John Lutz - In for the Kill

Almost?

Pearl didn't say anything for a while. Quinn might be right. She might be a prospective victim.

"Pearl, you okay?"

"Yeah, Lauri."

"I really gotta get to work."

"Go, and thank you."

Pearl hung up the phone and sat stunned and wondering, trying to come up with some plausible reason other than her impending murder why Jeb might have been secretly watching her.

If he was the Butcher, why hadn't he already killed her?

The answer was obvious-she was useful. He was using her to keep tabs on the investigation.

"Something here," Quinn said, excitement in his voice, but also puzzlement.

He was leaning almost close enough to his computer to take a bite out of it.

"I've got a match on the print."

Pearl was up out of her chair and leaning over Quinn, balancing with her hand on his shoulder so she could see his computer monitor.

"It's not a criminal, military, or federal employee site," he said. "It's the Florida Department of Children and Families archives."

Pearl read the information on the screen. The print was a ninety percent match with the right middle finger of the 1980 print of a lost child in Florida identified as Sherman Kraft.

Pearl ran the name through her memory and came up with nothing.

She continued to watch as Quinn played the computer keys and mouse. They followed the thread and the story unfolded:

In Harrison County, Florida, in August of 1980, a boy about ten was found dazed and wandering along a swamp road. His clothes were bloody and ragged. He had an injured leg, was malnourished, and appeared to have been living for some time in the swamp. He also remained in a state of shock and refused to utter a sound.

Local news referred to him simply as "the Swamp Boy" until four days after he was found, when his newspaper photo was recognized as that of Sherman Kraft. He was the son of a woman who lived in a remote house on the edge of the swamp, more than ten miles from where he was found. When authorities went to the house they learned little more. It was deserted, and Sherman's mother, Myrna Kraft, was missing.

Apparently she was never found. There was speculation of foul play, and of her simply running away after losing, or deserting, her son. The archival accounts were concentrated on Sherman, so there was nothing more of substance about Myrna.

Quinn and Pearl kept following the thread, and later, infrequent news accounts told of how Sherman finally began to speak, but never of his experiences in the swamp, or what had led to them. Memory block. Nature's protective device. He was like someone who'd survived a terrible car crash and could remember nothing of it. The rest of his mind was apparently unaffected. Tests on the boy revealed an amazingly high IQ.

Mesmerized, Quinn and Pearl read on about how he'd lived in a series of institutions and foster homes, all the time receiving special treatment and education because of his remarkable intelligence. High academic achievement and scholarship opportunities led him to graduate magna cum laude from Princeton in 1989 at the age of nineteen. He was thought to be brilliant but antisocial and arrogant. After a series of jobs ranging from restaurant manager to bond salesman, he disappeared.

There were photographs of Sherman at Princeton. Quinn placed the cursor on them and clicked them into enlargement.

Pearl gripped his shoulder and leaned in for a closer look.

She was reasonably sure she was looking at the young Jeb Jones.

Suddenly out of breath, she felt her knees gave out. She caught herself and sat down cross-legged on the floor beside Quinn's desk chair.

"Goddamnit, Quinn!"

He looked down at her and ran the backs of his knuckles gently over her cheek. "It's all right, Pearl."

"I really screwed up."

"When you left me, you mean?"

She snorted. He's making a joke, surely. Just like him. She began to cry. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

"Yeah," he said softly.

"Such a damned foul-up…"

"Not actually, Pearl. And the hell with it, you're human."

"Sometimes I wonder," she said, and bit her lip.

"Pearl…"

She sniffled, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and stood up. Quinn said nothing as she trudged to the half-bath, blew her nose, and splashed cold water on her face.

For a long time she stood leaning with both hands on the washbasin and watching the water swirl down the drain.

Feeling only slightly better, she returned to the office.

Quinn was still at his desk. The printer was whirring and clucking, doling out in glides and jerks the information on Sherman Kraft/Jeb Jones. Quinn was sitting back in his swivel chair, rotating slightly back and forth and watching the printer. When Pearl was near his desk, he looked up at her.

Con Ed was back from lunch or break or wherever they'd gone, and the jackhammer outside suddenly resumed its chattering, only louder. It sounded as if there might be two of them. Reinforcements had been called in to make Pearl feel even more miserable.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"We call Renz for a warrant and some backup, then we go pick up Sherman Kraft."

Pearl nodded. Sherman Kraft. Jeb Jones. This called for a hell of an adjustment in her thinking. In her feelings. She felt like lying back down on the floor, curling into a ball, and trying to process the entire ugly mess.

"You want to be there when we take him?" Quinn asked.

"I wouldn't miss it."

The jackhammers went at it full blast.

Pearl went to her desk and got her gun.

They were on their way to kill or capture Pearl's Jeb Jones. Fedderman had the unmarked so they took Quinn's Lincoln behemoth.

Driving fast and skillfully through midtown traffic, Quinn talked with Renz on his cell phone, setting up a rendezvous point near the Waverly Hotel. It had already been determined that Jeb was in his room, and most of that floor was quietly being evacuated. When the time came, SWAT team members would take the elevator to the floor above Jeb and station themselves in the stairwell. Then power to the elevators would be stopped, the stairwell below and fire escape would be blocked by uniformed cops and SWAT members, and Jeb Jones would be trapped.

When Quinn got off the phone and concentrated on weaving his way through stalled traffic, Pearl used her own phone to call her apartment and check for messages. Maybe there was one from Jeb.

My God, Jeb…

As she listened to her phone ring on the other end of the connection, Pearl wondered if she'd be able to stop Jeb if he bolted. If he decided to make a fight of it, or commit suicide by cop, would she be able to shoot him? The prospect made her intestines tie themselves in knots. The pain made her actually bend forward in her seat.

Pressing the cell phone to her ear, she listened to her message machine in her apartment click on. One message:

"Pearl?"

Her mother.

"Pearl, are you there? I've had a conversation with Mrs. Kahn, a nice lady, about her equally nice, not to mention handsome, nephew Milton, who comes here and visits with her often. At my suggestion Mrs. Kahn phoned him and he's extremely interested in meeting you, dear, so since tomorrow was his regular visiting day anyway, I got together with Mrs. Kahn and set up a lunch in the nursing home cafeteria for the four of us, so the two of you can get to know one another without any pressure. At what would be the proper time, Mrs. Kahn and I would agree that we had to go for mahjongg and you two would be alone so nature could do what nature's been doing best for thousands if not millions of years. That's tomorrow at noon, Pearl. It's pot roast day. Pot roast is the only dish they do well here, but they do it very well and with mushrooms, which are said by some to be an aphrodisiac. If you can't make it, be sure to call me. If I were you, dear, I would wear that navy dress of yours with the matching shoes. Definitely not the red, Pearl. As for accessories-"