by John Lutz
After a while, Westerley voiced what he’d been wondering. “Is all this tech wizardry-which I heartily admire, Mathew-actually getting us somewhere?”
Mathew didn’t answer until he’d swallowed the ice cream he’d skillfully transferred from bowl to mouth.
“’Es, sir,” he said, swallowing. On the return trip to the bowl, his spoon dribbled chocolate onto his blue Stephen Hawking T-shirt. Westerley had broken his rhythm.
“Where?” Westerley asked, somewhat surprised.
And Mathew Wellman proceeded to tell the sheriff everything that Jerry Lido had told Quinn and Associates.
When Mathew was finished talking, Westerley sat for a while thinking over what he’d heard.
He stood up and put on his Sam Browne belt, and the leather holster he wore on his right hip. Then he adjusted with movements of long habit the rest of the gear that was affixed to and dangled from the belt. The tools of his profession.
“Call Bobi and tell her I want her to come in,” he said. He smiled. “You’re doing a great job, Mathew.”
Mathew beamed.
Westerley got his Smokey hat from where it hung on a wall hook. “If anybody needs me, I’ll have my cell phone turned on. I’m gonna be at Mrs. Evans’s house.”
“I’ll tell Bobi, sir.”
Mathew watched Westerley go out the door and then observed through the window as the sheriff strode toward his SUV. He walked kind of neat, Mathew thought, with the uniform and thick belt across his back, and all that paraphernalia dangling from his belt. Holster, cell phone with GPS, key ring, leather notepad holder, telescoping billy club. Handcuffs, even.
Going to Mrs. Evans’s house.
Mrs. Evans, Mathew thought with a smile. Was that kind of formality supposed to fool anyone? Not that Mathew blamed Westerley. He’d seen Mrs. Evans and thought she was hot.
Mathew called Bobi Gregory and then viewed some porn from Sweden on the Internet. He could cover his tracks with a few clicks of the mouse when he saw Bobi coming. And what he was doing should be safe, considering he was using the sheriff’s department’s computer.
Sweden usually meant blondes. Mathew liked blondes.
81
New York, the present
Quinn and Pearl’s plane lifted off from LaGuardia at six o’clock that evening. The closest airport to Edmundsville was St. Louis’s Lambert International. From there they could rent a car, wend their way to Interstate 70, and drive west out of the St. Louis area.
In mid-Missouri, they could stay at a Hampton Inn just off 70, and in the morning drive less than an hour to reach the Evans house. If they left the motel about nine-thirty, they should easily arrive well before Link Evans. Evans’s flight touched down at ten o’clock, and his drive from the Kansas City airport to home was slightly farther than theirs, leaving them plenty of time to talk to Beth Evans before her husband got home.
The flight from LaGuardia to St. Louis seemed longer than it was, maybe because of the infant in the seat behind Quinn that somehow kept managing to touch cold and sticky miniature fingers to the back of his neck. While they were deplaning, the kid looked over at Quinn from his mother’s arms and grinned, as if they shared a secret: There were people, and then there were people who plagued them, and that was that.
Quinn and Pearl traveled with only rolling carry-ons. As they made their way through the crowded terminal to where they could rent a car, Quinn said, “That kid behind us was driving me nuts.”
“She was great,” Pearl said. “She didn’t utter a peep.”
“How do you know it was a she?”
“Could have been the pink dress.”
As they rounded a corner to leave the secure area, Pearl’s rolling suitcase bounced over Quinn’s toe. He was pretty sure she’d done it on purpose.
The drive toward Edmundsville was better than the flight to St. Louis. Their room was reserved at the motel, so there was no hurry. The sky was cloudless and tinted a deep purple. Though the day had been warm, it was so pleasant now that Quinn felt like putting down the Ford Taurus’s windows. He didn’t, though, knowing Pearl would complain about her hair blowing all over the place. She had no idea that he thought she was sexy with her hair all tousled by the wind. Or maybe she did know that, and she figured he was the one who’d made it clear that this was a business trip, so let him yearn. There were people…
The motel was so well kept it looked as if it had been built yesterday, even though the architecture was a couple thousand years old. It had tall fluted columns that looked like the entrance to a Greek temple, with cars parked outside instead of chariots.
