Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

Steve gripped the transom with his free hand. The sudden pounding of his heart was like the onset of an anxiety attack. Fear always came on like this whenever he learned of another victim.

“Jesus,” he heard himself breathe. “Oh, Jesus.”

Jack watched him coolly. “Guess you were already on the island by then, huh? Voluntarily out of contact with the outside world?”

“We arrived that day. First thing in the morning.”

“Just as well. Hearing about poor Ronni might have spoiled your vacation. I figure you came here to get away from it all, anyway.”

That was true, but not the whole truth. Yes, he had fastened on the idea of revisiting Pelican Key as a way to escape from the news reports, the mounting body count. But he had also felt an almost mystical yearning for the island. It stood in his mind as a symbol of the most precious part of his life, his years of innocence, the time before Meredith’s drowning and Jack’s false alibi and the beginning of guilt.

Irrationally he had hoped that by returning to Pelican Key he could erase that guilt, wash himself clean of sin, find renewal and redemption.

He’d been wrong. He had escaped from nothing.

And now Jack Dance was here, facing him across five feet of creaking wood, and there could be no escape, not ever.

A plane hummed past, low over the northeast horizon, wings glinting silver in the sun. Steve followed it with his eyes, wishing he were on it, flying away from this place, from his own past, from himself.

“You’ve thought a lot about those women I killed, haven’t you?” Jack asked. “You’ve been torturing yourself for six months.”

Torture. Yes. That was the right word. And with every new victim, the wheel of the rack had turned a little more.

“What’s it done to you, Stevie? How’s your sleep been? Your work? Your marriage?”

He didn’t want to answer. But something inside him, the timid, obedient part of himself that had always responded to Jack’s greater strength, made him speak.

“It’s been hell,” he whispered, surprised by the croaking rasp of his own voice. “I kept wanting to call the police, but I wasn’t certain it was you-wasn’t totally certain even about Meredith, let alone the others. And if I told, I’d be incriminating myself. Even if you were innocent of the murders, I’d be guilty of providing a false alibi.”

“That’s true,” Jack said, and again Steve saw through his technique, saw how he reinforced the idea of guilt, guilt, guilt, like a dramatist obsessively emphasizing a favorite theme. A transparent ploy, yet it was working, wasn’t it? Despite Steve’s best efforts to resist manipulation, it was working.

“So I would wait and hope they’d catch the guy and he would be someone, anyone, other than you. I kept expecting to hear about a break in the case. It was making me crazy. But nothing ever happened except the FBI and the cops would say they were pursuing various leads

… and every two months or so, another woman would die.”

The horizons wheeled slowly, the boat as their axis. Steve imagined himself on a slow-motion carousel, turning, turning. There was something dreamlike and fascinating in the lazy spinning of the world.

“Does Kirstie know any of this?” Jack asked.

“Not a thing. She thinks I’m going through some sort of midlife crisis. Probably thinks our marriage is coming apart. Shit, maybe it is. I don’t know.”

“Tough to hold all that inside you for so long,” Jack said with a pale imitation of sympathy.

“Yeah. And there was one other thing. Not just the guilt. Fear. Of you.”

“Me? Why?”

“I’m the only one who knew your alibi was phony. Suppose you decided I was dangerous to you. That I might make the connection with Mister Twister and go to the authorities. Suppose you decided to launch a preemptive strike.”

Yards away, the water blurred into bubbles and ripples as a school of baitfish, jumping madly, fled some unseen pursuer.

“Sounds like you were getting a little paranoid,” Jack said. “Coming after you never even entered my mind.”

Steve thought that was probably true. Jack could never have seen pitiful, hero-worshiping Stevie as a threat.

Still, he hadn’t been sure. And last night, when Anastasia woke him with her growling, he had been almost certain Jack had tracked him down. Searching the house, the Beretta cocked and ready, he had expected to find Jack folded batlike inside every patch of shadow.

“You looked happy enough to see me on the beach,” Jack said.

Happy? Steve nearly smiled at that. He had been stunned, staggered, his worst fear realized. Yet at some deeper level he had not been surprised at all. It was as if Jack’s arrival had been predestined, as if the two of them were chess figures moved by unseen hands into opposition with each other.

“I tried to act natural,” Steve answered, wishing he could make himself stop talking. “After all, I still didn’t know why the hell you were here. Then you asked if Kirstie and I had watched TV or listened to the radio since we came to the island. And I started to think there might be something in the news about you. That break in the case I’d been waiting for.” Steve gazed at him over the shiny gun barrel. “They identified you, didn’t they?”

“I’m on the run.”

“Well, you picked the wrong place to hide out.”

“I’m not so certain of that.” Jack leaned back against the gunwale, arms folded across his chest. “Think for a minute, Stevie. Just think about what you’ve gotten yourself into. The feds know who I am. And they’re after me. It’s a coast-to-coast manhunt. Now, don’t you think they’re going to look into my background? I’ll bet they’ve got cops or field agents in New Jersey interviewing our high-school friends and neighbors right now. How long will it take before somebody mentions Meredith Turner’s death?”

Steve’s chest tightened. He began to see where Jack was leading. “Not long,” he said softly.

“A day or two at most. Then they’ll make the same connection you did: blond hair, blue eyes, looks a lot like the girls I’ve done on my weekend escapades. So they’ll look at the police report, and guess what they’ll find. Jack Dance was eliminated from consideration as a suspect-because his best friend, Steven Gardner, provided him with an alibi. Now, given my subsequent behavior, how credible is that alibi going to be?”

“What’s your point?” Steve asked, though he already knew it.

“The point is, friend of mine, that pretty soon Uncle Sam will know you lied to cover for me. Which makes you my partner in crime. An accessory to murder. That’s a felony offense, and there’s no statute of limitations on it. And in a well-publicized case like this, they’ll have no choice but to prosecute. It’ll be an easy conviction. They’ll put you away.”

“You can’t threaten me.”

“Not a threat. A simple fact. A small army of nice men in dark suits will be hunting you, Steverino, right along with yours truly. They’re going to be real interested in talking to you. And you’re not going to have a hell of a lot to say.”

Steve couldn’t argue. What Jack said was true.

Years ago, while home from college on summer break, he had consulted the New Jersey Penal Code in a public library. Continuing doubts about what really happened to Meredith Turner had driven him to consider confessing the fabrication of Jack’s alibi. After reading two or three sections of the code, he had changed his mind.

The words of the relevant passages were still imprinted on his memory, as they had been for more than fifteen years: “Every person who, after a felony has been committed, harbors, conceals, or aids a principal in such felony, with the intent that said principal may avoid or escape from arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment, is an accessory to such felony…