Cat and Mouse

being nice to me lately. Put it all together — your heart is working again.”
    “She’s afraid that I could die on the job. Her husband was murdered, remember?”
    Nana rose from her chair at the kitchen table. She shuffled around to my side, and she stood very close to me. She was so much smaller than she used to be, and that worried me. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
    “I love you, Alex,” she said. “Whatever you do, I’ll still love you.
Marry her.
At least live with Christine.” She laughed to herself. “I can’t believe I said that.”
    Nana gave me a kiss, and then headed back to bed.
    “I
do too
have suitors,” she called from the hall.
    “Marry one,” I called back at her.
    “I’m not in love, lemon meringue man. You are.”

Chapter 24

    F IRST THING in the morning, 6:35 to be the exact, Sampson and I took the Metroliner to New York’s Penn Station. It was almost as fast as driving to the airport, parking, finagling with the airlines — and besides, I wanted to do some thinking about
trains.
    A theory that Soneji was the Penn Station slasher had been advanced by the NYPD. I’d have to know more about the killings in New York, but it was the kind of high-profile situation that Soneji had been drawn to in the past.
    The train ride was quiet and comfortable, and I had the opportunity to think about Soneji for much of the trip. What I couldn’t reconcile was why Soneji was committing crimes that appeared to be acts of desperation. They seemed suicidal to me.
    I had interviewed Soneji dozens of times after I had apprehended him a few years ago. That was the Dunne-Goldberg case. I certainly didn’t believe he was suicidal then. He was too much of an egomaniac, even a megalomaniac.
    Maybe these were copycat crimes.
Whatever
he was doing now didn’t track.
What had changed? Was it Soneji who was doing the killings? Was he pulling some kind of trick or stunt? Could this be a clever trap? How in hell had he gotten my blood on the sniper’s rifle in Union Station?
    What kind of trap? For what reason? Soneji obsessed on his crimes. Everything had a purpose with him.
    So why kill strangers in Union and Penn Stations? Why choose railroad stations?
    “Oh ho, smoke’s curling out of your forehead, Sugar. You aware of that?” Sampson looked over at me and made an announcement to the nice folks seated around us in the train car.
    “Little wisps of white smoke! See? Right
here.
And
here.”
    He leaned in close and started hitting me with his newspaper as if he were trying to put out a small fire.
    Sampson usually favors a cool deadpan delivery to slapstick. The change of pace was effective. We both started to laugh. Even the people sitting around us smiled, looking up from their newspapers, coffees, laptop computers.
    “Phew. Fire seems to be out,” Sampson said and chuckled deeply. “Man, your head is
hot
as Hades to the touch. You must have been brainstorming some powerful ideas. Am I right about that?”
    “No, I was thinking about Christine,” I told Sampson.
    “You lying sack. You
should
have been thinking about Christine Johnson. Then I would have had to beat the fire out someplace else. How you two doing? If I might be so bold as to ask.”
    “She’s great, she’s the best, John. Really something else. She’s smart and she’s funny. Ho ho, ha ha.”
    “And she’s almost as good-looking as Whitney Houston, and she’s sexy as hell. But none of that answers my question. What’s happening with you two? You trying to hide your love on me? My spy, Ms. Jannie, told me you had a date the other night. Did you have a big date and not tell me about it?”
    “We went to Kinkead’s for dinner. Had a good time. Good food, great company. One little minor problem, though: She’s afraid I’m going to get myself killed, so she doesn’t want to see me anymore. Christine’s still mourning her husband.”
    Sampson nodded, slid down his shades to check me out sans light filtration. “That’s interesting. Still mourning, huh? Proves she’s a good lady. By the by, since you brought up the forbidden topic, something I should tell you, all-star. You ever get capped in action, your family will mourn you for an indecent length of time. Myself, I would carry the torch of grief up to and through the funeral services. That’s it, though. Thought you should know. So, are you two star-crossed lovers going to have another date?”
    Sampson liked to talk as if we were girlfriends in