Pop Goes the Weasel Read online

  Animals all around the zoo howled, moaned, bellowed insanely. They sensed that something was wrong. I could make out the sounds of grizzlies and elephant seals. I realized that I had to be approaching Arctic Circle, but I couldn’t remember where it was in relation to the rest of the zoo or the city streets.

  Up ahead was a high, Gibraltar-like rock. I clambered up it to try to get my bearings.

  Down below I saw a cluster of cages, shuttered gift stores and snack bars, two large veldts. I knew where I was now. I hurriedly climbed back down the rock and started to run again. Christine was at the Farragut. Would I finally find her? Could it actually be happening?

  I passed African Alley, then the Cheetah Conservation Station. I came to a vast field with what looked like large haystacks scattered everywhere. I realized that they were bison. I was somewhere near Great Plains Way.

  The beeper in my pocket went off again.

  Patsy! An emergency! Where is she? Why didn’t she call back at the pay-phone number I gave her?

  I was soaked in sweat and almost hyperventilating. Thank God I could now see Cathedral Avenue, then Woodley Road up ahead.

  I was a long way from where I’d parked my car, but I was close to the Farragut apartment building.

  I ran another hundred yards in the dark, then climbed the stone wall separating the zoo from the city streets. There was blood smeared on my hands, and I didn’t know where it had come from. The knee I’d scraped? Scratches from swinging branches? I could hear the loud wail of sirens in the near distance. Was it coming from the Farragut?

  I headed there in a sprint. It was a little past ten o’clock. Over an hour had already gone by since the call to my house.

  The beeper was buzzing inside my shirt pocket.

  Chapter 72

  SOMETHING BAD HAD HAPPENED at the Farragut. The burping screams of approaching sirens were getting louder as I raced down Woodley. I was reeling, feeling dizzy. I couldn’t focus my mind, and I realized that for one of the few times in recent years, I was close to panic.

  Neither the police nor the EMS had arrived at the apartment building yet. I was going to be the first on the scene.

  Two doormen and several tenants in bathrobes were clustered in front of the underground-garage entrance. It couldn’t be Christine. It just couldn’t be. I raced across a quadrant of lawn toward them. Was the Weasel here at the Farragut?

  They saw me coming and looked as frightened as I felt inside. I must have been quite a sight. I remembered that I’d fallen once or twice inside the zoo. I probably looked like a madman, maybe even like a killer. There was blood on my hands and who knew where else.

  I reached for my wallet, shook it open to expose my detective’s shield.

  “Police. What’s happened here?” I shouted. “I’m a police detective. My name is Alex Cross.”

  “Somebody has been murdered, Detective,” one of the doormen finally said. “This way. Please.”

  I followed the doorman down the steeply sloped concrete driveway leading into the garage.

  “It’s a woman,” he said. “I’m pretty sure she’s gone. I called nine-one-one.”

  “Oh, God,” I gasped out loud. My stomach clutched. Patsy Hampton’s Jeep was tucked back in a corner space. The door of the Jeep was open, and light spilled outside.

  I felt terrible fear, pain, and shock as I hurried around the door. Patsy Hampton was sprawled across the front seat. I could tell she was probably dead.

  “We have her.” This was what the message meant. Jesus God, no. They murdered Patsy Hampton. They told me to back off. For God’s sake, no.

  Her bare legs were twisted and pinned under the steering wheel. Her upper body was crumpled over at almost a right angle. Patsy’s head was thrown back and lay partly off the seat, on the passenger’s side. Her blond hair was matted with blood. Her vacant blue eyes stared up at me.

  Patsy was wearing a white knit sport shirt. There were deep lacerations around her throat; bright-red blood was still oozing from the wound. She was naked below the waist. I didn’t see any other clothes anywhere. She might have been raped.

  I suspected that she’d been strangled with some kind of wire, and that she’d been dead for only a few minutes. A rope or garotte had been used in some of the Jane Doe murders. The Weasel liked to use his hands, to work close to his victims, possibly to watch and feel their pain—maybe even while he was sexually assaulting them.

