Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

I stood at the pay phone for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. I felt as if I were going mad, but I would stay there all night if I had to. I began to wonder if this was the right phone, but I knew it was. He had been crystal-clear, calm, in control.

For the first time in weeks I allowed myself to t

ruly hope that Christine might be alive. I imagined her face, her deep-brown eyes that showed so much love and warmth. Maybe, just maybe, I would be allowed to talk to her.

I let my anger build toward the unknown caller. But then I cut it off, shut down my emotions, and waited with a cool head.

People came and went, in and out of the drugstore. A few wanted to use the phone. They took one look at me and then moved on in search of another phone.

At five minutes to nine, the phone rang. I lifted the receiver instantly.

“This is Alex Cross,” I said.

“Yes, I know who you are. That’s already been established. Here’s what you should do. Back all the way off. Just back away. Before you lose everything you care about. It can happen so easily. In a snap. You’re smart enough to understand that, aren’t you?”

Then the caller hung up. The line was dead.

I banged the phone with the receiver. I cursed loudly. The manager from the drugstore had come outside and was staring at me.

“I’m going to call the police,” he said. “That’s a public phone.” I didn’t bother to tell him I was the police.

Chapter 63

WAS IT THE WEASEL who had called? Was I dealing with one killer, or more than one?

If only I had some idea who the caller was and who he meant by we. The message scared me just as much as the first one had, maybe even more; but it also gave me hope that Christine might still be alive.

With hope came a jolting surge of pain. If only they would put Christine on the phone. I needed to hear her voice.

What did they want? “Back all the way off.” Back off from what?

The Odenkirk murder case? The Jane Does? Perhaps even Christine’s disappearance? Was Interpol or the FBI getting close to something that had scared them? We weren’t close to anything that could solve any of the cases, and I knew timing was critical.

Early Wednesday morning, Sampson and I drove to Eckington. A woman over there knew where a purple and blue cab was garaged. We’d followed up a dozen or so leads like this already, but it didn’t matter. Every lead had to be investigated, every single one.

“Cab owner’s name is Arthur Marshall,” I told Sampson as we walked from my car toward a redbrick garden apartment that had seen better days. “Trouble is, Arthur Marshall seems to be a false identity. Landlady has him working at a Target store. According to Target, he doesn’t. Never worked at any Target store. Hasn’t been seen around for a while, according to the landlady.”

“Maybe we spooked him,” Sampson said.

“I hope not, but you may be right.”

I glanced around at the lower-middle-class neighborhood as we walked. Overhead, the sky was a bright-blue canvas, nearly empty of clouds. The street was packed with one- and two-story homes. Bright-orange fliers were sticking out from the mailboxes. Every window was a possible lookout for the Weasel. “Back away,” he had warned. I couldn’t. Not after what he’d done. I knew I was taking a risk, though.

He probably spotted us canvassing the streets. If he was responsible for the Jane Doe murders, he had been working undetected for a long while. He was skillful, good at killing, at not getting caught.

The landlady told us what she knew about Arthur Marshall, which wasn’t much more than the information she needed to rent him a one-bedroom apartment and the attached garage. She gave us a set of keys for the place and said we could go look for ourselves.

The second house was similar to the landlady’s, except that it was painted Easter-egg blue. Sampson and I entered the garage first.

The purple and blue cab was there.

Arthur Marshall had told the landlady that he owned the cab and operated it as a part-time job. That was a possibility, but it seemed unlikely. The Weasel was close. I could feel it now. Had he known we would find the cab? Probably. Now what? What came next? What was his plan? His fantasy?

“I’m going to have to figure out how to get some techies in here,” I told Sampson. “There has to be something in the cab, or maybe upstairs in the apartment. Hair, fibers, prints.”

“Hopefully no damn body parts,” Sampson said, and grimaced. It was typical cop humor, and so automatic that I didn’t give it a second thought. “Body parts are always popping up in these cases, Alex. I don’t want to see it. I like feet attached to ankles, heads attached to necks, even if all the parts happen to be dead.”

Sampson searched around the front seat of the cab with latex-gloved hands. “Papers in here. Candy and gum wrappers, too. Why not call in a favor from Kyle Craig? Get the FBI boys over here.”