by John Lutz
“What are we building?” Vitali asked in his gravelly voice.
“A case,” Quinn said. “Airtight.”
62
On the walk back to the office with Quinn, Pearl’s cell phone emitted its Dragnet theme alert. Still thinking about the carpet-tucking knife, which was wrapped in a paper towel and stuck in one of Quinn’s pockets, she flipped up the phone’s lid and answered without first checking caller ID.
When she saw that the call’s origin was Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey, it was too late. She was connected to her mother.
“Pearl, I was thinking about you, so I thought I should call.”
“I’m kind of busy, Mom. You know, this murderer…”
“Busy, shmizzy, when I heard about an offer that would change your world-and such a dangerous world-I knew it was a mother’s duty to make sure her loving daughter heard about it and might-”
“What sort of offer, Mom?”
“A job, dear.”
“I’ve got a job, Mom. In fact, right now I’m trying to do it.”
Quinn coughed. He would.
“Are you with the mensch Captain Quinn?”
“Matter of fact, yes. But he’s no longer a-”
“Longer shmonger. You could do much worse, Pearl. In fact you have.”
Pearl thought if her mother mentioned Yancy by name she’d hang up on her. Or break the connection. Whatever you did with cell phones.
“But that’s neither here nor anywhere, Pearl. The thing is, this is an interesting and well-paying position you are being offered that allows you to be out and about like you say you like to be as a policewoman.”
“Detective, Mom.”
“Deschmective.”
“Is that your mother?” Quinn asked, glancing over at Pearl.
Pearl nodded.
“Tell her I said hello.”
Hello, schmello, Pearl thought.
“I overheard,” Pearl’s mother’s voice said on the phone. “Tell the big mensch to marry my daughter. Stop this shacking up together that in God’s eyes, and the world’s, will shame you both as long as it continues. What are you two afraid of? Making a commitment to each other like your father and I made and the result-God bless-was you, Pearl?”
Quinn was grinning at Pearl. She wondered how he’d look with the phone in his mouth.
“Women your age, Pearl,” her mother said, “women still bursting with vitality, are not too old to bear children. But there is a natural order of things, Pearl, and shacking up is not an accepted part of it. However, grandchildren are.”
“For God’s sake, Mom! You know I still have my own apartment.”
“Where you are not often, considering how seldom the phone is answered. Maybe, God willing, Captain Quinn will gladly be part of a marriage with two wage earners in two separate jobs, both or neither of which would become nonexistent in a worsening economy. Add to this, of course, a small dependent.”
“I keep telling you, he’s no longer ‘Captain Quinn,’ Mom. You make him sound like a breakfast cereal.”
“He’s not a cereal, dear. He’s a property owner. Which, the moment of marriage to you, you yourself would become. Now this job that might be yours for the asking was told about to me by Mrs. Katzman, here at the nursing home-”
“Assisted living.”
“-but in the strictest confidence. The inside track would be yours because you would be working for Mrs. Katzman’s lovely son Aaron, who is a big producer.”
“Big how? Obese?”
“Pearl!”
“Sorry. What does he produce?”
“Plays, is what.”
“Broadway plays?”
“Close to Broadway. And he is in no way fat, but very trim and manly, except for the ponytail, and close to your age. He said to his mother, Ida Katzman, when I was showing them both your photograph-that one where you’re just climbing out of the swimming pool in a T-shirt and look just like Sophia Loren in-”
“I was eighteen when that was taken, Mom.”
“Nevertheless, what Aaron Katzman said when he saw that photo-and he said it as if he meant it-”
“I don’t care, Mom.”
“-was that he could guarantee you a job as assistant stage manager. At first it would just be-”
Pearl knew what it would be later on. She decided to take the quickest route back to reality.
“I’ll think about it, Mom. Honestly. You can tell Mrs. Katzman I’ll consider it, and thank her for me for telling you about it. And thank Alan.”
“Aaron. Of Aaron Katzman Productions.”
