Pop Goes the Weasel (17 page)

“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.

Lancelot shot back:

Hampton typed:

Lancelot replied,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 and 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.”

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.