Pop Goes the Weasel

afternoon, I remember. I went down to the water, cool off if I could.
    “I came back up over a knobbly hill, and I witnessed an accident on the roadway. It was maybe a quarter of a mile down the big hill there. You know it?”
    I nodded and held my breath as I listened to him. I remembered the stifling heat of that afternoon, everything about it. I could still see Christine driving off on a shiny blue moped, waving and smiling. The memory of her smile, which had always brought me such joy, now put a tight knot in my stomach.
    “I saw a white van hit a woman riding a blue moped. I can’t be sure, but it almost looked like the van hit her on purpose. Driver, he jumped out of the van right away and helped her up. She didn’t look like she was hurt badly. Then he helped her inside the van. Put the moped inside, too. Then he drove off. I thought he was taking her to the hospital. Thought nothing else of it.”
    “You sure she wasn’t badly hurt?” I asked.
    “Not sure. But she got right up. She was able to stand all right.”
    There was a catch in my voice when I spoke again. “And you didn’t tell anybody about the accident, not even when you saw the news stories?”
    The man shook his head. “Didn’t see no stories. Don’t bother with the local news much. Just small-time shit and worthless gossip. But then my girl, she keep talking about it. I didn’t want to go to the police, but she made me do it, made me talk to this inspector here.”
    “You know what kind of van it was?” I asked.
    “White van. I think it was maybe a rented one. Clean and new.”
    “License plate?”
    Graham shook his head. “Don’t have no idea.”
    “What did the man in the van look like?” I asked him. “Any little thing you remember is helpful, Mr. Graham. You’ve already helped a lot.”
    He shrugged, but I could tell that he was trying to think back to that afternoon. “Nothing special about him. Not as tall as you, but tall. Look like anybody else. Just a black man, like any other.”

Chapter 49
    IN A SMALL APARTMENT in a suburb of Washington called Mount Rainier, Detective Patsy Hampton lay in bed, restlessly flipping through the pages of the Post . She couldn’t sleep, but there was nothing unusual about that. She often had trouble sleeping, ever since she was a little girl in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Her mother said she must have a guilty conscience about something.
    She watched a rerun episode of ER , then fetched herself a Stonyfield yogurt with blueberries and logged on to America Online. She had an e-mail from her father, now relocated in Delray Beach, Florida, and one from an old college roommate from the University of Richmond, whom she had never been that close to anyway.
    The roommate had just heard from a mutual friend that Patsy was a hotshot police detective in Washington, and what an exciting life she must lead. The roommate wrote that she had four children and lived in a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, but added that she was bored with everything in her life. Patsy Hampton would have given anything to have just one child.
    She wandered back to the kitchen and got a cold bottle of Evian mineral water. She was aware that her life had become ridiculous. She spent too much time on her job, but also too much time by herself in her apartment, especially on weekends. It wasn’t that she couldn’t get dates; she was just turned off by men in general lately.
    She still fantasized about finding someone compatible, having children. But she was increasingly tired of the depressing and maddening cycle of trying to meet someone interesting. She usually ended up with guys who were either hopelessly boring or thirty-something jackasses who still acted like teenagers, though without the charm of youth. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless , she thought as she sent off a cheery lie to her dad in Florida.
    The phone rang, and she glanced at her wristwatch — it was twenty past twelve.
    She snatched up the receiver. “Hampton speaking.”
    “It’s Chuck, Patsy. Really sorry to call so late. Is it okay? You awake?”
    “Sure, no problem, Chucky Cheese. I’m up with the other vampires — yourself included, I guess.”
    It was kind of late, but she was glad to hear from Chuck Hufstedler, who was a computer geek at the FBI in Washington. The two of them helped each other out sometimes, and she’d recently talked to him about the unsolved D.C. murders, especially the Jane Does. Chuck had told her that he was also in