Free Cat and Mouse by James Patterson Page A

sprouting toward his chin. His partner was dressed from head to toe in black. Talk about your odd couples, but I still preferred Oscar and Felix.
    Goldman started in on what he knew about the Penn Station stabbings. The New York detective was high energy, a rapid-fire talker. He used his hands constantly, and appeared confident about his abilities and opinions. The fact that he’d called us in on his case was proof of that. He wasn’t threatened by us.
    “We know that the killer came up the stairs at track ten here, just like the two of you just did. We’ve talked to three witnesses who may have seen him on the Metroliner from Washington,” Goldman explained. His swarthy, dark-haired partner never said a word. “And yet, we don’t have a good ID of him — each witness gave a different description — which doesn’t make any sense to me. You have any ideas on that one?”
    “If it’s Soneji, he’s good with makeup and disguises. He enjoys fooling people, especially the police. Do you know where he got on the train?” I asked.
    Goldman consulted a black leather notebook. “The stops for that particular train were D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Princeton Junction, and New York. We assumed he got on in D.C.”
    I glanced at Sampson, then back at the NYPD detectives. “Soneji used to live in Wilmington with his wife and little girl. He was originally from the Princeton area.”
    “That’s information we didn’t have,” Goldman said. I couldn’t help noticing that he was talking only to me, as if Sampson and Groza weren’t even there. It was peculiar, and made it uncomfortable for the rest of us.
    “Get me a schedule for yesterday’s Metroliner, the one that arrived at five-ten. I want to double-check the stops,” he barked at Groza. The younger detective skulked off to do Goldman’s bidding.
    “We heard there were three stabbings, three deaths?” Sampson finally spoke. I knew that he’d been sizing up Goldman. He’d probably come to the conclusion that the detective was a New York asshole of the first order.
    “That’s what it says on the front pages of all the daily newspapers,” Goldman cracked out of the side of his mouth. It was a nasty remark, delivered curtly.
    “The reason I was asking—” Sampson started to say, still keeping his cool.
    Goldman cut him off with a rude swipe of the hand. “Let me show you the sites of the stabbings.” He turned his attention back to me. “Maybe it will jog something else you know about Soneji.”
    “Detective Sampson asked you a question,” I said.
    “Yeah, but it was a pointless question. I don’t have time for PC crap or pointless questions. Like I said, let’s move on. Soneji is on the loose in my town.”
    “You know much about knives? You cover a lot of stabbings?” Sampson asked. I could tell that he was starting to lose it. He towered over Manning Goldman. Actually, both of us did.
    “Yeah, I’ve covered quite a few stabbings,” Goldman said. “I also know where you’re going. It’s extremely unlikely for Soneji to kill three out of three with a knife. Well, the knife he used had a double serpentine blade, extremely sharp. He cut each victim like some surgeon from NYU Medical Center. Oh yeah, he tipped the knife with potassium cyanide. Kill you in under a minute. I was getting to that.”
    Sampson backed off. The mention of poison on the knife was news to us. John knew we needed to hear what Goldman had to say. We couldn’t let this get personal here in New York. Not yet anyway.
    “Soneji have any history with knives?” Goldman asked. He was talking to me again. “Poisons?”
    I understood that he wanted to pump me, to use me. I didn’t have a problem with it. Give and take is as good as it gets on most multijurisdictional cases.
    “Knives? He once killed an FBI agent with a knife. Poisons? I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised. He also shot an assortment of handguns and rifles while he was growing up. Soneji