Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,8

her more agitated. “What are the police doing at sweet Ginny Winslow’s door? Looking to persecute a gun lover?”

“I just want to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Soneji,” I said.

Soneji’s widow flinched at the name, and turned spitting mad. “My name’s been legally changed to Virginia Winslow going on seven years now, and I still can’t get the stench of Gary off my skin. What’s your name? Who are you with?”

“Alex Cross,” I said. “With DC…”

She hardened, said, “I know you now. I remember you from TV.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You never came to talk with me. Just them US marshals. Like I didn’t even exist.”

“I’m here to talk now,” I said.

“Ten years too late. Get the hell off my property before I embrace my Second Amendment rights and—”

“I saw Gary’s father this morning,” I said. “He told me how Gary’s obsession with the Lindbergh kidnapping began.”

She knitted her brows. “How’s that?”

“Gary’s dad said when Gary was eight they were in a used book store, and while his father was wandering in the stacks, his son found a tattered copy of True Detective Mysteries, a crime magazine from the 1930s, and sat down to read it.”

Finger still on the trigger of her semiautomatic rifle, Virginia Winslow shrugged. “So what?”

“When Mr. Soneji found Gary, his son was sitting on the floor in the bookstore, the magazine in his lap, and staring in fascination at a picture from the Lindbergh baby’s autopsy that showed the head wound in lurid detail.”

She stared at me with her jaw slack, as if remembering something that frightened and appalled her.

“What is it?” I asked.

Soneji’s widow hardened again. “Nothing. Doesn’t surprise me. I used to catch him looking at autopsy pictures. He was always saying he was going to write a book and needed to look at them for research.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

“I believed him until my brother Charles noticed that Gary was always volunteering to gut deer they killed,” she said. “Charles told me Gary liked to put his hands in the warm innards, said he liked the feeling, and told me how Gary’d get all bright and glowing when he was doing it.”

Chapter 11

“I didn’t know that about Gary, either,” I said.

“What’s this all about?” Virginia Winslow asked, studying me now.

“There was a cop shooting in DC,” I said. “A man who fit Gary’s description was the shooter.”

I expected Soneji’s widow to respond with total skepticism. But instead she looked frightened and appalled again.

“Gary’s dead,” she said. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

“He killed himself,” I said. “Detonated the bomb he was carrying.”

Her attention flitted to the boards. “That’s not what the internet is saying.”

“What’s the internet saying?”

“That Gary’s alive,” she said. “Our son, Dylan, said he’s seen it online. Gary’s dead, isn’t he? Please tell me that.”

The way she clenched the rifle told me she needed to hear it, so I said, “As far as I know, Gary Soneji’s dead and has been dead for more than ten years. But someone who looked an awful lot like him shot my partner yesterday.”

“What?” she said. “No.”

“It’s not him,” I said. “I’m almost certain.”

“Almost?” she said before a phone started ringing back in the house.

“I…I have to get that,” she said. “Work.”

“What kind of work?”

“I’m a machinist and gunsmith,” she said. “My father taught me the trade.”

She shut the door before I could comment. The bolts were thrown one by one.

I almost left, but then, remembering that voice I’d heard on my way in, I went around the farmhouse, seeing a small, neglected barn around which dozens of pigeons were flying.

I heard someone talking in the barn, and walked over.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

Pigeons started and whirled out the barn door.

There was a grimy window. I went to it, and peeked inside, seeing through the dirt sixteen-year-old Dylan Winslow standing there by a large pigeon coop, gazing off into space.

Dylan looked nothing like his father. He had his mother’s naturally dark hair, sharp nose, and the same dull brown eyes. He was borderline obese, with hardly a chin, more a draping of his cheeks that joined a wattle above his Adam’s apple.

“You need to learn your place,” he said to no one. “You need to learn to be quiet. Emotional control. It’s the key to a happy life.”

Then he turned and walked by the pigeon coop, running a hoop of keys across the metal mesh.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

The sound rattled the pigeons and they battered themselves against their cages.

“Be quiet now,” Dylan said firmly. “You got to learn some control.”

Then he pivoted and started