Pop Goes the Weasel (23 page)

“I told you to back off, didn’t I? Now you have to pay some consequences for disobeying. It’s your fault! There’s a pay phone
at the old Monkey House at the National Zoo. The zoo closes at eight, but you can get in through the gardening-staff gate.
Maybe Christine Johnson is there at the zoo waiting for you. You better get over there quick and find out. Run, Cross, run.
Hurry!
We have her.
”

The caller hung up, and I charged upstairs for my Glock. I called Patsy Hampton and told her I’d gotten another call, presumably
from the Weasel. I’d be at the National Zoo.

“Shafer’s still at his kid’s birthday party,” she told me. “Of course, he could have called from the house. I can see Silly
Billy’s truck from where I’m parked.”

“Keep in contact with me, Patsy. Phones and beepers. Beeper for
emergencies
only. Be careful with him.”

“Okay. I’m fine here, Alex. Silly Billy doesn’t pose too much of a threat. Nothing will happen at his house. Go to the zoo,
Alex.
You
be careful.”

I WAS AT THE NATIONAL ZOO by ten to nine. I was thinking that the zoo was actually pretty close to Dr. Cassady’s apartment
at the Farragut. Was it just a coincidence that I was so close to Shafer’s shrink? I didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.

I called Patsy Hampton before I left the car, but she didn’t pick up this time. I didn’t beep her—this wasn’t an emergency
—not so far.

I knew the zoo from lots of visits with Damon and Jannie, but even better from when I was a boy and Nana used to bring me,
and sometimes Sampson, who was nearly six feet tall by the time he was eleven. The main entrance to the zoo was at the corner
of Connecticut and Hawthorne avenues, but the old Monkey House was nearly a mile diagonally across the grounds from there.

No one seemed to be around, but the gardening-staff gate was unlatched, as the caller had said it would be. He knew the zoo,
too. More games, I kept thinking. He definitely loved to play.

As I hurried into the park, a steep horizon of trees and hills blocked out the lights of the surrounding city. There was only
an occasional foot lamp for light, and it was eerie and frightening to be in there alone. Of course, I was sure I
wasn’t
alone.

The Monkey House was farther inside the gates than I remembered. I finally located it in the dark. It looked like an old Victorian
railway station. Across a cobblestoned circle there was a more modern structure that I knew was the Reptile House.

A sign over the twin doors of the old Monkey House read: W
ARNING
: Q
UARANTINE
—D
O
N
OT
E
NTER
! More eeriness. I tried the tall twin doors, but they were securely locked.

On the wall beside the doors I saw a faded blue and white sign, the international pictograph indicating there was a phone
inside.
Is that the phone he wants me to use?

I shook the doors, which were old and wooden and rattled loudly. Inside I could hear monkeys starting to scream and act out.
First the smaller primates: spider monkeys, chimpanzees, gibbons. Then the deeper grunt of a gorilla.

I caught sight of a dim red glow across the cobblestoned circle. Another pay phone was over there.

I hurried across the square. Checked my watch. It was two minutes past nine.

He kept me waiting last time
.

I thought about his game playing. Was this all a role-playing game to him? How did he win? Lose?

I worried that I wasn’t at the right phone. I didn’t see any others, but there was always the one locked inside the old Monkey
House.

Is that the phone he wants me to use?
I felt frantic and hyper. So many dangerous emotions were building up inside me.

I heard a long, sustained
aaaaahhhh
, like the sound of a football crowd at the opening kickoff. It startled me until I realized it was the apes in the Monkey
House.

Was something wrong in there?
An intruder?
Something or someone near the phone?

I waited another five minutes, and then it dragged on to ten minutes. It was driving me crazy. I almost couldn’t bear it any
longer, and I thought about beeping Patsy.

Then my beeper went off, and I jumped!

It was Patsy. It had to be an emergency.

I stared at the silent pay phone; I waited a half minute or so. Then I snatched it up.

I called the beeper number and left the number of the pay phone.
I waited some more
.

Patsy didn’t call me back.

Neither did the mystery caller.

I was in a sweat.

I had to make a decision now. I was caught in a very bad place. My head was starting to reel.

Suddenly the phone rang. I grabbed at it, almost dropped the receiver. My heart was pounding like a bass drum.

“We have her.”

“
Where?
” I yelled into the receiver.

“She’s at the Farragut, of course.”

The Weasel hung up. He never said she was safe.

I COULDN’T IMAGINE why Christine would be at the Farragut in Washington, but he’d said she was there. Why would he do that
if she wasn’t? What was he doing to me? To her?

I ran toward where I thought Cathedral Avenue was located. But it was very dark in the zoo, almost pitch-black. My vision
was tunneling, maybe because I was close to being in shock. I couldn’t think straight.

My mind in a haze, I tripped over a dark slab of rock, went down on one knee. I cut my hands, tore my pants. Then I was up
again, running through thick high bushes that grabbed and ripped at my face and arms.

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.

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.