John Lutz - Urge to Kill

“Quinn?”

The voice on the phone was faint, as if Florida were drifting away from the rest of the continent.

“He’s out there,” Quinn said.

After hanging up the phone he sat and drank some more coffee. It was making him hungry.

Pearl sat on the park bench with her cell phone in her hand, wondering if she’d done the right thing. It wasn’t the bank; she knew they’d take her back when the NYPD and Quinn cut her loose. It was Quinn himself. She was certainly over him, but did he know it? Would he act accordingly?

Had Pearl made a mistake? Should she phone Quinn and back out of her agreement to become a cop again, just for a while?

Questions. Too many of them. When they reached a certain critical number, Pearl usually decided to ignore them and charge blindly ahead.

This time was no exception. She slipped her cell phone back into her purse and settled back on the bench. It was on the edge of the park, facing the street, so there was lots of pedestrian traffic.

A compact, dark-haired woman with a kind of vibrancy even when sitting still, Pearl was drawing male stares. She ignored them.

Right now she didn’t feel beautiful, and the hot sun beating down on her didn’t help to improve her mood. A bead of perspiration trickled erratically down her back beneath her shirt and into the waistband of her jeans. She admitted to herself that she felt like crap. Usually she felt better after making up her mind, when there was no turning back. Not this time. She hoped it wasn’t an omen.

She felt suddenly as if she were suffocating in the heat; she breathed in some exhaust fumes, and didn’t feel much better. But the next few deep breaths moved her away from the edge of panic. Manhattan air-whatever its quality, she could live on the stuff. Millions of other people did.

A squirrel with a gnarly tail that looked as if it might have been run over by a tire ventured close to the bench, where someone had scattered some peanut shells. It began to gnaw at one of the larger fragments of shell, then hunched its tightly sprung body and was very still.

There was the slightest of sounds; then a shadow passed nearby, and the squirrel shot away from Pearl and into some trees.

Pearl looked upward and saw the hawk. Its speed, the way it wheeled on the wind and soared higher, took her breath away.

“Falcon!” she heard someone nearby say.

Pearl squinted as the ascending bird crossed the brilliance of the sun.

Like a lot of other New Yorkers, she’d read in the papers about how people would sit and watch peregrine falcons that nested high on skyscrapers as if they were mountain crags. Residents of the buildings sometimes wanted the falcons killed or captured because of the mess they made defecating on and around the entrances. And hailing a cab in front of the buildings could be dangerous for the doormen and their cleaning bills. Sometimes canvas sheets were mounted several stories high on the buildings as makeshift awnings to shield the sidewalk below, but these were only temporary measures.

Pearl had read that there were over a dozen known families of falcons in New York City. Also that they fed on smaller birds such as sparrows and pigeons. So maybe this falcon was only curious and the squirrel had nothing to fear. But then, squirrels must have something to fear always, as did most animals that were the natural prey of carnivores.

Several passersby had also seen the swooping falcon and were standing and peering skyward, shielding their eyes with their hands as if holding salutes. A man accompanied by a boy about ten stopped to see what people were looking at. The man pointed, grinning, while the boy stood with his head tilted back and his mouth open.

The falcon veered, spread its wings wide to brake to a near halt in midair, and found its perch out of sight high on a building.

“That was something,” a voice said next to Pearl.

A fortyish man in a gray business suit had sat down next to her on the bench. He had a brown paper bag in one hand, almost certainly his lunch, and an unopened plastic water bottle in the other. His hairline had receded, and he’d dealt with it by affecting a tousled, forward-combed hairdo that made him look as if he’d just tumbled out of bed. On the hand holding the bottle was a wedding ring. He grinned at Pearl in a way not at all like a married man.

“Something,” she agreed pleasantly, and got up and walked away without looking back.

The man said nothing behind her.

There were plenty of men in the city, but Pearl was particular. Maybe too particular.

For the time being she contented herself with living alone and infrequently going to select dating bars, looking, but not for anything serious.

Still, if the right guy happened along…

Pearl smiled at her own naivete. Right guy, wrong guy, like lyrics in a musical. It was all so much more complicated than that. She supposed that was why musicals were popular.

She found a comfortable stride and began in earnest the walk to her subway stop. In motion she drew even more admiring glances, but she ignored them.

There was a slight rushing sound on the edge of her consciousness, and a shadow flitted like a spirit alongside her on the sidewalk, then was gone.

Pearl ignored that, too. She walked on, determined through her apprehension, refusing to be intimidated by her doubts.

Lavern Neeson lay as if asleep and listened to the apartment door open and close. The sounds were distinct, a faint grating noise as key meshed in lock, then the soft sigh of the door sweep crossing carpet, another sigh as the door closed, and the click of the latch. Last came the rattle of the chain lock as her husband Hobbs fastened it, locking them in together. Lavern shivered beneath the thin sheet.

Hobbs clattered about in the bathroom for a few minutes. She heard the seemingly endless trickle as he relieved himself, the flush of the toilet, the pinging and rush of water in the building’s old pipes. He seemed steady in his movements; he wasn’t drunk tonight. He wasn’t drunk as often as she liked to think. Alcohol would at least provide some excuse for what he did, and for her allowing it.

Not that she had any choice. Her options had been taken from her one by one over the seven years of their marriage.

No, alcohol wasn’t the problem.

Something she’d done? Had kept doing? There must be some solid reason for the guilt that weighed her down. Guilt needed at least some soil in which to grow.

My fault.

That wasn’t what she concluded whenever she carefully analyzed her dilemma, but it was always what she felt, and that was what made her powerless. She couldn’t let this continue, yet she couldn’t stop it. Every time it happened she was more helpless to prevent it. Hobbs used to discuss the problem with her, seeming to listen very carefully to what she was saying, but she knew now it had been a ruse while he manipulated her, neutralized her defenses one after another.

What’s wrong with us?

She’d asked the question more than once. Kept asking it. Now Hobbs no longer even pretended to listen politely or care and consider.

Lavern knew now that he didn’t have the answer. Or maybe he was as fearful of the answer as she was. Perhaps he feared merely the question.

Where is this taking us?

The bedroom light winked on, blinding her at first, so she clenched her eyes tightly closed and pressed her face into the pillow. She kept her eyes shut and didn’t move.

Hobbs knew she was awake. He knew all her evasive tricks.

“Lavern?”

She sighed, opened her eyes, and sat up blinking in the light. She was an attractive woman with honey-blond hair and blue eyes. Her slender figure was shapely but without much of a bust. (Years ago she’d considered breast implants, and was glad now she hadn’t gotten them. They’d be another vulnerability.) Her features were a bit too long to be beautiful, her lips full and not quite meeting because of a slight overbite Hobbs used to tell her was sexy. Her pink nightgown slid down one shoulder, almost exposing one breast that truly was the size of a teacup.