John Lutz - In for the Kill

"If Homer's fingerprint and DNA are at the crime scene, like your client's, he's in some kinda trouble."

Pareta dug into her briefcase and came up with a copy of the Princeton photo from the file on Sherman Kraft that had been faxed over to the prosecutor's office. She peered at the photo, then at Sherman. "Doesn't look like the same guy to me."

Quinn pretended to yawn. "Like you said, he was nineteen when it was taken."

"I didn't go to Princeton," the suspect said. "Went to Yale."

"Is that where you learned to be a journalist?" Pearl asked. Her voice was weary but level. She had herself in check and knew she could handle this now.

"I'm not a journalist," the suspect said.

"Then you were lying."

Pareta laid her hand gently on her client's arm. "There's no need to say anything at this point. You're better off maintaining silence until we know more."

"It doesn't matter," the suspect said.

"Maybe he doesn't remember committing those murders," Fedderman said.

Pareta looked thoughtful. "It's happened before."

The interrogation room door opened and Renz stuck his head in. "Talk to you for a minute, Quinn?"

Quinn noticed that Renz was sweating. Pushing back his chair, he said, "I'll be right back." To the suspect: "Don't go anywhere."

"Aren't one of you people supposed to be the good cop?" Sherman asked, playing the smart-ass now as Quinn was leaving. He must be pretty confident, or was running one helluva bluff.

Quinn had to credit him with balls, even though he felt like grabbing him by the throat and taking the quick route to justice. (But was he thinking of the murders, or of Pearl?)

When he went outside and closed the interrogation room door behind him, he saw Renz standing down the hall by the water fountain. He was splashing cool water on his face, not seeming to mind that he was messing up his shirt and tie.

He straightened up when Quinn approached. Quinn didn't like the expression on his face that was still beaded with water.

"Prints came back," Renz said. "They don't match."

Quinn was astonished. "They must!"

"Must but don't."

"Sweet Jesus!"

"Not only that," Renz said in a choked voice. "It's too early for DNA analysis, but the lab says they got some blood off the swab used to extract a culture from the suspect's gums. It's type O. The blood on the fingerprint is type A, same as the victim's."

"Meaning it's not from the killer and the DNA isn't going to match, either."

"Right. Just like the prints don't match."

Quinn felt himself getting light-headed, short of breath. He understood now why Renz was splashing cold water on his face. Though it hadn't seemed possible until a few minutes ago, they had the wrong man.

He went to the water fountain and got a drink, trying to slow down his thoughts so he could consider each separately and somehow fit them together to form a reasonable whole.

"He has to be our man," he said, straightening up and wiping his lips with the back of his thumb. "He's tricking us somehow."

"I don't see how," Renz said hopelessly. "Nobody's that smart."

"He's pretty goddamned smart."

Renz looked at him and said seriously, "So are you, Quinn."

Quinn felt the slow anger in him quickening, building in heat and strength. He charged up the hall and yanked open the interrogation room door. Burst inside. Behind him he heard Renz yell, "Quinn!"

Without remembering crossing the room Quinn was standing over the suspect, his huge right fist balled and ready to strike. He was aware of Pearl staring wide-eyed up at him.

Pareta jumped up, looking indignant and terrified. "Detective! Think what you're doing! Damn it, think!" She'd seen plenty of hard-ass acts in interrogation rooms, and knew this was real.

Quinn hadn't touched the suspect yet, knowing if he did touch him the game would change, his world would change. The system protected scum like this one, who was gazing up at him unafraid, confident.

The system that failed again and again.

"Who the hell are you?" Quinn demanded in a soft voice that made the flesh on the back of Pearl's neck crawl. She knew Quinn. She knew what the gentle tone and stillness could portend.

"I'm not Sherman Kraft," the suspect said calmly. Fear didn't seem to be one of his emotions.

"I didn't ask who you weren't."

"This has gone far enough!" Pareta said. She darted a glance at the one-way window, knowing Renz, somebody, should be out there somewhere and might stop this.

Pearl looked at Fedderman, who looked at Quinn, back at her, and shook his head no. Pearl was breathing hard. If Jeb Jones wasn't Sherman Kraft, who was he?

"Jeb!" she said sharply, the name flying out of her without thought. "Who are you?"

"You don't have to answer that," Pareta said. "You don't have to say a goddamned thing to these people."

These people? "Screw your lawyer!" Pearl said.

"Pearl!" Fedderman waved an arm, cautioning her to be quiet, his unbuttoned shirt cuff flapping like a sail.

The suspect continued looking only at Quinn, matching Quinn's unyielding stare with one of his own. There was a hardness in him Pearl was seeing for the first time, yet she recognized it. She'd seen it in people who'd bottomed out, entered the abyss and returned from it; and accepted that they were someday going back. She truly understood then that she didn't know Jeb, not at all.

He said, "I'm Sherman Kraft's brother."

Quinn backed away and stood looking at the wall behind the suspect and his attorney. Pearl couldn't take her eyes off her former lover who'd just become someone else again. Fedderman nervously paced, absently trying to button his loose shirt cuff.

Pareta snapped her shabby briefcase closed and stood up. "I have to know who I'm representing."

"You're representing me," the suspect said, "but you won't have to for long because I haven't done anything illegal."

Pareta thought it over, then sat back down.

"What are you doing in New York?" Quinn asked the suspect.

"As your attorney-" Pareta began.

"We're doing the same thing you are," the suspect said to Quinn, ignoring Pareta and cutting off his legal advice. "We're looking for Sherman."

"We?" Quinn asked. "You and who else?"

"Sherman's not my brother, actually. He's my half-brother."

"You and who else?" Quinn asked again.

"Our mother."

Now that Maria Cirillo had decided to give up on New York, her mind was at ease. She was simply tired of struggling in this city that moved so fast in the same place, that clanged and chattered constantly inside her head and heart, pressuring her, pressuring her…

Losing her part-time job yesterday as an optometrist's receptionist on Tenth Street was the final and decisive blow. Dr. Wolff said he was retiring and was winding down his practice, and his daughter was going to act as receptionist and file clerk for the next few months. He offered to give Maria the highest recommendation, and told her this had nothing to do with her work-it was simply time for him and his ill wife to leave the city and retire to Florida. Maria had received a generous severance check, but in New York it wouldn't last long.

She'd used most of her severance pay to buy an airline ticket to within driving distance of Homestead, Arizona. With her three years at John Jay, she could find work in the town's small police department. Maria had grown up in Homestead, had friends and family there, and had been the high-school sweetheart of the chief of police. The chief, she'd learned in her last letter from her mother, had recently filed to divorce his wife.

Maria didn't actually plan on reviving her old romance, but she knew it was one of those things that seemed ordained and just might happen. She was only twenty-six to the chief's twenty-eight. They were both young. He was handsome, and Maria, with her shoulder-length dark hair, pale complexion, and wide-set brown eyes, was beautiful and knew it. Her small, lithe body hadn't changed from her high school days. The chief would recognize it. High, firm breasts, a tiny waist, legs not long but muscular and shapely, a strawberry birthmark near her left nipple, like a second nipple…the chief would remember.