Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

Chapter 60

I HAD BEEN UP since before five that morning. I had to call Inspector Patrick Busby in Bermuda. I wanted to talk to him every day, sometimes more than once, but I stopped myself.

It would only make things worse, strain my relations with the local police, and signal that I didn’t trust them to handle the investigation properly.

“Patrick, it’s Alex Cross calling from Washington. Did I catch you at a good time? Can you talk for a moment now?” I asked. I always tried to sound as upbeat as possible.

I wasn’t, of course. I had been up pacing the house, and already had breakfast with Nana. Then I’d waited impatiently until eight-thirty Bermuda time to call Busby at the station house in Hamilton. He was an efficient man, and I knew he was there every morning by eight.

I could picture the thin, wiry policeman as we talked on the phone. I could see the tidy cubicle office where he worked. And superimposed over everything, I could still see Christine on her moped waving good-bye to me on that perfectly sunny afternoon.

“I have a few things for you from my contact at Interpol,” I said. I told him about an abduction of a woman on Jamaica earlier in the summer, and another in Barbados; both were similar, though not identical, to Christine’s disappearance. I didn’t think they were connected, really, but I wanted to give him something, anything.

Patrick Busby was a thoughtful and patient man; he remained silent until I had finished talking before asking his usual quota of logical questions. I had observed that he was flawed as an interrogator because he was so polite. But at least he hadn’t given up.

“I assume that neither abduction was ever solved, Alex. How about the women who were taken? Were they found?”

“No, neither woman was seen again. Not a sign of them. They’re still missing.”

He sighed into the phone receiver. “I hope your news is helpful in some way, Alex. I’ll certainly call the other islands and check into it further. Anything else from Interpol or the FBI?”

I wanted to keep him on the line—the lifeline, as I now thought of it. “A few far-flung possibilities in the Far East, Bangkok, the Philippines, Malaysia. Women abducted and murdered, all Jane Does. To be honest, nothing too promising at this point.”

I imagined him pursing his thin lips and nodding thoughtfully. “I understand, Alex. Please keep giving me whatever you get from your sources. It’s difficult for us to get help outside this small island. My calls for assistance frequently aren’t returned. I sincerely wish that I had some good news for you on my end, bu

t I’m afraid I don’t.

“Other than Perri Graham, no one saw the man with the van. No one seems to have seen Christine Johnson in Hamilton or St. George, either. It’s truly a baffling mystery. I don’t believe that she ever got to Hamilton. It’s frustrating for us, too. My prayers are with you and your wonderful family and, of course, John Sampson.”

I thanked Patrick Busby and hung up the phone. I went upstairs and dressed for work.

I still had nothing really substantial on the murder of Frank Odenkirk, and The Jefe was contacting me daily on e-mail. I certainly knew how the Odenkirk family felt. The media heat about the homicide had died down, though, as it often does. Unfortunately, so had the Post stories about the unsolved murders in Southeast.

While I was taking a hot shower, I thought about DeWitt Luke and the mysterious “watcher” on S Street. What was the man in the Mercedes doing out there for so long? Did he have some connection with the murders of Tori Glover and Marion Cardinal? None of this was making complete sense to me. That was the truly maddening thing about the Jane Doe murders and the Weasel. He wasn’t like other repeat killers. He wasn’t a criminal genius like Gary Soneji, but he was effective. He gets the job done, doesn’t he?

I needed to think more about why someone had been lurking outside Tori Glover’s apartment. Was he a private detective? A stalker? Or was he actually the murderer? One possibility hit me. Maybe the man in the car was an accomplice of the killer. Two of them, working together? I’d seen that before in North Carolina.

I turned up the water, made it hotter. I thought it would help me to concentrate better. Steam out the cobwebs in my brain. Bring me back from the dead.

Nana began banging on the pipes from downstairs in the kitchen. “Get down here and go to work, Alex. You’re using up all my hot water,” she yelled above the noise of the shower.

“Last time I looked, my name was on the water and gas bills,” I shouted back.

“It’s still my hot water. Always was, always will be,” Nana replied.

Chapter 61

EVERY DAY, EVERY NIGHT, I was out on the streets of Southeast, working harder than ever, but with nothing much to show for it. I continued to search for the mysterious purple and blue cab, and for the late-model black Mercedes that DeWitt Luke had seen on S Street.

Sometimes I felt as if I were sleepwalking, but I kept at it, sleepwalking as fast as I could. Everything about the investigation seemed a long shot at best. I received tips and leads every day that had to be followed up; none of them went anywhere, though.

I got home at a little past seven that night, and tired as I was, I still let the kids drag me downstairs for their boxing lesson. Damon was showing me a lot of hand speed, and also some pretty good footwork and power for his age. He’s always had good spirit, and I was confident that he wouldn’t abuse his burgeoning boxing skills at school.

Jannie was more a student of boxing, though she seemed to recognize the value of being able to defend herself. She was quick at mastering techniques, seeing connections, even if her heart wasn’t completely in the sport. She preferred to torture her brother and me with her taunts and wit.

“Alex, telephone,” Nana called down from the top of the cellar stairs. I looked at my watch, saw it was twenty to eight.

“Practice your footwork,” I told the kids. Then I trudged up the steep stone stairs. “Who is it?”