They checked into a room with a king-sized bed-Quinn’s idea-then rolled their suitcases along a long hall toward an elevator to the second floor.
“I noticed they serve breakfast,” Quinn said. “Means we can stay in bed pretty late tomorrow in case we don’t get much sleep.”
“Why would we not get much sleep?”
“We might be busy in a carnal way.”
“You would think that,” Pearl said.
“You’d be surprised what I might think,” Quinn told her, as he used the key card to unlock and open the door on only the fourth try.
The phone was ringing as they entered the room and deposited their suitcases on the bed. Quinn cursed inwardly. This didn’t bode well. Not that Pearl seemed to be getting in the mood. But then you never could tell about Pearl.
Quinn snatched up the receiver, thinking he’d hear the voice of the desk clerk downstairs checking to make sure everything was to their satisfaction.
Instead he heard Fedderman: “Things have changed, Quinn. Lincoln Evans’s flight tomorrow was canceled, so he booked another for this evening. He’s in the air now. He’ll change planes in Pittsburgh and will arrive in Kansas City at nine-thirty tonight.”
“Which means he’ll get home about ten-thirty.”
“Roughly,” Fedderman said.
Quinn glanced at the multifunctional alarm clock nightlight sleep timer radio on the dresser. “It’s almost nine o’clock now.”
“That nine-thirty is central time,” Fedderman said, from far away in the eastern time zone. “Just so there’s no mistake.”
“We’re in sync,” Quinn said.
He felt a stirring deep in his hunter’s heart. It was all coming at them fast now, the way it sometimes did. Any damned thing could happen, and they had to be ready.
“One other thing,” Fedderman said. “Tom Stopp really does have a brother, and his name is Marvin and he’s in California, writing for TV and the movies. Or struggling to, anyway. He’s got a sister Terri, too. Beautician, unmarried, likes the ladies.”
“Thanks for the confirmation, Feds.” So much for that TS possibility-if Tanya Moody actually did scrawl those two letters in blood. “Call me on my cell if anything else happens. We’re gonna be on the move.”
“Good luck, and whatever else you can use.”
Quinn placed the phone’s receiver back in its cradle. Pearl was standing by the window, staring at him now instead of at the swimming pool below, knowing the game had unexpectedly changed. There was a special intensity in her dark eyes. He doubted it had anything to do with motel sex.
“We’re checking out,” Quinn said. “We’ve got more driving ahead of us tonight.”
He explained to her about Fedderman’s phone call.
Without having unzipped their suitcases, they got them down from the bed and headed for the door. They didn’t talk as they rode the elevator down. Their minds were already an hour’s drive away and on a dozen things at once. The endgame did that to people.
They didn’t bother checking out. Probably it was done automatically tomorrow anyway. The clerk had already run the company charge card.
As they rolled the suitcases across the lobby’s tiled floor toward the exit, Pearl said, “There goes that free breakfast.”
She didn’t sound as if she cared.
82
Wayne Westerley lay half asleep in
Beth’s bed. Her head was resting in the crook of his arm, and he could hear her gentle breathing. They were both lying nude on top of the sheets, letting the air conditioner cool the room after the heat of their coupling. Westerley absently decided that the gradually dropping temperature had reached a perfect level. He felt satiated and peaceful and could easily doze off.
His cell phone began to vibrate where he’d placed it on the nightstand. Beth stirred but didn’t wake up. With his free hand, Westerley picked up the phone and glanced at it. The county sheriff’s department calling. A good part of the county sheriff’s department was here in bed with Beth. The thought amused him as he pressed the talk key and fitted the phone to his ear.
“Sheriff?”
It was Billy Noth, his deputy. “What’s up, Billy?” Westerley kept his voice low.
