Patterson, James: Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

Sampson crouched and looked at me. 'What are you thinking, Alex? Another one?'

I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders. 'Maybe, but she's an addict, John. Tracks on her arms and legs. Probably behind her knees, under her arms. Our boy doesn't usually go after addicts. He practices safe sex. The murder's brutal, though. That fits the style. You see the knife?'

Sampson nodded. He didn't miss much. 'Clothes,' he said, 'where the hell did they go? We need to find the clothes.'

'Somebody in the neighborhood probably stripped them off her already,' said the young uniform. There was a lot of disturbance around the body. Several footprints in the dirt. 'That's how it goes around here. Nobody seems to care.'

'We're here,' I said to him. 'We care. We're here for all the Jane Does.'

Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

CHAPTER Three

Geoffrey Shafer was so happy he almost couldn't hide it from his family. He had to keep from laughing out loud as he kissed his wife, Lucy, on the cheek. He caught a whiff of her Chanel No. 5 perfume, then tasted the brittle dryness of her lips as he kissed her again.

They were standing around like statues in the elegant galley hall of the large Georgian house in Kalorama. The children had been summoned to say goodbye to him.

His wife, the former Lucy Rhys-Cousins, was ash blonde, her sparkling green eyes even brighter than the Bulgari and Spark jewelry that she always wore. Slender, still a beauty of sorts at thirty-seven, Lucy had been at Newnham College, Cambridge, for two years before they were married. She still read useless poetry and literary novels, but spent most of her free time at equally pointless lunches, shopping with her expatriate girl friends, going to polo matches, or sailing. Occasionally, Shafer sailed with her. He'd been a very good sailor once upon a time.

Lucy had been considered a prize catch, and he supposed that she still would be, for some men. Well, they could have her skinny, bony body and all the passionless sex they could stomach.

Shafer hoisted up four-year-old twins Tricia and Erica, one in each arm. Two mirror images of their mother. He'd have sold the twins for the price of a postage stamp. He hugged the girls and laughed like the good papa he always pretended to be.

Finally, he formally shook twelve-year-old Robert's hand. The debate being waged in the house was over whether Robert should be sent back to England to boarding school, perhaps to Winchester, where his grandfather had gone. Shafer gave his son a crisp military salute. Once upon a time, Colonel Geoffrey Shafer had been a soldier. Only Robert seemed to remember that part of his life now.

'I'm only going away to London for a few days, and this is work, not a holiday. I'm not planning to spend my nights at the Athenaeum or anything like that.' he told his family. He was smiling jovially, the way they expected him to be.

Try to have some fun while you're away, Dad. Have some laughs. God knows, you deserve it' Robert said, talking in the lower-octave man-to-man's voice that he seemed to be adopting lately.

'Bye, Daddy! Bye, Daddy.' the twins chorused shrilly, making Shafer want to throw them against the walls.

'Bye, Erica-san. Bye, Tricia-san.'

'Remember, Ore's Nest,' Robert said with sudden urgency. 'Dragon and The Duelist.' Ore's Nest was a store for role-playing books and gaming equipment. It was in Earlham Street, just off Cambridge Circus in London. Dragon and The Duelist were currently the two hot-shit British magazines on role-playing games.

Unfortunately for Robert, Shafer wasn't actually going to London. He had a much better plan for the weekend. He was going to play his own fantasy game right here in Washington.

Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

CHAPTER Four

He sped due east, rather than toward Washington's Dulles airport, feeling as if a tremendously burden-some weight had been lifted. God, he hated his perfect English family, and even more, their claustrophobic life here in America.

Shafer's own family back in England had been 'perfect' as well. He had two older brothers and they were both excellent students, model youths. His father had been a military attache and the family had traveled around the globe until he was twelve, when they returned to England and settled in Guildford, about half an hour outside London. Once there, Shafer began to expand on the schoolboy mischief he'd practiced since he was eight. The center of Guildford contained several historic buildings and he set out to gleefully deface all of them. He began with the Abbot's Hospital where his grandmother was dying. He painted obscenities on the walls. Then he moved onto Guildford Castle, the Guildhall, the Royal Grammar School, and the Cathedral. He scrawled more obscene words, and also large penises in bright colors. He had no idea why he took such joy in ruining beautiful things, but he did. He loved it - and he especially loved not getting caught.

Shafer was eventually sent to school at Rugby, where the pranks continued. Then he attended St John's College, Cambridge, where he concentrated on philosophy, Japanese, and shagging as many good-looking women as he possibly could. All his friends were mystified when he went into the army at twenty-one. His language skills were excellent and he was posted to Asia, which was where the mischief rose to a new level and he began to play the game of games.

He stopped at a 7-Eleven in Washington Heights for coffee - three coffees, actually. Black, with four sugars in each. He drank most of one of the cups on his way to the counter.

The Indian cashier gave him a cheeky, suspicious look, and he laughed in the bearded wanker's face.

'Do you really think I'd steal a bloody seventy-five-cent cup of coffee? You pathetic jerkoff. You pitiful Fuck.'

He threw his money on the counter and left before he killed the clerk with his bare hands, which he could do easily enough.

From the 7-Eleven he drove into the Northeast part of Washington, a middle-class section called Eckington. He began to recognize the streets when he was west of Gallaudet University. Most of the structures were two-storied apartments, with vinyl siding, either red brick, or a hideous Easter-egg blue that always made him wince.

He stopped in front of one of the red-brick garden apartments on Uhland Terrace, near Second Street. This one had an attached garage. A previous tenant had adorned the brick facade with two white concrete cats.

'Hello, pussies.' Shafer said. He felt relieved to be here. He was 'cycling up'- that is, getting high, manic. He loved this feeling, couldn't get enough of it. It was time to play the game.

Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

CHAPTER Five

A rusted and taped-up purple-and-blue taxi was parked inside the two-car garage. Shafer had been using it for about four months. The taxi gave him anonymity, made him almost invisible anywhere he chose to go in DC. He called it his 'nighI'mare machine'.

He wedged the Jaguar beside the taxi cab, then he jogged upstairs. Once inside the apartment, he switched on the air-conditioning. He drank another sugar-laced coffee.

Then he took his pills, like a good boy. Thorazine and Librium. Benadryl, Xanax, Vicodin. He'd been using the drugs in various combinations for years. It was mostly a trial and error process, but he'd learned his lessons well. Feeling better, Geoffrey? Yes, much better, thank you.

He tried to read today's Washington Post, then an old copy of Private Eye, and finally a catalog from DeMask, a rubber and leather fetish wholesaler in Amsterdam, the world's largest. He did two hundred pushups, then a few hundred situps, impatiently waiting for darkness to fall over Washington.