Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

Hampton nodded again, still agreeing when she saw the chance. She was afraid she’d lost him, said the wrong thing by speaking the truth. “They think that at least some of the victims were innocent women from their neighborhoods. That E.R. nurse who was killed over the weekend, she was a friend of Cross and Detective John Sampson. Cross thinks a killer could be loose in Southeast, preying on women.”

“A serial killer in the ghetto? Give me a break. We’ve never had one there. They’re rare in any inner city. Why now? Why here? Because Cross wants to find one, that’s why.”

“Cross and the others would counter that by saying we’ve never seriously tried to catch this squirrel.”

Pittman’s small eyes suddenly burned into her skull. “Do you agree with that horseshit, Detective?”

“No, sir. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree. I know for a fact that the department doesn’t have enough resources anywhere in the city, with the possible exception of Capitol Hill. Now that’s political, and it’s an outrage.”

Pittman smiled at her answer. The chief knew she was playing him a little, but he liked her anyway. He liked just being in a room with Patsy Hampton. She was such a doll, such a cutie. “What do you know about Cross, Patsy?”

She sensed that the chief had vented enough. Now he wanted their talk to be more informal. She was certain that he liked her, had a crush on her, but he was too uptight to ever act on his desires, thank God.

“I know Cross has been on the force for just over eight years. He’s currently the liaison between the department and the FBI, works with the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. He’s a profiler with a good reputation, from what I hear. Has a Ph.D. in psych from Johns Hopkins. Private practice for three years before he came to us. Widower, two kids, plays the blues on the piano at his house. That enough background? What more do you want to know? I’ve done my homework. You know me,” Hampton said, and finally smiled.

Pittman was smiling now, too. He had small teeth with spaces between them, and always made her think of Eastern European refugees, or maybe Russian gangsters.

Detective Hampton smiled, though. She knew he liked it when she played along with him—as long as he thought she respected him.

“Any other worthwhile observations at this point?” he asked.

You’re such a soft, flabby dick, Patsy Hampton wanted to say, but she just shook her head. “He has some charm. He’s well connected in political circles. I can see why you’re concerned about him.”

“You think Cross is charming?”

“I told you, he’s slick. He is. People say he looks like the young Muhammad Ali. I think he likes to play the part sometimes: dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” She laughed again—and so did he.

“We’re going to nail Cross,” Pittman said. “We’ll send him flying back to private practice. Wait and see. You’re going to help get it done. You get things done. Right, Detective Hampton? You see the bigger picture. That’s what I like about you.”

She smiled again. “That’s what I like about me, too.”

Chapter 16

THE BRITISH EMBASSY is a plain, Federal-style building located at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue. Its immediate neighbors are the vice president’s house and the Observatory. The ambassador’s residence is a stately Georgian building with tall, flowing white columns; the Chancery is the actual office building.

Geoffrey Shafer sat behind his small mahogany desk at the embassy and stared out onto Massachusetts Avenue. The embassy staff currently counted 415 people—soon to be cut to 414, he was thinking to himself. The staff included defense experts, foreign-policy specialists, trade, public affairs, clerks, and secretaries.

Although the United States and Britain have an agreement not to spy on each other, Geoffrey Shafer was nonetheless a spy. He was one of eleven men and women from the Security Service, formerly known as MI6, who worked at the embassy in Washington. These eleven in turn ran agents attached to the consulates general in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

He was feeling restless as hell today, getting up from his desk frequently, pacing back and forth across the carpet that covered the creaking parquet floors. He made phone calls he didn’t need to make, tried to get some work done, thought about how much he despised his job and the everyday details of life.

He was supposed to be working on a truly silly communiqué about the government’s absurd ongoing commitment to human rights. The foreign secretary had rather bombastically proclaimed that Britain would support the international condemnation of regimes that violate human rights; support international bodies involved in the cause; and denounce human-rights abuses, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam.

He glanced through a few of the computer games he enjoyed when he was uptight like this—Riven, MechCommander, Unreal, TOCA, Ultimate Soccer Manager. None of them appealed to him right now; nothing did.

He was starting to crash, and he knew the feeling. I’m going down, and there is only one certain way to stop it: play the Four Horsemen.

To make matters worse, it was raining and woefully grayskied outside. The city of Washington, and also the surrounding countryside, looked forlorn and depressing. It sucked. Christ, he was in a bad mood, even for him.

He continued to stare east across Massachusetts Avenue, looking into the trees bordering a park dedicated to the pacifist bullshit artist Kahlil Gibran. He tried to daydream, mostly about fucking various attractive women currently working at the embassy.

He had called his psychiatrist, Boo Cassady, at her home-office, but she was about to start a session and couldn’t talk for long. They agreed to meet after work: a nasty quickie at her place before he went home to face Lucy and the sniveling brood.

He didn’t dare play Horsemen again tonight. It was too soon after the nurse. But God Almighty, he wanted to play. He wished he could take somebody out in some very imaginative way, right there inside the embassy.

He did have one excellent thing to do today—saving it until now—three in the afternoon. He had used the dice already, played a bit of Horsemen, just to help him make a personnel decision.

He had called Sarah Middleton just before lunch and told her they needed to have a chat and could she stop by his office, say at three?