“We just got a call from the New York City police.”
Westerley snapped all the way awake, but he didn’t stir. “ ’Bout what?”
“There’s a warrant out for Link Evans to be arrested as a suspect in the Skinner murders in New York. You know, that nutcase who-”
“Yeah, yeah, Billy.”
“I figured you’d want to know,” Billy said.
“I did and I didn’t.”
“I know what you mean, Sheriff.”
Westerley broke the connection.
He was dumbfounded. Still trying to put his thoughts together. Beth had told him Link wasn’t due home until tomorrow from the numismatic convention in Denver. He played again in his mind his conversation with Billy Noth.
The Skinner?
Link?
Westerley considered contacting the New York police immediately; then he realized they’d be able to determine the origin of his phone call. Not only that, if his office got the message from New York, the state police and the Missouri State Highway Patrol almost surely received the same message. They might already be busting their balls on their way to see if they could apprehend Link here, where he lived, where Westerley was in bed with the suspect’s wife.
He wriggled back on the mattress and sat up straight, waking Beth, and switched on the light by the bed.
Beth lay on her side and smiled sleepily up at him. “Something wrong, hon?”
“A few things,” Westerley said.
Link Evans enjoyed being early. It didn’t happen very often. His visit with the woman he’d gone to New York to see had taken less time than he’d expected. She’d provided the opportunity for them to be alone together almost as soon as he’d arrived in town. He figured that if his luck held, he’d be home before ten-thirty. Beth might still be awake. He could surprise her.
Link’s luck did hold. The plane bounced gently twice on landing, then slowed rapidly with the engines roaring on reversed thrust. When the roaring dropped to a lower level, the pilot announced that they’d had a tailwind and were ten minutes early.
Deplaning was smooth and efficient. Link had no luggage to claim, so he was out of the main terminal fast. He’d left the pickup for Beth this trip and driven the Kia to the airport. The shuttle to the lot where he’d left the car was parked and waiting at the curb, as if just for him.
He was away from the airport and on the road in no time, driving fast toward home.
It was ten-twenty when Link slowed the car at the mouth of the driveway and let it roll to a stop. The house was dark. Beth must have gone to bed early.
Rather than wake her, he pulled farther into the driveway and left the car parked off to the side on the grass.
He wasn’t going to bother unpacking tonight, and he didn’t feel like lugging his suitcase all the way up the long drive. He left the suitcase in the trunk, then made sure the car was locked and began walking toward the dark house.
When he got closer, he saw the back end of an SUV that was parked behind the house, where it wouldn’t be seen from the road or driveway. And the house wasn’t completely dark. He noticed soft light escaping from where a shade hadn’t been pulled quite all the way down. Silently, he approached the steady bar of light showing beneath the shade. He moved aside the branches of an overgrown forsythia bush that he’d neglected to prune. Crouching low, he peered inside through the window.
It was the bedroom window.
Quinn tried not to look at the dashboard clock or his watch. Beside him, Pearl squirmed. They’d been making good time before traffic had slowed, and then gradually stopped, on the Interstate. Now they were creeping forward at less than ten miles per hour.
“Way it looks on the GPS,” Pearl said, “we’ve only got a few miles before our turnoff.”
“GPS tell us why we’re crawling along?” Quinn asked.
“Not even if you asked it nice.”
The highway curved, and ahead of them Quinn could see a long line of traffic and flashing red and blue lights. Though it was difficult to know for sure in the dark night, it appeared that traffic was being diverted to a single lane.
No. When he got a closer look, he saw that what had been a single lane was now realigning itself and again becoming two lanes.
There was a state patrol car parked just off the shoulder.
“Looks like an accident,” he said, “and they finally cleared the wreckage off the highway.”
Traffic began to pick up its pace.
