Chapter 71
I WAS ALLOWED to visit Soneji/Murphy, but only in connection with the Sanders and Turner murder investigations. I could see him about crimes that would probably never go to trial, but not about one that could possibly remain unsolved. So goes the tale of the red tape.
I had a friend out at Fallston, where Gary was imprisoned. I’d known Wallace Hart, the chief of psychiatry at Fallston, since I’d joined the D.C. police force. Wallace was waiting for me in the lobby of the ancient facility.
“I like this kind of personal attention,” I said as I shook his hand. “First time I’ve ever got any, of course.”
“You’re a celebrity now, Alex. I saw you on the tube.”
Wallace is a small scholarly looking black man who wears round bottle glasses and baggy blue business suits. He reminds people of George Washington Carver, maybe crossed with Woody Allen. He looks as if he were black and Jewish.
“What do you think about Gary so far?” I asked Wallace as we took a prison elevator up to the maximum-security floor. “Model prisoner?”
“I’ve always had a soft spot for psychopaths, Alex. They keep shit interesting. Imagine life without the real bad guys. Very boring.”
“You’re not buying the possibility of multiple personalities, I take it?”
“I think it’s a possibility, but very slim. Either way, the bad boy in him is really bad. I’m surprised he got his ass in a sling, though. I’m surprised he got caught.”
I said, “Want to hear one off-the-wall theory? Gary Murphy caught Soneji. Gary Murphy couldn’t handle Soneji, so he turned him in.”
Wallace grinned at me. He had a big toothy smile for such a little face. “Alex, I do like your crazy mind. But do you really buy that? One side turning in the other?”
“Nope. I just wanted to see if you would. I’m beginning to think he’s a psycho all the way. I just need to know how far all the way is. I observed a definite paranoid personality disorder when I was seeing him.”
“I agree with that. He’s mistrustful, demanding, arrogant, driven. Like I say, I love the guy.”
I was a little shocked when I finally saw Gary this time. His eyes appeared to be sunken into his skull. The orbs were red-rimmed, as if he were suffering from conjunctivitis. The skin was pulled tight all around his face. He’d lost a lot of weight, maybe thirty pounds, and he’d been fit and trim to begin with.
“So I’m a little depressed. Hello, Doctor.” He looked up from his cot and spoke to me. He was Gary Murphy again. At least he seemed to be.
“Hello, Gary,” I said. “I couldn’t stay away.”
“Long time no visits. You must want something. Let me guess—you’re doing a book about me. You want to be the next Anne Rule?”
I shook my head. “I wanted to come and see you long before this. I had to get a court order first. I’m here to talk about the Sanders and Turner murders, actually.”
“Really?” He seemed resigned and his affect was indifferent and passive. I didn’t like the way he looked. It struck me that his personality could be on the verge of complete disintegration.
“I’m only allowed to talk to you about the Sanders and Turner murders, in fact. That’s my purview. But we could talk about Vivian Kim, if you like.”
“Then we don’t have a lot to talk about. I don’t know anything about those killings. I haven’t even read the newspapers. I swear on my daughter’s life I haven’t. Maybe our friend Soneji knows. Not me, Alex.” He seemed real comfortable calling me Alex by now. Nice to know you can make friends, anywhere.
“Your lawyer must have explained the murder cases to you. There could be another trial this year.”
“I won’t see any more lawyers. It’s got nothing to do with me. Besides, those cases won’t get to trial. Too expensive.”
“Gary.” I talked to him as if he were a patient of mine. “I’d like to put you under hypnosis again. Will you sign the papers if I can get all the bullshit arranged? It’s important for me to talk to Soneji. Let me try to talk to him.”
Gary Murphy smiled and he shook his head. Finally he nodded. “Actually, I’d like to talk with him myself,” he said. “If I could, I’d kill him. I would kill Soneji. Like I’m supposed to have killed all those other people.”
That evening I went to see former Secret Service Agent Mike Devine. Devine was one of the two agents who had been assigned to Secretary Goldberg and his family. I wanted to ask him about the “accomplice” theory.
Mike Devine had taken voluntary retirement about a month after the kidnapping. Because he was still in his mid-forties, I assumed he’d been pushed out of his job. We talked for a couple of hours out on his stone terrace overlooking the Potomac.
It was a tasteful, well-appointed apartment for a now-single man. Devine was tan and looked rested. He was one of the better advertisements I’d seen for getting out of police work while you can.
He reminded me a little of Travis McGee in the John MacDonald novels. He was well built, with lots of character in his face. He’d do well in early-retirement-land, I thought: movie-hero good looks, lots of curly brown hair, an easy smile, stories galore.
“My partner and I were pushed out, you know,” Devine confessed over a couple of Corona beers. “One f*ck-up that happened to turn into World War Three, and we were both history at the Service. We didn’t get a lot of support from our boss, either.”
