John Lutz - In for the Kill

Jesus! Pearl thought.

Gotta get in there!

Time was on fast-forward and might leave her behind.

Her heart hammering like a machine gun in her rib cage, she passed Quinn and Fedderman on their way into the hotel room. Weaver somehow squeezed ahead of her, flak jacket and all, smelling of stale sweat and cheap perfume, shotgun leveled.

Don't you shoot him, bitch!

Pearl held her Glock pressed tight against her thigh as she entered and glanced around.

At first she thought the room had been unoccupied, and she felt a great surge of relief.

Then a hand appeared above the narrow space between the bed and the wall, fingers spread wide.

Another hand.

The smoke-fogged room suddenly became silent.

Jeb stood up slowly, surprise and fear on his face, but not panic. When he saw Pearl, his lips parted as if he were about to say something, and his expression of surprise turned to one of disappointment. Pearl felt for a moment as if she might begin to sob.

Damn it, hold on to yourself!

She swallowed, not liking how loud a sound it made.

Pearl knew Quinn had decided to put on a show for Renz. It was, after all, part of the deal. He held his old. 38 police special revolver in both hands, pointed in Jeb's direction but low enough so that if he fired, a bullet would go into the bed.

"Sherman Kraft, we have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Marilyn Nelson. You have the right…"

At the mention of the name Sherman Kraft, Jeb suddenly looked stunned, and Pearl knew in heart as well as mind that they had the right man. Her wrong man.

Again.

But they'd solved the case. They'd stopped the killing. And she'd been part of it.

She had her emotions tightly tied and knotted as she listened to Quinn finish reading Jeb-or Sherman-his rights.

Fedderman gripped one of Jeb's raised arms and led him out from behind the bed, then turned him around and yanked both his arms down behind his back.

Pearl stepped forward and handcuffed him.

She had on her cop's face when he was led away and they exchanged glances. She wasn't sure if he knew she was the one who'd cuffed him.

"Have you anything to say?" the blond anchorwoman asked Jeb, dancing nimbly alongside and trying to keep up.

He stared straight ahead. "Only to my attorney."

Pearl thought, Bastard!

Sherman Kraft sat at a small oak table bolted to the floor in a precinct interrogation room. Behind him stood a uniformed officer with his arms crossed in a way that displayed bulging biceps. Shavers was his name, Quinn remembered. He was a lean-waisted black man who'd won a weightlifting championship while in the academy. Quinn figured he had to be well into his fifties by now, but he didn't look it.

Besides the two unmoving figures and the table in the room there were four hard wooden chairs. They looked and were uncomfortable. It was in one of them that Sherman Kraft sat-uncomfortably.

Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman were standing outside the room with Renz, looking in through the observation window. Kraft couldn't see out, but he knew they were there, of course, having watched plenty of TV cop shows. From time to time he glanced in their direction.

He'd stuck to his word about waiting for his attorney, but surprised them by asking for a public defender. A call had been made to the Legal Aid Society.

"He doesn't look worried," Fedderman said.

"Concerned, though," Renz said.

Pearl found it difficult to connect this pleasant-featured, mild-looking man with the killer who'd dismembered his victims and stacked their body parts in ritual fashion in their bathtubs. More and more she saw the world as a series of facades, and it scared the hell out of her.

The attorney from Legal Aid turned out to be Lisa Pareta, a woman in her forties with square-cut gray bangs framing a square-featured, ruddy face. She had blue eyes that always seemed to be red-rimmed and swollen, as if they hurt. Quinn knew her to be smart and tough.

Renz glanced over at her approaching figure. She wore a gray pantsuit, sensible black shoes, and was carrying a worn black leather briefcase. She had a confident smile and was swinging the briefcase in her right arm with each stride as if she wouldn't mind bonking someone with it.

"Ball breaker," Renz said in a low voice.

Pearl thought he had a point, but what did he expect?

"Lisa!" Renz's jowly face shaped itself into a smile as he stepped forward to meet her.

Looking serious, flushed, and slightly out of breath, Pareta pretty much ignored him and said, "That my client in there?"

"The one without the uniform," Renz said. Before she could ask, he handed her the arrest warrant and she scanned it and gave it back.

She looked at all of them as if they were the suspects and said, "I'm assuming he's been read his rights and hasn't yet been interrogated."

"We tried," Renz said honestly. "He's been silent as the furniture, waiting for his champion."

Pareta moved closer to the observation window and seemed to study her new client for a moment. Pearl wondered what she was thinking.

"I want to talk with him alone, without the muscle," she said.

"If you're brave enough," Renz said. He unlocked the door and held it open for her, kept it open after she went inside, and motioned for Shavers to come out.

They watched Pareta sit across from her client, and the two of them talked for a few minutes with their heads close together, as if worried that the bug in the room might be activated. They were right, of course, but as every criminal attorney knew, the system wasn't sensitive enough to eavesdrop on attorney-client whispered conversation.

After about five minutes, Pareta sat back and motioned for her unseen audience to come into the room.

Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman went in. Renz stayed outside and listened.

Fedderman remained standing and let Quinn and Pearl take the other two chairs. Pareta had moved around to sit alongside her client. Pearl was in the chair farthest away from him.

"My client says he has alibis for the times of some of the Butcher murders," Pareta said.

"Some of them?" Quinn said. "It only takes one murder charge to convict."

"If you're not interested in convicting the right man."

Quinn looked dead-eyed at Sherman Kraft as he spoke. "Your fingerprints are being matched with the killer's right now. You left a bloody print in your victim's apartment, which means we have your DNA. It will be matched with the DNA on the swab we took when you were brought in."

That wasn't exactly true, of course, as the blood might be the victim's.

Kraft looked at Pearl as if in appeal. "I've killed no one."

"And your name isn't Sherman Kraft," she said bitterly.

"It isn't," said the suspect.

"Then you've got no worries," Fedderman said. He smiled. "My name isn't Sherman Kraft and I got no worries. I'm not even lawyered up."

"It's a wonderful world," Pareta said, "where no one is named Sherman Kraft or has worries. We should all go out for egg creams."

"How about going for murder one instead?" Quinn said. He focused more intently on the suspect, who now didn't seem able to look away from him.

Quinn explained how they'd learned his identity, from the time Sherman had been found wandering the swamp road in Florida to when he disappeared from his last job after leaving Princeton.

"Your client's a smart one," Fedderman said to Pareta. He'd noticed her perk up at the mention of Princeton.

"Not so smart we don't have him cold," Quinn said.

Pareta sneered. "Like you'd have a ham sandwich if you had some bread and mustard, if you had some ham." She glanced at Pearl. "You don't have much to say."

"I'm a good listener," Pearl said.

Pareta blatantly took her measure, smiled faintly, and turned her attention back to Quinn. "I reviewed the evidence. You think a photo taken at college when he was nineteen years old is going to convict my client? You coulda fooled me into thinking it's a photo of my nephew Homer."