CHAPTER 10

NEWS BULLETINS were flashing on the television screen every fifteen minutes or so. Gary Soneji was right there on the high and mighty tube. He saw photographs of “Mr. Chips” on every news bulletin. The news reports didn't offer a clue about what was really going on, though.

So this was fame! This was how fame felt. He liked it a lot. This was what he'd been practicing for all these years. “Hi, Mom! Look who's on TV. It's the Bad Boy!”

There was only one glitch all afternoon, and that was the press conference given by the FBI. An agent named Roger Graham had spoken, and Agent Graham obviously thought he was hot shit, He wanted some fame for himself. “You think this is your movie, Graham? Wrong, baby!” Gary Soneji shouted at the TV. “I'm the only star here!”

Soneji had been prowling around inside the farmhouse for several hours, watching the night slowly fall inside. He felt the different textures of darkness as they ted the farm. It was now seven o'clock and time to get on with his plan.

“Let's do it.” He pranced around the farmhouse like a prizefighter before a bout. “Let's get it on.”

For a while, he thought about Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, his all-time favorite couple. That calmed him some. He thought about Baby Charles; and about that poor fool, Bruno Hauptmann, who had obviously been framed for the brilliantly conceived and executed crime. He was convinced that the Lindbergh affair was the century's most elegant crime, not just because it remained unsolved-many, many crimes went unsolved-but because it was important and unsolved.