“It was a public case. I guess there had to be heroes and villains.” I could be as philosophical as the next guy over a cold beer.
“Maybe it’s all for the best,” Mike Devine mused. “You ever think about starting over, doing something else while you still have the energy? Before the Alzheimer’s sets in?”
“I’ve thought about private practice,” I said to Devine. “I’m a psychologist. I still do some pro bono work in the projects.”
“But you love The Job too much to leave it?” Mike Devine grinned and squinted into late afternoon sunlight coming off the water. Gray seabirds with white chests flew right by the terrace. Nice. Everything about the layout was nice.
“Listen, Mike, I wanted to go over, once more, those last couple of days before the kidnapping,” I said to him.
“You are goddamn hooked, Alex. I’ve been over every square inch of that territory myself. Believe me, there’s nothing there. It’s fallow ground. Nothing grows. I’ve tried and tried, and finally I gave up the ghost.”
“I believe you. But I’m still curious about a late-model sedan that might have been seen out in Potomac. Possibly a Dodge,” I said. It was the car that Nina Cerisier remembered parked on Langley Terrace. “You ever notice a blue or black sedan parked on Sorrell Avenue? Or anywhere around the Day School?”
“Like I said, I’ve been over and over all of our daily logs. There wasn’t any mystery car. You can look at the logs yourself.”
“I have,” I told him and laughed at the seeming hopelessness of my case.
Mike Devine and I talked for a while more. He couldn’t come up with anything new. In the end, I listened to him praise the beach life, bonefishing on the Keys, “hitting the little white ball.” His new life was just starting. He’d gotten over the Dunne-Goldberg kidnapping a lot better than I had.
Something still bothered me, though. The whole “accomplice” thing. Or “the watcher” thing. More than that, I had a gut feeling about Devine and his partner. A bad feeling. Something told me they knew more than they were willing to tell anybody.
While I was still as hot as a ten-dollar pistol, I decided to contact Devine’s ex-partner, Charles Chakely, later that same night. After his dismissal, Chakely and his family had settled in Tempe, Arizona.
It was midnight my time; ten o’clock in Tempe. Not too late, I figured. “Charles Chakely? This is Detective Alex Cross calling from Washington,” I said when he got on the phone.
There was a pause, an uncomfortable silence, before he answered. Then Chakely got hostile—real strange, it seemed to me. His reaction only served to fuel my instincts about him and his partner.
“What the hell do you want?” he bristled. “Why are you calling me here? I’m retired from the Service now. I’m trying to put what happened behind me. Leave me the hell alone. Stay away from me and my family.”
“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you—” I started to apologize.
He cut me off. “Then don’t. That’s an easy fix, Cross. Butt out of my life.”
I could just about picture Charles Chakely as I spoke to him. I remembered him from the days right after the kidnapping. He was only fifty-one, but he looked over sixty. Beer belly. Most of his hair gone. Sad, kind of withdrawn eyes. Chakely was physical evidence of the harm The Job could do to you, if you let it.
“Unfortunately, I’m still assigned to a couple of murders,” I said to him, hoping he’d understand. “They involved Gary Soneji/Murphy, too. He came back to kill one of the teachers at the school. Vivian Kim?”
“I thought you didn’t want to bother me. Why don’t you pretend you never called, huh? Then I’ll pretend I never picked up the phone. I’m getting good at playing ‘let’s pretend’ out here on the painted desert.”
“Listen, I could get a subpoena. You know I can do that. We could have this conversation in Washington. Or I could fly out there and come over to your house in Tempe. Show up for a barbecue some night.”
“Hey, what the f*ck’s the matter with you? What’s with you, Cross? The goddamn case is over. Leave it alone, and leave me the f*ck alone.”
There was something very strange in Chakely’s tone. He sounded ready to explode.
“I talked to your partner tonight,” I said. That kept him on the line.
“So. You talked to Mickey Devine. I talk to him myself now and then.”
“I’m happy for both of you. I’ll even get out of your hair in a minute. Just answer a question or two.”
“One question. That’s it,” Chakely finally said.
“Do you remember seeing a dark late-model sedan parked on Sorrell Avenue? Anywhere around the Goldberg or Dunne house? Maybe a week or so prior to the kidnapping?”
“Hell, no; Christ, no. Anything out of the ordinary would have gone in our log. The kidnapping case is closed. It’s over in my book. So are you, Detective Cross.”
Chakely hung up on me.
The tone of the conversation had been too weird. The unsolved “watcher” angle was driving me a little crazy. It was a big loose end. Too important to ignore if you were any kind of detective. I had to talk to Jezzie about Mike Devine and Charlie Chakely, and the logs they had kept. Something wasn’t checking out about the two of them. They were definitely holding back.