Pop Goes the Weasel

front entryway into the girl’s building. Any of those windows. Let’s get back to work.”
    Sampson nodded. “I’m here as long as you want to be.”
    There was something about pounding the streets that appealed to me that night. We talked to everyone in the building that we could find at home, about half the apartments. Nobody had seen a purple and blue cab on the street; nobody had seen Tori or Marion, either. Or so they said.
    “You see any connections anywhere?” I asked as we came down the steep stairs of a fourth-floor walk-up. “What do you see? What the hell am I missing?”
    “Not a thing, Alex. Nothing to miss. Weasel didn’t leave a clue. Never does.”
    We got back down to the entrance and met up with an elderly man carrying three clear-plastic bags of groceries from the Stop & Shop.
    “We’re homicide detectives,” I said to him. “Two young girls were murdered across the street.”
    The man nodded. “Tori and Marion. I know ’em. You want to know ’bout that fella watchin’ the buildin’? He was sittin’ there most the night. Inside a slick, fancy black car,” he said. “Mercedes, I think. You think maybe he’s the killer?”

Chapter 55
    “I BEEN AWAY AWHILE, y’see. Visitin’ wit’ my two old-bat sisters in North Carolina for a week of good memories, home-cooked food,” the elderly man said as we went up to the fourth floor. “That was why I was missed during the earlier time through here by your detectives.”
    This was old-school police work, I was thinking as I climbed stairs — the kind of work too many detectives try to avoid. The man’s name was DeWitt Luke, and he was retired from Bell Atlantic, the huge phone company that services most of the Northeast. He was the fifty-third interview I’d had so far in Shaw.
    “Saw him sittin’ there around one in the mornin’. Didn’t think much of it at first. Probably waitin’ for somebody. Seemed to be mindin’ his own business. He was still there at two, though. Sittin’ in his car. Seemed kinda strange to me.” He paused for a long moment as if trying to remember.
    “Then what happened?” I prompted the man.
    “Fell asleep. But I got up to pee around three-thirty. He was still in that shiny black car. So I watched him closer this time. He was watchin’ the other side of the street. Like some kind of damn spy or somethin’. Couldn’t tell what he was lookin’ at, but he was studyin’ somethin’ real hard over there. I thought he might be the police. ’Cept his car was too nice.”
    “You got that right,” Sampson said, and barked out a laugh. “No Mercedes in my garage.”
    “I pulled up a card-table chair behind the darkened window in my apartment. Made sure there were no lights on, so he couldn’t see me. By now he’d caught my attention some. Remember the old movie Rear Window? I tried to figure out why he might be down there sittin’, waitin’. Jealous lover, jealous husband, maybe some kinda night stalker. But he wasn’t botherin’ anybody far as I could see.”
    I spoke again. “You never got a better look than that? Man sitting in the car?”
    “Around the time I got up to pee, he got out of the car. Opened the door, but the inside light didn’t come on. That struck me strange, it bein’ such a nice car and all. Fueled my mind even more. I squinted my eyes, get a better look.” Another long pause.
    “And?”
    “He was tall, a blond gentleman. White fella. We don’t get too many of them around here at night, or even in the daytime, for that matter.”

Chapter 56
    DETECTIVE PATSY HAMPTON’S INVESTIGATION of the Jane Doe murders was starting to show forward movement and positive results. She thought she might have something good in the works. She had confidence in her ability to solve the murders. She knew from experience that she was smarter than everybody else.
    It helped to have Chief Pittman and all the department’s resources on her side. She had spent the past day and a half with Chuck Hufstedler at the FBI building. She knew she was using Chuck a little, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was lonely, and she did like his company. She and Chuck were still sitting around at three-thirty in the afternoon when Lancelot entered the Gamester’s Chatroom again. Laughalot , she remembered.
    “He couldn’t resist, could he?” Hampton said to Hufstedler. “Gotcha, you fantasy freak.”
    Hufstedler looked at her, his thick black eyebrows arched. “Three-thirty in the afternoon,