Roses Are Red

wanted to hear. “I’m afraid there’s a tumor. I’m pretty certain that it’s a pilocytic astrocytoma, a kind of tumor that strikes the very young. We’ll confirm that after the surgery. It’s located in her cerebellum. The tumor is large, and it’s life threatening. I’m sorry to have to give you that news.”
    I spent another night at the hospital with Jannie. She fell asleep holding my hand again.

Chapter 31
    EARLY THE NEXT MORNING my beeper went off. I made a call and got bad news from Sandy Greenberg, a friend who worked at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France.
    A woman named Lucy Rhys-Cousins had been savagely murdered in a London supermarket. She was killed while her children looked on. Sandy told me the police in London suspected that the killer was her husband, Geoffrey Shafer, a man I knew as the Weasel.
    I couldn’t believe it. Not now. Not the Weasel.
“Was it Shafer or not?” I asked Sandy. “Do you know for certain?”
    “It’s him, Alex, though we won’t confirm it for the press vermin. Scotland Yard is positive. The children recognized him. Their mad-hatter daddy! He killed their mother right before their eyes.”
    Geoffrey Shafer had been responsible for Christine’s kidnapping. He had also committed several grisly murders in the Southeast section of Washington. He’d preyed on the poor and defenseless. The news that he might be alive, and killing again, was like a swift, sudden punch below the belt. I knew it would be even worse for Christine to learn about Shafer.
    I called her at home from St. Anthony’s but got her answering machine. I talked calmly to the machine. “Christine, pick up if you’re there. It’s Alex. Please, pick up. It’s important that I talk to you.”
    Still, no one picked up at Christine’s. I knew that Shafer couldn’t be here in Washington — and yet I worried about the possibility that he could be. His pattern was to do the unexpected. The goddamn Weasel!
    I checked my watch. It was 7:00 A.M. Sometimes Christine went to the school on Saturday. I decided to head over to the Sojourner Truth School, anyway. It wasn’t far.

Chapter 32
    AS I DROVE THERE, I was thinking,
Don’t let this be happening. Not again! Please, God, don’t do this to her. You can’t do this. You wouldn’t.
    I parked near the school and dashed out of the car. Then I found myself running down the hall to Christine’s corner office. My heart pounded dully in my chest. My legs were unsure. I could hear the clicking of the word processor before I reached the door.
    I peered inside.
    I was relieved to see Christine there in her warm and fuzzy, thoroughly cluttered office. She was always intensely focused when she worked. Not wanting to startle her, I stood and watched for a moment. Then I knocked gently on the doorjamb.
    “It’s me,” I said in a soft voice.
    Christine stopped typing and turned. For just an instant, she looked at me like she used to. It melted me. She had on a pair of navy blue trousers and a tailored yellow silk blouse. She didn’t look as if she were going through a bad time, but I knew that she was.
    “What are you doing here?” she finally asked. “I already heard it on CNN this morning,” she continued. “I saw the glorious murder scene at the market in London.” She shook her head, closed her eyes.
    “Are you all right?” I asked.
    Christine snapped out an answer. “I’m not all right! I’m a million miles from all right. This news doesn’t help. I
can’t sleep
nights. I have nightmares all the time. I can’t concentrate during the day. I imagine terrible things happening to little Alex. To Damon and Jannie and Nana, and to you. I can’t make it stop!”
    Her words cut right through me. It was a terrible feeling not to be able to help. “I don’t think he’ll come back here,” I said.
    Anger flashed in Christine’s eyes. “You don’t know that for sure.”
    “Shafer considers himself beyond us. We aren’t that important in his fantasy world. His wife was. I’m surprised that he didn’t murder the kids, too.”
    “You see, you’re
surprised.
Nobody knows for sure what these insane, pathetic maniacs will do! And now you’re involved with more of them: depraved men who murder innocent hostages for no reason.
Because they can.
”
    I started to walk into the office — but she raised her hand. “Don’t. Please stay away from me.”
    Christine then rose from her chair and walked past me toward the teacher’s washroom. She