Pop Goes the Weasel

followed the doorman down the steeply sloped concrete driveway leading into the garage.
    “It’s a woman,” he said. “I’m pretty sure she’s gone. I called nine-one-one.”
    “Oh, God,” I gasped out loud. My stomach clutched. Patsy Hampton’s Jeep was tucked back in a corner space. The door of the Jeep was open, and light spilled outside.
    I felt terrible fear, pain, and shock as I hurried around the door. Patsy Hampton was sprawled across the front seat. I could tell she was probably dead.
    “We have her.” This was what the message meant. Jesus God, no. They murdered Patsy Hampton. They told me to back off. For God’s sake, no .
    Her bare legs were twisted and pinned under the steering wheel. Her upper body was crumpled over at almost a right angle. Patsy’s head was thrown back and lay partly off the seat, on the passenger’s side. Her blond hair was matted with blood. Her vacant blue eyes stared up at me.
    Patsy was wearing a white knit sport shirt. There were deep lacerations around her throat; bright-red blood was still oozing from the wound. She was naked below the waist. I didn’t see any other clothes anywhere. She might have been raped.
    I suspected that she’d been strangled with some kind of wire, and that she’d been dead for only a few minutes. A rope or garotte had been used in some of the Jane Doe murders. The Weasel liked to use his hands, to work close to his victims, possibly to watch and feel their pain — maybe even while he was sexually assaulting them.
    I saw what looked like paint chips around the deep, ugly neck wounds. Paint chips?
    Something else seemed very strange to me: the Jeep’s radio had been partly dislodged, but left behind. I didn’t understand why the radio had been tampered with, but it didn’t seem important right now.
    I leaned back out of the Jeep. “Is anyone else hurt? Have you checked?”
    The doorman shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. I’ll go look.”
    Sirens finally screeched inside the garage. I saw red and blue lights flashing and whirling against the ceiling and walls. Some of the tenants had made it into the garage as well. Why did they have to come and gape at this terrible crime?
    A very bad thought flashed in my head. I climbed out of the Jeep, grabbing Patsy’s keys out of the ignition. I hurried around to the back. I pushed the release, and the rear door came open. My heart was thundering again. I didn’t want to look inside, but when I did, there was nothing. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. “We have her!” Is Christine here, too? Where?
    I looked around the garage. Up near the entrance I spotted Geoffrey Shafer’s sports car, the black Jaguar. He was here at the Farragut. Patsy must have followed him.
    I ran across the garage to the Jag. I felt the hood, then the exhaust pipe. Both were still warm. The car hadn’t been in the garage very long. The doors were locked. I couldn’t break in. I was all too aware of the search-and-seizure constraints.
    I stared inside the Jaguar. In the backseat I could see dress shirts on wire hangers. The hangers were white, and I thought of the chips in Detective Hampton’s wounds. Had he strangled her with a hanger? Was Shafer the Weasel? Was he still in the building? What about Christine? Was she here, too?
    I said a few words to the patrolmen who’d just arrived, the first on the scene after me. Then I took them with me.
    The helpful doorman told me which floor Shafer’s therapist’s apartment was on. The number was 10D, the penthouse. Like all buildings in D.C., the Farragut was restricted to a height no greater than that of the Capitol dome.
    I took the elevator with the two uniformed cops, both in their twenties and both scared shitless, I’d bet. I was close to rage. I knew I had to be careful; I had to act professionally, to control my emotions somehow. If there was an arrest, there would be questions to answer, such as what I was doing here in the first place. Pittman would be on my case in a second.
    I talked to the policemen on the way up, more to calm myself than anything else.
    “You okay, Detective?” one of them asked me.
    “I’m fine. I’m all right. The killer might still be in the building. The victim was a detective, one of our own. She was on surveillance here. The suspect has a relationship with a woman upstairs.”
    The faces of both young cops tightened. It was bad enough to have seen the murdered woman in her car, but to learn that she was a policewoman, a detective