Chapter 11
FBI SPECIAL AGENT ROGER GRAHAM lived in Manassas Park, midway between Washington and the FBI Academy in Quantico. Graham was tall and physically impressive, with short, sandy brown hair. He’d worked on several major kidnappings, but nothing quite as disturbing as this current nightmare.
At a little past one that morning, Graham finally got home. Home was a sprawling Colonial, on an average street in Manassas Park. Six bedrooms, three baths, a big yard that covered nearly two acres.
Unfortunately, this had not been a normal day. Graham was drained and beaten up and bone-tired. He often wondered why he didn’t just settle down and write another book. Take early retirement from the Bureau. Get to know his three children before they fled from the house.
The street in Manassas Park was deserted. Porch lights glowed down the line of the road, and they were a comforting, friendly sight. Lights appeared in the rearview mirror of Graham’s Ford Bronco.
A second car had stopped on the street in front of his house, its headlamps gleaming. A man got out, and waved a notepad that was clutched in his hand.
“Agent Graham? Martin Bayer, New York Times,” the man called out as he walked up the driveway. He flashed a press credential.
Jesus Christ. Son-of-a-bitching New York Times, Graham thought to himself. The reporter wore a dark suit, pin-striped shirt, rep tie. He was your basic up-and-coming New York yuppie on assignment. All these a*sholes from the Times and the Post looked the same to Graham. Not a real reporter among them anymore.
“You’ve come a long way at this hour for a ‘no comment,’ Mr. Bayer. I’m sorry,” Roger Graham said. “I can’t give you anything on the kidnapping. Frankly, there isn’t anything to give.”
He wasn’t sorry, but who needed enemies at the New York Times. Those bastards could stick their poison pens in one of your ears and out the other.
“One question, and one question only. I understand that you don’t have to answer, but it’s that important to me—for me. For me to be here at one in the morning.”
“Okay. Let’s have it. What’s your question?” Graham shut the door of his Bronco. He locked up for the night, flipped the car keys, and caught them.
“Are all of you this incredibly insipid and stupid?” Gary Soneji asked him. “That’s my question, Grahamcracker.”
A long, sharp knife flashed forward once. Then flashed again. The blade sliced back and forth across Roger Graham’s throat.
The first slashing motion pinned him back against his Ford Bronco. The second slashed his carotid artery. Graham dropped dead in his driveway. There had been no time to duck, run, or even say a prayer.
“You’re supposed to be a freaking star, Roger. You wanted to be the star, right? I see no evidence of that. None, zero,” Soneji said. “You’re supposed to be way better than this. I need to be challenged by the best and the brightest.”
Soneji bent low and slid a single index card into the breast pocket of Agent Graham’s white shirt. He patted the dead man’s chest. “Now, would a New York Times reporter really be here at one in the morning, you arrogant f*ck? Just to talk to your sorry ass?”
Then Soneji drove away from the murder scene. The death of Agent Graham wasn’t a big deal to him. Not really. He’d killed over two hundred people before this one. Practice makes perfect. It wouldn’t be the last time, either.
This one would wake everybody up, though. He just hoped they had somebody better waiting in the wings.
Otherwise, where was the fun? The challenge? How could this get bigger than the Lindbergh kidnapping?