Pop Goes the Weasel

puzzle created over several years, one that was not given to easy solutions. I was trying to play a complex game against a skillful opponent, but I didn’t know the rules of his game, or how it was played. That was Shafer’s unfair advantage.
    I had found some useful notes in Patsy Hampton’s detective logs, and they led me to interview the teenage boy, Michael Ormson, who’d chatted on-line with Shafer about the Four Horsemen. I continued to work closely with Chuck Hufstedler of the FBI. Chuck felt guilty about giving Patsy Hampton the original lead, especially since I’d come to him first. I used his guilt.
    Both the Bureau and Interpol were doing an active search of the game on the Internet. I’d visited countless chatrooms myself, but had encountered no one, other than young Ormson, who was aware of the mysterious game. It was only because Shafer had taken a chance and gone into the chatroom that he’d been discovered. I wondered what other chances he’d taken.
    Following Shafer’s arrest at the Farragut, we did a little search on his Jaguar, and I’d also spent nearly an hour at his home — before his lawyers knew I was there. I spoke to his wife, Lucy, and his son, Robert, who confirmed that he played a game called the Four Horsemen. He had been playing for seven or eight years.
    Neither the wife nor the son knew any of the other players, or anything about them. They didn’t believe that Geoffrey Shafer had done anything wrong.
    The son called his father the “straight arrow of straight arrows.” Lucy Shafer called him a good man, and she seemed to believe it.
    I found role-playing game magazines as well as dozens of sets of game dice in Shafer’s den, but no other physical evidence relating to his game. Shafer was careful; he covered his tracks well. He was in intelligence, after all. I couldn’t imagine him throwing dice to select his victims, but maybe that helped to account for the irregular pattern of the Jane Does.
    His attorney Jules Halpern complained loudly and vigorously about the invasion of Shafer’s home, and had I uncovered any useful evidence, it would certainly have been suppressed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time, and Shafer was too clever to keep anything incriminating in his house, anyway. He’d made one big mistake; he wasn’t likely to make another. Was he?
    Sometimes, very late at night, as I worked in the attic, I would stop for a while and remember something about Christine. The memories were painful and sad, but also soothing to me. I began to look forward to these times when I could think about her without any interruption. Some nights, I would wander down to the piano in the sun porch and play songs that had been important to us — “Unforgettable,” “Moonglow,” “’S Wonderful.” I could still remember how she’d looked, especially when I visited at her place — faded jeans, bare feet, T-shirt or maybe her favorite yellow crewneck sweater, a tortoiseshell comb in her long hair that always smelled of shampoo.
    I didn’t want to feel sorry for myself, but I just couldn’t help feeling miserably bad. I was caught in limbo, not knowing one way or the other what had really happened to Christine. I couldn’t let her go.
    It was paralyzing me, crippling me, making me feel so damn sad and empty. I knew I needed to move on with my life, but I couldn’t do it. I needed answers, at least a few of them. Is Christine part of the game? I kept wondering. I was obsessed with the game.
    Am I part of it?
    I believed I was. And in a way, I hoped she was, too. It was my only hope that she might still be alive.

Chapter 81
    AND SO I FOUND MYSELF a player in a truly bizarre game that was habit-forming for all the wrong reasons. I began to make up my own rules. I brought in new players. I was in this game to win.
    Chuck Hufstedler from the FBI offices in D.C. continued to be helpful. The more I talked to him, the more I realized that he’d had a serious crush on Detective Hampton. His loss, and mine with Christine, united us.
    I climbed up to the attic late Friday night after watching The Mask of Zorro with Damon, Jannie, Nana, and Rosie the cat. I had a few more facts to check before going to bed.
    I booted up the computer, logged on, and heard the familiar message: You have mail . Ever since that night in Bermuda, those words had given me a terrible fright, a chill that tightened my body from head to toe.
    Sandy Greenberg from Interpol was replying to one of