  I saw what looked like paint chips around the deep, ugly neck wounds. Paint chips?

  Something else seemed very strange to me: the Jeep’s radio had been partly dislodged, but left behind. I didn’t understand why the radio had been tampered with, but it didn’t seem important right now.

  I leaned back out of the Jeep. “Is anyone else hurt? Have you checked?”

  The doorman shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. I’ll go look.”

  Sirens finally screeched inside the garage. I saw red and blue lights flashing and whirling against the ceiling and walls. Some of the tenants had made it into the garage as well. Why did they have to come and gape at this terrible crime?

  A very bad thought flashed in my head. I climbed out of the Jeep, grabbing Patsy’s keys out of the ignition. I hurried around to the back. I pushed the release, and the rear door came open. My heart was thundering again. I didn’t want to look inside, but when I did, there was nothing. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. “We have her!” Is Christine here, too? Where?

  I looked around the garage. Up near the entrance I spotted Geoffrey Shafer’s sports car, the black Jaguar. He was here at the Farragut. Patsy must have followed him.

  I ran across the garage to the Jag. I felt the hood, then the exhaust pipe. Both were still warm. The car hadn’t been in the garage very long. The doors were locked. I couldn’t break in. I was all too aware of the search-and-seizure constraints.

  I stared inside the Jaguar. In the backseat I could see dress shirts on wire hangers. The hangers were white, and I thought of the chips in Detective Hampton’s wounds. Had he strangled her with a hanger? Was Shafer the Weasel? Was he still in the building? What about Christine? Was she here, too?

  I said a few words to the patrolmen who’d just arrived, the first on the scene after me. Then I took them with me.

  The helpful doorman told me which floor Shafer’s therapist’s apartment was on. The number was 10D, the penthouse. Like all buildings in D.C., the Farragut was restricted to a height no greater than that of the Capitol dome.

  I took the elevator with the two uniformed cops, both in their twenties and both scared shitless, I’d bet. I was close to rage. I knew I had to be careful; I had to act professionally, to control my emotions somehow. If there was an arrest, there would be questions to answer, such as what I was doing here in the first place. Pittman would be on my case in a second.

  I talked to the policemen on the way up, more to calm myself than anything else.

  “You okay, Detective?” one of them asked me.

  “I’m fine. I’m all right. The killer might still be in the building. The victim was a detective, one of our own. She was on surveillance here. The suspect has a relationship with a woman upstairs.”

  The faces of both young cops tightened. It was bad enough to have seen the murdered woman in her car, but to learn that she was a policewoman, a detective on surveillance, made it worse. Now they were about to confront a cop killer.

  We hurried out of the elevator to apartment 10D. I led the way and pressed the bell. I saw what appeared to be drops of blood on the hallway carpet near the door. I noticed the blood on my hands, saw the two cops staring at the blood.

  No answer from inside the apartment, so I pounded my fist on the door. Was everyone okay in there? “Police, open up! D.C. police!”

  I could hear a woman shouting inside. I had my Glock out, the safety off. I was angry enough to kill Shafer. I didn’t know if I could hold myself back.

  The uniformed patrolmen took their pistols out of their holsters, too. After
just a few seconds I was ready to kick down the door, search-and-seizure constraints or no. I kept seeing Patsy Hampton’s face, her dead, vacant eyes, the savage wounds in her crushed throat.

  Finally, the door to the apartment slowly opened.

  A blond woman was standing there—Dr. Cassady, I assumed. She wore an expensive-looking light-blue suit with lots of gold buttons, but she was barefoot. She looked frightened and angry.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. “What the hell is going on here? Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve interrupted a therapy session.”

  Chapter 73

  GEOFFREY SHAFER stepped into the doorway and stood a few feet behind his irate therapist. He was tall and imposing and very blond. He’s the Weasel, isn’t he?

  “What the hell’s the problem here? Who are you, sir, and what do you want?” he asked in a clipped English accent.

