Pop Goes the Weasel

her with his chin. He loved the power he had over her — his goddamned shrink.
    “I don’t want to talk about it just yet. I’m here with you. I feel much better already.”
    “What happened, darling? What’s wrong? You have to share these things with me.”
    So he made up a story on the spot, acted it out. Nothing to it. “Lucy claims she knows about us. God, she was paranoid before I started to see you. Lucy always threatens to destroy my life. She says she’ll leave me. Sue for what fucking little I have. Her father will have me fired, then blackball me in the government and in the private sector, which he’s perfectly capable of doing. The worst thing is, she’s poisoning the children, turning them against me. They use the same belittling phrases that she does: ‘colossal failure,’ ‘underachiever,’ ‘get a real job, Daddy.’ Some days I wonder whether it isn’t true.”
    Boo kissed him lightly on the forehead. “No, no, darling. You’re well thought of at the embassy. I know you’re a loving dad. You just have a bitchy, mean-spirited, spoiled-rotten wife who gets you down on yourself. Don’t let her do it.”
    He knew what she wanted to hear next, so he told her. “Well, I won’t have a bitchy wife for much longer. I swear to God I won’t, Boo. I love you dearly, and I’m going to leave Lucy soon.”
    He looked at her heavily made-up face and watched as tears formed and ruined her look. “I love you, Geoff,” she whispered, and Shafer smiled as if he were pleased to hear it.
    God, he was so good at this.
    Lies.
    Fantasies.
    Role-playing games.
    He unbuttoned the front of her mauve silk blouse, fondled her, then carried her inside to the sofa.
    “This is my idea of therapy,” he whispered hotly in Boo’s ear. “This is all the therapy I need.”

Chapter 60
    I HAD BEEN UP since before five that morning. I had to call Inspector Patrick Busby in Bermuda. I wanted to talk to him every day, sometimes more than once, but I stopped myself.
    It would only make things worse, strain my relations with the local police, and signal that I didn’t trust them to handle the investigation properly.
    “Patrick, it’s Alex Cross calling from Washington. Did I catch you at a good time? Can you talk for a moment now?” I asked. I always tried to sound as upbeat as possible.
    I wasn’t, of course. I had been up pacing the house, and already had breakfast with Nana. Then I’d waited impatiently until eight-thirty Bermuda time to call Busby at the station house in Hamilton. He was an efficient man, and I knew he was there every morning by eight.
    I could picture the thin, wiry policeman as we talked on the phone. I could see the tidy cubicle office where he worked. And superimposed over everything, I could still see Christine on her moped waving good-bye to me on that perfectly sunny afternoon.
    “I have a few things for you from my contact at Interpol,” I said. I told him about an abduction of a woman on Jamaica earlier in the summer, and another in Barbados; both were similar, though not identical, to Christine’s disappearance. I didn’t think they were connected, really, but I wanted to give him something, anything.
    Patrick Busby was a thoughtful and patient man; he remained silent until I had finished talking before asking his usual quota of logical questions. I had observed that he was flawed as an interrogator because he was so polite. But at least he hadn’t given up.
    “I assume that neither abduction was ever solved, Alex. How about the women who were taken? Were they found?”
    “No, neither woman was seen again. Not a sign of them. They’re still missing.”
    He sighed into the phone receiver. “I hope your news is helpful in some way, Alex. I’ll certainly call the other islands and check into it further. Anything else from Interpol or the FBI?”
    I wanted to keep him on the line — the lifeline, as I now thought of it. “A few far-flung possibilities in the Far East, Bangkok, the Philippines, Malaysia. Women abducted and murdered, all Jane Does. To be honest, nothing too promising at this point.”
    I imagined him pursing his thin lips and nodding thoughtfully. “I understand, Alex. Please keep giving me whatever you get from your sources. It’s difficult for us to get help outside this small island. My calls for assistance frequently aren’t returned. I sincerely wish that I had some good news for you on my end, but I’m afraid I don’t.
    “Other than Perri