Cat & Mouse

Solve that mystery, answer that question-case solved.

Chapter 99

THE HOUSE was quiet, and it had a sad and empty feeling, as houses do when a big, important piece of the family is missing.

I could see Nana Mama working feverishly in her kithen. The smell of baking bread, roast chicken, and baked sweet potatoes flowed through the house, and it was soothing and reassuring. She was lost in her cooking, and I didn’t want to disturb her.

“Is she okay?” I asked Sampson. He had agreed to meet me at the house, though I could tell he was still angry about my leaving the case for a few days.

He shrugged his shoulders. “She won’t accept that Alex isn’t coming back, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “If he dies, I don’t know what will happen to her.”

Sampson and I climbed the stairs in silence. We were in the hallway when the Cross children appeared out of a side bedroom.

I hadn’t formally met Damon and Ja

“This is Mr. Pierce,” Sampson said, “he’s a friend of ours. He’s one of the good guys.”

“I’m working with Sampson,” I told them. “Trying to help him.”

“Is he, Uncle John?” the little girl asked. The boy just stared at me-not angry, but wary of strangers. I could see his father in Damon’s wide brown eyes.

“Yes, he is working with me, and he’s very good at it,” Sampson said. He surprised me with the compliment.

Ja

She reached out and shook my hand. “Well, you can’t be as good as my daddy, but you can use my daddy’s bedroom,” she said, “but only until he comes back home.”

I thanked Ja

When I finally trudged back downstairs, Sampson and Nana were both in the kitchen. The uncluttered and practical-looking room was cozy and warm. It brought back memories of Isabella, who had loved to cook and was good at it, too, memories of our home and life together.

Nana looked up at me, her eyes as incisive as I remembered. “I remember you,” she said. “You were the one who told me the truth. Are you close to anything yet? Will you solve this terrible thing?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t solved it, Nana,” I told her the truth again. “But I think Alex might have. Gary Soneji might have had a partner all along.”

Chapter 100

A RECURRING THOUGHT was playing constantly inside my head: Who can you trust? Who can you really believe? I used to have somebody-Isabella.

John Sampson and I boarded an FBI Bell Jet Ranger around eleven the following morning. We had packed for a couple of days’ stay.

“So who is this partner of Soneji’s? When do I get to meet him?” Sampson asked during the flight.

“You already have,” I told him.

We arrived in Princeton before noon and went to see a man named Simon Conklin. Sampson and Cross had questioned him before. Alex Cross had written several pages of notes on Conklin during the investigation of the sensational kidnapping of two young children a few years back: Maggie Rose Du

I’d read the notes through a couple of times now. Simon Conklin and Gary had grown up on the same country road, a few miles outside the town of Princeton. The two friends thought of themselves as “superior” to other kids, and even to most adults. Gary had called himself and Conklin the “great ones.” They were reminiscent of Leopold and Loeb, two highly intelligent teens who had committed a famous thrill killing in Chicago one year.

As boys, Simon Conklin and Gary had decided that life was nothing more than a cock-and-bull “story” conveniently cooked up by the people in charge. Either you followed the “story” written by the society you lived in, or you set out to write your own.

Cross double-underscored in the notes that Gary had been in the bottom fifth of his class at Princeton High School, before he transferred to The Peddie School. Simon Conklin had been number one, and gone on to Princeton University.

A few minutes past noon, Sampson and I stepped out into the dirt-and-gravel parking lot of a dreary little strip mall between Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey. It was hot and humid and everything looked bleached out by the sun.

“ Princeton education sure worked out well for Conklin,” Sampson said with sarcasm in his voice. “I’m really impressed.”

For the past two years, Simon Conklin had managed an adult bookstore in the dilapidated strip mall. The store was located in a single-story, red-brick building. The front door was painted black and so were the padlocks. The sign read ADULT.

“What’s your feeling about Simon Conklin? Do you remember much about him?” I asked as we walked toward the front door. I suspected there was a back way out, but I didn’t think he would run on us.

“Oh, Simon Says is definitely a world-class freakazoid. He was high on my Unabomber list at one time. Has an alibi for the night Alex was attacked.”

“He would,” I muttered. “Of course he would. He’s a clever boy. Don’t ever forget that.”

We walked inside the seedy, grungy store and flashed our badges. Conklin stepped out from behind a raised counter. He was tall and gangly and painfully thin. His milky brown eyes were distant, as if he were someplace else. He was instantly unlikable.

He had on faded black jeans and a studded black leather vest, no shirt under the vest. If I hadn’t known a few Harvard flameouts myself, I wouldn’t have imagined he had graduated from Princeton and ended up like this. All around him were pleasure kits, masturbators, dildos, pumps, restraints. Simon Conklin seemed right in his element.

“I’m starting to enjoy these unexpected visits from you assholes. I didn’t at first, but now I’m getting into them,” he said. “I remember you, Detective Sampson. But you’re new to the traveling team. You must be Alex Cross’s unworthy replacement.”

“Not really,” I said. “Just haven’t felt like coming around to this shithole until now.”

Conklin snorted, a phlegmy sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You haven’t felt like it. That means you have feeling that you occasionally act on. How quaint. Then you must be with the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Analysis Program. Am I right?”

I looked away from him and checked out the rest of the store.

“Hi,” I said to a man perusing a rack with Spanish Fly Powder, Sta-Hard, and the like. “Find anything you like today? Are you from the Princeton area? I’m Thomas Pierce with the FBI.”

The man mumbled something unintelligible into his chin and then he scurried out, letting a blast of sunlight inside.

“Ouch. That’s not nice,” Conklin said. He snorted again, not quite a laugh.

“I’m not very nice sometimes,” I said to him.

Conklin responded with a jaw-cracking yawn. “When Alex Cross got shot, I was with a friend all night. Your very thorough cohorts already spoke to my squeeze, Dana. We were at a party in Hopewell till around midnight. Lots and lots of witnesses.”