John Lutz - In for the Kill

A photo of the Swamp Boy appeared on the screen. Sherman. Hair long and tangled, face gaunt, eyes wild-but Sherman.

Myrna put her beer can down on the floor and sat back in the recliner, closing her eyes and digging her fingertips into the warm vinyl arms. She couldn't look at the TV screen.

Harrison County. Twenty miles away. My God! He survived somehow, lived somehow on his own in the swamp. All that time…

He doesn't know his name. Doesn't remember.

But he will. The doctors will give him drugs. Hypnotize him. He'll remember. He'll talk.

Myrna felt a sudden panic and stood up from the chair.

Then she took a deep breath, waited for her heartbeat to slow, and retrieved her beer and finished it in a series of gulps. She hadn't thought this day would come, but at the same time she'd been waiting for it. It was a miracle that anyone, let alone a nine-year-old boy, could survive the night in the deep swamp, but miracles seemed to attach themselves to Sherman. Sam Pickens used to talk about how odd Sherman was, and how smart. How very smart.

He'll know. He'll remember. He'll talk.

Myrna knew what she had to do. She turned off the TV, went directly into the bedroom, and began to pack.

By the time people learned from the photograph who Sherman was and the authorities came to see Myrna, they found only the empty shack. It was assumed something bad had happened to her, that she'd been killed or had become lost and died in the swamp. It wasn't unusual for dead bodies never to be recovered from the swamp's dark landscape. She became simply another brief story, another unsolved mystery. Not the first to live on the edge of the vast darkness and one day disappear into it.

Over the coming years, from her anonymity and place of safety, she would read and hear about how the Swamp Boy was identified and had finally talked. But his story about how he'd wandered away from home on his own to go fishing and gotten lost wasn't at all what had happened. Myrna didn't know if Sherman couldn't remember the truth, or had chosen to lie. The mind could blank out certain horrors, but Sherman could be devious.

As his biological mother, she admitted to a certain satisfaction as she read from time to time about how intelligent he was, how, as a ward of the state, he'd been tested and found to have an amazingly high IQ. He was given favoritism, scholarship opportunities, as he was shuffled through a series of institutions and foster homes. Sherman made the most of those opportunities.

Myrna knew that by now he might remember at least something about the time before the swamp, yet he must not have spoken of it, or surely it would have been on the news. She could understand why he would remain silent, considering how people's view of him would change if he revealed his part in what had happened; the boarders who'd disappeared, and whose Social Security checks had continued to be collected and cashed. He'd been a child and wouldn't be in any legal jeopardy, but still, people would have and share their thoughts.

At times Myrna had her own thoughts about Sherman and smiled with motherly pride. Her son. So smart.

Smart enough not to talk.

New York, the present

"This has to stop," Pearl told Lauri.

"You saw me?" Lauri's eyes widened in surprise. "How?"

They were in the Hungry U, where Pearl had stopped in to talk to Lauri as she waited tables. It was five o'clock, still early for the dinner crowd, and the lunchtime diners were long gone. Pearl and Lauri were alone in the restaurant except for a touristy-looking couple at a corner table, and whoever was in the kitchen or out by the register. Something in the kitchen was giving off a peculiar but not unpleasant scent, a mingling of sage and cinnamon.

Pearl had ordered only a diet Coke, which she sipped slowly as she carefully formulated her words. She released her plastic straw from between her lips, noticing that it was now lipstick stained. "It doesn't work to follow someone on the other side of the street unless you know what you're doing. It doesn't work to stand around outside someplace like you're haunting it unless you're careful to stay out of sight. And it especially doesn't work if you try to sneak inside without being seen so you can use the restroom."

Standing over Pearl, still holding her serving tray in one hand, other hand on hip, Lauri said, "What do you do if you're tailing someone and you have to pee?"

"If you actually become a cop, you'll go to the Academy and they'll tell you."

Pearl watched as the touristy couple beckoned Lauri over and asked for their check. Lauri smilingly presented it, then carried it and a credit card through the door to the restaurant's entrance area and register.

By the time she came back, returned the card and check to the couple, and walked back to where Pearl was sitting, Pearl had drunk half her Coke. Despite the early hour and having only three customers, there was soft background music in the restaurant. It didn't sound very Pakistani, but how would Pearl know? It bothered her that she'd probably have a hard time getting the nagging little melody that persisted between the overwrought drum solos and the unintelligible singer out of her brain. It sounded vaguely familiar, but it was that kind of melody.

Lauri returned to Pearl's table and stood hipshot, still holding the round serving tray-which Pearl was beginning to figure out was a prop to make her feel more like a professional food server-in her previous spot. The curtain-filtered light from a nearby window made her look even younger and yet somehow even more like Quinn.

"Want a refill?"

"I'm good," Pearl assured her.

"You haven't told Dad, have you?"

"That you're still tailing me? No. But I want it to stop, Lauri. I mean actually stop. Or I will tell him."

Lauri flashed her father's stubborn, defiant expression for a second, then shrugged and nodded. "Okay. If you say stop, I'll stop."

"Your solemn word?"

"I promise you'll never spot me following you again."

Which wasn't exactly the promise Pearl was requesting.

More of Quinn's bullshit. Was it genetic?

"Lauri-" But something had popped into Pearl's mind. "Now I've got it."

"What?"

"That tune. I thought I might have heard it before."

Lauri grinned proudly. "That's right. You heard it here. That's The Defendants' CD of Lost in Bonkers."

"They actually sell their music?"

"Not yet, but they will. That's just a demo CD they made at the drummer's brother's apartment studio. Wormy's shopping it around. Well, looking for an agent to shop it around, actually."

"Speaking of Wormy," Pearl said, "do you realize he's following you following me?"

Lauri appeared temporarily confused. Then her face flushed with anger.

It was anger she didn't express in words; she knew what Pearl would say.

"Wormy? Why's he following me?" Lauri admirably kept her voice calm.

"I don't know for sure," Pearl said. "He might think you're seeing someone else. Or he might be afraid for you. The little-he probably loves you and feels protective. Men are like that." Even worms.

"He's a musician, not a fighter," Lauri said.

Thinking Lauri had that right except for the musician part, Pearl finished her Coke, which was now diluted by melted ice. "I'm not saying he's a skilled bodyguard, only that he's been following you. I saw him outside the Pepper Tree the other day, trying to be invisible in a doorway across the street."

Lauri couldn't help looking miffed. Pearl figured if Wormy were around he might be beaned with the serving tray, the way Lauri's knuckles were so white on the hand that gripped it.

She stared at a point just above Pearl's head, the way Quinn did when he was angry, as if there were a message written in the air confirming his righteous rage. "I'll put a goddamned stop to that!"