Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

Christ, where the hell is Bayer? What game is Famine playing? Was there a back way out of the building? If so, why had he left the taxi as evidence? Evidence! Damn him!

But then he saw Bayer finally leave the building. He quickly crossed S Street, got into the cab, and drove away.

Shafer decided to go upstairs. He jogged over to the building and found the wooden front door unlocked. He hurried up the steep, winding stairs. He had a flashlight in one hand, and turned it on. His semiautomatic was in the other.

Shafer made his way to the fourth floor. He immediately knew which of the two flats was the one. A poster for Mary J. Blige’s What’s the 411? album was on the splintered and scarred door to his right. The girls lived here.

He turned the handle and carefully pushed the door open. He pointed his gun inside, ready.

One of the young girls came out of the bathroom wearing a fluffy black towel on her head, nothing else. She was a hot number with pert little titties. Christ, Famine must have paid for it. What a fool! What a wanker!

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in here?” the girl shouted angrily.

“I’m Death,” he grinned, then announced, “I’m here for you and your pretty friend.”

Chapter 27

I HAD GOTTEN HOME from the John Doe murder scene at a little past three-thirty in the morning. I went to bed but set my alarm for six-thirty. I managed to get myself up before the kids went off to school.

“Somebody was out very, very, very late last night.” Jannie started her teasing before I had made it all the way downstairs and into the kitchen. I continued down and found her and Damon in the breakfast nook with Nana.

“Somebody sure looks like he had a late night,” Nana said from her customary catbird’s seat.

“Somebody’s cruising for a bruising,” I said to quiet them. “Now, there’s something important I need to tell you before you head out to school.”

“Watch our manners. Always pay attention in class, even if the teacher’s boring. Lead with our left if it ever comes to a fight in the schoolyard,” Jannie offered with a wink.

I rolled my eyes. “What I was going to say,” I said, “is that you should be especially nice to Mrs. Johnson today. You see, last night Christine said that she’d marry me. I guess that means she’s marrying all of us.”

At that point, everything became hugging and loud celebrating in the kitchen. The kids got chocolate milk and bacon grease all over me. I’d never seen Nana happier. And I felt exactly the same. Probably even better than they did.

I eventually made it to work that morning. I had made some progress on the John Doe homicide, and early on Tuesday morning, I learned that the man whose body had been dumped on Alabama Avenue was a thirty-four-year-old research analyst named Franklin Odenkirk. He worked at the Library of Congress for the Congressional Research Service.

We didn’t release the news to the press, but I did inform Chief Pittman’s office as soon as I knew. Pittman would find out anyway.

Once I had a name for the victim, information came quickly, and as it usually is, it was sad. Odenkirk was married and had t

hree small children. He had taken a late flight back from New York, where he’d given a talk at the Rockefeller Institute. The plane landed on time, and he deboarded at National around ten. What happened to him after that was a mystery.

For the remainder of the week, I was busy with the murder case. I visited the Library of Congress and went to the newest structure, the James Madison Building, on Independence Avenue. I talked to nearly a dozen of Frank Odenkirk’s coworkers.

They were courteous and cooperative, and I was told repeatedly that Odenkirk, while haughty at times, was generally well liked. He wasn’t known to use drugs or drink to excess; wasn’t known to gamble, either. He was faithful to his wife. He hadn’t been involved in a serious argument at the office for as long as he’d been there.

He was with the Education and Public Welfare Division and spent long days in the spectacular Main Reading Room. There was no apparent motive for his murder, which was what I had feared. The killing roughly paralleled the Jane Does so far, but of course the chief of detectives didn’t want to hear that. There was no Jane Doe killer, according to him. Why? Because he didn’t want to shift dozens of detectives to Southeast and begin an extensive investigation on the basis of my instincts and gut feelings. I had heard Pittman joke that Southeast wasn’t part of his city.

Before I left the Madison Building, I was compelled to stop and see the Main Reading Room once again. It was newly renovated, and I hadn’t been there since the work had been done.

I sat at a reader’s table and stared up at the amazing dome high over my head. Around the room were stained-glass representations of the seals of forty-eight states, along with bronze statues of famous figures, including Michelangelo, Plato, Shakespeare, Edward Gibbon, and Homer. I could imagine poor Frank Odenkirk doing his work here, and it bothered me. Why had he been killed? Had it been the Weasel?

The death was a terrible shock to everyone who had worked with him, and a couple of Odenkirk’s coworkers broke down while talking to me about his murder.

I wasn’t looking forward to interviewing Mrs. Odenkirk, but I drove out 295 and 210 to Forest Heights late on Friday afternoon. Chris Odenkirk was home with her mother, and also her husband’s parents, who had flown in from Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, New York. They told me the same story as the people at the Library of Congress. No one in the family knew of anyone who might want to harm Frank. He was a loving father, a supportive husband, a thoughtful son and son-in-law.

At the Odenkirk home, I learned that the deceased had been wearing a green seersucker suit when he left home, that his business meeting in New York had run over, and that he had been nearly two hours late getting to La Guardia Airport. He generally took a cab home from the airport in Washington because so many flights arrived late.

Even before I went to the house in Forest Heights, I had two detectives sent out to the airport. They showed around pictures of Odenkirk, interviewed airline personnel, shopworkers, porters, taxi dispatchers, and cabdrivers.

Around six I went over to the medical examiner’s office to hear the results of the autopsy. All the photos and sketches from the crime scene were laid out. The autopsy had run about two and a half hours. Every cavity of Frank Odenkirk’s body had been swabbed and scraped, and his brain had been removed.