was right here,” I said. “He came in through the kitchen. He was here, where we’re standing.”
    “Don’t talk like that, Alex,” Sampson said. “Sound like Jeane Dixon. Creep me out.”
    No matter how many times you do this kind of thing, it never gets easier. You don’t want to have to go inside. You don’t want to see any more horrible nightmares in your lifetime.
    “They’re upstairs,” the cop with the mustache said. He filled us in on who the victims were. A family named Sanders. Two women and a small boy.
    His partner, a short, well-built black man, hadn’t said a word yet. His name was Butchie Dykes. He was a sensitive young cop I’d seen around the station.
    The four of us entered the death house together. We each took a deep breath. Sampson patted my shoulder. He knew that child homicide had me shook.
    The three bodies were upstairs in the front bedroom, just off the top of the stairs.
    There was the mother, Jean “Poo” Sanders, thirty-two. Even in death, her face was haunting. She had big brown eyes, high cheekbones, full lips that had already turned purplish. Her mouth was stretched open in a scream.
    Poo’s daughter, Suzette Sanders, fourteen years on this earth. She was just a young girl but had been prettier than her mother. She wore a mauve ribbon in her braided hair and a tiny nose earring to prove she was older than her years. Suzette was gagged with dark blue panty hose.
    A baby son, Mustaf Sanders, three years old, was lying faceup, and his little cheeks seemed stained with tears. He was wearing a “pajama bag” like my own kids wear.
    Just as Nana Mama had said, it was a bad part of what somebody had let become a bad city. In this big bad country of ours. The mother and the daughter were bound to an imitation brass bedpost. Satin underwear, black and red mesh stockings, and flowery bed sheets had been used to tie them up.
    I took out the pocket recorder I carry and began to put down my first observations. “Homicide cases H234 914 through 916. A mother, teenage daughter, little boy. The women have been slashed with something extremely sharp. A straight razor, possibly.
    “Their breasts have been cut off. The breasts are nowhere to be found. The pubic hair of the women has been shaved. There are multiple stab wounds, what the pathologists call ’patterns of rage.’ There is a great deal of blood, fecal matter. I believe the two women, both the mother and daughter, were prostitutes. I’ve seen them around.”
    My voice was a low drone. I wondered if I’d be able to understand all the words later.
    “The little boy’s body seems to have been casually tossed aside. Mustaf Sanders has on hand-me-down pajamas that are covered with Care Bears. He is a tiny, incidental pile in the room.” I couldn’t help grieving as I looked down at the little boy, his sad, lifeless eyes staring up at me. Everything was very noisy inside my head. My heart ached. Poor little Mustaf, whoever you were.
    “I don’t believe he wanted to kill the boy,” I said to Sampson. “He or she.”
    “Or
it
.” Sampson shook his head. “I vote for
it
. It’s a
Thing
, Alex. The same
Thing
that did Condon Terrace earlier this week.”

CHAPTER 3

    SINCE SHE HAD BEEN THREE OR FOUR years old, Maggie Rose Dunne was always
watched
by people. At nine, she was used to special attention, to strangers gawking at her as if she was Maggie Scissorhands, or Girl Frankenstein.
    That morning she was being watched, but she didn’t know it. This one time, Maggie Rose would have cared. This one time, it mattered very much.
    Maggie Rose was at Washington Day School in Georgetown, where she was trying to blend in with the other hundred and thirty students. At that