Page 31 of Return of the Spider
“Well, you won’t fail.”
“You have more belief in me than I do.”
“Of course I do. I’m your wife. That’s what I’m here for. You’re the same way about me. Damon? Do you want some noodles?”
“Yes, please, Mommy,” he said as I lowered him into his high chair. He threw both hands up and crowed, “Noodles!”
Any kind of pasta was his favorite food, and when he cheered, I realized just how right my life was.
CHAPTER
20
Newark, Delaware
IN A CARREL DEEPin the stacks on the second floor of the University of Delaware library, Gary Soneji was engrossed inPractical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniquesby Vernon J. Geberth.
He’d read the book during his undergraduate years but had returned to study so-called equivocal-death investigations, specifically ones where detectives believed they were dealing with staged murder scenes. He wanted to know what they took into consideration beyond fetishistic posing. He wanted to know what would make them suspect that the victim had been killed elsewhere and then moved.
He found what he was looking for. One tip-off was the location of internal blood pooling in the body being contradictory to a corpse’s position at discovery. Another was fibers on the body suggesting that the victim had been wrapped in a rug or ablanket. A third was an injury on the body at odds with the manner of death.
Too many things could go wrong if you moved them, Soneji decided. You didn’t leave them to be found. You didn’t move them anywhere but to their graves.This is pleasure. But it must be done so the pleasure can last longer.
He shut the book on homicide investigations and turned his attention to an FBI manual he’d found in the stacks that focused on kidnapping investigations and included a detailed narrative about the Lindbergh-baby kidnapping case, which he read with great interest.
He’d grown up in Princeton, near where the crime had occurred, so he’d always been fascinated with that case. The idea of kidnapping—and killing—a celebrity’s child held a particular thrill for him.
Death was intensely interesting to him, and it gave him immense pleasure to see people die at his hands. He felt a fierce adrenaline rush, an exhilarating explosion of power.
Murder was fun, Soneji allowed. And strangely fulfilling.Like a glimpse into the unknown,he thought, and felt a chill go through him.
Yet there was something about an abduction that moved Soneji equally if not more. As he devoured information on the Lindbergh case, his mind flashed back to scenes from his first take.
Joyce Adams. Very pretty. Very arrogant.
That had changed quickly, hadn’t it? She’d been begging for mercy by the end.
Joyce had left the Princeton University campus to go to a local county park for an early-morning run in the woods, a fairly routine habit for the freshman co-ed. She had never emerged from those trees.
Dressed in camouflage, Soneji had ambushed her, knockedher out with injectable animal tranquilizer he’d stolen from a vet hospital he volunteered at, and bundled her into his old VW van. He’d taken her to a small house in the Pine Barrens that he’d inherited from an uncle on his mother’s side. It had a basement that suited his secret purposes perfectly, allowing him to toy and play with Joyce for several days before ending her life.
At the memory, Soneji felt warm and fuzzy inside. But also hungry for more, wanting that buzzing sense of power that had surged through him while holding Joyce against her will. He wanted it again and he wanted it soon.
The more efficient side of him, however—the side that thrived on the order and rigor of math and computer science—kept him in check. Soneji had promised himself he would finish what he’d set out to do: to study all the masters, teach himself every possible way a crime could go wrong, then resolve all the issues before he acted.
But he had to admit he’d already made two mistakes. He hadn’t stayed to put a second shot in Abby, and she’d lived, and he hadn’t finished off the guy on the bike, though he was evidently critically injured. On a positive note, Soneji had been reading the newspaper stories about the shooting closely and had seen no mention of a white van.
Soneji told himself he was okay. Abby and the bicyclist were alive, but he was okay. This was no time to quit. He would just have to do better next time.
He closed the FBI manual on kidnap investigations and realized that it had been more than a week since he’d taken the shot at Conrad Talbot—almost ten days, actually. It was time to practice becoming David Berkowitz once again.
CHAPTER
21
Soneji checked his watch.Three thirty p.m. He’d gotten to the library around eleven a.m.
He did some calculations in his head and decided to visit his secret little cabin in the Pine Barrens, making some important client visits on the way. He could check the place, take a few shots with the Bulldog, and be hunting for targets by sundown.
