We were down in a secluded knoll, talking quietly, when I became aware of someone watching us in the woods. I kept my head rock-steady, but my eyes darted to the right. Somebody else was in the woods. Someone was watching us.
Another watcher.
“Somebody's up there, Jezzie. Just beyond that hill to our right,” I whispered to her. She didn't look in that direction. She was still a cop.
“Are you sure, Alex?” she asked.
“I'm sure. Trust me on this one. Let's split up,” I said. “If whoever it is starts to take off, we run them down. ” We separated, and walked so that we'd flank the hill where I'd seen the watcher. That probably confused whoever it was.
He took off!
The watcher was a man. He had on sneakers and a dark, hooded jumpsuit that blended in with the woods. I couldn't tell about his height or build. Not yet, anyway.
Jezzie and I raced behind him for a good quarter of a mile. Both of us were barefoot, so we didn't gain any distance on the watcher. We probably lost a few yards during our all-out sprint. Branches and thorns tore at our faces and arms. We finally burst out of the pine woods, and found ourselves at a blacktop country road. We were just in time to hear a car accelerating around a nearby curve. We never saw the car, not even a glimpse of the license plate.
“Now that's really goddamn weird!” Jezzie said as we stood by the roadside, trying to catch our breath. Sweat was rolling down our faces, and our hearts pounded in synch.
“Who knows you're down here? Anyone?” I asked her. “No one. That's why it's so weird. Who the hell was that? This is scary, Alex. You got any ideas?”
I had jotted down at least a dozen theories on the watcher whom Nina Cerisier had seen. The most promising theory I had was the simplest. The police had been watching Gary Soneji. But which police? Could it have been anyone in my own department? Or Jezzie's?
It certainly was scary.
We made it back to Jezzie's cabin just before it turned dark. A wintry chill was entering the air.
We built a big fire inside and cooked a fine meal that would have fed four.
There was sweet white corn, a huge salad, a twentyounce steak for each of us, a dry white wine with Chassagne-Montrachet, Premier Cru, Marquis de Laguiche etched on the label.
After we ate we got around to talking about Mike Devine and Charlie Chakely, and the watcher. Jezzie
Idn't help too much. She told me I was probably ng in the wrong place with the Secret Service agents. She said that Chakely was an excitable type who just might blow up over a call to Arizona. She told me he was bitter on the job, so he'd probably be bitter off it. In her opinion, Mike Devine and Chakely were both good, but not great, agents. If something was worth noting during the Goldberg family surveillance, they would have seen it. Their logs would have been accurate. Neither of them was clever enough to pull off a cover-up. Jezzie was sure of that.
She didn't doubt that Nina Cerisier had seen a car parked on her street the night before the Sanders murder, but she didn't believe that somebody had been watching Soneji/Murphy. Or even that Soneji had been down near the projects himself.
“I'm not on the case anymore,” Jezzie finally said to me. “I don't represent the interests of Treasury or anybody else. Here's my honest opinion, Alex. Why don't you just give it up? It's over. Let it go.”
“I can't do that,” I told Jezzie. “That isn't how we do things at King Arthur's Round Table. I can't give up on this case. Every time I try, something pops up and changes my mind.” t
That night we went to bed fairly early. Nine, ninefifteen. The Chassagne-Montrachet, Premier Cru did its job. There was still passion, but there was also warmth and tenderness between us.
We cuddled, and we laughed, and we didn't go to sleep early. Jezzie dubbed me “Sir Alex, the Black Knight of the Round Table.” I called her “Lady of the Lake.” We finally fell asleep whispering like that, peaceful in each other's arms.
I don't know what time it was when I woke up. I was on top of ruffled bed covers and comforter, and it was very cold.
There was still an orangish glow from the fire, a quiet crackling noise. I wondered how it could be so cold in the bedroom with the fire still going.
What my eyes saw, what my body was feeling, didn't add up. I mulled on that for a few seconds. I crawled under the covers and pulled them up to my chin. The glow reflected against the windowpane looked strange.
I thought about how odd it was to be there with Jezzie again. In the Middle of Nowhere. I couldn't imagine ever not being with her now.
I was tempted to wake her. Tell her that. Talk to her about anything and everything. The Lady of the Lake. And the Black Knight. Sounded like Geoffrey Chaucer for the 1990s.
Suddenly I realized it wasn't a glow from the fireplace that was flickering against the window.
I jumped out of bed and ran to take a look. I was witnessing something I had heard about all of my life, but had never expected to see.
A cross was burning very brightly on Jezzie's lawn.
Along Came A Spider
