But she was out here walking for a different reason today. She was thinking about her husband, George, and how he died, and why. She wished she could bring him back and talk to him now. She wanted to hold George at least one more time. Oh God, she needed to talk to him.
She wandered to the far end of the hall to Room 111, which was light yellow and called Buttercup. The kids had named the rooms themselves, and the names changed every year in the fall. It was their school, after all.
Christine slowly and quietly opened the door a crack. She saw Bobbie Shaw, the second-grade teacher, scrubbing notes on the blackboard. Then she noticed row after row of mostly attentive faces, and among them Jannie Cross.
She found herself smiling as she watched Jannie, who happened to be talking to Ms. Shaw. Jannie Cross was so animated and bright, and she had such a sweet perspective on the world. She was a lot like her father. Smart, sensitive, handsome as sin.
Christine eventually walked on. Preoccupied, she found herself climbing the concrete stairs to the second floor. Even the walls of the stairwells were decorated with projects and brightly colored artwork, which was part of the reason most of the kids believed that this was “their school.” Once you understood something was “yours,” you protected it, felt a part of it. It was a simple enough idea, but one that the government in Washington seemed not to get.
She felt a little silly, but she checked on Damon, too.
Of all the boys and girls at the Truth School, Damon was probably her favorite. He had been even before she met Alex. It wasn’t just that Damon was bright, and verbal, and could be very charming — Damon was also a really good person. He showed it time and again with the other kids, with his teachers, and even when his little sister entered the school this past semester. He’d treated her like his best friend in the world — and maybe he already understood that she was.
Christine finally headed back to her office, where the usual ten-to-twelve-hour day awaited her. She was thinking about Alex now, and she supposed that was really why she had gone and looked in on his kids.
She was thinking that she wasn’t looking forward to their dinner date tonight. She was afraid of tonight, a little panicky, and she thought she knew why.
Chapter 6
AT A little before eight in the morning, Gary Soneji strolled into Union Station, as if he owned the place. He felt tremendously good. His step quickened and his spirits seemed to rise to the height of the soaring train-station ceilings.
He knew everything there was to know about the famous train gateway for the capital. He had long admired the neoclassical facade that recalled the famed Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome. He had studied the station’s architecture for hours as a young boy. He had even visited the Great Train Store, which sold exquisite model trains and other railroad-themed souvenirs.
He could hear and feel the trains rattling down below. The marble floors actually shook as powerful Amtrak trains departed and arrived, mostly on schedule, too. The glass doors to the outside world rumbled, and he could hear the panes clink against their frames.
He loved this place, everything about it. It was truly magical. The key words for today were train and cellar, and only he understood why.
Information was power, and he had it all.
Gary Soneji thought that he might be dead within the next hour, but the idea, the image, didn’t trouble him. Whatever happened was meant to, and besides, he definitely wanted to go out with a bang, not a cowardly whimper. And why the hell not? He had plans for a long and exciting career after his death.
Gary Soneji was wearing a lightweight black jumpsuit with a red Nike logo. He carried three bulky bags. He figured that he looked like just another Yuppified traveler at the crowded train station. He appeared to be overweight and his hair was gray, for the time being. He was actually five foot ten, but the lifts in his shoes got him up to six one today. He still had a trace of his former good looks. If somebody had wanted to guess his occupation, they might say teacher.
The cheap irony wasn’t lost on him. He’d been a teacher once, one of the worst ever. He had been Mr. Soneji — the Spider Man. He had kidnapped two of his own students.
He had already purchased his ticket for the Metroliner, but he didn’t head for his train just yet.
Instead, Gary Soneji crossed the main lobby, hurrying away from the waiting room. He took a stairway next to the Center Cafi and climbed to the balcony on the second floor, which looked out on the lobby, about twenty feet below.
He gazed down and watched the lonely people streaming across the cavernous lobby. Most of these assholes had no idea how undeservedly lucky they were this particular morning. They would be safely on board their little commuter trains by the time the “light and sound” show began in just a few minutes.
What a beautiful, beautiful place this is, Soneji thought. How many times he’d dreamed about this scene.
This very scene at Union Station!
Long streaks and spears of morning sunlight shafted down through delicate skylights. They reflected off the walls and the high gilded ceiling. The main hall before him held an information booth, a magnificent electronic train arrival-and-departure board, the Center cafi, Sfuzzi, and America restaurants.
The concourse led to a waiting area that had once been called “the largest room in the world.” What a grand and historic venue he had chosen for today, his birthday.
Gary Soneji produced a small key from his pocket. He flipped it in the air and caught it. He opened a silver-gray metallic door that led into a room on the balcony.
He thought of it as his room. Finally, he had his own room — upstairs with everyone else. He closed the door behind him.
“Happy birthday, dear Gary, happy birthday to you.”
Chapter 7
THIS WAS going to be incredible, beyond anything he’d attempted so far. He could almost do this next part blindfolded, working from memory. He’d done the drill so many times. In his imagination, in his dreams. He had been looking forward to this day for more than twenty years.
He set up a folding aluminum tripod mount inside the small room, and positioned a Browning rifle on it. The BAR was a dandy, with a milspec scoping device and an electronic trigger he had customized himself.
