else is.”
“You came back to check the children again the following day?” I asked him.
“The next day she was fine, too. But the day after Michael Goldberg died, Maggie Rose was gone! I drove into the barn, and there was the hole in the ground where I’d buried the box. Big hole in the ground. Empty! I didn’t harm her. I didn’t get the ransom money down in Florida, either. Somebody else has it. Now, you have to figure out what happened, Detective. I think I have! I think I know the big secret.”
CHAPTER 74
I WAS UP at three in the morning. Flying! Playing Mozart and Debussy and Billie Holiday on the porch. Junkies were probably calling the police to complain about the noise.
I visited with Soneji again in the morning. The “Bad Boy.” I sat in his small windowless room. All of a sudden he wanted to talk. I thought I knew where he was going with all of this; what he was going to tell me soon. Still, I needed to have my opinion confirmed by him.
“You have to understand something that is extremely foreign to your nature,” he said to me. “I was in heat when I was scouting the fucking famous girl and her actress mother. I am a ‘cheap thrill’ artist and junkie. I needed a fix.” I couldn’t help thinking of my own child-abuse patients as I listened to him relate his bizarre, grisly experiences. It was pathetic to hear a victim talking about his many victims.
“I understood the ‘thrill state’ perfectly, Doctor. My theme song is ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ The Rolling Stones? I always tried to take proper precautions—without breaking the spell. I had figured out escape routes, and backup escape routes, ways in and out of every neighborhood that I entered. One of these involved a sewer-system tunnel that goes from the edge of the ghetto out to Capitol Hill. I had a change of clothing inside the tunnel, including a wig. I’d thought of everything. I wouldn’t get caught. I was very confident about my abilities. I believed in my own omnipotence.”
“Do you still believe in your omnipotence?” It was a serious question. I didn’t think he’d tell me the truth, but I wanted to hear what he had to say, anyway.
He said, “What happened back then, my one mistake, was I permitted my successes, the applause of millions of admirers, to rush to my head. The applause can be a drug. Katherine Rose suffers from the same disease, you know. Most of the movie people, the sports icons, they do, too. Millions are cheering for them, you understand. They’re telling these people how ‘special’ and how ‘brilliant’ they are. And some of the stars forget any limitations they might have, forget the hard work that got them to the plateau originally. I did. At the time. That is precisely why I was caught. I believed I could escape from the McDonald’s! Just as I had always escaped before. I would just dabble in a little ‘spree’ killing, then get away. I wanted to sample all the high-impact crimes, Alex. A little Bundy, a little Geary, a little Manson, Whitman, Gilmore.”
“Do you feel omnipotent now? Since you’re older and wiser?” I asked Soneji. He was being ironic. I assumed I could be, too.
“I’m the closest thing to it you’ll ever see. I’m a way to understand the concept, no?”
He smiled that blank killer smile of his again. I wanted to hit him. Gary Murphy was a tragic and almost likable sort of man. Soneji was hateful, pure evil. The human monster; the human beast.
“When you scouted the Goldberg and Dunne houses, were you at the height of your powers?” Were you omnipotent then, shithead?
“No, no, no. As you know, Doctor, I was already becoming sloppy. I’d read too many news accounts of my ‘perfect’ killing in Condon Terrace. ‘No traces, no clues, the perfect killer!’ Even I was impressed.”
“What went wrong out in Potomac?” I thought I knew the answer. I needed him to confirm it.
He shrugged. “I was being followed, of course.”
Here we go, I thought to myself. The “watcher.”
“You didn’t know it at the time?” I asked Soneji.
“Of course not.” He frowned at the question. “I realized I was being followed much later. Then it was confirmed at the trial.”
“How was that? How did you find out you were being followed?”
Soneji stared into my eyes. He seemed to be staring straight through to the back of my skull.