A war room just isn’t war room without pushpin maps and a large bulletin board. At the very top of our board was the name that had been given to the case by the chief of detectives. He had chosen “Web,” since Soneji had already picked up the nickname “Spider” in police circles. Actually, I’d coined the nickname. It came out of the complex webs he was always able to spin.
One section of the big board was devoted to “civilian leads.” These were mostly reliable eyewitness accounts from the previous morning at Union Station. Another section was “police leads,” most of which were the detective’s reports from the train terminal.
Civilian leads are “untrained eye” reports; police leads are “trained eye.” The thread in all of the reports so far was that no one had a good description of what Gary Soneji looked like now. Since Soneji had demonstrated unusual skill with disguises in the past, the news wasn’t surprising, but it was disturbing to all of us.
Soneji’s personal history was displayed on another part of the board. A long, curling computer printout listed every jurisdiction where he had ever been charged with a crime, as well as several unsolved homicides that overlapped his early years in Princeton, New Jersey.
Polaroid pictures depicting the evidence we had so far were also pinned up. Captions had been written in marker on the photos. The captions read: “known skills, Gary Soneji”; “hiding locations, Gary Soneji”; “physical characteristics, Gary Soneji”; “preferred weapons, Gary Soneji.”
There was a category for “Known associates” on the board, but this was still bare. It was likely to remain that way. To my knowledge, Soneji had always worked alone. Was that assumption still accurate? I wondered. Had he changed since our last run-in?
Around six-thirty that night, I got a call from the FBI evidence labs in Quantico, Virginia. Curtis Waddle was a friend of mine, and knew how I felt about Soneji. He had promised he’d pass on information as fast as he got it himself.
“You sitting down, Alex? Or you pacing around with one of those insipid, state-of-the-artless cordless phones in your hand?” he asked.
“I’m pacing, Curtis. But I’m carrying around an old-fashioned phone. It’s even black. Alexander Graham himself would approve.”
The lab head laughed and I could picture his broad, freckled face, his frizzy red hair tied with a rubber band in a ponytail. Curtis loves to talk, and I’ve found you have to let him go on or he gets hurt and can even get a little spiteful.
“Good man, good man. Listen, Alex, I’ve got something here, but I don’t think you’re going to like it. I don’t like it. I’m not even sure if we trust what we have.”
I edged in a few words. “Uh, what do you have, Curtis?”
“The blood we found on the stock and barrel of the rifle at Union Station? We’ve got a definite match on it. Though, as I said, I don’t know if I trust what we have. Kyle agrees. Guess what? It’s not Soneji’s blood.”
Curtis was right. I didn’t like hearing that at all. I hate surprises in any murder investigation. “What the hell does that mean? Whose blood is it then, Curtis? You know yet?”
I could hear him sigh, then blow out air in a Whoosh. “Alex, it’s yours. Your blood was on the sniper rifle.”
Part Two. Monster Hunt
Chapter 20
IT WAS rush hour in Penn Station in New York City when Soneji arrived. He was on time, right on schedule, for the next act. Man, he had lived this exact moment a thousand times over before today.
Legions of pathetic burnouts were on the way home, where they would drop onto their pillows (no goose down for these hard cases), sleep for what would seem like an instant, and then get back up the following morning and head for the trains again. Jesus-and they said he was crazy!
This was absolutely, positively, the best-he’d been dreaming of this moment for more than twenty years. This very moment!
He had planned to get to New York between five and five-thirty-and here he was. Heeere’s Gary! He’d imagined himself, saw himself, coming up out of the deep dark tunnels at Penn Station. He knew he was going to be out-of-his-head furious when he got upstairs, too. Knew it before he began to hear the piped-in circus music, some totally insane John Philip Sousa marching band ditty, with an overlay of tinny-sounding train announcements.
“You may now board through Gate A to Track 8, Bay Head Junction,” a fatherly voice proclaimed to the clueless.
All aboard to Bay Head Junction. All aboard, you pathetic morons, you freaking robots!
He checked out a poor moke porter who wore a dazed, flat look, as if life had left him behind about thirty years ago.
“You just can’t keep a bad man down,” Soneji said to the passing redcap. “You dig? You hear what I’m saying?”
“Fuck off,” the redcap said. Gary Soneji snorted out a laugh. Man, he got such a kick out of the surly downtrodden. They were everywhere, like a league these days.
He stared at the surly redcap. He decided to punish him-to let him live.
Today’s not your day to die. Your name stays in the Book of Life. Keep on walking.
He was furious-just as he knew he would be. He was seeing red. The blood rushing through his brain made a deafening, pounding sound. Not nice. Not conducive to sane, rational thought. The blood? Had the bloodhounds figured it out yet?
The train station was filled to the gills with shoving, pushing, and grumbling New Yorkers at their worst. These goddamn commuters were unbelievably aggressive and irritating.
Couldn’t any of them see that? Well, hell, sure they could. And what did they do about it? They got even more aggressive and obnoxious.
None of them came close to approaching his own seething anger, though. Not even close. His hatred was pure. Distilled. He was anger. He did the things most of them only fantasized about. Their anger was fuzzy and unfocused, bursting in their bubbleheads. He saw anger clearly, and he acted upon it swiftly.
This was so fine, being inside Penn Station, creating another scene. He was really getting into the spirit now. He was noticing everything in full-blast, touchy-feely 3-D. Dunkin’ Donuts, Knot Just Pretzels, Shoetrician Shoe Shine. The omnipresent rumble of the trains down below-it was just as he’d always imagined it.
He knew what would come next-and how it would all end.
Gary Soneji had a six-inch knife pressed against his leg. It was a real collector’s item. Had a mother-of-pearl handle and a tight serpentine blade on both sides. “An ornate knife for an ornate individual,” a greasy salesman had told him once upon a long time ago. “Wrap it up!” he’d said. Had it ever since. For special occasions like today. Or once to kill an FBI agent named Roger Graham.
He passed Hudson News, with all of its glossy magazine faces staring out at the world, staring at him, trying to work their propaganda. He was still being shoved and elbowed by his fellow commuters. Man, didn’t they ever stop?
Wow! He saw a character from his dreams, from way back when he was a kid. There was the guy. No doubt about it. He recognized the face, the way the guy held his body, everything about him. It was the guy in the gray-striped business getup, the one who reminded him of his father.
“You’ve been asking for this for a long time!” Soneji growled at Mr. Gray Stripes. “You asked for this.”
He drove the knife blade forward, felt it sink into flesh. It was just as he had imagined it.