Roses Are Red

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Early the next morning my beeper went off. I made a call and got bad news from Sandy Greenberg, a friend who works at Interpol headquarters in Lyons, France.

A woman named Lucy Rhys-Cousins had been savagely murdered in a London supermarket. She was killed while her children looked on. Sandy told me the police in London suspected that the killer was her husband, Geoffrey Shafer, a man I knew as the Weasel.

I couldn't believe it. Not now. Not the Weasel "Was it Shafer or not?" I asked Sandy. "Do you know for certain?"

"It's him, Alex, though we won't confirm it for the press vermin. Scotland Yard is positive. The children recognized him. Their Mad Hatter daddy! He killed their mother right before their eyes." Months before, Geoffrey Shafer had been responsible for Christine's kidnapping. He had also committed several grisly murders in the Southeast section of Washington. He'd preyed on the poor and defenseless. The news that he might be alive, and killing again, was like a swift, sudden punch below the belt. I knew it would be even worse for Christine to learn about Shafer.

I called her at home from St. Anthony's, but got her answering machine. I talked calmly to the machine. "Christine, pick up if you're there. It's Alex. Please, pick up. It's important that I talk to you."

Still, no one picked up at Christine's. I knew that Shafer couldn't be here in Washington and yet I worried about the possibility that he was. It was his pattern to do the unexpected. The goddamn Weasel!

I checked my watch. It was seven a.m. It seemed too early for Christine to have left for school. I decided to head over to the Sojourner Truth School anyway. It wasn't far.