Page 8 of Return of the Spider
I was a rookiehomicide detective on that fine October day, standing in front of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Southeast DC, listening to organ music, and taking the first case of my new job hard.
John Sampson put his hand on my shoulder. “First one’s tough.”
Sampson and I had been friends since childhood, but he’d joined the DC Metropolitan Police Department long before me and had been a detective with their major-crimes unit for more than a year. I graduated from Johns Hopkins with a PhD in psychology and started a private practice, but recently I’d left it to join the same investigative unit as Sampson, and this was my first case.
Profiling was all the rage in law enforcement circles at the time. Though I was green as a street investigator in those days, Iwas experienced as a researcher. Over the course of writing my dissertation, I had interviewed hundreds of hardened murderers in prisons across the country as well as the families of their victims and even a few people who’d been attacked but had managed to survive.
Struggling with my emotions, I cleared my throat and looked at my oldest friend. “Chief Pittman said I would be expected to offer you and the other guys insight into the minds of possible perpetrators, John. But I honestly don’t know how the mind of someone who’s willing to kill like this works.”
Four nights earlier, my friend and I had had to inform Maxine Miller that the body of her fourteen-year-old son, Tony, had been found floating in the Potomac, stabbed multiple times, his face beaten to a pulp.
Sampson squeezed my shoulder. “You will, Alex. Today, it’s not all about grief. Maxine wants this to be a celebration of Tony’s life. Afterward, you can get clinical about it and point us in the right direction.”
I nodded without conviction, then saw my grandmother coming down the sidewalk, dressed in black. Nana Mama worked as a vice principal at Tony’s high school.
She and I hugged. She and Sampson hugged. “A sad, sad day,” she said.
“We’ll find his killer. We’re doing everything we can with limited resources,” John said.
Her expression hardened. “You mean because of his color, there are limited resources.”
“I’m telling you, Nana, Tony Miller won’t be forgotten. We will find who did this.”
My grandmother nodded and let her shoulders relax. “Iknow, John. It’s just hard when you’ve known a boy since kindergarten.”
“We understand, Nana,” I said. “How are the kids at school holding up?”
“We’re bringing in counselors,” Nana Mama said. “A lot of students will be here. He was well liked. How’s Maria doing?” she asked me, changing the subject. “What is she, six months along now?”
“That’s right. Baby’s kicking a lot, but otherwise, Maria’s great.”
“And my great-grandson?”
“Damon was toddling around the kitchen when I left.”
A hearse pulled up, followed by the funeral home’s limousine. Dressed in black, Maxine Miller got out of the back of the limo with the help of her older son, Thomas.
She saw us and walked over, smiling weakly. “Thank you for coming, Detectives. And you too, Mrs. Cross. It means a lot.”
Nana Mama hugged Maxine, and we all walked into the church. The place was packed with students, family, and community members.
Thomas and five other young men carried the casket from the hearse to the front of the church.
Father Nathan Barry, an old family friend of ours, had also known Tony Miller. He was visibly moved as he began the service. He talked about how Tony had lived in one of the toughest, most gang-infested neighborhoods in the nation’s capital, the parts the tourists rarely saw; about how Tony’s mother worked two jobs; about how he’d tried to resist the gangs and had spoken out against them.
“We don’t know who killed this brave young man,” FatherBarry said. “But we know who his enemies were. We know because he told us. The gangs did this because he would not join them. The gangs did this because he was their vocal opponent.”
Sitting in the pews surrounded by almost a hundred people, I saw the priest’s stare and knew he was talking directly to me and Sampson, asking us to find Tony’s killer.
CHAPTER
3
At ten that evening,the full moon brilliant overhead, Gary Soneji was four vehicles behind the old red-and-black Ford Bronco carrying Conrad Talbot and Abby Howard north on the Canal Road from Georgetown through the Palisades area of the District of Columbia.
Soneji was not driving his Saab; he drove a white utility van full of junk and trash on the floor in the back.
He wore leather gloves, a brown workman’s jumpsuit, and a black ball cap pulled down low. The green contacts were in their storage case back in the Saab. The wig was packed away there as well, along with the round wire-rimmed glasses and facial prosthetics. The sometime substitute teacher was now just some doughy blond guy with a mustache.
