Chapter 23
I ANSWERED my pager and it was disturbing news from the NYPD. There had been another attack at a crowded train station. It kept me at work until well past midnight.
Gary Soneji was probably in New York City. Unless he had already moved on to another city he’d targeted for murder. Boston? Chicago? Philadelphia?
When I got home, the lights were off. I found lemon meringue pie in the refrigerator and finished it off. Nana had a story about Oseola McCarty attached to the fridge door. Oseola had washed clothes for more than fifty years in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She had saved $150,000 and donated it to the University of Southern Mississippi. President Clinton had invited her to Washington and given her the Presidential Citizens Medal.
The pie was excellent, but I needed something else, another kind of nourishment. I went to see my shaman.
“You awake, old woman?” I whispered at Nana’s bedroom door. She always keeps it ajar in case the kids need to talk or cuddle with her during the night. Open twenty-four hours, just like 7-Eleven, she always says. It was like that when I was growing up, too.
“That depends on your intentions,” I heard her say in the dark. “Oh, is that you, Alex?” she cackled and had a little coughing spell.
“Who else would it be? You tell me that? In the middle of the night at your bedroom door?”
“It could be anyone. Hugger-mugger. Housebreaker in this dangerous neighborhood of ours. Or one of my gentlemen admirers.”
It goes like that between us. Always has, always will.
“You have any particular boyfriends you want to tell me about?”
Nana cackled again. “No, but I suspect you have a girlfriend you want to talk to me about. Let me get decent. Put on some water for my tea. There’s lemon meringue pie in the fridge, at least there was pie. You do know that I have gentlemen admirers, Alex?”
“I’ll put on the tea,” I said. “The lemon meringue has already gone to pie heaven.”
A few minutes passed before Nana appeared in the kitchen. She was wearing the cutest housedress, blue stripes with big white buttons down the front. She looked as if she were ready to begin her day at half past twelve in the morning.
“I have two words for you, Alex. Marry her.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not what you think, old woman. It’s not that simple.”
She poured some steaming tea for herself. “Oh, it is absolutely that simple, granny son. You’ve got that spring in your step lately, a nice gleam in your eyes. You’re long gone, mister. You’re just the last one to hear about it. Tell me something. This is a serious question.”
I sighed. “You’re still a little high from your sweet dreams. What? Ask your silly question.”
“Well, it’s this. If I was to charge you, say, ninety dollars for our sessions, then would you be more likely to take my fantastic advice?”
We both laughed at her sly joke, her unique brand of humor.
“Christine doesn’t want to see me.”
“Oh, dear,” Nana said.
“Yeah, oh, dear. She can’t see herself involved with a homicide detective.”
Nana smiled. “The more I hear about Christine Johnson, the more I like her. Smart lady. Good head on those pretty shoulders.”
“Are you going to let me talk?” I asked.
Nana frowned and gave me her serious look. “You always get to say what you want, just not at the exact moment you want to say it. Do you love this woman?”
“From the first time I saw her, I felt something extraordinary. Heart leads head. I know that sounds crazy.”
She shook her head and still managed to sip steaming hot tea. “Alex, as smart as you are, you sometimes seem to get everything backwards. You don’t sound crazy at all. You sound like you’re better for the first time since Maria died. Will you look at the evidence that we have here? You have a spring back in your step again. Your eyes are bright and smiling. You’re even being nice to me lately. Put it all together-your heart is working again.”
“She’s afraid that I could die on the job. Her husband was murdered, remember?”
Nana rose from her chair at the kitchen table. She shuffled around to my side, and she stood very close to me. She was so much smaller than she used to be, and that worried me. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
“I love you, Alex,” she said. “Whatever you do, I’ll still love you. Marry her. At least live with Christine.” She laughed to herself. “I can’t believe I said that.”
Nana gave me a kiss, and then headed back to bed.
“I do too have suitors,” she called from the hall.
“Marry one,” I called back at her.
“I’m not in love, lemon meringue man. You are.”
Chapter 24
FIRST THING in the morning, 6:35 to be the exact, Sampson and I took the Metroliner to New York ’s Penn Station. It was almost as fast as driving to the airport, parking, finagling with the airlines-and besides, I wanted to do some thinking about trains.
A theory that Soneji was the Penn Station slasher had been advanced by the NYPD. I’d have to know more about the killings in New York, but it was the kind of high-profile situation that Soneji had been drawn to in the past.
The train ride was quiet and comfortable, and I had the opportunity to think about Soneji for much of the trip. What I couldn’t reconcile was why Soneji was committing crimes that appeared to be acts of desperation. They seemed suicidal to me.
I had interviewed Soneji dozens of times after I had apprehended him a few years ago. That was the Dunne- Goldberg case. I certainly didn’t believe he was suicidal then. He was too much of an egomaniac, even a megalomaniac.
Maybe these were copycat crimes. Whatever he was doing now didn’t track. What had changed? Was it Soneji who was doing the killings? Was he pulling some kind of trick or stunt? Could this be a clever trap? How in hell had he gotten my blood on the sniper’s rifle in Union Station?
What kind of trap? For what reason? Soneji obsessed on his crimes. Everything had a purpose with him.
So why kill strangers in Union and Penn Stations? Why choose railroad stations?
“Oh ho, smoke’s curling out of your forehead, Sugar. You aware of that?” Sampson looked over at me and made an announcement to the nice folks seated around us in the train car.
“Little wisps of white smoke! See? Right here. And here.”
He leaned in close and started hitting me with his newspaper as if he were trying to put out a small fire.
Sampson usually favors a cool deadpan delivery to slapstick. The change of pace was effective. We both started to laugh. Even the people sitting around us smiled, looking up from their newspapers, coffees, laptop computers.
“Phew. Fire seems to be out,” Sampson said and chuckled deeply. “Man, your head is hot as Hades to the touch. You must have been brainstorming some powerful ideas. Am I right about that?”
“No, I was thinking about Christine,” I told Sampson.
“You lying sack. You should have been thinking about Christine Johnson. Then I would have had to beat the fire out someplace else. How you two doing? If I might be so bold as to ask.”
“She’s great, she’s the best, John. Really something else. She’s smart and she’s funny. Ho ho, ha ha.”
“And she’s almost as good-looking as Whitney Houston, and she’s sexy as hell. But none of that answers my question. What’s happening with you two? You trying to hide your love on me? My spy, Ms. Jannie, told me you had
