“Keep this. If you get in trouble or get another lead, you can beep me anytime. If you find something out, please let me know. I’ll do the same. If Shafer’s the one, I want to talk to him before we bring him in. This is personal for me. You can’t imagine how personal.”

Hampton continued to make eye contact, studying me. She reminded me of someone I’d known a while back, another complicated woman cop, named Jezzie Flanagan. “I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know.”

“All right. Thanks for calling me in on this.”

She stood. “You’re not in on it yet. Like I said, I’ll let you know.” Then she touched my hand. “I really am sorry about your friend.”

Chapter 68

WE BOTH KNEW I was in, though. We’d made some kind of deal in the City Limits diner. I just hoped I wasn’t being set up by Hampton and Pittman or God knows who else.

Over the next two days, we talked four times. I still wasn’t sure that I could trust her, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to keep moving forward. She had already visited the landlady who’d rented out the apartment and garage in Eckington. The landlady hadn’t recognized the pictures of Shafer. Possibly he’d worn a disguise when he met with her.

If Patsy Hampton was setting me up, she was one of the best liars I’d met, and I’ve known some good ones. During one of our calls, she confessed that Chuck Hufstedler had been her source, and that she’d gotten him to keep the information from me. I shrugged it off. I didn’t have the time or the energy to be angry at either of them.

In the meantime, I spent a lot of time at home. I didn’t believe the killer would come after my family, not when he already had Christine, but I couldn’t tell that for sure. When I wasn’t there, I made sure Sampson or somebody else was checking on the house.

On the third night after I met her, Patsy Hampton and I had a breakthrough of sorts. She actually invited me to join her on her stakeout of Shafer’s town house in Kalorama Heights.

He had arrived home from work before six and remained there until just past nine. He had a nice-looking expat family — three children, a wife, a nanny. He lived very well. Nothing about his life or surroundings suggested that he might be a killer.

“He seems to go out every night around this time,” Hampton told me as we watched him walk to a shiny black Jag parked in a graveled driveway at the side of the house.

“Creature of habit,” I said. A weasel.