Page 32 of Return of the Spider

He picked up his briefcase, left the library, and headed to the parking lot and his black Saab. As he got in, his big Motorola car phone started ringing. Marty Kasajian, his boss and brother-in-law, had bought the insanely expensive device for him.

Soneji answered, figuring it was Marty, but instead he heard Meredith Kasajian Murphy’s voice say coldly, “Hello, Gary. It’s your wife.”

“Missy?” he said, frowning. “You know this phone is only for work and emergencies.”

“You didn’t call last night, Gary,” Missy said.

“I’m sorry. I was beat after a long day making cold calls and just crashed when I hit the motel. I know I should have called, but the pay phone there was out.”

“You could have used the car phone.”

“And have Marty explode about the charges? Do you know how much this thing costs a minute?”

Missy said, “Marty can afford it for my peace of mind.”

“I hope you’ll be the one telling him that.”

There was a silence, then his wife said, “I’ll do that. When are you coming home? Roni and I want to know.”

Roni was their two-year-old daughter. Wanting to pound the heel of his hand against the side of his head, he replied, “As soon as I make monthly quota on new business, probably dinnertime on Friday.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I’m going to tell Marty I want you home Friday whether you make quota or not.”

“Good luck with that,” Soneji said and hung up, kind of wishing Missy and Marty were in front of him right now so he could slap his bitch wife silly and kick his dickhead brother-in-law in the nuts.

Marty Kasajian was the kind of guy who’d been born on third base and believed he’d hit a triple. He’d inherited his family’s booming heating oil and propane company but acted like he was the big entrepreneur who’d built the place. He’d given Soneji a job, not in computers, but as a traveling salesman, drumming up business along the middle Atlantic Seaboard.

As jobs went, it wasn’t bad. The pay was more than decent. And it allowed him chunks of time to play hooky and try out this private-school-teacher identity. He could spend his days around elite kids, studying them and fantasizing about kidnapping them.

But at the moment, he had more important things to think about. Like where to hunt his next victims.

CHAPTER

22

The morning after myill-fated meeting with Pittman, Kurtz, and Diehl, John Sampson and I were called to a homicide in Fort Circle Park in Southeast Washington, DC.

A jogger had come upon a dead male on one of the park’s interior paths.

We found the body beside the path, arms circling the trunk of an oak tree, wrists tied together with wire that had cut deeply into the skin.

It had rained overnight. The skies were still threatening. We stood back while patrol officers erected canopies over the scene, then moved closer.

“No prints in the mud except the runner’s,” Sampson said.

“Rained hard last night,” I said, moving around the tree so I could see the victim more clearly.

The left side of his face showed him to be young, in his mid-teens, and of mixed race. Hispanic and Black would be my guess.

I kept moving and saw that the right side of his face, against the tree trunk, was battered and grossly swollen. A rag had been stuffed in his mouth.

I took a few more steps and saw that his back had been struck repeatedly with something long and narrow and with such force that his bloody T-shirt had ripped, showing livid welts and torn flesh beneath.

“Jesus,” I said, turning away, nauseated.