“Okay. Aaron.”
“I sense, Pearl, an eagerness in you to end our conversation.”
“Mom, I don’t-”
“I understand, Pearl. You have a life to live while mine dwindles away here at this stopover on the way to hell.”
“You don’t believe in hell, Mom.”
“I didn’t, Pearl, until I found myself in its anteroom.”
“Mom, I’ve really gotta-”
“I understand, I said. And I still do. Say good-bye for me to Captain Quinn.”
“He’s not-”
But Pearl’s mother had terminated the conversation. This didn’t happen often. Usually Pearl had to force the issue and hang up first.
Pearl was pissed off, and at the same time felt bruised. She had hurt her mother and felt guilty as hell, and she knew she would call back, probably tomorrow. Or the next day.
“How is your mother?” Quinn asked, seeing Pearl flip her phone lid closed and work the instrument back into her pocket.
“Hurt and in hell,” Pearl said. “So am I.”
Quinn nodded. “Aren’t we all?”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” Pearl said, thinking about it.
Fedderman had sat in or just outside of Weaver’s room for the past six hours. Weaver remained drugged up and didn’t make sense when she attempted to talk. Fedderman felt sorry for her, but he was getting tired of sitting or standing guard. It happened a lot in books and movies, but in real life not many people were assaulted in hospital rooms except by doctors who graduated last in their class in medical school.
At the end of the hall, the uniformed cop the precinct had sent over to spell Fedderman stepped out of the elevator and trudged toward where Fedderman sat outside the door to Weaver’s room.
Fedderman had known him right away: Jesse Jones, a capable and light-hearted black man with a pencil mustache. Jones was slight of build, but Fedderman knew he was whipcord strong. He’d worked with Jones for a while in Burglary and had been impressed by the man.
Fedderman watched him approach. Within fifty feet of Fedderman’s chair, Jones switched his gleaming white smile on like a spotlight.
“You can turn it over to me now, sir, and I’ll fill the breach here,” Jones said.
Fedderman liked the “sir.” Jones wasn’t one of the new wiseass guys. He was a little older and had been around and respected his elders. And being retired from the NYPD made Fedderman his elder, even though there wasn’t that much difference in the men’s ages. At least, that was how Fedderman saw it.
He got up slowly from the chair and stretched until he heard his back pop and become less stiff. “I’m ready to be relieved,” he said, looking beyond Jones at the long corridor lined with identical doors. The killer would have to know his way around hospitals in order to find and take out Weaver. Fedderman thought there was no place more confusing than a hospital.
Stretching his back, Fedderman realized how tired he was. He shot a glance at his watch to make sure he hadn’t been imagining that it was time for him to be relieved.
Yep. Jones was five minutes early. “Let’s take a last look at her before I log out,” he said.
Fedderman opened the door to Weaver’s room and let Jones enter first.
The only sound in the quiet room was the soft in-and-out breathing of Weaver, who lay on her back in bed with her eyes closed. She was hooked up to an IV and to several monitor
ing machines. Normally tan and vital, she looked like a pale representation of herself, with the taut white sheets pulled up to her neck.
“She any better?” Jones asked.
“You see what I’ve been seeing most of the day,” Fedderman said.
“Bastard musta beat the crap outta her,” Jones said in a whisper, as if there was some danger of waking Weaver. “Broke her spirit as well as her bones.”
“Not her,” Fedderman said. “She’ll have plenty left.”
Jones smiled. “So she’s a game one.”
“Yeah. She’ll shake this. What we don’t want is whoever attacked her coming in here and adding to the damage.”
“He won’t this day,” Jones said. “I can guarantee it.”
Both men left the room. Out in the hall, Jones sat down in the chair Fedderman had spent hours in today. He settled in like an airline passenger prepared for a long flight. Glancing down, he dangled a long arm and picked up a magazine from a small stack on the floor, a well-worn People.
“You want something else to read before I leave?” Fedderman asked.