  “There’s been a murder,” I said. “I’m Detective Cross.” I showed them my badge. I kept looking past Shafer and Dr. Cassady, trying to spot something that would give me probable cause to come inside the apartment. There were lots of plants on the sills and hanging in windows—philodendron, azalea, English ivy. Dhurrie rugs in light pastels, overstuffed furniture.

  “No. There’s certainly no murderer here,” the therapist said. “Leave this instant.”

  “You should do as the lady says,” Shafer said.

  Shafer didn’t look like a murderer. He was dressed in a navy suit, a white shirt, a moiré tie, a pocket square. Impeccable taste. Completely unruffled and unafraid.

  Then I glanced down at his shoes. I almost couldn’t believe it. The gods had finally smiled on me.

  I pointed my Glock at Shafer. At the Weasel. I went up to him and bent down on one knee. My whole body was trembling. I examined the right leg of his trousers.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, pulling away from me. “This is completely absurd.

  “I’m with the British Embassy,” Shafer then stated. “I repeat, I’m with the British Embassy. You have no rights here.”

  “Officers,” I called to the two patrolmen who were still outside the door. I tried to act calm, but I wasn’t. “Come here and look. You see this?”

  Both patrolmen moved closer to Shafer. They entered the living room.

  “Stay out of this apartment!” The therapist raised her voice close to a scream.

  “Remove your trousers,” I said to Shafer. “You’re under arrest.”

  Shafer lifted his leg and gave a look. He saw a dark stain, Patsy Hampton’s blood, smudged on the cuff of his trousers. Fear shot through his eyes, and he lost his cool.

  “You put that blood there! You did it,” he yelled at me. He pulled out an identification badge. “I am an official at the British Embassy. I don’t have to put up with this outrage. I have diplomatic immunity. I will not take off my trousers for you. Call the embassy immediately! I demand diplomatic immunity.”

  “Get out of here now!” Dr. Cassady yelled loudly. Then she pushed one of the patrolmen.

  It was just what Shafer needed. He broke free and ran back through the living room. He rushed into the first room down the hallway, slammed the door, and locked it.

  The Weasel was trying to get away. It couldn’t happen; I couldn’t let it. I got to the door seconds behind him. “Come out of there, Shafer! You’re under arrest for the murder of Detective Patsy Hampton.”

  Dr. Cassady came screaming down the hall after me.

  I heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. No, no, no! I reared back powerfully and kicked in the door.

  Shafer was pulling off his trousers, standing on one leg. I tackled him hard, knocked him over, then held him facedown against the tile floor. He screamed curses at me, flailed his arms, bucked his lower body. I pushed his face harder into the floor.

  The therapist tried to pull me off Shafer. She was scratching my face, pounding my back with her fists. It took both policemen to restrain her.

  “You can’t do this to me!” Shafer was yelling at the top of his voice, twisting and turning beneath me, a powerful stallion of a man.

  “This is illegal. I have diplomatic immunity!”

  I turned to one of the officers.

  “Cuff him.”

  Chapter 74

  IT WAS A LONG AND VERY SAD NIGHT at the Farragut, and I didn’t leave until past three. I had never lost a partner before, though I had once come close with Sampson, in North Carolina. I realized that I’d already come to think of Patsy Hampton as a partner, and a friend. At least we had the Weasel in custody.

  I slept in the next morning, allowing myself the small luxury of not setting the alarm. Still, I was wide awake by seven. I’d been dreaming about Patsy Hampton, and also about Christine—different, vivid scenes with each of them, the kind of frenetic dreams where you wake up feeling as tired as when you went to bed. I said a prayer for both of them before I finally rolled out of bed. We had the Weasel. Now I had to get the truth out of him.

  I slipped on a somewhat worn white satin robe. Muhammad Ali had worn it in his training camp in Manila before the Joe Frazier fight. Sampson had given it to me for my fortieth birthday. He appreciated the fact that while most people would treat the robe as some kind of sacred exhibit in their house, I routinely wear it to breakfast.

  I love the old robe, which is unusual for me since I’m not particularly into mementos and souvenirs. Maybe part of it is that I’m supposed to resemble Ali physically, or so people tell me. Maybe I’m a little better looking, but he’s definitely the better man.

