He knew she was watching him through the door’s peephole, just as he had watched Alex Cross through it on the night Patsy Hampton got her just deserts. He had seen Boo a few times after his release, but then he’d cut her off.
When he’d stopped seeing her, she lost it. Boo had called him at work, then at home, and constantly on his car phone, until he changed the bloody number. At her worst, she reminded him of the nutcase Glenn Close had played in the movie Fatal Attraction.
He wondered if he could still push her buttons. She was a fairly bright woman, and that was a large part of her problem. She thought far too much, double- and triple-think. Most men, especially dull-witted Americans, didn’t like that, which made her even crazier.
He put his face against the door, felt its cool wood on his cheek. He started his act.
“I’ve been petrified to see you, Boo. You don’t know what it’s been like. One slipup, anything they can use against me, and I’m finished. And what makes it worse is that I’m innocent. You know that. I talked to you the whole time from my house to yours that night. You know I didn’t kill that detective. Elizabeth? Boo? Please say something. At least curse at me. Let the anger out ? Doctor?”
There was no answer. He rather liked that. It made him respect her more than he had. What the hell, she was more screwed up than he was.
“You know exactly what I’m going through. You’re the only one who understands my episodes. I need you, Boo. You know I’m manic-depressive, bipolar, whatever the hell you shrinks want to call my condition. Boo?”
Then Shafer actually started to cry, which nearly made him laugh. He uttered loud, wrenching sobs. He crouched on his haunches and held his head. He knew he was a far better actor than so many of the high-priced fakers he saw in the movies.
The door to the apartment slowly opened. “Boo-hoo,” she whispered. “Is poor Geoff in pain? What a shame.”
What a bitch, he thought, but he had to see her. She was testifying soon. He needed her tonight, and he needed her help in the courtroom.
“Hello, Boo,” he whispered back.
Chapter 86
ACT TWO of the evening’s performance.
She stared at him with huge dark-brown eyes that looked like amber beads, the kind she bought at her swanky shops. She’d lost weight, but that made her sexier to him, more desperate. She wore navy walking shorts and an elegant pink silk T-shirt—but she also wore her pain.
“You hurt me like no one ever has before,” she whispered.
He held himself under control, playacting, a truly award-winning performance. “I’m fighting for my life. I swear, all I think about is killing myself. Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? Besides, do you want your picture all over the tabloids again? Don’t you see? That’s why I’ve been staying away from you.”
She laughed bitterly, haughtily. “It’s going to happen anyway when I testify. The photographers will be everywhere I go.”
Shafer shut his eyes. “Well, that will be your chance to hurt me back, darling.”
She shook her head and frowned. “You know I wouldn’t do that. Oh, Geoff, why didn’t you at least call? You’re such a bastard.”
Shafer hung his head, the repentant bad boy. “You know how close I was to the edge before all this happened. Now it’s worse. Do you expect me to act like a responsible adult?”
She gave a wry smile. He saw a book on the hallway table behind her: Man and His Symbols. Carl Jung. How fitting. “No, I suppose not, Geoff. What do you want? Drugs?”
“I need you. I want to hold you, Boo. That’s all.”
That night, she gave him what he wanted. They made love like animals on the gray velvet love seat she used for her clients, then on the JFK-style rocking chair where she always sat during sessions. He took her body—and her soul.
Then she gave him drugs—antidepressants, painkillers, most of her samples. Boo was still able to get the samples from her ex, a psychiatrist. Shafer didn’t know what their relationship was, and frankly, he didn’t care. He swallowed some Librium and shot up Vicodin at her place.
Then he took Boo again, both of them naked and sweating and frenzied on the kitchen counter. The butcher block, he thought.
He left her place around eleven. He realized he was feeling worse than before he’d gone there. But he knew what he was going to do. He’d known before he went to Boo’s. It would explode their little minds. Everyone’s. The press. The jury.
Now for Act Three.
Chapter 87
AT A LITTLE PAST MIDNIGHT, I got an emergency call that blew off the top of my head. Within minutes I had the old Porsche
up close to ninety on Rock Creek Parkway, the siren screaming at the night, or maybe at Geoffrey Shafer.