Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

“How’d you come up with the profile?” Shawn Moore asked. “How can you stand thinking about these kinky bastards as much as you do?”

I shrugged. “It’s what I do best. I’ve analyzed all the Jane Does,” I said. “It took me weeks working on my own. Just me and the kinky bastard.”

“Plus, he studies rodent droppings,” said Sampson. “I saw him bagging the little turds. That’s his real secret.”

I grinned and told them what I had so far. “I think one male is responsible for at least some of the killings. Maybe as many as a dozen murders. I don’t think he’s a brilliant killer, like Gary Soneji or Mr. Smith, but he’s clever enough not to be caught. He’s organized, reasonably careful. I don’t think we’ll find he has any prior record. He probably has a decent job. Maybe even a family. My FBI friends at Quantico agree with that.

“He’s almost definitely caught up in an escalating fantasy cycle. I think he’s into his fantasies big-time. Maybe he’s in the process of becoming someone or something new. He might be forming a new personality for himself. He isn’t finished with the killing, not by any means.

“I’ll make some educated guesses. He hates his old self, though the people closest to him probably don’t realize it. He might be ready to abandon his family, job, any friends he has. At one time he probably had very strong feelings and beliefs about something—law and order, religion, the government—but not anymore. He kills in different ways; there’s no set formula. He knows a lot about killing people. He’s used different kinds of weapons. He may have traveled overseas. Or maybe he’s spent time in Asia. I think it’s very possible he’s a black man. He’s killed several times in Southeast—no one’s noticed him.”

“Fuck me,” Jerome Thurman said to that. “Any good news, Alex?”

“One thing, and this is a long shot. But it feels right to me. I think he might be suicidal. It fits the profile I’m working on. He’s living dangerously, taking a lot of chances. He might just blow himself up.”

“Pop goes the weasel,” Sampson said.

That was how we came to name the killer: the Weasel.

Chapter 13

GEOFFREY SHAFER looked forward to playing the Four Horsemen every Thursday night from nine until about one in the morning.

The fantasy game was everything to him. There were three other master players around the world. The players were the Rider on the White Horse, Conqueror; the Rider on the Red Horse, War; the Rider on the Black Horse, Famine; and himself, the Rider on the Pale Horse, Death.

Lucy and the children knew they were forbidden to disturb him for any reason once he locked himself into the library on the second floor. On one wall was his collection of ceremonial daggers, nearly all of them purchased in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Also on the wall was the rowing oar from the year his college team had won the “Bumps.” Shafer nearly always won the games he played.

He had been using the Internet to communicate with the other players for years, long before the rest of the world caught on. Conqueror played from the town of Dorking, in Surrey, outside London; Famine traveled back and forth between Bangkok, Sydney, Melbourne, and Manila; and War usually played out of Jamaica, where he had a large estate on the sea. They had been playing Horsemen for seven years.

Rather than becoming repetitive, the fantasy game had expanded itself. It had grown every year, becoming something new and even more challenging. The object was to create the most delicious and unusual fantasy or adventure. Violence was almost always part of the game, but not necessarily murder. Shafer had been the first to claim that his stories weren’t fantasies at all, that he lived them in the real world. Now the others would do so as well from time to time. Whether they really lived their fantasies, Shafer couldn’t tell. The object was to create the evening’s most startling fantasy, to get a rise out of the other players.

At nine o’clock his time, Shafer was on his laptop. So were the others. It was rare for one of them to miss a session, but if he did, he left lengthy messages and sometime

s drawings or even photographs of supposed lovers or victims. Films were occasionally used, and the other players then had to decide whether the scenes were stage-acted or cinema verité.

Shafer couldn’t imagine missing a chapter of the game himself. Death was by far the most interesting character, the most powerful and original. He had missed important social and embassy affairs just to be available for Thursday nights. He had played when he had pneumonia, and once when he’d had a painful double-hernia operation the day before.

The Four Horsemen was unique in so many ways, but most important was the fact that there was no single gamemaster to outline and control the action of the game. Each of the players had complete autonomy to write and visualize his own story, as long as he played by the roll of the dice and remained inside the parameters of the character.

In effect, in Horsemen there were four gamemasters. There was no other fantasy game like it. It was as gruesome and shocking as the participants’ imaginations and their skills at presentation brought them.

Conqueror, Famine, and War had all signed on.

Shafer began to type.

DEATH HAS TRIUMPHED AGAIN IN WASHINGTON. LET ME TELL YOU THE DETAILS, THEN I’LL LISTEN TO THE GLORIOUS STORIES, THE IMAGINATIVE POWER, OF CONQUEROR, FAMINE, AND WAR. I LIVE FOR THIS, AS I KNOW ALL OF YOU DO AS WELL.

THIS WEEKEND, I DROVE MY FANTASTIC TAXI, THE “NIGHTMARE MACHINE,” ONCE AGAIN…. LISTEN TO THIS. I CAME UPON SEVERAL CHOICE AND DELECTABLE VICTIMS, BUT I REJECTED THEM AS UNWORTHY. THEN I FOUND MY QUEEN, AND SHE REMINDED ME OF OUR DAYS IN BANGKOK AND MANILA. WHO COULD EVER FORGET THE BLOOD LUST OF THE BOXING ARENA? I HELD A MOCK KICKBOXING MATCH. GENTLEMEN, I BEAT HER WITH MY HANDS AND FEET. I AM SENDING PICTURES.

Chapter 14

SOMETHING WAS UP, and I didn’t think I’d like it very much. I arrived at the Seventh District Police Station just before seven-thirty the following morning. I’d been summoned by the powers-that-be to the station, and it was a tough deal. I’d worked until two in the morning trying to get a lead on Nina Childs’s murder.

I had a feeling that the day was starting out wrong. I was tense and more uptight than I usually let myself become. I didn’t like this early-morning command appearance one bit.

I shook my head, frowned, tried to roll the kinks out of my neck. Finally, I gritted my teeth tightly before opening the mahogany door. Chief of Detectives George Pittman was lying in wait in his office, which in fact consists of three connecting offices, including a conference room.

The Jefe, as he’s called by his many “admirers,” had on a boxy gray business suit, an overstarched white shirt, and a silver necktie. His gray-and-white-streaked hair was slicked back. He looked like a banker, and in some ways he is one. As he never tires of saying, he is working with a fixed budget and is always mindful of manpower costs, overtime costs, caseload costs. Apparently, he is an efficient manager, which is why the police commissioner overlooks the fact that he’s a bully, bigot, racist, and careerist.