Jones shook his head and held up the People. “Don’t need anything else. This has got it all. Go on home and forget this place for a while, sir.”
Fedderman nodded and left to walk to the elevator. Most of the people in People, he didn’t recognize. Besides that, they all looked like kids.
Outside the hospital, he breathed in air that didn’t smell faintly of menthol; then he walked to a small jewelry store that had been in the next block for years. There he stood in front of the display window and studied the array of rings. The engagement rings were set off by themselves in a maroon velvet display case that made the gold or silver in them look like it had just been polished.
They were all expensive, except for two at the bottom of the display.
Fedderman had an hour before he was to meet Penny. He’d never been a man of impulse, but here he was in an Armani suit, mooning at engagement rings. Penny had changed him.
He again went over the calculations he’d made in his chair in the hospital corridor. Retired cops, if they’d been honest cops, weren’t among the rich. But he’d been thrifty and had a fair amount in his IRA account that he hadn’t touched.
He thought for a moment, settled on one of the rings at the bottom of the display, then went into the jewelry shop feeling the way he’d felt as a kid diving into the untested waters of a lake.
Excited. But you could also drown.
63
Edmundsville, 2010
Since Eddie had gone away to school in Iowa, Link went to coin shows and conferences more often. He’d changed jobs and worked for Krupke Currency Exchange, a large coins and precious metals dealer. Much of the work was done on the Internet, but there was also a lot of travel involved. Link and Eddie were still in close touch via e-mail, and still discussed coins. Eddie would request certain coins for his collection, and Link would often find and purchase them. When he returned home, he’d put them in the drawer along with Eddie’s collection portfolio.
Beth watched Link through the window as he stepped down off the porch and walked to where the Kia was parked in front. He would take the car, or sometimes the pickup truck, and leave it at the airport in Kansas City while he was away-this time at a coin show and auction in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He hoisted his big carry-on into the passenger side of the car and walked around and climbed in behind the steering wheel. He’d packed his sport coat and was wearing a white shirt and paisley tie. Beth noticed that he’d put on a little weight the past few years, and he wasn’t so nimble working himself in behind the steering wheel.
The sun-baked red car gave a rumbling roar, telling anyone within earshot it needed exhaust work. Link backed around so he was headed down the long dirt and gravel drive, then shifted to drive and was on his way. Beth stood at the window and watched until all the dust behind the car had settled.
Though they weren’t wet, she wiped her hands on the dish towel she was holding. After a slight detour to toss the wadded towel onto the sink counter, she went to the phone and called Sheriff Wayne Westerley.
Within two hours Westerley was parking his SUV, with its red and blue lights on the roof and the big sheriff’s badge painted on the doors, exactly where the Kia had been parked. He stepped down from the vehicle and hitched up his belt with the holster and law-enforcement paraphernalia hanging from it. Beth thought he’d put on weight just as Link had, only Westerley still had a flat stomach. His face and shoulders appeared somewhat broader in his tan sheriff’s uniform. He moved easily and with his familiar muscular grace as he came up the wooden steps to the porch.
Beth opened the front door and they looked at each other. Beth felt something tugging at her. She hadn’t expected that. Or had she?
Westerley was sweating, as if the SUV’s air conditioner didn’t work. He smiled. “Been too long,”
“It has,” Beth said. She wished she’d thought to make some lemonade, something. She returned his smile. “Get you something to drink? Glass of ice water to cool you down?”
“Be fine.” He removed his Smokey hat. His dark curly hair looked the same. Not even a fleck of gray.
As she was going into the kitchen she saw him placing the hat on the coffee table as he sat down on the sofa. She could feel herself slipping back in time. It was a pleasant but unsettling sensation.
She came back with a glass of water poured over cubes from the refrigerator ice maker. Nothing for herself. She handed Westerley his tall, clear tumbler and then sat down in the wing chair that was angled toward the sofa.
He sipped his water and grinned. “Just what I needed.” He glanced around. “Where’s Link?”