The marble floors continued to shake as his beloved trains entered and departed the station, huge mythical beasts that came here to feed and rest. There was nowhere he’d rather be than here. He loved this moment so much.
Soneji knew everything about Union Station, and also about mass murders conducted in crowded public places. As a boy, he had obsessed on the so-called “crimes of the century.” He had imagined himself committing such acts and becoming feared and famous. He planned perfect murders, random ones, and then he began to carry them out. He buried his first victim on a relative’s farm when he was fifteen. The body still hadn’t been found, not to this day.
He was Charles Starkweather; he was Bruno Richard Hauptmann; he was Charlie Whitman. Except that he was much smarter than any of them; and he wasn’t crazy like them.
He had even appropriated a name for himself: Soneji, pronounced Soh-nee-gee. The name had seemed scary to him even at thirteen or fourteen. It still did. Starkweather, Hauptmann, Whitman, Soneji.
He had been shooting rifles since he was a boy in the deep, dark woods surrounding Princeton, New Jersey. During the past year, he’d done more shooting, more hunting, more practicing than ever before. He was primed and ready for this morning. Hell, he’d been ready for years.
Soneji sat on a metal folding chair and made himself as comfortable as he could. He pulled up a battleship gray tarp that blended into the background of the train terminal’s dark walls. He snuggled under the tarp. He was going to disappear, to be part of the scenery, to be a sniper in a very public place. In Union Station!
An old-fashioned-sounding train announcer was singing out the track and time for the next Metroliner to Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, and New York’s Penn Station.
> Soneji smiled to himself — that was his getaway train.
He had his ticket, and he still planned to be on it. No problem, just book it. He’d be on the Metroliner, or bust. Nobody could stop him now, except maybe Alex Cross, and even that didn’t matter anymore. His plan had contingencies for every possibility, even his own death.
Then Soneji was lost in his thoughts. His memories were his cocoon.
He had been nine years old when a student named Charles Whitman opened fire out of a tower at the University of Texas, in Austin. Whitman was a former Marine, twenty-five years old. The outrageous, sensational event had galvanized him back then.
He’d collected every single story on the shootings, long pieces from Time, Life, Newsweek, the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Times of London, Paris Match, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun. He still had the precious articles. They were at a friend’s house, being held for posterity. They were evidence — of past, present, and future crimes.
Gary Soneji knew he was a good marksman. Not that he needed to be a crackerjack in this bustling crowd of targets. No shot he’d have to make in the train terminal would be over a hundred yards, and he was accurate at up to five hundred yards.
Now, I step out of my own nightmare and into the real world, he thought as the moment crystallized. A cold, hard shiver ran through his body. It was delicious, tantalizing. He peered through the Browning’s telescope at the busy, nervous, milling crowd.
He searched for the first victim. Life was so much more beautiful and interesting through a target scope.
Chapter 8
YOU ARE there.
He scanned the lobby with its thousands of hurrying commuters and summer vacation travelers. Not one of them had a clue about his or her mortal condition at that very moment. People never seemed to believe that something horrible could actually happen to them.
Soneji watched a lively brat pack of students in bright blue blazers and starched white shirts. Preppies, goddamn preppies. They were giggling and running for their train with unnatural delight. He didn’t like happy people at all, especially dumb-ass children who thought they had the world by the nuts.
He found that he could distinguish smells from up here: diesel fuel, lilacs and roses from the flower vendors, meat and garlic shrimp from the lobby’s restaurants. The odors made him hungry.
The target circle in his customized scope had a black site post rather than the more common bull’s-eye. He preferred the post. He watched a montage of shapes and motion and colors swim in and out of death’s way. This small circle of the Grim Reaper was his world now, self-contained and mesmerizing.
Soneji let the aiming post come to rest on the broad, wrinkled forehead of a weary-looking businesswoman in her early to mid-fifties. The woman was thin and nervous, with haggard eyes, pale lips. “Say good night, Gracie,” he whispered softly. “Good night, Irene. Good night, Mrs. Calabash.”
He almost pulled the trigger, almost started the morning’s massacre, then he eased off at the last possible instant.
Not worthy of the first shot, he thought, chastising himself for impatience. Not nearly special enough. Just a passing fancy. Just another middle-class cow.
The aiming post settled in and held as if by a magnet on the lower spine of a porter pushing an uneven load of boxes and suitcases. The porter was a tall, good-looking black — much like Alex Cross, Soneji thought. His dark skin gleamed like mahogany furniture.
That was the attraction of the target. He liked the image, but who would get the subtle, special message other than himself? No, he had to think of others, too. This was a time to be selfless.
He moved the aiming post again, the circle of death. There were an amazing number of commuters in blue suits and black wing tips. Business sheep.
A father and teenage son floated into the circle, as if they had been put there by the hand of God.
Gary Soneji inhaled. Then he slowly exhaled. It was his shooting ritual, the one he’d practiced for so many years alone in the woods. He had imagined doing this so many times. Taking out a perfect stranger, for no good reason.
He gently, very gently, pulled the trigger toward the center of his eye.
