Pop Goes the Weasel Read online

  “I’m wide awake, Chuck. What’s up? What’s on your big mind?”

  He started with a disclaimer that said volumes about his incredibly low self-esteem: “Maybe nothing, but maybe something a little interesting on those killings in Southeast, and particularly the two young girls in Shaw. This really comes out of left field, though.”

  The FBI computer expert had her attention. “That’s where this killer lives, Chuck, in deep left field. Tell me what you have. I’m wide awake and listening. Talk to me, Chucky Cheese.”

  Chuck hemmed and hawed. He was always like that, which was too bad because he was basically a really nice guy. “You know anything about RPGs, Patsy?” he asked.

  “I know it stands for role-playing games, and let’s see, there’s a popular one called Dragons and Dungeons, or Dungeons and Dragons—whatever the order.”

  “It’s Dungeons and Dragons, or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Confession time, kiddo: I occasionally play an RPG myself, it’s called Millennium’s End. I play a couple of hours a day, usually. More on weekends.”

  “New to me. Go on, Chuck.” God, she thought, cyberspace confessions in the middle of the night.

  “Very popular game, even with so-called adults. The characters in Millennium’s End work for Black Eagle Security. It’s a private organization of troubleshooters who hire out for investigative services around the world. The characters are all good guys, crusaders for good.”

  “Uh-huh, Chuck. Say six Hail Marys, now make an Act of Contrition, then get to the damn point. It is around twelve-thirty, pal.”

  “Right, I am heartily sorry, and deeply embarrassed, too. Anyway, there’s a chatroom on-line that I visited. It’s called the Gamester’s Chatroom, and it’s on AOL. As I speak, there’s a fascinating discussion going on about a new kind of game. It’s more an anti-game, though. All the role-playing games I know are about good characters’ trying to conquer chaos and evil. The game under discussion has a couple of evil characters’ trying to overcome good. Specifically, Patsy, one of the characters is attacking and murdering women in the Southeast part of D.C. Lots of lurid detail on the murders. These aren’t the actual players, but they know about the game. The game itself is probably protected. Thought you should know. The game is called the Four Horsemen.”

  Patsy Hampton was definitely wide awake now. “I’m on it. Thanks, Chuck. Let’s keep this between the two of us for the moment, okay, Chuck?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  It took her a couple of minutes to log on to AOL, then get into the Gamester’s Chatroom. She didn’t participate, just read what the others had to say. This was interesting. She wondered if she had just stumbled onto her first big break in the Jane Doe case.

  The others in the room were named Viper, Landlocked, J-Boy, and Lancelot. They chattered on and on about the hottest fantasy games and cutting-edge magazines, which nearly succeeded in putting her to sleep. The Four Horsemen came up twice, but only in passing, as a point of reference. Lancelot was the one who mentioned it. Chuck was right: these probably weren’t the actual players, but they knew about the game somehow.

  The fantasy nerds were starting to wear really thin with her by quarter past one. Finally, out of frustration, she typed out a message for the little shitheels. She called herself Sappho.

  I CAME IN LATE, BUT HORSEMEN SOUNDS LIKE A NEAT KIND OF REVOLUTIONARY GAME TO ME, LANCELOT. PRETTY AUDACIOUS STUFF, NO?

  Lancelot shot back:

  NOT REALLY, SAPPO. THERE’S A LOT OF IT GOING AROUND LATELY. ANTIHEROES, SICKOS. ESPECIALLY IN VAMPIRE GAME CIRCLES.

  Hampton typed:

  HAVEN’T I READ ABOUT MURDERS LIKE THESE IN THE NEWSPAPERS? BY THE WAY, IT’S SAPPHO, LIKE THE POET.

  Lancelot replied,

  YEAH, BUT LOTS OF RPGs USE CURRENT EVENTS. NO BIGGIE, REALLY, SAPPO.

  Hampton grinned. He was an obnoxious little nerd, but she had him—for the moment, anyway. And she needed him. How much did he know about the Four Horsemen? Could he be a player? She tried to peek at Lancelot’s profile, but he had restricted access to it.

  YOU’RE FUNNY. ARE YOU A PLAYER, LAUGHALOT, OR JUST AN ART CRITIC?

