Pop Goes the Weasel

didn’t believe he could handle a suspension at that time. I warned him and let it slide. I shouldn’t have,” said Pittman.
    “No further questions.”
    None needed , I thought.

Chapter 85
    THAT NIGHT, after he left the courthouse, Shafer was flying high. He thought that he was winning the game. He was manic as hell, and it felt both good and bad. He was parked in the dark garage under Boo Cassady’s building. Most manics aren’t really aware of it when they’re exhibiting signs of a manic episode, but Shafer knew. His “spirals” didn’t come out of nowhere; they built and built.
    The irony and the danger of being back in her building weren’t lost on him. Scene of the crime, and all that rot. He wanted to go to Southeast tonight, but that was too risky. He couldn’t hunt — not now. He had something else in mind: the next few moves in his game.
    It was unusual, though not unheard-of, for the defendant in a first-degree homicide trial to be out roaming the streets, but that had been one of the prerequisites of his dropping his immunity. What choice did the prosecution have? None at all. If the D.A. hadn’t agreed, he had a free pass to keep him out of jail.
    Shafer followed a tenant he’d seen several times into the lift from the garage and took it to Boo’s apartment. He rang the doorbell. Waited. Heard her padding across the parquet floor. Yes, Act One of tonight’s performance was about to begin.
    He knew she was watching him through the door’s peephole, just as he had watched Alex Cross through it on the night Patsy Hampton got her just deserts. He had seen Boo a few times after his release, but then he’d cut her off.
    When he’d stopped seeing her, she lost it. Boo had called him at work, then at home, and constantly on his car phone, until he changed the bloody number. At her worst, she reminded him of the nutcase Glenn Close had played in the movie Fatal Attraction .
    He wondered if he could still push her buttons. She was a fairly bright woman, and that was a large part of her problem. She thought far too much, double- and triple-think. Most men, especially dull-witted Americans, didn’t like that, which made her even crazier.
    He put his face against the door, felt its cool wood on his cheek. He started his act.
    “I’ve been petrified to see you, Boo. You don’t know what it’s been like. One slipup, anything they can use against me, and I’m finished. And what makes it worse is that I’m innocent. You know that. I talked to you the whole time from my house to yours that night. You know I didn’t kill that detective. Elizabeth? Boo? Please say something. At least curse at me. Let the anger out ? Doctor?”
    There was no answer. He rather liked that. It made him respect her more than he had. What the hell, she was more screwed up than he was.
    “You know exactly what I’m going through. You’re the only one who understands my episodes. I need you, Boo. You know I’m manic-depressive, bipolar, whatever the hell you shrinks want to call my condition. Boo?”
    Then Shafer actually started to cry, which nearly made him laugh. He uttered loud, wrenching sobs. He crouched on his haunches and held his head. He knew he was a far better actor than so many of the high-priced fakers he saw in the movies.
    The door to the apartment slowly opened. “Boo-hoo,” she whispered. “Is poor Geoff in pain? What a shame.”
    What a bitch , he thought, but he had to see her. She was testifying soon. He needed her tonight, and he needed her help in the courtroom.
    “Hello, Boo,” he whispered back.

Chapter 86
    ACT TWO of the evening’s performance.
    She stared at him with huge dark-brown eyes that looked like amber beads, the kind she bought at her swanky shops. She’d lost weight, but that made her sexier to him, more desperate. She wore navy walking shorts and an elegant pink silk T-shirt — but she also wore her pain.
    “You hurt me like no one ever has before,” she whispered.
    He held himself under control, playacting, a truly award-winning performance. “I’m fighting for my life. I swear, all I think about is killing myself. Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? Besides, do you want your picture all over the tabloids again? Don’t you see? That’s why I’ve been staying away from you.”
    She laughed bitterly, haughtily. “It’s going to happen anyway when I testify. The photographers will be everywhere I go.”
    Shafer shut his eyes. “Well, that will be your