In for the Kill (17 page)

Four days later, early in the morning, Pearl was sitting on a bench in Washington Square, watching a homeless guy finding his way awake on an opposite bench. He was wearing ragged clothes two sizes too large, and he moved arthritically though he didn't appear to be older than forty. An empty can of Colt 45 malt liquor lay beneath the bench, probably his sleeping pill.

Pearl watched as the man sat up, glared angrily at her as if she'd caused his bad luck, then made it to his feet and staggered toward Macdougal Street. Lauri passed him walking the other way, toward Pearl, and gave him a wide berth. He didn't seem to notice her.

In sharp contrast to the homeless guy, Lauri strode with the sureness and lightness of youth, through about a dozen disinterested pigeons pecking about on the pavement, causing them to flap skyward with obvious reluctance. She was smiling. She and Pearl had met for lunch, or simply to walk and talk, several times, and had come to like each other. Pearl knew the teenager admired and trusted her, perhaps too much.

Lauri plopped down next to Pearl on the bench. She was wearing jeans and a yellow sleeveless blouse, joggers without socks. The morning sun glinted off her zirconia nose stud.

"You talk to my dad?" she asked.

"Beautiful morning," Pearl said.

"Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Inward directed, I guess."

Pearl figured the kid must have been watching Dr. Phil.

"It
is
a beautiful morning," Lauri said, applying the grease.

Pearl didn't actually think it was particularly beautiful. There was trash all over the ground, including some broken crack vials, and four or five homeless reminders of life's travails still lurked about. The pigeons Lauri had stirred up were back. Dirty things. Pearl didn't like pigeons.

"Pearl--"

"I did ask your dad what he thought about me giving you pointers on what it means to be a cop. He was okay with that. In fact, he likes us talking with each other. But he also doesn't want you to be a cop."

"Why not? He is."

"He thinks you can do better."

"Can or should?"

"Both, I would imagine."

"Mom and that Elliott geek were always pushing me to do better. Like I was some kind of Rhodes Scholar." Lauri made a face as if she were disappointed. "I didn't think Dad was like that."

"Wanting the best for his kid? Why shouldn't he?"

"Because not everybody can be a Rhodes Scholar. Some of us want to be cops. Like you."

"I don't think it's that, Lauri. Your dad doesn't want you to see certain things."

"Well, why shouldn't I see them? He has."

"Exactly. He has, and he knows. Also, he doesn't want certain things to happen to you."

"Such as?"

That one was easy. "Getting shot or stabbed to death."

"Oh."

Pearl stood up from the bench. "I'd better get going, Lauri. I've gotta meet your dad and Feds in about twenty minutes."

"I thought we were gonna have breakfast."

"No time now. You were almost an hour late."

Lauri bowed her head to gaze at a gray-and-white pigeon that had wandered close. "Yeah, I need to work on promptness."

Pearl smiled. "It'll come."

"What about the other?" Lauri asked. "Did you talk to Dad again about that?"

"He didn't seem warm to the idea of you tagging along with me while I'm working."

"How do you mean?"

"He said he'd shoot me." Pearl waited until Lauri looked up from the pigeon to her. "I think it's a bad idea, too, Lauri. This isn't a job like word processing or selling insurance. You can learn by watching, but you can also get hurt."

"I'm willing to take the chance."

"He isn't."

"And he's Dad, is that it?"

"Yeah. And he's my boss."

"I guess we both have to settle for that."

"Now you're learning."

But Pearl knew this was too easy. Lauri was, after all, Quinn's daughter, and Pearl knew a thing or two about Quinn.

"We can still meet now and then as friends," Lauri said. "Still talk."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Pearl said.

Lauri stood up, shrugged, and smiled. "Then I guess that's the way it is. That's what life's about, settling for what you get."

"Part of what it's about," Pearl said. "Car's parked over there. Want a lift uptown?"

"No, I've gotta check in to work soon." Big smile. Made her look like Quinn. "Gotta be prompt."

"Atta girl," Pearl said.
You are so full of bullshit, like your father.

When she reached the car, Pearl turned and saw Lauri walking in the opposite direction, away from her. Standing there with her hand on the sun-warmed car roof, she felt a sudden and unexpected fondness for Quinn's daughter, a protectiveness. Maybe even a stirring of something maternal.

Scary.

When Pearl arrived at the office, Quinn was seated behind his desk, wearing the drugstore reading glasses he used for fine print and looking at the postmortem results on Anna Bragg. They were those weird glasses that sat low on the nose and looked as if they'd been sawed in half lengthwise. Fedderman was across the room, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"Want one?" he asked, glancing over at Pearl.

"Not this morning." Pearl's stomach felt oddly unsettled, maybe because of her probably futile conversation with Lauri and the unfamiliar maternal instinct it had provoked.