  I DON’T LIKE THE BASIC CONCEPT OF HORSEMEN. ANYWAY, IT’S A PRIVATE GAME. STRICTLY PRIVATE. ENCRYPTED.

  YOU KNOW ANY OF THE PLAYERS? I MIGHT LIKE TO TRY IT OUT MYSELF?

  There was no response to the question. Patsy thought maybe she’d pushed too hard, too fast. Damn! She should have known better. Damn, damn! Come back, Lancelot. Earth to Lancelot.

  I REALLY WOULD LIKE TO PLAY THE FOUR HORSEMEN. BUT I’M COOL ABOUT IT. NO BIGGIE. LANCELOT?

  Patsy Hampton waited, and then Lancelot left the chatroom. Lancelot was gone. And so was her connection to somebody playing a so-called fantasy game about committing gruesome murders in Washington—murders that had really happened.

  Chapter 50

  I RETURNED TO WASHINGTON during the first week of September, and I had never felt stranger in my own skin. I’d gone to Bermuda with my family and Christine, and now I was coming home without her. Whoever had taken Christine had contacted me only once. I missed her nearly every moment of every day, and it pained me to think about where she might still be.

  It was an unusually cool and windy day when I got back to the city. It almost seemed as if summer had suddenly changed to the middle of fall, as if I had been away much longer than I had. I had been in a fog of unreality in Bermuda, and it was nearly the same once I was back in D.C. It had never been this bad before. I was so lost, so unhinged, so battered.

  I wondered if Christine and I were part of a madman’s elaborate delusion, what profilers call an escalating fantasy. If so, who was this madman, and where was he now? Was it the Weasel? Did I know him from some time in my past? The heartless, spineless bastard had communicated, “We have her.” And that was it. No further word. Now only silence, which was deafening.

  I took a cab from the airport and remembered what had happened to Frank Odenkirk, who had innocently taken a cab one night in August and wound up murdered on Alabama Avenue near Dupont Park. I hadn’t thought about the Odenkirk case during the past three weeks. I had rarely even had a thought about the Jane Doe murders while in Bermuda, but I was guiltily reminded of them now. Others had suffered painful losses because of the killer.

  I wondered if any progress had been made, and who in the department was running the case, at least the Odenkirk part of it. On the other hand, I didn’t feel that I could work on any of the other unsolved murders right now. I felt my place was still in Bermuda, and I nearly headed back as soon as I landed.

  Then I could see our house up ahead on Fifth Street. Something strange was happening—there was a huge gathering.

  Chapter 51

  LOTS OF PEOPLE were standing on the porch and others were clustered in front of the house when the cab arrived. Cars were parked and double-parked all along the street.

  I recognized Aunt Tia. My sister-in-law Cilla and Nana were on the porch with the kids. Sampson was there with a girlfriend named Millie, a lawyer from the Justice Department.

  Some of them waved as I pulled up, so I knew everything was all right. This wasn’t more trouble. But what was this all about?

  I saw my niece Naomi and her husband, Seth Taylor, who had come all the way from Durham, North Carolina. Jerome Thurman, Rakeem Powell, and Shawn Moore were standing on the front lawn.

  “Hey, Alex, good to see you,” Jerome’s deep voice boomed out at me as I passed near him on my way to the porch. I finally set down my travel bag and started shaking hands, giving out hugs, receiving back pats and kisses from all sides.

  “We’re all here for you,” Naomi said. She came over to me and hugged me tightly. “We love you so much. But we’ll go away if you don’t want us here now.”

  “No, no. I’m glad you’re here, Scootchie,” I said, and kissed my niece on both cheeks. A while back, she’d been abducted in Durham, North Carolina. I had been there for her, and so had Sampson. “It’s good that you a
nd Seth are here. It’s good to see everybody. You can’t imagine how good it is.”

  I hugged relatives and friends, my grandmother, my two beautiful kids, and I realized again how lucky I was to have so many good people in my life. Two teachers from the Sojourner Truth School had also come to the house. They were friends of Christine’s, and they started to cry when they came up to me. They wanted to know if any progress had been made and if there was anything they could do.

  I told them that we had a witness to the abduction and that we were more hopeful than ever. The teachers were buoyed by the news, which wasn’t nearly as good as I made it sound. Nothing more had come of the one eyewitness account of the abduction. No one else had seen the white van that took away Christine.