They were doing fifty miles per hour and accelerating as they passed the twisted mass of steel that had been a car. A sheet or blanket covered a body that lay on the grass on the side of the road. Yellow lights flashed on the roof of a tow truck that was slowly bumping along, making its way against traffic by driving on the shoulder. A state trooper was frantically waving an arm in a circular motion, as if getting ready to pitch a ball underhand, urging drivers to keep up their speed. Quinn could hear a siren in the distance, probably an ambulance.
“No rush on the ambulance,” Pearl muttered, craning her neck and staring at the body as they passed.
Quinn made no comment, and she said nothing more. Each knew the other considered the accident scene a bad omen.
Concealed behind the forsythia bush at the bedroom window, Link held his breath as he watched Westerley climb nude out of his, Link’s, bed. Beside him lay Beth, Link’s wife. She was nude and on her side, one knee slightly drawn up, her hip rounded and smooth, in a pose Link had seen in dozens of old paintings. She reached out and ran a hand languidly along Westerley’s back as he straightened up.
Link clenched his teeth until his jaws hurt.
It was the way Westerley moved that got to Link-casually and comfortably, as he usually moved, with a wellmuscled animal’s grace and power. As if he was familiar with his surroundings, as if this was his home, his bed, his wife. Pretending might make it so, if you wore a badge.
Mindful to be silent, Link backed slowly away from the window. As he did so, dark clouds scudded across the moon, changing the shapes of still objects and seeming to set them into motion. When Link was in shadow, he moved farther away from the house, toward the garage.
Inside the garage was his steel gun locker with its combination lock.
Inside the locker was his Remington twelve-gauge shotgun.
83
Westerley managed to slide one leg into his uniform pants, but the other got tangled in material halfway in. He hopped around for a while on one bare foot.
By the time he’d gotten his other leg through and was buttoning and zipping up his pants, Beth had her nightgown on and was frantically trying to arrange the sheets and fluff his pillow so it would appear that she’d been in bed alone.
Finished with the bed, she went to the window and pulled the shade back slightly with one finger so she could peek outside.
“We’ll hear them drive up,” Westerley said, trying to reassure both of them.
“You’ve gotta be outta here before then, Wayne.” Beth didn’t sound reassured.
“Don’t I know it.” He plopped his Smokey hat on his head, knowing he looked ridiculous standing there shirtless and barefoot, but he didn’t want t
o forget the hat. He could leave his shirt unbuttoned, work his feet into his boots without socks. The important thing was to back the SUV out from behind the house and down the driveway before the state police showed up. He’d have to do a hell of lot of explaining otherwise.
Beth, still at the window, said, “Holy shit, Wayne!”
Westerley stood frozen with his shirt in his hand. “What?”
“Link’s out there! And he’s got a gun. Gotta be a shotgun. He keeps one locked up in the garage.”
“He’s not due till tomorrow night.”
“Whenever he’s due, he’s here!” She stared at Westerley with huge eyes. “Remember he’s the Skinner, Wayne. He’s a killer!”
What Westerley remembered was that he’d left his nine-millimeter handgun in its holster hanging by its belt over the back of a kitchen chair. He broke for the kitchen but took only two steps before tripping over his boots and sprawling on the floor.
He started to get up and dropped back down hard when pain jolted like electricity through his right elbow where he’d bumped it on the floor.
Funny bone. I get the message.
I’ll be shooting left-handed!
He tried to stand up again and had made it about halfway when he heard the brass chain lock on the front door clatter. The chain rattled louder, Link testing the door.
Westerley barely made it out of the bedroom, and thought for a second he might make it to the kitchen and his gun, and maybe even out the back door. He would be armed then, out in the night, where he could formulate some sort of plan.
That at least might draw Link outside. Westerley wasn’t going to leave Beth here alone with Link and his shotgun.
But the sheriff didn’t have the time he thought he had. Link kicked the door open and stepped inside with the shotgun, looking at Westerley with eyes that might as well have been corneal transplants from a shark.
Quinn braked the Taurus and made a sharp right into the driveway. He almost hit the car parked off to the side, half on the grass.