His body was completely still, almost lifeless. He could feel the faint pulse in his arm, the pulse in his throat, the approximate speed of his heartbeat.
The shot made a loud cracking noise, and the sound seemed to follow the flight of the bullet down toward the lobby. Smoke spiraled upward, inches in front of the rifle barrel. Quite beautiful to observe.
The teenager’s head exploded inside the telescopic circle. Beautiful. The head flew apart before his eyes. The Big Bang in miniature, no?
Then Gary Soneji pulled the trigger a second time. He murdered the father before he had a chance to grieve. He felt absolutely nothing for either of them. Not love, not hate, not pity. He didn’t flinch, wince, or even blink.
There was no stopping Gary Soneji now, no turning back.
Chapter 9
RUSH HOUR! Eight-twenty A.M. Jesus God Almighty, no! A madman was on the loose inside Union Station.
Sampson and I raced alongside the double lanes of stalled traffic that covered Massachusetts Avenue as far as the eye could see. When in doubt, gallop. The maxim of the old Foreign Legion.
Car and truck drivers honked their horns in frustration. Pedestrians were screaming, walking fast, or running away from the train station. Police squad cars were on the scene everywhere.
Up ahead on North Capitol I could see the massive, all-granite Union Station terminal with its many additions and renovations. Everything was somber and gray around the terminal except the grass, which seemed especially green.
Sampson and I flew past the new Thurgood Marshall Justice Building. We heard gunshots coming from the station. They sounded distant, muffled by the thick stone walls.
“It’s for goddamn real,” Sampson said as he ran at my side. “He’s here. No doubt about it now.”
I knew he would be. An urgent call had come to my desk less than ten minutes earlier. I had picked up the phone, distracted by another message, a fax from Kyle Craig of the FBI. I was scanning Kyle’s fax. He desperately needed help on his huge Mr. Smith case. He wanted me to meet an agent, Thomas Pierce. I couldn’t help Kyle this time. I was thinking of getting the hell out of the murder business, not taking on more cases, especially a serious bummer like Mr. Smith.
I recognized the voice on the phone. “It’s Gary Soneji, Dr. Cross. It really is me. I’m calling from Union Station. I’m just passing through D.C., and I hoped against hope that you’d like to see me again. Hurry, though. You’d better scoot if you don’t want to miss me.”
Then the phone went dead. Soneji had hung up. He loved to be in control.
Now, Sampson and I were sprinting along Massachusetts Avenue. We were moving a whole lot faster than the traffic. I had abandoned my car at the corner of Third Street.
We both wore protective vests over our sport shirts. We were “scooting,” as Soneji had advised me over the phone.
“What the hell is he doing in there?” Sampson said through tightly gritted teeth. “That son of a bitch has always been crazy.”
We were less than fifty yards from the terminal’s glass-and-wood front doors. People continued to stream outside.
“He used to shoot guns as a boy,” I told Sampson. “Used to kill pets in his neighborhood outside Princeton. He’d do sniper kills from the woods. Nobody ever solved it at the time. He told me about the sniping when I interviewed him at Lorton Prison. Called himself the pet assassin.”
“Sounds like he graduated to people,” Sampson muttered.
We raced up the long driveway, heading toward the front entrance of the ninety-year-old terminal. Sampson and I were moving, burning up shoe leather, and it seemed like an eternity since Soneji’s phone call.
There was a pause in the shooting — then it began again. Weird as hell. It definitely sounded like rifle reports coming from inside.
; Cars and taxis in the train terminal’s driveway were backing out, trying to get away from the scene of gunfire and madness. Commuters and day travelers were still pushing their way out of the building’s front doors. I’d never been involved with a sniper situation before.
In the course of my life in Washington, I’d been inside Union Station several hundred times. Nothing like this, though. Nothing even close to this morning.
“He’s got himself trapped in there. Purposely trapped! Why the hell would he do that?” Sampson asked as we came up to the front doors.
“Worries me, too,” I said. Why had Gary Soneji called me? Why would he effectively trap himself in Union Station?
Sampson and I slipped into the lobby of Union Station. The shooting from the balcony — from up high somewhere — suddenly started up again. We both went down flat on the floor.
Had Soneji already seen us?
Chapter 10
I KEPT my head low as my eyes scanned the huge and portentous train-station lobby. I was desperately looking for Soneji. Could he see me? One of Nana’s sayings was stuck in my head: Death is nature’s way of saying “howdy.”
Statues of Roman legionnaires stood guard all around the imposing main hall of Union Station. At one time, politically correct Pennsylvania Railroad execs had wanted the warriors fully clothed. The sculptor, Louis Saint-Gaudens, had managed to sneak by every third statue in its accurate historical condition.
I saw three people already down, probably dead, on the lobby floor. My stomach dropped. My heart beat even faster. One of the victims was a teenage boy in cutoff shorts and a Redskins practice jersey. A second victim appeared to be a young father. Neither of them was moving.
Hundreds of travelers and terminal employees were trapped inside arcade shops and restaurants. Dozens of frightened people were squashed into a small Godiva Chocolates store and an open cafi called America.