Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

Jack enjoyed the sight for a moment, as he had enjoyed observing her stroll on the beach. Then he turned back to Steve, some smart and thoughtless remark riding on his lips.

The comment died unspoken. Even Jack, not the most sensitive of men, knew enough to keep silent now.

Behind the sunstruck lenses of his glasses, Steve’s eyes ran wet with tears.

Albert Dance, father of Jack, had died four years ago, at the age of sixty-six. Social Security records listed his last address as a retirement community in Fort Lauderdale.

Briefly, Lovejoy had allowed himself to speculate that Jack had visited his father often. Being familiar with Fort Lauderdale, he’d gone to ground there.

A phone conversation with the director of the retirement home killed that slight hope. Jack, she reported, had never come to see his father. Not once.

“Do you happen to know who administered Mr. Dance’s estate?” Lovejoy asked. There was a chance Jack had inherited a house or condo, perhaps in Florida: another possible hideout.

“As I recall, it was his lawyer. We’ve probably still got his address on file.”

Lovejoy’s pen scribbled busily, recording a street and number in Pompano Beach, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale.

Dennis Gibson, the attorney in question, answered his own phone on the third ring. Yes, he remembered Al Dance. Yes, he’d probated the estate. Lovejoy arranged to meet with him in a half hour.

“Think this will pan out?” Moore asked from the passenger seat of their borrowed motor-pool sedan, speeding north on Interstate 95.

“In all probability, no.” Lovejoy shrugged. “But it’s slightly more productive than chewing our nails.”

“Jack could be anywhere by now. Could have boarded another plane and left the country.”

“From what we understand, he doesn’t have a passport.”

“You don’t need a passport to enter Mexico or Canada.”

“I know.”

“Or Bermuda, the Bahamas…”

“I know.”

“Besides,” Moore said, “he might have a phony passport. The rest of his escape was planned well enough. He’s got connections. He could have bought whatever paper he might need.”

“Well, what the fuck do you want me to do about it?”

Moore puffed up her cheeks and let the air out in a hiss. She was silent.

Lovejoy didn’t speak until they were rolling down Thirty-sixth Street in Pompano Beach. Then he said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m overtired, that’s all.”

“We both are.”

“And I’m…”

“Worried.”

“Yes.”

“Of course. This isn’t exactly going to put you on the fast track, is it?”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Your career. Drury must have told you-”

“Is that what you think I’m concerned about?”

“Well… yeah.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t had time to even consider it.”

“You haven’t?”

Her startled tone amused him. “I see. You think that’s all I would ever have time for. Peter Lovejoy, the ladder climber, the bureaucrat’s bureaucrat.”

“No. That’s not how I-”

“Sure it is. And ordinarily it would be true, too. On any other case I’d be primarily engaged in my normal cover-your-ass mode of operation. Which has worked quite well for me so far, I might add. Why do you think they made me task force leader? It wasn’t just seniority. I know how to play the game.”

“But not now?”

“Not now. This is different. This is Mister Twister. This is someone who kills for pleasure. Even animals don’t do that.” He turned to her. “What worries me is that he’s still on the loose. And…” He swallowed. “And it’s my fault.”

“If I’d been supervising the raid,” she said with unaccustomed gentleness, “I would have handled it the same way.”

“Possibly. But you weren’t. I was. The failure was my responsibility. And if he kills again, while he’s on the run-that will be my responsibility, too.”

“You’re being way too hard on yourself.”

Lovejoy chuckled, a dry sound, without humor. “I was raised that way. Catholic school. Those nuns… they really drill it into you. The four R’s. Religion being the fourth. I thought I was a lapsed Catholic till yesterday, during the raid. Then I found myself praying.”

“My knowledge of Catholicism is fairly limited,” Moore said. “But doesn’t it involve forgiveness?”

“Yes. But also punishment.”

“You’ve punished yourself enough.”

“Have I? I doubt that’s what the nuns would have said. Not under these circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“Jack Dance is the devil. And I let him get away.”

The door to Dennis Gibson’s office was open, his secretary apparently out to lunch.

“Come in, come in,” Gibson said, rising from behind a clutter of legal documents on his desk. His face was a study in monochrome: jet black hair, gray steel-rimmed glasses, white beard. “You must be the feds.”

Morse smiled. “That’s us.”

Lovejoy was all business. “We don’t want to take up too much of your time, Mr. Gibson.”

“I’ve got plenty of time to talk about Jack Dance.”

Lovejoy and Moore seated themselves in response to the lawyer’s gesture of invitation.

“I take it you’ve heard the news,” Lovejoy said.

“Yes, I heard. Wasn’t as surprised as you might think, either. I knew that guy had a screw loose.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Let me start at the beginning.”

He told his story quickly and well, with the practiced conciseness of someone trained to summarize complicated material.

A widower of many years, Albert Dance took early retirement in 1985, sold his split-level in New Jersey, and moved south to the Gold Coast. For six years Gibson handled his affairs and investments.

“And in all that time,” Gibson said, “his son Jack-his only child, only close living relative-never visited him, never wrote or called. Albert didn’t even know Jack’s phone number or address after a certain point.”

He paused to sip his coffee and, with a touch of embarrassment at his belated hospitality, offered his guests the same refreshment. They declined.

“Well, anyway, a heart attack killed Al in ’91. Completely unexpected; he’d seemed to be in excellent health for his age. He died intestate, unfortunately. I’d pressed him to make out a will, but he never seemed to get around to it. The court appointed me administrator of his estate. Jack, as Al’s sole issue, was entitled to everything. I had to track down his address in L.A., then call to inform him that his father was dead. His reply: ‘So?’ That’s it. He was interested in the estate, though. His father didn’t matter to him, but money did.”

“How large an inheritance are we talking about?” Moore asked.

“Three hundred thousand dollars, most of it in mutual funds and tax-free bonds. Jack instructed me to convert everything to cash, sell the furniture and family heirlooms at auction, and transfer the funds to his bank account. His checking account. The assets of a lifetime, and he meant to spend it all. But that wasn’t the worst part.”

Lovejoy leaned forward. “Then what was?”

“In going through his father’s effects, I’d found scrapbooks, photo albums. Pictures of his father in the Army, of his mother as a small girl. His parents’ wedding portraits. Vacation snapshots. I told Jack I’d send the items to him. He said not to bother. ‘Just throw all that shit out’-those, I believe, were his exact words.” Gibson shook his head. “No human feelings whatsoever. A true sociopath. It’s not a long step from there to serial murder, is it?”