“Off to Cedar Rapids to a coin show.”
“He’s still heavily into that, huh?”
“Heavily. Working for a coin and precious metal company now. Mostly on the computer here at home, but he does some traveling, too.”
“And Eddie?”
“Away at school.” Nobody here but the two of us.
Westerley took another swallow of water. She watched his Adam’s apple work in the strong column of his throat.
He observed her with a half smile, as if this was an ordinary visit between old friends. He knew it wasn’t, but he couldn’t figure out where it was going. He put his glass down on a Coin Universe magazine. “You said you had a problem, Beth.”
“Did I say that?”
“Gave that impression.” He had a hard time keeping his gaze away from her cleavage showing above the scoop-neck white blouse she was wearing with her jeans. The jeans were faded and tight, molded to her body. Dressed for seduction? He realized his breathing was ragged. Took another sip of water. He felt like pressing the cold glass to his forehead but didn’t.
Beth squirmed in her chair. Whatever they were going to discuss made her uncomfortable. “I do have a problem, Sheriff.”
“Wayne. Name’s Wayne, Beth. Remember?”
She began absently wringing her hands in her lap. Her hands looked older, he noticed, though it hadn’t been that long since he and Beth had last seen each other. Edmundsville and Hogart weren’t all that far from each other, and in the same county.
“I do have a problem, Wayne.”
Sure. You have a son in college. That was his first guess. “With Eddie?”
“No.”
“Not with that bastard Salas?”
“No. Or maybe yes. More with Link.”
Westerley leaned back in the sofa and crossed a polished black boot over his knee. “Just relax and tell me what it is, Beth.”
She leaned forward slightly, as if to compensate for his settling back into the sofa. “You ever notice how much Eddie looks like Link?”
Westerley drew a deep breath and stared at her. He had noticed the resemblance, though he’d never made mention of it. “There’s some physical resemblance,” he said, “and people pick up the mannerisms of who they’re always around. Who raises them.”
�
�It’s more than that, Wayne. Like you said, it’s physical.”
“You do know what you’re implying, Beth.”
“I do. And I wouldn’t imply it to anybody but you.”
“But why-?”
“I don’t know why, Wayne. Link would be the one to tell you that, if what I suspect is true.”
“Jesus, Beth! What do you want me to do?”
She shook her head as if in sudden pain. “I’m not sure. I thought maybe you could tell me.”
“You did the right thing. I’m glad you called.”
“So am I.”
“I think you’ve given this some thought, Beth. We both know a possible way to make sure. DNA. A paternity check.”
“I can’t just up and ask Link if we can do that.”
“You wouldn’t have to ask him. I know people at the state lab where the tests are performed. It might take a while, though. They’re always running behind.” He ran a finger around the rim of his glass, as if expecting it to sing like fine crystal. “You sure you want to do this, Beth?”
“What do you need?” Beth asked.
“DNA samples of Link. And of Eddie.”
“We can find something, I’m sure. Some of their hair, with the follicle still attached.”
Westerley sipped his ice water. She’s been reading and learning about this.
Beth continued: “Link’s cigarette butts are still in the ashtray by the porch glider, and maybe someplace else in the house. Eddie keeps his own toothbrush here for when he visits. And we might even get nail clippings from both of them.”
Westerley nodded, thinking it all over. She might have already collected those samples. “Has Link been a good father to Eddie?”
“The best,” Beth said. “God help me, that’s what makes me suspicious-the way he treats Eddie, just like he’s his natural son. As if Link knew he existed and couldn’t keep away from him, so he married me to raise his own child.”
“Your rapist would want to be a true father to your son?”
“His son, too.”
Westerley pursed his lips and gave an almost silent whistle. “I can’t think of that ever happening, Beth.”
“But it could happen, Wayne!” Beth bowed her head. He saw tears glisten an instant before her dangling hair concealed her eyes. “Or maybe I’m sick and guilt ridden so I’m suspicious when I shouldn’t be.”