Page 4 of Return of the Spider

North of Batsto, we saw FBI vehicles, coroner’s office vans, and New Jersey state police patrol cars parked on both sides of a rutted gravel driveway that snaked uphill and into the pines. We got out of the car and walked over to two young FBI agents standing at the end of the driveway.

“Captain Barthalis called us in,” I said, showing them my credentials. “Who’s in charge?”

“Agent Mahoney,” one of them said. “He just arrived on scene.”

Ned Mahoney’s presence meant this was a very high-profile case. It helped that he’d been my partner back when we both worked in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit.

“This way?” Sampson asked, gesturing up the driveway.

“Yeah, they’re up there.”

We climbed the steep driveway in the oppressive heat. I could hear dogs barking in the woods as we broke into a clearing and saw a cabin with a small porch and a shed, both of which looked like they were about to rot away and collapse at any minute.

Moss grew on the roof. The shake shingles had not been stained in years. Most were curling upward, and many were missing. Paint hung in spirals from the eaves.

Ned Mahoney, a short, lean man with gray-flecked sandy hair, stood near the cabin talking to Alexander Barthalis.

Mahoney nodded at us. “I was going to call you two, but Alexander beat me to it.”

Barthalis, a burly, florid-faced guy wearing gray suit pants but no jacket, a shoulder holster with a weapon, and dark Terminator sunglasses, said, “Well, who else would I call? Been a long time.”

“Five years?” I said, reaching out to shake Barthalis’s hand. “Good to see you, Captain.”

Barthalis pumped my hand. “Always Alexander to you and Detective Sampson, Dr. Cross.”

“It’s Alex, Alexander,” I said.

“And John,” Sampson said, shaking Alexander’s hand. “So, bring us up to speed. What’s going on?”

Barthalis turned all business. “Four bodies have been found by the cadaver dogs, all of them in the woods right around here. There are probably more.”

Mahoney said, “But we think you’re going to be more interested in what was found behind a false wall in the cabin’s basement. That’s what got us to bring in the dogs and the FBI.”

He and Mahoney started toward the sagging front porch; Sampson and I followed. “Who’s the owner?” I asked.

“Guy named Adam Brenner. He bought it last month when the county auctioned off the property because the owner of record—a Delaware company called MKM Holdings—was decades behind on taxes and unreachable, having gone out of business years ago,” Barthalis said. “We know this because Mr.Brenner had a title search done on the property before making his bid. Here’s where it gets interesting.”

He stopped on the porch. “MKM’s address was a post office box in Camden, and a long-dead lawyer was listed as treasurer. The president was given as M. K. Murphy, and his address was a different post office box in Camden.”

I frowned. “Okay?”

“Who sold M. K. Murphy the property?” Sampson asked.

Barthalis pointed at Sampson. “Smart man. The property was sold to MKM by one Gary Murphy shortly after he inherited it from his uncle.”

4

Gary murphy. my firstspider, now long dead. As was Gary Soneji. Both had inhabited the same body—one mind split by dissociative identity disorder.

Murphy’s Soneji side was obsessed with fame, serial killing—and kidnapping the children of the rich and powerful.

Sampson and I caught him and sent him to prison—but things didn’t end there. Soneji had been abused repeatedly as a child, traumatic events that damaged his psyche. In prison, he contracted HIV and developed AIDS. Finding out he was terminally ill sent him into a violent rage; he escaped and went on a killing spree that began with a mass murder in a DC Metro station.

I caught up to him in New York City and chased him into a Grand Central Station train tunnel. During a shoot-out, he fell,and the makeshift bomb in his jacket detonated, engulfing him in flames.

Only then was he finally stopped.

But that was years ago, long before Alexander Barthalis called us to the moldering cabin in the Pine Barrens near Batsto.