Page 105 of Return of the Spider

87

Gary soneji went backinto the classroom and saw his students as if through steam brewing up out of the sourness in his stomach. The kids seemed part of a dream he was observing; he was wholly separate from them, from everything now.

He went to his desk, needing to sit, though he still felt no remorse whatsoever about the loss of Sandy and Peter Ravisky. They were obstacles that had stood in the way of the job being his. No more. No less.

But the baby. The infant. What was her name? Iris? Irene.

She was not supposed to be in that van. Irene was supposed to be home with Grandma. But she was collateral damage.

Any way Soneji looked at it, he didn’t feel regret.

That understanding cut some last cord inside him.

He was different now, stronger in a way. He told himself hewas more dangerous than Berkowitz. More deadly than DeSalvo and every other homicidal maniac he had ever studied, from Jack the Ripper to the Green River Killer. None of them had ever killed a baby. Not one.

He had gone beyond all of them.

He was—

“Mr. Soneji?”

Soneji startled when he realized that Cheryl Lynn Wise had come up to his desk. This was a first.

“I’m trying to do the retreat by flipping the code, but for some reason it’s not working. Or at least, I don’t think it’s working.”

“Let’s take a look, shall we?” Soneji said. She handed the printout to him and came around the desk so they could look at it together.

It took every bit of his willpower not to focus on Cheryl Lynn being so close, not to smell her preteen odor, as he showed her how she could work toward the answer without the extra steps she’d added, which had cut her off from the solution.

“Thank you, Mr. Soneji,” Cheryl Lynn said and laughed. “My mom says I always make things more difficult than they have to be.”

“It’s just a learning process, Ms. Wise,” Soneji said. “Sometimes we have to go down blind alleys in the maze to find our way out.”

He smiled, handed her the printout, then gazed at his desk as she walked back to her seat.

Soneji was his own monster now.

That lovely idea spawned another thought, a new one. It triggered a sudden bolt of power that spiraled up through him, triggering the new thought again and causing another surge ofstrength that became a dead certainty in his mind. He raised his head to watch Cheryl Lynn take her seat.

He was his own monster now.

And with monsters, anything was possible.

Absolutely anything.

CHAPTER

88

The deeper we gotinto December, the bigger and more uncomfortable Maria became and the more excited and boisterous Damon turned in anticipation of Christmas.

He’d caught on to the concept of presents at his last birthday and was using that word and the wordcandymore and more as we closed in on the twenty-fifth of the month.

Maria had officially started her maternity leave and wasn’t sleeping well, which meant I wasn’t sleeping well either. But I was still getting up to take care of Damon while she rested.

I was yawning and drinking a strong cup of coffee at my desk downtown on December 23 when John Sampson plopped another stack of files in front of me.

“More evidence against Diggs and Beech,” he said.