Danielle Steel - Southern Lights - A Novel

“Easy boys, play nice,” Jack Jones, the senior detective, said as he handed Charlie the cuffs. “Let’s not kill him before we get him to the station.” There was murder in Charlie’s eyes. Jack Jones knew Charlie had wanted to make him, and why. Charlie had told him in confidence one night when he got drunk. Jack had promised him not to say anything to anyone when he saw him the next morning. But he could see what was happening to Charlie now, he was shaking with rage. Jack didn’t like personal vendettas getting into business. If Luke had moved a hair to break free and run from them, Charlie would have shot him. He wouldn’t have winged him or shot him in the leg, he would have killed him on the spot.

The third man on the team radioed for a patrol car. Their own car was several blocks away, and they didn’t want to move Luke that far. They weren’t going to take that chance.

Luke’s nose was bleeding copiously onto his shirt, and none of them offered him anything to stop it. He would get no mercy from them. Jack read him his Miranda rights, and Luke looked arrogant despite the ferocious nosebleed. He had icy eyes, and a stare that took them all in and gave nothing away. Jack thought he was the coldest sonofabitch he had ever met.

“I could sue you bastards for this. I think my nose is broken,” he threatened, and Charlie gave him a scathing glance as the other two men pushed him toward the car. They shoved him into the car, and told the cops driving they would meet them at the station.

The three men were quiet on the way back to their car, and Charlie glanced at Jack as he turned on the ignition and then slumped against the seat, looking pale.

“How does it feel?” Jack asked him as they drove downtown. “You got him.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said quietly. “Now we gotta prove it and make it stick.”

By the time they got downtown and into the station, Luke was looking cocky. There was blood all over his face and shirt, but even cuffed, he was strutting his stuff.

“So what are you guys doing? Looking for someone to pin a mugging on, or stealing an old lady’s purse?” Luke laughed in Charlie’s face.

“Book him,” Charlie said to Jack, and walked away. He knew he’d get credit for the collar. He’d been following him for way too long. It was just sheer luck Quentin wound up back in New York. Providence. Fate. Charlie was happy to have nailed him in the city where he worked. He had better connections here, and liked the DA they worked with. He was a tough old guy from Chicago, and more willing to prosecute than most. Joe McCarthy, the DA, didn’t care how full the jails were, he wasn’t willing to let suspects go. And if they proved everything Charlie hoped they would about Luke Quentin, it was going to be the trial of the year. He wondered who McCarthy was going to assign the case to. He hoped to hell it was someone good.

“So what’s the beef you trumped up for me?” Luke asked, laughing in Jack’s face, as a rookie shackled him and started to lead him away. “Shoplifting? Jaywalking?”

“Not exactly, Quentin,” Jack said coolly. “Rape, and murder one, actually. Four counts of each so far. Maybe you’d like to tell us something about it?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow, as Luke laughed again and shook his head.

“Assholes. You know it won’t stick. What’s the matter? You got a bunch of murders you can’t solve, so you figured you’d do some one-stop shopping and pin them all on me?” Luke looked totally undisturbed, and almost amused, but his eyes were like steel, and an evil shade of blue.

Jack wasn’t fooled by the bravado. Luke was slick. They had evidence that he had committed two murders, and they were almost sure of two others. And if Jack’s guess was right, Luke Quentin had killed over a dozen women in two years, maybe more. They were waiting for a more conclusive DNA report on the dirt from his shoes that Charlie had gotten out of the shag carpet in Quentin’s hotel room. If the dirt was a match, as Charlie hoped it would be, Quentin had just been on the streets for the last time in his life.

“What a crock of shit,” Luke mumbled as he shuffled away. “You know you won’t make it stick. You’re just fishing. I have an alibi for every night. I hardly left my hotel room in the last two weeks. I’ve been sick.” Yeah, Jack thought to himself, very sick. They all were, guys like him, sociopaths who didn’t bat an eye after they killed their victims, dumped them somewhere, and then went out to lunch. Luke Quentin was handsome and looked as though he could be charming. He was the perfect type to spot some innocent young girl, and lure her to a secluded spot where he could rape her and then kill her. Jack had seen guys like him before, although if the stories were true about this one, he was one of the worst. Or the worst they’d had in a long time anyway. Jack knew there would be a lot of press on this, and every last detail had to be handled right, or Quentin would get a mistrial on some finicky detail. Charlie knew it too, which was why he had let Jack handle the booking, and after Luke was taken away to be searched and get his mug shot done, Jack called the DA himself.

“We got him,” Jack said proudly. “All our hunches paid off, and luck was on our side. That and Charlie McAvoy, who ran his ass off and caught him. If I’d had to run down all those alleys and hit all those fences, he’d have been halfway to Brooklyn before I got over the first one.” Jack was in good shape, but he was forty-nine years old, and he and the DA teased each other about their weight. They were the same age. The DA congratulated him for his good work, and told him he’d see him in the morning. He wanted to meet with the arresting officers to decide how they were going to handle the press.

By the time Jack left the station half an hour later, Luke was already in a cell. They had decided to put him in a cell alone. He was being scheduled for arraignment the following afternoon, and Jack knew the press would be all over them by then. Arresting the man who may have killed a dozen women or more in seven states was going to be big news. And if nothing else, it was going to make the NYPD look extremely good at what they did. Now it was up to the DA’s office, the prosecutor, and the investigators they used to do the rest.

He drove home with Charlie that night, after they made the arrest. It had been a long day watching the hotel all afternoon. They had seen Luke when he left, and Charlie had wanted to grab him then, but Jack told him to wait. Since he didn’t suspect they were on to him, they knew he’d be back. And there were too many people around then, Jack didn’t want anyone in the hotel to get hurt. It had worked out just right for them in the end. And not so well for Luke.

Luke Quentin was sitting in his cell then, staring at the wall. He could hear all the familiar sounds of jail. In an odd way it was like coming home. And he knew that if he lost, this time he was home for good. His face gave away nothing, as he stared down at his shoes, and then he lay on his bunk and closed his eyes. He looked totally at peace.

Chapter 2

“Hurry! Hurry, hurry!” Alexa Hamilton said to her daughter as she shoved a box of cereal and a carton of milk at her. “I’m sorry for the lousy breakfast, but I’m late for work.” She had to force herself to sit down and glance at the paper, and not stand there and tap her foot. Her seventeen-year-old daughter Savannah Beaumont had miles of pale blond hair. She wore it straight down her back, and she had a figure that had made men whistle at her in the street since she was fourteen. She was the hub of her mother’s life. Alexa looked up from the paper with a smile. “You’re wearing lipstick. Someone cute at school?” It was Savannah’s senior year in a good private New York school. Savannah was working on her applications to Stanford, Brown, Princeton, and Harvard. Her mother hated the thought of her going away to school. But she had fantastic grades and was as smart as she was beautiful. So was Alexa, but she had a different look. Alexa had a long lean body and a model’s looks, except she was healthier and prettier. She pulled her hair back tightly in a bun, and never wore makeup to work. She had no need or desire to distract anyone with her looks. She was an assistant DA and was thirty-nine, turning forty later that year. She had gone to the DA’s office straight out of law school, and had worked there for seven years.