Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

“Look it up tonight, little one. Fifty cents in your pocket for the correct answer,” I told her.

“You’re on.” Jannie grinned. “You can pay me right now if you like.”

“Me, too?” Damon asked.

“Of course. You can look up Jane Austen,” I said to him. “Now what’s with the heavenly harmonizing? I like it very much, by the way. I just want to know what the special occasion is.”

“We’re just singing while we prepare dinner,” Nana said, and stuck up her nose and twinkled her eyes. “You play jazz and the blues on the piano, don’t you? We harmonize like angels sometimes. No special reason necessary. Good for the soul, and the soul food, I suppose. Can’t hurt.”

“Well, don’t stop singing on my account,” I said, but they had already stopped. Too bad. Something was going on; I’d figured out that much. A musical mystery to be solved in my own house.

“We still on for boxing after dinner?” I asked cautiously. I was feeling a little vulnerable because I didn’t want them to turn me down for the boxing lesson that has become a ritual.

“Of course,” Damon said, and frowned like I must be out of my mind to even ask such a question.

“Of course. Pshaw. Why wouldn’t we be?” Jannie said, and brushed off my silly question with a wave of her hand. “How’s Ms. Johnson?” she asked then. “You two talk today?”

“I still want to know what the singing was all about?” I answered Jannie with a question of my own.

“You have valuable information. Well, so do I. Tit for tat,” she said. “How do you like that?”

A little later, I decided to call Christine at home. Lately it had seemed more like the way it had been between us before I got involved with the Mr. Smith case. We talked for a while, and then I asked her to go out on Friday.

“Of course. I’d like that, Alex. What should I wear?” she asked.

I hesitated. “Well, I always like what you choose—but wear something special.”

She didn’t ask why.

Chapter 12

AFTER ONE of Nana’s roast-chicken dinners with baked sweet potatoes and homemade bread, I took the kids downstairs for their weekly boxing lesson. Following the Tuesday night fight with the kids, I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already a little past nine.

The doorbell rang a moment later. I set down a terrific book called The Color of Water and pushed myself up from my chair in the family room.

“I’ll get it. It’s probably for me,” I called out.

“Maybe it’s Christine. You never know,” Jannie teased, then darted away into the kitchen. Both of the kids adored Christine, in spite of the fact that she was the principal at their school.

I knew exactly who was out on the porch. I had been expecting four homicide detectives from the First District—Jerome Thurman, Rakeem Powell, Shawn Moore, and Sampson.

Three of the detectives were standing out on the porch. Rosie the cat and I let them inside. Sampson arrived about five minutes later, and we all gathered in the backyard. What we were doing at the house wasn’t illegal, but it wouldn’t make us a lot of friends in high places in the police department.

We sat on lawn chairs, and I set out beer and low-fat pretzels that two-hundred-seventy-pound Jerome scoffed at. “Beer and low-fat pretzels. Give me a break, Alex. You lost your mind? Hey, you having an affair with my wife? You must have got this bad idea from Claudette.”

“I bought these especially for you, big man. I’m trying to give your heart a break,” I told him, and the others guffawed loudly. We all pick on Jerome.

The five of us had been getting together informally for a couple of weeks. We were beginning to work on the Jane Does, as we called them. Homicide had no official investigation going on; it wasn’t trying to link the murders to a serial killer. I’d tried to start one and been turned down by Chief Pittman. He claimed that I hadn’t discovered a pattern linking any of the murders, and besides that, he didn’t have any extra detectives for duty in Southeast.

“I suppose you’ve all heard about Nina Childs by now?” Sampson asked the other detectives. All of them had known Nina, and of course Jerome had been at the murder scene with us.

“The good die young.” Rakeem Powell frowned severely and shook his head. Rakeem is smart and tough and could go all the way in the department. “Least they do in Southeast.” His eyes went cold and hard.

I told them what I knew, especially that Nina had been found with no I.D. I mentioned everything else I had noticed at the tenement crime scene. I also took the occasion to talk some more about the rash of unsolved murders in Southeast. I went over the devastating stats I had compiled, mostly in my free time.

“Statistic like that in Georgetown or the Capitol district, people in this city be enraged. Going ballistic. Be Washington Post headlines every day. The president himself be involved. Money no object. National tragedy!” Jerome Thurman railed on and waved his arms around like signal flags.

“Well, we are here to do something about it,” I said in a calmer voice. “Money is no object with us. Neither is time. Let me tell you what I feel about this killer,” I continued. “I think I know a few things about him.”