Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

CHAPTER Eighty

I purposely, and probably wisely, skipped the first day, then the second, and the third day of the courtroom circus. I didn't want to face the world press, or the public anymore than I had to. I felt like I was on trial too.

A cold-blooded murderer was on trial, but the investigation continued more feverishly than ever for me. I still had the Jane Does to solve, and the disappearance of Christine, if I could open up any new leads. I wanted to make certain that Shafer would not walk away a free man, and most importantly, I desperately wanted finally to know the truth about Christine's disappearance. I had to know. My greatest frustration was that because of the diplomatic shenanigans, I had never gotten to question Shafer. I would have given anything for a few hours with him.

I turned the southern end of our attic into a war room. There was an excess of unused space up there anyway. I moved an old mahogany dining table out from the shadows. I rewired an ancient window fan and it made the attic space almost bearable most days.

Especially early in the morning and late in the evening, when I did my best work up there - in my hermitage.

I set up my laptop on the table, and I pinned different-colored index cards to the walls, to keep what I considered the most important pieces of the case before me at all times. Inside several bulky and misshapen cardboard boxes I had all the rest of it: every scrap of evidence on Christine's abduction; and everything I could find on the Jane Does.

The murder cases formed a maddening puzzle, created over several years, that was not given to easy solutions. I was trying to play a complex game, against a skillful opponent, but I didn't know the rules of his game, or how it was played. That was Shafer's unfair advantage.

I had found some useful notes in Patsy Hampton's detective logs, and they led me to interview the teenage boy, Michael Ormson, who'd chatted online with Shafer about The Four Horsemen. I continued to work closely with Chuck Hufstedler of the FBI. Chuck felt guilty about giving Patsy Hampton the original lead, especially since I'd come to him first. I used his guilt.

Both the Bureau and Interpol were doing an active search of the game on the Internet. I'd visited countless chatrooms myself, but had encountered no one, other than young Ormson, who was aware of the mysterious game. It was only because Shafer had taken a chance and gone into the chatroom that he'd been discovered. I wondered what other chances he'd taken.

Following Shafer's arrest at the Farragut, we'd had a little time to search his Jaguar, and I also spent nearly an hour at his home - before his lawyers knew I was there. I spoke to his wife, Lucy, and his son, Robert, who confirmed that he played a game called The Four Horsemen. He had been playing for seven or eight years.

Neither the wife nor the son knew any of the other players, or anything about them. They didn't believe that Geoffrey Shafer had done anything wrong.

The son called his father 'the straight arrow of straight arrows'. Lucy Shafer called him 'a good man', and seemed to believe it.

I found role-playing-game magazines as well as dozens of sets of game dice in Shafer's den, but no other physical evidence concerning his game. Shafer was careful. He covered his tracks well. He was in intelligence, after all. I couldn't imagine him throwing dice to select his victims, but maybe that helped to account for the irregular pattern of the Jane Does.

His attorney, Jules Halpern, complained loudly and vigorously about the invasion of Shafer's home, and had I uncovered any useful evidence, it would have been suppressed. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time, and Shafer was too clever to keep anything incriminating at his home. He'd made one big mistake; he wasn't likely to make another. Was he?

Sometimes, very late at night as I worked in the attic, I would stop for a while and remember something about Christine. The memories were painful and sad, but also soothing to me. I began to look forward to these times when I could think about her without any interruption. Some nights, I would wander down to the piano in the sun porch and play songs that had been important to us -'Unforgettable', 'Moonglow', 'Swonderful'. I could still remember how she looked, especially when I visited at her place - faded jeans, bare feet, T-shirt, or maybe a favorite yellow crewneck sweater she liked, a tortoiseshell comb in her long hair that always smelled of shampoo.

I didn't want to feel sorry for myself, but I just couldn't help feeling miserably bad. I was caught in limbo, not knowing one way or the other what had really happened to Christine. I couldn't let her go.

It was paralyzing me, crippling me, making me feel so damn sad and empty. I knew I needed to move on with my life, but I couldn't do it. I needed answers, at least a few of them. Is Christine part of the game? I kept wondering. I was obsessed with the game.

Am I part of it?

I believed that I was. And in a way I hoped she was, too. It was my only hope that she might still be alive.