Cat & Mouse

Chapter 33

SONDRA GREENBERG of Interpol spotted Thomas Pierce as he walked toward the crime scene at the center of Piccadilly Circus. Pierce stood out in a crowd, even one like this.

Thomas Pierce was tall; his long blond hair was pulled back in ponytail; and he usually wore dark glasses. He did not look like your typical FBI agent, and, in fact, Pierce was nothing like any agent Greenberg had ever met or worked with.

“What’s all the excitement about?” he asked as he got up close. “Mr. Smith out for his weekly kill. Nothing so unusual.” His habitual sarcasm was at work.

Sondra looked around at the packed crowd at the homicide scene and shook her head. There were press reporters and television news trucks everywhere.

“What’s being done by the local geniuses? The police?” said Pierce.

“They’re canvassing. Obviously, Smith has been here.”

“The bobbies want to know if anyone saw a little green man? Blood dripping from his little green teeth?”

“Exactly, Thomas. Have a look?”

Pierce smiled and it was entirely captivating. Definitely not the American FBI’s usual style. “You said that like, spot of tea?…Have a look?”

Greenberg shook her head of dark curls. She was nearly as tall as Pierce, and pretty in a tough sort of way. She always tried to be nice to Pierce. Actually, it wasn’t hard.

“I guess I’m finally becoming jaded,” she said. “I wonder why.”

They walked toward the crime scene, which was almost directly under the towering, waxed aluminum figure of Eros. One of London ’s favorite landmarks, Eros was also the symbol for the Evening Standard newspaper. Although people believed the statue was a representation of erotic love, it had actually been commissioned as a symbol for Christian charity.

Thomas Pierce flashed his ID and walked up to the “body bag” that Mr. Smith had used to transport the remains of Chief Inspector Cabot.

“It’s as if he’s living a Gothic novel,” Sondra Greenberg said. She was kneeling beside Pierce. Actually, they looked like a team, even like a couple.

“Smith called you here, too-to London? Left a voice mail?” Pierce asked her.

Greenberg nodded. “What do you think of the body? The latest kill? Smith packed the bag with body parts in the most careful and concise way. Like you would if you had to get everything into a suitcase.”

Thomas Pierce frowned. “Freak, goddamn butcher.”

“Why Piccadilly? A hub of London. Why under Eros?”

“He’s leaving clues for us, obvious clues. We just don’t understand,” Thomas Pierce said and continued to shake his head.

“Right you are, Thomas. Because we don’t speak Martian.”

Chapter 34

CRIME MARCHES on and on.

Sampson and I drove to Wilmington, Delaware, the following morning. We had visited the city made famous by the Du Ponts during the original manhunt for Gary Soneji a few years before. I had the Porsche floored the entire ride, which took a couple of hours.

I had already received some very good news that morning. We’d solved one of the case’s nagging mysteries. I had checked with the blood bank at St. Anthony’s. A pint of my blood was missing from our family’s supply. Someone had taken the trouble to break in and take my blood. Gary Soneji? Who else? He continued to show me that nothing was safe in my life.

“Soneji” was actually a pseudonym Gary had used as part of a plan to kidnap two children in Washington. The strange name had stuck in news stories, and that was the name the FBI and media used now. His real name was Gary Murphy. He had lived in Wilmington with his wife, Meredith, who was called Missy. They had one daughter, Roni.

Actually, Soneji was the name Gary had appropriated when he fantasized about his crimes as a young boy locked in the cellar of his house. He claimed to have been sexually abused by a neighbor in Princeton, a grade-school teacher named Martin Soneji. I suspected serious problems with a relative, possibly his paternal grandfather.

We arrived at the house on Central Avenue at a little past ten in the morning. The pretty street was deserted, except for a small boy with Rollerblades. He was trying them out on his front lawn. There should have been local police surveillance here, but, for some reason, there wasn’t. At least I didn’t see any sign of it yet.

“Man, this perfect little street kills me,” Sampson said. “I still keep looking for Jimmy Stewart to pop out of one of these houses.”

“Just as long as Soneji doesn’t,”I muttered.

The cars parked up and down Central Avenue were almost all American makes, which seemed quaint nowadays: Chevys, Olds, Fords, some Dodge Ram pickup trucks.

Meredith Murphy wasn’t answering her phone that morning, which didn’t surprise me.

“I feel sorry for Mrs. Murphy and especially the little girl,” I told Sampson as we pulled up in front of the house. “Missy Murphy had no idea who Gary really was.”

Sampson nodded. “I remember they seemed nice enough. Maybe too nice. Gary fooled them. Ole Gary the Fooler.”

There were lights burning in the house. A white Chevy Lumina was parked in the driveway. The street was as quiet and peaceful as I remembered it from our last visit, when the peacefulness had been short-lived.

We got out of the Porsche and headed toward the front door of the house. I touched the butt of my Glock as we walked. I couldn’t help thinking that Soneji could be waiting, setting some kind of trap for Sampson and me.

The neighborhood, the entire town, still reminded me of the 1950s. The house was well kept and looked as if it had recently been painted. That had been part of Gary ’s careful facade. It was the perfect hiding place: a sweet little house on Central Avenue, with a white picket fence and a stone walkway bisecting the front lawn.

“So what do you figure is going on with Soneji?” Sampson asked as we came up to the front door. “He’s changed some, don’t you think? He’s not the careful pla

It seemed that way. “Not everything’s changed. He’s still playing parts, acting. But he’s on a rampage like nothing I’ve seen before. He doesn’t seem to care if he’s caught. Yet everything he does is pla

“And why is that, Dr. Freud?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out. And that’s why we’re going to Lorton Prison tomorrow. Something weird is going on, even for Gary Soneji.”

I rang the front doorbell. Sampson and I waited for Missy Murphy on the porch. We didn’t fit into the small-town-America neighborhood, but that wasn’t so unusual. We didn’t exactly fit into our own neighborhood back in D.C. either. That morning we were both wearing dark clothes and dark glasses, looking like musicians in somebody’s blues band.

“Hmm, no answer,” I muttered.

“Lights blazing inside,” Sampson said. “Somebody must be here. Maybe they just don’t want to talk to Men In Black.”

“Ms. Murphy,” I called out in a loud voice, in case someone was inside but not answering the door. “Ms. Murphy, open the door. It’s Alex Cross from Washington. We’re not leaving without talking to you.”

“Nobody home at the Bates Motel,” Sampson grunted.

He wandered around the side of the house, and I followed close behind. The lawn had been cut recently and the hedges trimmed. Everything looked so neat and clean and so harmless.

I went to the back door, the kitchen, if I remembered. I wondered if he could be hiding inside. Anything was possible with Soneji-the more twisted and unlikely the better for his ego.

Things about my last visit were flashing back. Nasty memories. It was Roni’s birthday party. She was seven. Gary Soneji had been inside the house that time, but he had managed to escape. A regular Houdini. A very smart, very creepy creep.

Soneji could be inside now. Why did I have the unsettling feeling that I was walking into a trap?