"Orange juice? I stopped and got a carton."

"Nothing, thanks."
Leave me the hell alone.

"This is more of the same, almost down to the number of cuts the killer made," Quinn said dejectedly, tapping the report with a blunt forefinger. Pearl wouldn't have wanted to be tapped that hard.

"Cause of death?" she asked.

"Drowning. Like the others. He puts them in the bathtub, runs the water, then drowns them before carving them up."

"What about the tape residue?" Pearl asked. "Is that the same?"

"Yeah. Same kind of duct tape, sold everywhere. Same MO all the way. Taped tight as a Thanksgiving turkey, and with a rectangle of tape across the mouth. When they're dead and silent forever, he removes the tape, including the gag, before going to work with his blades and saw."

"Time of death?"

Quinn adjusted the narrow glasses on his nose and glanced down to make sure. "Says here between six and nine
P.M.
"

Pearl thought that was about perfect. Unless Maize the waitress was lying, Jeb Jones had his alibi.

Jeb...

"Her colleagues at Courtney Publishing all seemed to like her."

"They always do, after they're dead," Pearl said.

"Yeah. She was an associate editor, working her way up. Her boss said she had potential. Nobody there noticed her acting scared lately, or different in any way. She'd dated a guy in sales a few times, but it didn't go anywhere and they stopped seeing each other. He's at some book convention in Frankfurt now."

"Ah, the Frankfurt alibi."

"I talked by phone to people who were with him at the time of Anna Bragg's death," Quinn said. "No possibility he flew here, killed her, then flew back."

Fedderman had walked over and was sitting behind his desk. He had coffee in one hand, a plastic cup of juice in the other. "You get anywhere with him?" he asked Pearl.

"Huh?"

"With that guy who dated Marilyn Nelson a few times."

"Oh. No, I didn't. And he's alibied up for the time Anna Bragg was killed."

"That pretty much clears him across the board," Quinn said. "Just like the other guys we connected with the dead women. They dated them, some of them had sex with them, but they've got alibis for one or more of the murders."

"
Sex and the City
," Fedderman said.

Pearl looked at him.

"I rent the videos and watch them," he explained. "That way I know what I'm missing."

"What we're all missing," Pearl said.

Quinn removed his goofy half-glasses and gave her a look she knew too well. Had he picked up something in her voice? Did he somehow know she was covering up exactly the kind of furtive sex she was lamenting not having?

Don't be a fool. He isn't a mind reader.

But she knew Quinn.

He could see through people and beyond. Sometimes, only for brief moments, she found herself feeling sorry for the people Quinn hunted.

She turned and walked toward the coffee brewer so he wouldn't be looking right at her, studying her. Damn him!

"I think I'll have some coffee after all." She needed to get everything out of her mind except the Job.

"You should have some of the orange juice instead," Quinn said. "It might cool you down."

Damn him!

The fax machine began humming and gurgling.

Though he was sitting down, Fedderman was closest. He stood up and wandered over to the machine, then loomed gazing down at it as if it were some puzzle he couldn't quite work out.

When it beeped and was silent, he picked up the two pages that had been faxed and carried them over to Quinn.

"Copies of Marilyn Nelson's charge account receipts," he said.

Quinn scanned them, and then put his glasses back on and looked at them more closely. The receipts were mostly for meals and clothes. Only one of them was for two meals, at the Pepper Tree restaurant. Quinn remembered seeing the Pepper Tree just a few blocks from Marilyn Nelson's apartment. The date on the receipt was less than two weeks before her murder. Had she been dining with her killer? Unlikely.

But maybe with someone who might be able to tell them more about Marilyn Nelson's last days.

With his huge blunt finger he pointed out the charge to Pearl. "Pay a visit to this restaurant. See if anyone recalls who the victim dined with on this date. Marilyn picked up the check, and she was a regular who usually ate alone, so somebody might remember."

Pearl thought it was a long shot, but it was something. If they were lucky, Marilyn Nelson had dined with a date that evening even though she'd picked up the check. Marilyn going Dutch out of desperation, maybe even with someone who knew her intimately. Pearl could picture it.

Death and the City.

Then she looked more closely at the name of the restaurant. The Pepper Tree. Jeb had told her he and Marilyn Nelson once dined there.

Pearl and Jeb had a date to go there.

It seemed to Pearl that nothing in her life was simple.

Harrison County, Florida, 1980

It was a moonless night and dark, or Sherman might have seen the danger. His time in the swamp had made him alert to such things. He'd learned hard lessons, such as how to shelter himself from the storms that blasted through the trees and raised the black water, how to find and eat things alive and dead that wouldn't make him sick, how to sleep fitfully and watchfully for what had become his natural and very real enemies.

