Pop Goes the Weasel

anything I had ever experienced. Who could have done this to Christine? Why? Who was the Weasel?
    Every time I closed my eyes, tried to sleep, I could see Christine’s face, see her waving good-bye that final time on Middle Road, see her walking through the hotel gardens with flowers in her hair.
    I could hear Christine’s voice all through the night — and then it was morning again. My guilt over what had happened to her had doubled, tripled.
    Sampson and I continued to canvass Middle Road, Harbour Road, South Road. Every person we spoke to in the police and the military believed that Christine didn’t simply disappear on the island. Sampson and I heard the same song and dance every day for a week. No shopkeepers or taxi or bus drivers had seen her in Hamilton or St. George, so it was possible that she’d never even arrived in either town that afternoon.
    No one, not one witness, remembered seeing her moped on Middle or Harbour roads, so maybe she never even got that far.
    Most disturbing of all was that there hadn’t been any further communication with me about her since the e-mail on the night she disappeared. An agent at the FBI had investigated the e-mail address and confirmed that it didn’t exist . Whoever had contacted me was a skillful hacker, able to conceal his or her identity. The words I’d read that night were always on my mind.
    “She’s safe for now.”
    “We have her.”
    Who was “we”? And why hadn’t there been any further contact? What did they want from me? Did they know they were driving me insane? Was that what they wanted to do? Did the Weasel represent more than one killer? Suddenly that made a lot of sense to me.
    Sampson returned to Washington on Sunday, and he took Nana and the kids with him. They didn’t want to leave without me, but it was time for them to go. I couldn’t make myself leave Bermuda yet. It would have felt as if I were abandoning Christine.
    On Sunday night, Patrick Busby showed up at the Belmont Hotel around nine. He asked me to ride with him out past Southampton, about a six-mile drive that he said would take us twenty minutes or more. Bermudians measure distances in straight lines, but all the roads run in wiggles and half-circles, so it always takes longer to travel than you might think.
    “What is it, Patrick? What’s out in Southampton?” I asked as we rode along Middle Road. My heart was in my throat. He was scaring me with his silence.
    “We haven’t found Mrs. Johnson. However, a man may have witnessed the abduction. I want you to hear his story. You decide for yourself. You’re the big-city detective, not me. You can ask whatever questions you like. Off the record, of course.”
    The man’s name was Perri Graham, and he was staying in a room at the Port Royal Golf Club. We met him at his tiny apartment in the staff quarters. He was tall and painfully thin, with a longish goatee. He clearly wasn’t happy to see Inspector Busby or me on his doorstep.
    Busby had already told me that Graham was originally from London and now worked as a porter and maintenance man at the semiprivate golf club. He had also lived in New York City and Miami and had a criminal record for selling crack in New York.
    “I already told him everything I saw,” Perri Graham said defensively as soon as he opened the front door of his room and saw the two of us standing there. “Go away. Let me be. Why would I hold back anything or —”
    I cut him off. “My name is Alex Cross. I’m a homicide detective from Washington. The woman you saw was my fiancée, Mr. Graham. May we come in and talk? This will only take a few minutes.”
    He shook his head back and forth in frustration.
    “I’ll tell you what I know. Again ,” he finally said, relenting. “Yeah, come in. But only because you called me Mr. Graham.”
    “That’s all I want. I’m not here to bother you about anything else.”
    Busby and I walked inside the room, which was little more than an alcove. The tile floors and all the furniture were strewn with wrinkled clothes, mostly underwear.
    “A woman I know lives in Hamilton,” Graham said in a weary voice. “I went to visit her this Tuesday past. We drank too much wine. Stayed the evening — you know how it is. I got up somehow. Had to be at the club by noon, but I knew I’d be late and get docked some of my pay. Don’t have a car or nothin’, so I hitched a ride from Hamilton, out South Shore Road. Walked along near Paget, I suppose. Damn hot