  Jannie cornered me in the backyard around nine o’clock. I had just spent half an hour with Damon in the basement, talking man to man, shadowboxing a little bit.

  Damon had told me that he was having trouble remembering Christine’s face, exactly what she looked like. I told him that it happened with people and that it was all right. Then we shared a long hug.

  Jannie had patiently waited to talk with me.

  “My turn?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, sweetheart.”

  Jannie then took my hand and pulled me forward into the house. She quietly led me upstairs—not to her room, but to mine.

  “If you get lonely in here tonight, you can come to my room. I mean it,” she said as she gently shut the door on the two of us.

  She is so wise and has such a good perspective on so many things. Both she and Damon are such good kids. Nana says they have “sound character,” and it is building nicely. So far, so good.

  “Thank you, sweetie. I will come to your room if it gets bad in here. You’re very thoughtful and nice.”

  “I am, Daddy. You helped me be this way, and I’m glad of it. Now I have a real serious question for you, Daddy. It’s hard, but I have to ask anyway.”

  “You go ahead,” I told her, feeling uncomfortable under her serious little gaze. I wasn’t completely focused, and I didn’t know if I could handle one of Jannie’s hard questions. “I’m listening, sweetheart,” I said. “Fire away.”

  She had let go of my hand, but then she took it up again, held my big hand tightly in both her small ones.

  “Daddy, is Christine dead?” she asked me. “You can tell me if she is. Please tell the true truth, though. I want to know.”

  I almost lost it, sitting on the edge of the bed with Jannie. I’m sure she had no idea how much her question hurt, or how hard it was to answer.

  I was hanging over the edge of a dark abyss, just about gone, but I pulled myself together and took a deep, hard breath. Then I tried to answer my little girl’s honest question as best I could.

  “I don’t know yet,” I told her. “That’s the truth. We’re still hoping to find her, sweetie. We found one witness so far.”

  “But she might be dead, Daddy?”

  “Let me tell you the best thing I know about dying,” I said to Jannie. “The very best thing that I know. Just about the only thing, in fact.”

  “You go away, and then you’re with Jesus forever,” Jannie said. The way she spoke, though, I wasn’t sure if she really believed what she was saying. It sounded like one of Nana’s “gospel truths,” or maybe she’d heard it in church.

  “Yes, that can be a great comfort to know, baby. But I was thinking of something else. Maybe it’s the same thing, but a different way to look at it.”

  Her intense little eyes held mine, wouldn’t let go. “You can tell me, Daddy. Please. I want to hear it. I’m very interested in this.”

  “It’s not a bad thing, but it helps me whenever somebody dies. Think about this. We come into life so easily—from somewhere, from the universe, from God. Why should it be any harder when we leave life? We come from a good place. We leave—and go to a good place. Does that make any sense to you, Jannie?”

  She nodded and continued to stare deeply into my eyes. “I understand,” she whispered. “It’s like it’s in balance.”

  She paused a second, thinking it over, then she spoke. “But Daddy, Christine isn’t dead. I just know it. She isn’t dead. She hasn’t gone to that good place yet. So don’t you lose hope.”

  Chapter 52

  THE CHARACTER AND TRAITS of Death were so much like his own, Shafer was thinking as he sped south along I-95. Death wasn’t brilliant, but he was always thorough, and he always won in the end.

  As the black Jag raced past the exits for various small towns, Shafer wondered if he wanted to be caught now, if he needed to be unmasked, needed to show his true face to everyone. Boo Cassady believed that he was hiding, even from her, but more important, from himself. Maybe she was right. Maybe he did want Lucy and the kids to see who he really was. And the police. But especially the uptight and sanctimonious staff at the embassy.

  I am Death—it’s who I am. I am a multiple killer—it’s who I am. I am not Geoffrey Shafer anymore; maybe I never was. But if I was, it was a long, long time ago.

  Shafer had always had a natural mean streak, a vengeful, nasty way. He remembered it from his early years traveling with his family through Europe, then Asia, and finally back to England. His father had been in the military and was always a real “tough guy” around the house. He struck Shafer and his two brothers often, but not nearly as often as he hit their mother, who died of a fall when Shafer was twelve.

  Shafer was large as a boy, and he was one “tough hombre,” a real bully. Other boys feared him, even his brothers, Charles and George, who believed that Geoff was “capable of anything.” He was.