How to survive.

Every sound in the swamp meant something to him now, as did the subtle scents on the breeze, or the irregular ripple of previously still water. He studied and learned to read these signs as he'd studied and learned from Sam's books and his long, lazy conversations with Sam. That knowledge was Sam's legacy. The swamp was Sherman's home now, dangerous, but less so than the home he had left.

The leaving had been complete. No longer did he even think of his name as Sherman, for there was no one to call him that or anything else. And there wasn't much time to contemplate the past; he had no choice but to live in and for the present. He knew that to get lost in the past was to surrender the future. He was in and of the swamp now and considered and obeyed only the laws of nature, and really there was only one law--survive.

He violated that law when he stepped on the rough, ridged surface that moved beneath his bare foot in the inky water. In an instant he knew--
gator!
And he knew he might die and would do anything if only he might live.

A long, thick tail rose into darkness and slapped down on the shallow water, breaking its surface with a sound like a rifle shot and splashing it coldly on Sherman's face. He instinctively tried to take a giant leap away from the gator, but his foot slipped and he almost fell. Teetering desperately, he went splashing sideways away from another slap of the huge tail.

Then the gator was up high on its legs, its pale belly clear of the surface. It was gigantic, at least ten feet long, and Sherman knew it could outrun him, especially in the shallow water.

The sight of the beast paralyzed him with terror. The gator was accustomed to this temporary lack of motion in its prey. It was the time to strike.

Black water foamed and roiled violently as the gator lunged. Sherman felt something hard brush his bare heel and heard the eerie clack of primal teeth. He yelped and flung himself frantically away, landing on hands and knees. Fueled by fear, he was up almost immediately, running through the knee-deep water, lifting his legs high and stretching out his strides to minimize splashing and maximize speed. Survive.

He knew the gator was coming. He could hear it between the frenetic dissonance of his own splashing. He could sense and see it in his mind, swift and graceless in its bent-legged strides, gliding smoothly at times through the dark water, then finding firm footing again and picking up speed, gaining.

Gaining!

Sherman bumped his shoulder on a thick tree trunk. Chanced a glance behind him.

Gaining!

Climb!

Though they were fast, big, strong, and armed with tooth and tail, the one thing gators couldn't do was climb. Sherman leaped, wrapped his arms and legs around the tree, and attempted to shinny higher. Up was safety. Up away from the guttural grunts and the slashing tail, the tearing teeth. Up was life!

But the tree trunk was coated with moss and slippery. He slid lower instead of gaining height and was back in the muddy water.

The lowest branch might be within his reach. He bent his knees and leaped, groping in the night air for the branch.

His fingertips brushed it.

He landed splashing awkwardly and leaped again, and this time was well short of even touching the branch.

The gator had stopped now and was angled in the water, crouched low again, watching him with a gaze thousands of years old, detached, observant, and merciless.

Sherman understood gators. He knew why this one had stopped. It sensed in its prey the knowledge that the chase was over. It had won.

Slowly, smoothly, it began moving toward Sherman, leaving the slightest V wake in the shallow water. Sherman could only stare paralyzed with fear. He knew what would happen next. The gator's jaws would close on him, then it would drag him toward deeper water where it would do its death spin until Sherman bled lifeless or drowned. The gator would carry what had become its meal to its lair in the deep mud near the waterline and store it there where it would rot and become tenderer. Those nights with his mother at swamp's edge came crashing into Sherman's memory. He remembered the doomed boarders, and Sam, dragged away in pieces into the night. He remembered the gnashing and grinding and grunting of pure gluttony and its appeasement.

He wouldn't give up--not yet. Not ever. He had to run! Had to get away!

Run, damn you!

He made himself abandon his fruitless attempts to climb the tree and began splashing away into the swamp, roiling black water with each stride, praying the gator would give up.

He slipped and fell. Splashed helplessly trying to stand up. Gained his feet. Ran, ran. Part of the swamp. Part of the struggle. One of the hunted.

Survive! Survive! That was his one and every instinct in mind and muscle. Run fast enough, far enough.
Survive!

A branch scratched his face, breaking his stride, slowing him only momentarily.

Three awkward steps and he had his balance again, steadier now. Full speed!

Something grabbed his lower left leg and became a painful vise as he slammed down hard on his stomach and inhaled swamp water. Flailing with his arms and free leg, he fought to keep his head above the surface.

The vise tightened and became needles of incredible pain. Choking, spitting, unable even to scream, Sherman felt himself being pulled backward through the water.

He glanced back at what had him and almost died from terror. He was caught firm in the jaws of the beast. Two prehistoric, uncaring eyes met his. They were very close, darker than the night, and they were death.

Then came sudden brilliance and a roar.

Sherman felt himself sinking.