Cat & Mouse

This afternoon Mr. Smith was operating in the tony, fashionable Knightsbridge section. He was there to study the human race-at least that was the way the newspapers described it. The press in London and across Europe also called him by another name-Alien. The prevailing theory was that Mr. Smith was an extraterrestrial. No human could do the things that he did. Or so they said.

Mr. Smith had to bend low to talk into Drew Cabot’s ear, to be more intimate with his prey. He played music while he worked-all kinds of music. Today’s selection was the overture to Don Giovanni. Opera buffa felt right to him.

Opera felt right for this live autopsy.

“Ten minutes or so after your death,” Mr. Smith said, “flies will already have picked up the scent of gas accompanying the decomposition of your tissue. Green flies will lay the tiniest eggs within the orifices of your body. Ironically, the language reminds me of Dr. Seuss-‘green flies and ham.’ What could that mean? I don’t know. It’s a curious association, though.”

Drew Cabot had lost a lot of blood, but he wasn’t giving up. He was a tall, rugged man with silver-blond hair. A never-say-never sort of chap. The inspector shook his head back and forth until Smith finally removed his gag.

“What it is, Drew?” he asked. “Speak.”

“I have a wife and two children. Why are you doing this to me? Why me?” he whispered.

“Oh, let’s say because you’re Drew. Keep it simple and unsentimental. You, Drew, are a piece of the puzzle.”

He tugged the inspector’s gag back into place. No more chitchat from Drew.

Mr. Smith continued with his observations as he made his next surgical cuts and Don Giovanni played on.

“Near the time of death, breathing will become strained, intermittent. It’s exactly what you’re feeling now, as if each breath could be your last. Cessation will occur within two or three minutes,” whispered Mr. Smith, whispered the dreaded Alien. “Your life will end. May I be the first to congratulate you. I sincerely mean that, Drew. Believe it or not, I envy you. I wish I were Drew.”

Part One. Train Station Murders

Chapter 3

“I AM the great Cornholio! Are you challenging me? I am Cornholio!” the kids chorused and giggled. Beavis and Butt-head strike again-in my neighborhood.

I bit my lip and decided to let it go. Why fight it? Why fan the fires of preadolescence?

Damon, Jannie, and I were crowded into the front seat of my old black Porsche. We needed to buy a new car, but none of us wanted to part with the Porsche. We were schooled in tradition, in the classics. We loved the old car, which we had named “The Sardine Can” and “Old Paintless.”

Actually, I was preoccupied at twenty to eight in the morning. Not a good way to start the day.

The night before, a thirteen-year-old girl from Ballou High School had been found in the Anacostia River. She had been shot, and then drowned. The gunshot had been to her mouth. What the coroners call a “hole in one.”

A bizarre statistic was creating havoc with my stomach and central nervous system. There were now more than a hundred unsolved murders of young, inner-city women committed in just the past three years. No one had called for a major investigation. No one in power seemed to care about dead black and Hispanic girls.

As we drove up in front of the Sojourner Truth School, I saw Christine Johnson welcoming kids and their parents as they arrived, reminding everyone that this was a community with good, caring people. She was certainly one of them.

I remembered the very first time we met. It was the previous fall and the circumstances couldn’t have been any worse for either of us.

We had been thrown together-smashed together someone said to me once-at the homicide scene of a sweet baby girl named Shanelle Green. Christine was the principal of the school that Shanelle attended, and where I was now delivering my own kids. Jannie was new to the Truth School this semester. Damon was a grizzled veteran, a fourth grader.

“What are you mischief makers gawking at?” I turned to the kids, who were looking back and forth from my face to Christine’s as if they were watching a championship tennis match.

“We’re gawking at you, Daddy, and you’re gawking at Christine!” Jannie said and laughed like the wicked child-witch of the North that she can be sometimes.

“She’s Mrs. Johnson to you,” I said as I gave Jannie my best squinting evil eye.

Jannie shrugged off my baleful look and frowned at me as only she can. “I know that, Daddy. She’s the principal of my school. I know exactly who she is.”

My daughter already understood many of life’s important connections and mysteries. I was hoping that maybe someday she would explain them to me.

“Damon, do you have a point of view we should hear?” I asked. “Anything you’d like to add? Care to share some good fellowship and wit with us this morning?”