  Nothing in his early days prepared him for being the man who finally emerged once he joined MI6. It was there that he learned he was capable of killing another human being—and he found that he loved it. He had discovered his calling, his true passion in life. He was the ultimate “tough guy”; he was Death.

  He continued traveling south on the interstate highway. Because it was late, traffic was light, mostly high-speeding trucks headed toward Florida, he supposed.

  He mentally composed a message to the other fantasy game players.

  DEATH GOES TO FREDERICKSBURG, MARYLAND, TONIGHT. A GOOD-LOOKING 37-YEAR-OLD WOMAN LIVES THERE WITH HER MIRROR-IMAGE 15-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER. THE WOMAN IS DIVORCED, A SMALL-TOWN LAWYER, A PROSECUTOR. THE DAUGHTER IS AN HONOR STUDENT AND A FOOTBALL CHEERLEADER. THE TWO WOMEN WILL BE SLEEPING. DEATH HAS COME TO MARYLAND BECAUSE WASHINGTON IS TOO DANGEROUS NOW. (YES, I TOOK YOUR WARNING TO HEART.) THE D.C. POLICE ARE SEARCHING FOR THE JANE DOE MURDERER. A WELL-THOUGHT-OF DETECTIVE NAMED PATSY HAMPTON IS ON THE CASE, AND DETECTIVE CROSS HAS RETURNED FROM BERMUDA. IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE IF HIS CHARACTER HAS CHANGED IN ANY WAY. CHARACTER IS EVERYTHING, DON’T YOU AGREE?

  I CAN SEE THE CAHILL HOUSE UP AHEAD. I CAN PICTURE BOTH OF THE LOVELY CAHILL WOMEN. THEY LIVE IN A FOUR-BEDROOM RANCH HOUSE. THE SUBURBAN STREET IS VIRTUALLY SILENT AT 1:00 A.M. NO ONE COULD POSSIBLY CONNECT THESE TWO MURDERS TO THE JANE DOES. I WISH YOU COULD BE HERE WITH ME. I WISH YOU COULD FEEL EXACTLY AS I DO.

  Chapter 53

  SHAFER PARKED HIS JAG on the shadowy street and felt strangely alone and afraid. He was actually scaring himself. The things he thought and did. No one had a twisted mind like his—no one thought like this. No one had ever had such outlandish fantasies and ideas, and then acted them out.

  The other players also had complicated and very sick fantasy lives, of course, but they paled in comparison to his. Famine claimed authorship of a series of psychosexual murders in Thailand and the Philippines. War liked to think of himself as the uncrowned head of the group—he claimed to “influence” the adventures of the others. Conqueror was confined to a wheelchair and made up stories about using his infirmity to lure his prey close enough for the kill.

  Shafer doubted that any of them actually had the guts to play the game out in the real world.

  But perhaps they would surprise him. Maybe each of the others was liv
ing out a homicidal fantasy. Wouldn’t that be something?

  The Cahill women thought they were so perfectly safe inside the ranch house, less than fifty yards away. He could see a green wooden fence surrounding a stone terrace and lap swimming pool in the back. The house had sliding doors to the pool area. So many possibilities for him to consider.

  He might enter the house and murder both of them execution-style. Then he would drive directly back to Washington.

  The local police and FBI would be totally baffled. The story might even make network TV. Two women shot and murdered while they slept, a mother and daughter whom everybody in their small town admired. No motive for the horrific crime, no suspects.

  He was hard now, and it was difficult to walk. That was comical to Shafer, his absurd hard-on waddle. His mouth formed a smile.

  A dog was howling two or three houses down the street—a small wimpy dog, from the sound of it. Then a larger dog joined in. They sensed death, didn’t they? They knew he was here.

  Shafer knelt beside a maple tree at the edge of the backyard. He stood in shadows while the moon cast a soft white light across the yard.

  He slid the twenty-sided dice out of his pocket, then let them fall on the tufts of lawn. Here we go. Playing by the rules. Let’s see what the night has to offer. He counted the numerals on the special dice. They appeared fuzzy in the dark.

  Shafer couldn’t believe what he saw. He wanted to howl like the crazed and bewildered neighborhood dogs.

  The dice count was five.

  Death had to leave! This instant! There could be no murders tonight!