Page 9 of Return of the Spider
Before donning the jumpsuit, Soneji had sat at the counter of the Georgetown café where Abby and Conrad were eating dessert. They’d had no idea who he was. Abby had walked by Soneji twice on her way to the bathroom and hadn’t given him a second glance.
The Bronco approached the traffic lights where the Chain Bridge from Virginia met the Canal Road. The light turned yellow and the Bronco sped through, leaving Soneji three cars behind as the light turned red. He watched the Bronco’s taillights vanish north on the Clara Barton Parkway.
It didn’t matter. Soneji knew exactly where they were headed. He’d looked it up in an atlas of national parks in the school library.
North of the bridge, on the Maryland side of the parkway, there was a pull-off at lock five of the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that allowed canoers and kayakers access to the Potomac River.
Bikers, hikers, National Park Service vehicles and equipment, and, evidently, the odd Bronco could cross the top of the lock and take a short bridge to Bear Island and the old towpath heading south.
Roughly a mile south on the towpath, still on Bear Island but back in the District of Columbia, was a maintenance road of sorts that ran down to a large concrete platform above the Potomac River. Little Falls and the rapids were right upstream.
Most of the traffic was heading across the Chain Bridge to Virginia; there were few cars north of the Maryland state line. Soneji checked his rearview and saw no one behind him. Headlights came at him as he neared the pull-out for lock five.
Soneji slowed, put on his blinker, lowered the visor, and let thecar go by, which left the road ahead empty. He turned into the parking lot at lock five, deserted at that hour. His headlights revealed trees and the entrance to the wide top of the lock.
There were signs warning that only pedestrians, bikes, and official vehicles were allowed to cross. But there was no gate.
With no cars coming in either direction behind him, Soneji turned off his headlights, waited several seconds to let his eyes adjust, then drove slowly over the top of the lock. It was a tight squeeze, but he made it. Conrad had been right—there was more than enough light from the moon to see, and he never touched the wooden rails.
Once he reached the other side, he glanced to his left and saw headlights flickering on the parkway. He crossed the second bridge much quicker and again without touching the rails.
Soneji was on the actual towpath now, which was easily wide enough to drive on, heading south. A broken line of trees and kudzu to his left partially blocked his view of the river and the parkway beyond. Feeling safe, he took a chance and briefly flicked the van’s fog lights on and off.
He smiled. The fog lights had revealed the Bronco’s big tire tracks on the gravel and dirt ahead.
As the map had shown and as Talbot’s tracks confirmed, a maintenance road branched off from the main trail and headed at an angle across the island toward the Potomac’s west branch.
Soneji pulled over just inside the road entry. He turned the van off, sat there a moment listening to the ticking of the engine, and climbed out.
It was a cool October night. The bright moon filtered through the trees, making the way forward much clearer than he’d expected.
Walking around to the back of the van, Soneji flashed on several memories of Joyce Adams in the basement of his uncle’s old cabin in the Pine Barrens. The images were all of one flavor: her eyes lit up with terror, his feeling of absolute control over her. He craved that feeling, the power of holding someone captive.
But he had much to learn before he took that kind of chance again.Stay focused,he told himself.You’re here to study.
He opened the van’s rear doors, eager now to find out what worked and what didn’t. The mechanics. The potential pitfalls of this particular modus operandi.
Soneji turned on a small penlight and put the back end of it in his mouth. His heart rate quickened as he opened a duffel bag he’d stowed there. He pulled out heavy wool socks and a black balaclava and stuffed them in the inner pockets of the jumpsuit.
Shining the light back into the duffel, he picked up a snub-nosed .44-caliber pistol in a quart-size plastic bag and slid it deep into the front right pocket of the coverall. Soneji shut the doors quietly, turned off the light, and started down the shadowed path to the west side of the island.
He tried to see the gun not as his salvation but as a tool.Focus on the gun,he told himself.You can bring a city to its knees with a gun like this. It’s been done before.
CHAPTER
4
Gravel crunched beneathGary Soneji’s sneakers. When he saw the woods open ahead, he put the wool socks on over his sneakers and the balaclava over his curly blond hair.
He took a few steps into the clearing and spotted the old Bronco about forty yards away on a concrete pad above the river. It was parked facing away from him toward Little Falls. The moonlight had turned the scene a dusky blue.
Soneji felt a thrill shoot through him.
It wasn’t a Joyce scenario, but his heart was suddenly booming. He got out the weapon, breathless at the solid weight of the pistol in his hand.
After gauging where the moon would throw his shadow and locating the blind spot of the Bronco’s side-view mirror, Sonejipadded forward. He heard the low roar of the nearby rapids and the distant wail of a siren somewhere on the Virginia side of the river.
Feeling the blood pound in his temples, he watched for movement in the car as he closed the distance. At five yards, he could see the silhouettes of the jock and his girlfriend in the moonlight and the glow of the radio, which was playing the intro to Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.”