  When I got down to the kitchen, Nana and the kids were sitting at the table watching the small portable TV that she keeps there but doesn’t use very often. She prefers to read or chitchat and, of course, cook.

  “Ali.” Jannie looked up at me and grinned, but then her eyes went back to the TV. “You should watch this, Daddy.”

  Nana muttered into her cup of tea. “Your British murderer is all over the news this morning. TV and the newspaper, too. ‘Diplomatic Immunity May Bar Prosecution of British Embassy Suspect,’ ‘Spy Linked to Detective Slay.’ They already interviewed people in Union Station and on Pennsylvania Avenue. Everybody’s mad as a hatter about this diplomatic-immunity disgrace, as they call it. It’s just terrible.”

  “I’m mad. It’s not right,” Damon said. “Not if he did it. Did he, Dad? Did he do it?”

  I nodded. “He did it.” I poured milk into my coffee. I wasn’t quite ready to deal with Geoffrey Shafer, or the kids, or especially the horrible, senseless murder the night before. “Anything else on the news?”

  “The Wizards kicked butt,” Damon said with a straight face. “Rod Strickland had a double-double.”

  “Shhhh.” Nana gave us both a mighty look of irritation. “CNN carried stories from London. The media there is already comparing this to that unfortunate nanny case in Massachusetts. They say that Geoffrey Shafer is a decorated war hero and that he claims, with good reason, that he was framed by the police. I assume that means you, Alex.”

  “Yes, it does. Let’s watch CNN for a few minutes,” I said. Nobody objected, so I switched the channel. A hard knot was forming in my stomach. I didn’t like what I was seeing and hearing on TV.

  Almost immediately, a reporter came on the screen from London. He introduced himself and then proceeded to give a pompous, thirty-second summary of the previous evening’s events.

  The reporter looked gravely into the camera. “And now, in a dramatic turnabout, we have learned that the Washington Police Department is investigating a bizarre twist. The senior detective who arrested Geoffrey Shafer might himself be a suspect in the murder case. At least that’s what has been reported in the American press.”

  I shook my head and frowned. “I’m innocent,” I said to Nana and the kids. They knew that, of course.

  “Until proven guilty,” said Jannie, with a little wink.

  Chapter 75

  THERE WAS A LOUD HUBBUB out in front of the house, and Jannie ran
to the living-room window to look. She hurried back to the kitchen with wide eyes, loud-whispering, “It’s TV cameras and the newspapers outside. CNN, NBC—lots of them, like that other time, with Gary Soneji. Remember?”

  “Of course we remember,” said Damon. “Nobody’s retarded in this house except you.”

  “Oh, good Lord, Alex,” Nana said, “don’t they know decent people are eating breakfast?” She shook her head, rolled her eyes. “The vultures are here again. Maybe I should throw some meat scraps out the front door.”

  “You go talk to them, Jannie,” I said, and looked back at the TV. I don’t know why I was feeling so cynical, but I was. My remark quieted her down for a half second, but then she figured it was a joke. She pointed a finger at herself. “Gotcha!”

  I knew they wouldn’t go away, so I took my mug of coffee and headed toward the front door. I walked out into a beautiful fall morning, temperature probably in the low sixties.

  Leaves rustled merrily in the elm and maple trees, dappled sunshine fell on the heads of the TV crew and print journalists gathered at the edges of our front lawn.

  The vultures.

  “Don’t be absurd and ridiculous around here,” I said, and then calmly sipped my coffee as I stared at the noisy press mob. “Of course I didn’t kill Detective Patsy Hampton, or frame anyone for her murder.”

  Then I turned on my heel and walked back inside without answering a single question from any of them.

  Nana and the kids were right behind the big wooden door, listening. “That was pretty good,” Nana said, and her eyes sparkled and beamed.

  I went upstairs and got dressed for work. “Go to school. Now!” I called back to Jannie and Damon. “Get straight A’s. Play nicely with your friends. Pay no attention to the craziness everywhere around you.”

  “Yes, Daddy!”

  Chapter 76