John Lutz - Serial

“I don’t care, Mom.”

“-was that he could guarantee you a job as assistant stage manager. At first it would just be-”

Pearl knew what it would be later on. She decided to take the quickest route back to reality.

“I’ll think about it, Mom. Honestly. You can tell Mrs. Katzman I’ll consider it, and thank her for me for telling you about it. And thank Alan.”

“Aaron. Of Aaron Katzman Productions.”

“Okay. Aaron.”

“I sense, Pearl, an eagerness in you to end our conversation.”

“Mom, I don’t-”

“I understand, Pearl. You have a life to live while mine dwindles away here at this stopover on the way to hell.”

“You don’t believe in hell, Mom.”

“I didn’t, Pearl, until I found myself in its anteroom.”

“Mom, I’ve really gotta-”

“I understand, I said. And I still do. Say good-bye for me to Captain Quinn.”

“He’s not-”

But Pearl’s mother had terminated the conversation. This didn’t happen often. Usually Pearl had to force the issue and hang up first.

Pearl was pissed off, and at the same time felt bruised. She had hurt her mother and felt guilty as hell, and she knew she would call back, probably tomorrow. Or the next day.

“How is your mother?” Quinn asked, seeing Pearl flip her phone lid closed and work the instrument back into her pocket.

“Hurt and in hell,” Pearl said. “So am I.”

Quinn nodded. “Aren’t we all?”

“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” Pearl said, thinking about it.

Fedderman had sat in or just outside of Weaver’s room for the past six hours. Weaver remained drugged up and didn’t make sense when she attempted to talk. Fedderman felt sorry for her, but he was getting tired of sitting or standing guard. It happened a lot in books and movies, but in real life not many people were assaulted in hospital rooms except by doctors who graduated last in their class in medical school.

At the end of the hall, the uniformed cop the precinct had sent over to spell Fedderman stepped out of the elevator and trudged toward where Fedderman sat outside the door to Weaver’s room.

Fedderman had known him right away: Jesse Jones, a capable and light-hearted black man with a pencil mustache. Jones was slight of build, but Fedderman knew he was whipcord strong. He’d worked with Jones for a while in Burglary and had been impressed by the man.

Fedderman watched him approach. Within fifty feet of Fedderman’s chair, Jones switched his gleaming white smile on like a spotlight.

“You can turn it over to me now, sir, and I’ll fill the breach here,” Jones said.

Fedderman liked the “sir.” Jones wasn’t one of the new wiseass guys. He was a little older and had been around and respected his elders. And being retired from the NYPD made Fedderman his elder, even though there wasn’t that much difference in the men’s ages. At least, that was how Fedderman saw it.

He got up slowly from the chair and stretched until he heard his back pop and become less stiff. “I’m ready to be relieved,” he said, looking beyond Jones at the long corridor lined with identical doors. The killer would have to know his way around hospitals in order to find and take out Weaver. Fedderman thought there was no place more confusing than a hospital.

Stretching his back, Fedderman realized how tired he was. He shot a glance at his watch to make sure he hadn’t been imagining that it was time for him to be relieved.

Yep. Jones was five minutes early. “Let’s take a last look at her before I log out,” he said.

Fedderman opened the door to Weaver’s room and let Jones enter first.

The only sound in the quiet room was the soft in-and-out breathing of Weaver, who lay on her back in bed with her eyes closed. She was hooked up to an IV and to several monitoring machines. Normally tan and vital, she looked like a pale representation of herself, with the taut white sheets pulled up to her neck.

“She any better?” Jones asked.

“You see what I’ve been seeing most of the day,” Fedderman said.

“Bastard musta beat the crap outta her,” Jones said in a whisper, as if there was some danger of waking Weaver. “Broke her spirit as well as her bones.”

“Not her,” Fedderman said. “She’ll have plenty left.”

Jones smiled. “So she’s a game one.”

“Yeah. She’ll shake this. What we don’t want is whoever attacked her coming in here and adding to the damage.”

“He won’t this day,” Jones said. “I can guarantee it.”

Both men left the room. Out in the hall, Jones sat down in the chair Fedderman had spent hours in today. He settled in like an airline passenger prepared for a long flight. Glancing down, he dangled a long arm and picked up a magazine from a small stack on the floor, a well-worn People.

“You want something else to read before I leave?” Fedderman asked.

Jones shook his head and held up the People. “Don’t need anything else. This has got it all. Go on home and forget this place for a while, sir.”

Fedderman nodded and left to walk to the elevator. Most of the people in People, he didn’t recognize. Besides that, they all looked like kids.

Outside the hospital, he breathed in air that didn’t smell faintly of menthol; then he walked to a small jewelry store that had been in the next block for years. There he stood in front of the display window and studied the array of rings. The engagement rings were set off by themselves in a maroon velvet display case that made the gold or silver in them look like it had just been polished.

They were all expensive, except for two at the bottom of the display.

Fedderman had an hour before he was to meet Penny. He’d never been a man of impulse, but here he was in an Armani suit, mooning at engagement rings. Penny had changed him.

He again went over the calculations he’d made in his chair in the hospital corridor. Retired cops, if they’d been honest cops, weren’t among the rich. But he’d been thrifty and had a fair amount in his IRA account that he hadn’t touched.

He thought for a moment, settled on one of the rings at the bottom of the display, then went into the jewelry shop feeling the way he’d felt as a kid diving into the untested waters of a lake.

Excited. But you could also drown.

Edmundsville, 2010

Since Eddie had gone away to school in Iowa, Link went to coin shows and conferences more often. He’d changed jobs and worked for Krupke Currency Exchange, a large coins and precious metals dealer. Much of the work was done on the Internet, but there was also a lot of travel involved. Link and Eddie were still in close touch via e-mail, and still discussed coins. Eddie would request certain coins for his collection, and Link would often find and purchase them. When he returned home, he’d put them in the drawer along with Eddie’s collection portfolio.

Beth watched Link through the window as he stepped down off the porch and walked to where the Kia was parked in front. He would take the car, or sometimes the pickup truck, and leave it at the airport in Kansas City while he was away-this time at a coin show and auction in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He hoisted his big carry-on into the passenger side of the car and walked around and climbed in behind the steering wheel. He’d packed his sport coat and was wearing a white shirt and paisley tie. Beth noticed that he’d put on a little weight the past few years, and he wasn’t so nimble working himself in behind the steering wheel.

The sun-baked red car gave a rumbling roar, telling anyone within earshot it needed exhaust work. Link backed around so he was headed down the long dirt and gravel drive, then shifted to drive and was on his way. Beth stood at the window and watched until all the dust behind the car had settled.