Along Came a Spider

forever. The darkness was a tiny room like a closet. She—
    Suddenly, Maggie Rose heard voices outside. She couldn’t hear well enough to understand what was being said, but there were definitely voices. The old woman? Must be. Maggie Rose wanted to call out, but she was frightened of the old woman. Her awful screaming, her threats, her scratchy voice that was worse than horror movies her mother didn’t even like her to watch. Worse than Freddy Krueger by miles.
    The voices stopped. She couldn’t hear anything, not even when she pressed her ear against the closet door. They had gone away. They were leaving her in there forever.
    She tried to cry, but no tears would come.
    Then Maggie Rose started to scream. The door suddenly burst open and she was blinded by the most beautiful light.

CHAPTER 33

    ON THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 11, Gary Murphy was cozy and safe in his basement. Nobody knew that he was down there, but if snoopy Missy happened to open the basement door, he’d just flick on the lamp at his workbench. He was thinking everything through. One more time for good measure.
    He was becoming nicely obsessed with murdering Missy and Roni, but he thought that he wouldn’t do it just yet. Still, the fantasy was rich. To murder your own family had a certain homespun style to it. It wasn’t very imaginative, but the effect would be neat: the icy chill racing through the serene, dippity-doo suburban community. All the other families doing the most ironic thing —
locking their doors, locking themselves in together
.
    Around midnight he realized that his little family had gone to bed without him. No one had even bothered to call down to him. They didn’t care. A hollow roar was starting inside his head. He needed about a half-dozen Nuprins to stop the white noise for a while.
    Maybe he would torch the perfect little house on Central Avenue. Torching houses was good for the soul. He’d done it before; he’d do it again. God, his whole skull ached as if somebody’d been hitting it with a ball peen hammer. Was something physically the matter with him? Was it possible he was going mad this time?
    He tried to think about the Lone Eagle — Charles Lindbergh. That didn’t work, either. In his mind, he revisited the farmhouse in Hopewell Junction. No good. That mind-trip was getting old, too.
    He was world famous himself, for Chrissakes.
He was famous now
. Everybody in the world knew about him. He was a media star all over Planet Dearth.
    He finally left the cellar, and then the house in Wilmington. It was just past five-thirty in the morning. As he walked outside to the car, he felt like an animal, suddenly on the loose.
    He drove back to D.C. There was more work to do there. He didn’t want his public to be disappointed, did he?
    He thought he had a treat for everyone now.
Don’t get comfortable with me
!

    Around eleven that morning, Tuesday, Gary Murphy lightly tapped the front doorbell of a well-kept brick townhouse on the edge of Capitol Hill.
Bing-bong
went a polite door chime inside.
    The sheer danger of the situation, of his being in Washington again, gave him a nice chill. This was a lot better than being in hiding. He felt alive again, he could breathe, he had his own space.
    Vivian Kim kept the lock chain on, but she opened the door about a foot. She’d seen the familiar uniform of Washington’s PEPCO public utilities service through the peephole.
    Pretty lady, Gary remembered from the Washington Day School. Long black braids. Cute little upturned nose. She clearly didn’t recognize him as a blond. No mustache. Little flesh off the cheeks and chin.
    “Yes? What is it? Can I help you?” she asked the man standing on her porch. Inside the house, jazzy music was playing. Thelonious.
    “I hope it’s the other way around.” He smiled pleasantly. “Somebody called about an overcharge on the electric.”
    Vivian Kim frowned and shook her head. She had a tiny map of Korea hanging from rawhide around her neck. “I didn’t call anybody. I know I didn’t call PEPCO.”
    “Well, somebody called us, miss.”
    “Come back some other time,” Vivian Kim told him. “Maybe my boyfriend called. You’ll have to come back. I’m sorry.”
    Gary shrugged his shoulders. This was so delicious. He didn’t want it to end. “I guess. You can call us again if you like,” he said. “Get on the schedule again. It’s an overcharge, though. You paid too much.”
    “Okay. I hear you. I understand.”
    Vivian Kim