The light was so very bright that Maggie Rose couldn't really see anything.
For the second-or third-time, it had gone from pitch-black to blinding, blinding white.
Then someone's silhouette blocked out most of the light. Maggie still couldn't see who was there. Light radiated behind the person.
Maggie clamped shut her eyes, tightly. Then opened them. She did this over and over again.
She couldn't really see anything. Couldn't focus on whoever or whatever it was. She had to keep blinking. Whoever was up there had to see the blinking, had to know she was alive.
“Mr. Soneji? Please help me,” she tried to call out. Her throat was so dry. Her voice came out raspy and unrecognizable.
“Shaddup! Shaddup!” a voice from above shouted.
Someone was up there now! Someone was really up there and could get her out. It sounded like... a very old woman's voice.
“Please help me. Please,” Maggie begged.
A hand came flying down and slapped her face hard.
Maggie cried out. She was more frightened than hurt, but the blow hurt, too. She'd never been slapped before. It set off a loud roar inside her head. “Stop yer crying!” The eerie voice was closer.
Then the person climbed down into the grave and was right over her. Maggie could smell strong body odor and someone's bad breath. She was being pinned down now, and she was too weak to fight back.
'Don't fight me, yer little bastard! Don't ever fight me! Who do yer think yer are, yer little bastard!
“Don't yer ever raise yer hand to me! Yer hear me? Don't yer ever!”
Please, God, what was happening?
“Yer that famous Maggie Rose, aren't yer? The rich, spoiled brat! Well, let me tell yer a secret. Our secret. Yer gonna die, little rich girl. Yer gonna die!”
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 17
HE NEXT DAY was Christmas Eve. It didn't feel like the season to be merry. And it was going to get a whole lot worse before Christmas Day.
None of us had been able to make any of the usual, festive holiday preparations with our families. It added to the tension the Hostage Rescue Team was feeling. It magnified the misery of the depressing task. If Soneji had chosen the holiday season for this reason, he'd chosen well. He had turned everyone's Christmas to shit.
Around ten o'clock in the morning, I walked down Sorrell Avenue to the Goldberg house. Sampson, meanwhile, had sneaked off to do a little work on the murders in Southeast. We planned to get back together around noon to compare horror stories.
I talked with the Goldbergs for over an hour. They weren't holding up well. In a lot of ways, they were even more forthcoming than Katherine and Thomas Dunne. They were stricter parents than the Dunnes, but Jerrold
92 and Laurie Goldberg loved their son dearly. Eleven years earlier, Laurie Goldberg had been told by doctors that she couldn't have children. Her uterus had been ed. When she found herself pregnant with Michael, it had seemed a miracle. Had Soneji known about that? I wondered. How carefully had he picked out his victims? Why Maggie Rose and Michael Goldberg?
The Goldbergs allowed me to see Michael's bedroom, and to spend some time there by myself. I shut the door to the room and sat quietly for several moments. I had done the same thing in Maggie's room at the Dunnes'.
The boy's room was amazing. It was a treasure chest of state-of-the-art computer hardware and software Macintosh, Nintendo, Prodigy, Windows. The AT&T labs had less equipment than Michael Goldberg.
Posters of Katherine Rose from her films Taboo and Honeymoon were taped up on the walls. A poster of Skid Row's lead singer, Sebastian Bach, was centered over the bed. A picture of Albert Einstein with a mauve punk haircut stared out from Michael's private bathroom. Also, a Rolling Stone magazine cover that asked “Who Killed Pee-wee Herman?”
A framed photograph of Michael and Maggie Rose was propped up on the boy's work desk. Posed arm in arm, the two kids looked like the greatest friends. What had inspired Soneji? Was it something about their special friendship?
Neither of the Goldbergs had ever met Mr. Soneji, although Michael had talked a lot about him. Soneji was the only person, child or adult, who had ever beaten Michael at Nintendo games like “Ultima” and 'Super
Brothers. ' It suggested that Soneji might be a niac himself, another whiz kid, but not willing to let a nine- year-old beat him at video games for the sake of the cause. Not willing to lose at any game.
I was back in the library with the Goldbergs, looking out a window, when everything went completely and forever crazy on the kidnapping case.
I saw Sampson running down the street from the Dunnes'. Each of his strides covered about a third of a block. I raced out the Goldbergs' front door at the same time that Sampson made it to the lawn. He broke stride like the San Francisco 49ers' Jerry Rice in the end zone.
“He called again?”
Sampson shook his head. “No! There's been a break, though. Something happened, Alex. The FBI's keeping
