Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel
Page 29
'Nah American woman here.' The original speaker spat defiantly on the ground. 'Turn around, go back.'
'You know James Whitehead? You know Shafer?' Jones said.
They didn't deny it. I doubted we'd get anymore from them than that.
'I love her,' I told them. 'I can't leave. Her name is Christine.'
My mouth was still dry and I couldn't breathe very well. 'She was kidnapped a year ago. We know she was brought here.'
Sampson took out his Glock and held it loosely at his side. He stared at the four men, who continued to glare back at us. I touched the handle of my gun, still in its holster. I didn't want a gunfight.
'We can cause you a whole lot of trouble,' Sampson said, in a low, rumbling voice. 'You won't believe how much trouble is coming your way.'
Finally, I just walked forward on a worn path through the tall grass. I passed by the men, lightly brushing against one of them.
No one tried to stop me. I could smell ganja and sweat on their work clothes. Tension was building up inside me.
Sampson followed me, no more than a step or two behind. 'I'm watching them,' he said. 'Nobody's doing anything yet.'
'Doesn't matter.' I said. 'I have to see if she's here.'
?CHAPTER One Hundred and Twenty-Three
An older woman with long and wildly frazzled gray-and-white hair stepped out of the front door as I reached the scarred, unpainted steps. Her eyes were ringed with redness.
'Come with me,' she sighed. 'Come along. You nah need no weapon.'
For the first time in many months I allowed myself to feel the tiniest flash of hope. I didn't have any reason to, just the rumor that a woman had been kept here against her will.
Beatitude? Something to do with blessedness and happiness? Could it be Christine?
The old woman walked unsteadily around the house and through light bushes, trees, and ferns out back. About sixty or seventy yards into thickening woods she came to half-a-dozen small shacks, and she stopped. The shacks were made of wood, bamboo, and corrugated metal.
She walked forward again and stopped at the next-to-last shack in the group.
She took out a key attached to a leather strap around her waist. She then inserted the key and jiggled it.
She pushed the door forward and it creaked loudly on a rusty hinge.
I looked inside and saw a plain, neat, and clean room. Someone had written The Lord Is My Shepherd in black paint on the wall.
No one was there.
No Beatitude.
No Christine.
I let my eyes fall shut. Desperation enveloped me.
My eyes slowly opened. I didn't understand why I had been led to this empty room, this old shack in the woods. My heart was ripped in two again. Was it some kind of trap?
The Weasel? Shafer? Was he here?
Someone stepped out from behind a small folding screen in one corner of the room. I felt as if I were in free fall, and a small gasp came out of my mouth.
I didn't know what I had been expecting, but not this. Sampson put out his hand to steady me. I was barely aware of his touch.
Christine gently stepped into the shafts of sunlight coming from the single window in the shack. I had never expected to see her again.
She was much thinner and her hair was braided and longer than I'd ever seen it. But she had the same wise, beautiful brown eyes. Neither of us was able to speak at first. It was the strangest moment of my life.
I had gone cold all over and everything was moving in slow motion. It seemed supematurally quiet in the small room.
Christine was holding a light-yellow blanket, and I could see a baby's head just peeking above the crown of the covers. I walked forward even though my legs were trembling and threatening to buckle. I could hear the baby softly cooing in the nest of blankets.
'Oh, Christine, Christine,' I finally managed.
Tears welled in her eyes, and then in mine. We both stepped forward, and then I was awkwardly holding her. The little baby peacefully gazed up into both our faces.
'This is our baby, and he probably saved my life. He takes after you,' Christine said. Then we kissed gently, and it was so sweet and tender. We held on for dear, dear life. We melted into each other. Neither of us could believe this was actually happening.
'I call him Alex. You were always right here,' Christine told me. 'You were always with me.'
Epilogue
London Bridges, Falling
?CHAPTER One Hundred and Twenty-Four
His name was Frederick Neuman, and he liked to think of himself as a citizen of the European Community rather than any single country, but if anyone asked he claimed to be German. His head was shaved close and it made him look severe, but also more impressive, he thought, which was an amazing accomplishment.
He would be remembered as 'quite tall, thin and bald', or as 'an interesting artist type', and several people did see him that week in the Chelsea area of London. He wanted to be remembered. That was important.
He shopped, or at least window-shopped, on the King's Road and Sloane Street.
He went to the cinema on Kensington High Street.
And Waterstone's bookshop.
Nights, he would have a pint or two at the King's Head. He mostly kept to himself at the pub.
He had a master plan. Another game was beginning.
He saw Lucy and the twins at Safeway one afternoon. He watched them from a safe distance across rows of baked beans and aisles of shoppers. No harm, no foul, no problem for anybody.
He couldn't resist the challenge though. The dice started to play in his head. They rattled the number he wanted to hear.
He kept walking closer and closer to the family, careful to keep his face slightly averted, just in case, but still watching Lucy out of the corner of his eye, watching the twins, who were perhaps more dangerous.
Lucy was examining some wild Scottish salmon. She finally noticed him, he was sure, but she didn't recognize who he was - obviously. Neither did the twins. Dumb, silly little girls - mirrors of their mother.
The game was on again - so delicious. He'd been away from it for a while. He had book money, his advance, which he kept in Switzerland. He had bummed around the Caribbean after his escape by boat from Jamaica. He'd gone to San Juan and been tempted to act up there. He'd finally traveled to Europe, to Rome, Milan, Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin - and at last home to London. He'd only strayed a couple of times on the whole trip. He was such a careful boy now.
It felt just like old times as he got oh so close to Lucy in the shopping aisle. Jesus, his physical tics were back. He was tapping his foot nervously and shaking out his hands.
He'd have thought she might have noticed that, but she was such a vacuous blonde cow, such a cipher, a waste of time; even now, as he got closer and closer, only a foot or two away.
'Oh Loo-cy... it's Ricky,' he said, and grinned and grinned. 'It's me, darling.'
Swish. Swish. He swiped at her twice, back and forth, as they passed like strangers in the aisle at Safeway. The blows barely crisscrossed Lucy's throat, but they cut her inches deep.
She dropped to her bony knees, both hands clutching her neck as if she were strangling herself. And then she saw who it was, and her blue eyes filled with complete shock and pain and what seemed to be terrible disappointment.
'Geoffrey,' she managed in a gurgling voice, as blood bubbled from her open mouth.
Her last word on earth. His name.
Beautiful for Shafer to hear, recognition that he craved, revenge against all of them. He turned away, forced himself to, before he did the twins as well.
He was never seen again in Chelsea, but everyone would remember him for as long as they lived.
God, would they remember.
That tall, bald monster.
The one in all-black clothes, the inhuman freak.
The heartless killer who had committed so many awful murders that even he had lost count.
Geoffrey Shafer.
Deat
h.
The End
FB2 document info
Document ID: 05815380-2ec5-46ca-b4a8-44f9fa9ca09b
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 11.7.2011
Created using: calibre 0.8.9 software
Document authors :
Patterson, James
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