Shafer hung his head, the repentant bad boy. “You know how close I was to the edge before all this happened. Now it’s worse. Do you expect me to act like a responsible adult?”

She gave a wry smile. He saw a book on the hallway table behind her: Man and His Symbols. Carl Jung. How fitting. “No, I suppose not, Geoff. What do you want? Drugs?”

“I need you. I want to hold you, Boo. That’s all.”

That night, she gave him what he wanted. They made love like animals on the gray velvet love seat she used for her clients, then on the JFK-style rocking chair where she always sat during sessions. He took her body — and her soul.

Then she gave him drugs — antidepressants, painkillers, most of her samples. Boo was still able to get the samples from her ex, a psychiatrist. Shafer didn’t know what their relationship was, and frankly, he didn’t care. He swallowed some Librium and shot up Vicodin at her place.

Then he took Boo again, both of them naked and sweating and frenzied on the kitchen counter. The butcher block, he thought.

He left her place around eleven. He realized he was feeling worse than before he’d gone there. But he knew what he was going to do. He’d known before he went to Boo’s. It would explode their little minds. Everyone’s. The press. The jury.

Now for Act Three.

Chapter 87

AT A LITTLE PAST MIDNIGHT, I got an emergency call that blew off the top of my head. Within minutes I had the old Porsche up close to ninety on Rock Creek Parkway, the siren screaming at the night, or maybe at Geoffrey Shafer.

I arrived in Kalorama at 12:25. EMS ambulances, squad cars, TV news trucks were parked all over the street.

Several neighbors of the Shafers’ were up and had come outside their large, expensive houses to observe the nightmare scene. They couldn’t believe this was happening in their upscale enclave.

The chatter and buzz of several police radios filled the night air. A news helicopter was already hovering overhead. A truck marked CNN arrived and parked right behind me.

I joined a detective named Malcolm Ainsley on the front lawn. We knew each other from other homicide scenes, even a few parties. Suddenly, the front door of the Shafer house opened.

Two EMTs were carrying a stretcher outside. Dozens of cameras were flashing.

“It’s Shafer,” Ainsley told me. “Son of a bitch tried to kill himself, Alex. Slit his wrist and took a lot of drugs. There were open prescription packets everywhere. Must’ve had second thoughts, though. Called for help.”