Along Came a Spider

barn that the hunters had mentioned in their call to the station. “Let’s go for a look-see,” Marshall said, trying to match the younger officer’s enthusiasm.
    Chester Dils hopped out of the squad car. Artie Marshall followed, though not at the same sprightly pace. They approached a badly faded red barn, a low building that looked as if it had sunk a couple of feet into the ground since its heyday. The hunters had stopped at the barn to get out of the rainstorm earlier that afternoon. Then they had called the police.
    The barn was fairly dark and gloomy inside. The windows had been covered over with cheesecloth. Artie Marshall turned on his flashlight.
    “Let’s have a little light on the subject,” he muttered. Then, he bellowed, “
Bingo fucking Jesus
!”
    There it was, all right. A big sinkhole in the middle of the dirt floor. A dark blue van parked next to the hole.
    “Son-of-a-B, Artie!”
    Chester Dils pulled out his service revolver. Suddenly, he was having trouble getting his breath. He was having trouble just standing there. In all honesty, he did not want to go up to the big hole in the ground. He did not want to be inside the old barn anymore. Maybe he wasn’t ready for the troopers after all.
    “Who’s here?” Artie Marshall called out in a loud, clear voice. “Come out, right now. We’re the police! This is the Crisfield police.”
    Christ, Artie was doing better than he was, Dils thought. The man was rising to the occasion. That got Chester Dils’s feet and legs moving, anyway. He was heading farther inside the barn — to see if this was what he prayed to Almighty God it wasn’t.
    “Point that lamp right down in there,” he said to his partner in crime-solving. They had come up right alongside the hole in the ground. He could barely breathe now. His chest felt as if it were constricted by a tourniquet. His knees were knocking against each other.
    “You okay, Artie?” he asked his partner.
    Marshall beamed the flashlight down into the dark, deep hole. They saw what the hunters had already seen.
    There was a small box… almost a
casket
, in the sinkhole. The wooden case, or casket, was wide open. And it was empty.
    “What the hell is that thing?” Dils heard himself asking.
    Artie Marshall bent down closer. He aimed the flash-light beam directly into the hole. Instinctively, he looked around. He checked his back. Then his attention went to the black hole again.
    Something was down at the bottom of the hole. Something that looked bright pink, or red.
    Marshall’s mind was racing.
It’s a shoe… Christ, it must be the little girl’s. This must be where they kept Maggie Rose Dunne
.
    “This is where they kept those two kids,” he finally spoke to his partner. “We found it, Chesty.”
    And they had.
    Along with one of Maggie Rose’s pretty-in-pink sneakers. The old trusty-dusty Reebok sneakers that were supposed to help her blend in with the other kids at Washington Day School. The really weird part was that the sneaker looked as if it had been left there to be found.
----
Part Two
The Son of
Lindbergh
----

CHAPTER 26

    WHEN GARY WAS VERY UPSET, he retreated into his beloved boyhood stories and powerful fantasies. He was very upset now. His master plan seemed to be racing out of control. He didn’t even want to think about it.
    Speaking in a whisper, he repeated the magical words from memory: “
The Lindbergh farmhouse glowed with bright orangish lights. It looked like a fiery castle… But now, the taking of Maggie Rose is the Crime of the Century. It simply is
!”
    He’d had a fantasy about committing the Lindbergh kidnapping as a boy. Gary had even committed it to memory.
    That was the beginning of everything: a story he had made up when he was twelve years old. A story he told himself over and over to keep from going insane. A daydream about a crime committed twenty-five years before he was born.
    It was pitch-black in the basement of his house now. He had gotten used to the dark. It was livable. It could even be great.
    It was 6:15 P.M., a Wednesday, January 6, in Wilmington, Delaware.
    Gary was letting his mind wander now, letting his mind fly. He was able to visualize every intimate detail of Lucky Lindy and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s farmhouse in Hopewell. He’d been obsessed with the world-famous kidnapping for so long. Ever since his stepmother had arrived with her two spoiled bastard kids. Ever since he was first sent down to the cellar. “
Where bad boys