Page 114 of Return of the Spider

A Reckoning

Present Day

CHAPTER

96

I heard footsteps comingdown the stairs, shaking me from the trance I’d been in, reading Soneji’s kill diary inside his secret room in the Pine Barrens cabin.

I looked at the last line I’d read:Let them all study me now.

“Alex? You still in there?” Sampson called. “We’ve been outside three hours.”

I shook my head, setProfiles in Homicidal Geniusaside with a quarter of the pages still unread, and stood up. “Felt like weeks to me.”

“The dogs have located more bodies,” John said. “Going to be a chore identifying them.”

I shook my head. “Probably not. In his book, he names several of the victims and describes where he buried them. There’s probably more in the pages I didn’t get to. One will be a womannamed Cynthia Owens. And you don’t want to know the names of two of them.”

Sampson frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I gazed around at the bins. “These are murder kits, John. Specific kits assembled so Soneji could practice the methods of serial killers he admired.TBSis the Boston Strangler.NSis the Night Stalker.ZKis the Zodiac Killer,GRKis the Green River Killer,JWGis John Wayne Gacy, andSOS—”

Mahoney came pounding down the stairs. “We’ve got another one, and I need all hands on deck.”

Realizing I desperately needed fresh air, I took a last look at the bins, the macabre treasures, and Soneji’s memoir. When I ducked out of the room, Mahoney and Sampson studied me.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ned said.

“I have, in a way. Quite a few, in fact,” I said, jabbing my thumb over my shoulder. “It’s all in there.”

“All what?”

Sampson said, “The names and burial locations of Soneji’s victims.”

“And all the evidence against Soneji—and us,” I said, feeling gutted again. I wanted to cry or rage at everything that had changed so completely inside the spider’s nest.

“Evidence againstus? Who isus?” Sampson demanded.

I gazed at John, then Ned. “A long time ago, Soneji duped the FBI, the Virginia state police, the Maryland state police, and the Pennsylvania state police. But most of all, he duped DC Metro’s Homicide team, specifically me and John, when we were junior detectives on our earliest cases.”

Sampson’s expression turned hard. “I do not know what you’re talking about, Alex.”

“I’ll explain it in full on the drive back to DC, but for now,Ned, I don’t think John and I should have anything further to do with this investigation.”

Mahoney rubbed his jaw. “What? Why? Stop talking in opaque loops.”

“We can’t be a part of this because we are compromised,” I said. I felt closed in and pushed past them, heading toward the stairs. “Like it or not, culpable or not, Sampson and I had a role in a lot of what happened in this cabin.”

John came after me as I climbed up from the basement. “What in God’s name are you talking about, Alex?” he yelled.

I ignored him, wanting cold air in my lungs and something in my stomach before I explained it all. He stayed right behind me, and Mahoney followed him. When we were all out on the front porch, I gazed across Soneji’s yard with new and stunned eyes.

“We could have stopped him,” I said. “A long time ago.”

My anguish must have shown on my face because when Sampson spoke again, it was in a lower voice and with more empathy. “What did you mean when you said I didn’t want to know the names of two of the people buried here? Please, brother, you’re upsetting me.”

“And me,” Mahoney said.