“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.”
I nodded, looked as bored as he did. “On another, more promising subject, tell me what happened to Gary ’s trains? The ones he stole from his stepbrother?”
Conklin wasn’t smiling anymore. “Look, actually I’m getting a little tired of the bullshit. The repetition bores me and I’m not into ancient history. Gary and I were friends until we were around twelve years old. After that, we never spent time together. He had his friends, and so did I. The end. Now get the hell out of here.”
I shook my head. “No, no, Gary never had any other friends. He only had time for the ‘great ones.’ He believed you were one of them. He told that to Alex Cross. I think you were Gary ’s friend until he died. That’s why you hated Dr. Cross. You had a reason to attack his house. You had a motive, Conklin, and you’re the only one who did.”
Conklin snorted out of his nose and the side of his mouth again. “And if you can prove that, then I go directly to jail. I do not pass Go. But you can’t prove it. Dana. Hopewell. Several witnesses. Bye-bye, assholes.”
I walked out the front door of the adult bookstore. I stood in the blazing heat of the parking lot and waited for Sampson to catch up with me.
“What the hell is going on? Why did you just walk out like that?” he asked.
“Conklin is the leader,” I said. “Soneji was the follower.”
Chapter 101
SOONER OR later almost every police investigation becomes a game of cat and mouse. The difficult, long-running ones always do. First you have to decide, though: Who is the cat? Who is the mouse?
For the next few days, Sampson and I kept Simon Conklin under surveillance. We let him know we were there, waiting and watching, always just around the next corner, and the corner after that. I wanted to see if we could pressure Conklin into a telling action, or even a mistake.
Conklin’s reply was a occasional jaunty salute with his middle finger. That was fine. We were registering on his radar. He knew we were there, always there, watching. I could tell we were unnerving him, and I was just beginning to play the game.
John Sampson had to return to Washington after a few days. I had expected that. The D.C. police department couldn’t let him work the case indefinitely. Besides, Alex Cross and his family needed Sampson in Washington.
I was alone in Princeton, the way I liked it, actually.
Simon Conklin left his house on Tuesday night. After some maneuvering of my own, I followed in my Ford Escort. I let him see me early on. Then I dropped back in the heavy traffic out near the malls, and I let him go free!
I drove straight back to his house and parked off the main road, which was hidden from sight by thick scrub pines and brambles. I walked through the dense woods as quickly as I could. I knew I might not have a lot of time.
No flashlight, no lights of any kind. I knew where I was going now. I was pumped up and ready. I had figured it all out. I understood the game now, and my part in it. My sixth sense was active.
The house was brick and wood and it had a quirky hexagonal window in the front. Loose, chipped, aqua-colored shutters occasionally banged against the house. It was more than a mile from the closest neighbor. No one would see me break in through the kitchen door.
I was aware that Simon Conklin might circle back behind me-if he was as bright as he thought he was. I wasn’t worried about that. I had a working theory about Conklin and his visit to Cross’s house. I needed to test it out.
I suddenly thought about Mr. Smith as I was picking the lock. Smith was obsessed with studying people, with breaking and entering into their lives.
The inside of the house was absolutely unbearable: Simon Conklin’s place smelled like Salvation Army furniture laced with BO and immersed in a McDonald’s deep fryer. No, it was actually worse than that. I held a handkerchief over my nose and mouth as I began to search the filthy lair. I was afraid that I might find a body in here. Anything was possible.
Every room and every object was coated with dust and grime. The best that could be said for Simon Conklin was that he was an avid reader. Volumes were spread open in every room, half a dozen on his bed alone.
He seemed to favor sociology, philosophy, and psychology: Marx, Jung, Bruno Bettelheim, Malraux, Jean Baudrillard. Three unpainted floor-to-ceiling bookcases were crammed with books piled horizontally. My initial impression of the place was that it had already been ransacked by someone.
All of this fit with what had really happened at Alex Cross’s house.
Over Conklin’s rumpled, unmade bed was a framed Vargas girl, signed by the model, with a lipstick kiss next to the butt.
A rifle was stashed under the bed. It was a BAR-the same model Browning Gary Soneji had used in Washington. A smile slowly broke across my face.
Simon Conklin knew the rifle was circumstantial evidence, that it proved nothing about his guilt or innocence. He wanted it found. He wanted Cross’s badge found. He liked to play games. Of course he did.
I climbed down creaking wooden stairs to the basement. I kept the house lights off and used only my penlight.