Deadly Pursuit

by Michael Prescott

  She dialed the wattage higher, tried the channel selector again.

  No luck.

  She was out of options. There was nothing else she knew how to do.

  “Come on,” she whispered, furious at the radio for failing her when she needed it. “Damn you”—she banged her fist against the side of the transmitter—“come on!”

  Behind her, soft laughter.

  She whirled in her seat, and there was Jack, leaning against the wall just inside the doorway, chuckling mirthlessly. And a yard behind him—who else but his buddy, his ally, Steve, stiff and shell-shocked, his face unreadable.

  Slowly Kirstie set down the microphone.

  “What did you do to it?” she asked Jack, her voice dulled by a sudden crushing onset of despair.

  “A little minor sabotage.” His fixed smile made his face a comic mask. “Simple, actually. I lifted off the cover of the transmitter and found the VFO. Variable frequency oscillator, I mean. This one was a Colpitts circuit, wired to the tuning knob. I tore it apart. Just reached in with my fist and ripped out the circuitry. Not the most sophisticated way to attack the problem, but it worked. You can still pick up signals—I didn’t mess with the receiver—but as for transmitting, forget it.”

  “I see.”

  “Bottom line: you’re cut off from the outside world, Mrs. Gardner.”

  “I see,” she said again.

  “Where did you learn about radios?” Steve asked.

  Jack answered without turning. “In prison. Shop class.”

  Kirstie wasn’t listening anymore. She heard only the dull throb of the twin generators outside, the sound pulsing through the thin exterior wall like an echo of her own heartbeat.

  Her gaze slid away from Jack, briefly exploring the room.

  No back door. A window in the side wall, but it was sealed shut by dampness.

  The doorway to the kitchen was the only usable exit, then.

  She took a breath, rose from the chair. “Well, it looks like I’ll have to talk to the police in person.”

  Jack went on smiling. “Now, how do you plan to do that?”

  “I’ll take the motorboat.”

  “No chance.”

  “I’m going.”

  She moved toward him. He stepped up fast and slammed her backward with a sudden, vicious shove. The floor skidded out from under her, and she collapsed into the chair.

  “Hey,” Steve snapped. “Watch it.”

  “I didn’t hurt her, Stevie. Now give me the pills.” Steve hesitated. “Give them to me.”

  Kirstie could see Steve didn’t want to. And she could see that he would.

  Slowly he handed them over.

  Jack rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned close to her, the six white capsules in his palm filling her world. “Swallow these.”

  Lips sealed, she shook her head.

  “They won’t kill you. Put you to sleep for a while, that’s all.” He pressed his hand to her mouth. “Go on.”

  She averted her face. Jack grabbed her by the chin, made her look at him.

  “Open your damn mouth.”

  She looked past Jack and saw Steve watching.

  “I said, open your mouth.”

  Desperately she gazed into her husband’s eyes, pleading voicelessly for help. She saw anguish in his face, but no resolve.

  Jack’s fingers crept up under her lips like burrowing beetles and peeled them back from her teeth.

  “You’re very stubborn, Kirsten Gardner,” he breathed. “It’s an unattractive trait in a woman.”

  If he tried to pry her jaws apart, she would bite off his fingers like a snapping turtle.

  He seemed to guess her intention. “You won’t cooperate?” He let go of her mouth and studied her coldly. “Well, maybe I can persuade you.”

  The first stinging slap caught her on the left side of her face. A backhanded slap: she felt the crack of his knuckles on her cheek.

  “Don’t.” Steve stepped forward, lifting the gun.

  Jack didn’t even look at him. “Shut up, Stevie. This is business, not pleasure.”

  Past involuntary tears of pain, Kirstie saw Steve’s face, still tormented, still irresolute.

  “Will you take the pills?” Jack hissed.

  She glared at him, projecting all the wordless defiance she could summon.

  His right arm blurred. A second slap, harder than the first, rocked her sideways. She sagged, gasping, and Jack took advantage of her momentary weakness to force one of the capsules into her mouth.

  Somewhere in the background, a clatter of footsteps and an angry woof. Anastasia had heard the slaps. She scampered into the room, casting bewildered looks at her master and mistress and her Uncle Jack.

  Jack ignored the dog. “Swallow it,” he ordered Kirstie. “Come on. Swallow it!”

  Kirstie rallied her strength and spat the pill in his face.

  “Shit.” Jack raised his hand to strike again. Ana snarled.

  “Cut it out, Jack.” It was Steve who’d spoken, his voice abruptly firm and calm. “Right now.”

  Jack hesitated as if gauging Steve’s seriousness, then drew back with a slow exhalation of breath. A meaningless smile twitched like a tic at the corner of his mouth.

  “Sure. No problem.” He pocketed the five remaining pills and circled behind the chair. “She doesn’t have to take the damn things anyway.” Kirstie watched him unhook the rubber-insulated wire linking receiver and transmitter. “I’ll just skip ahead to part two of the procedure. If that’s okay with you ... buddy.”

  Kirstie looked at her husband. He swallowed.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “Maybe we shouldn’t. I mean ... maybe it’s not too late to work something out, some other plan ...”

  “It is too late.” Jack flicked the wire in his hand. “You’re in deep now, Steve-o. You’re committed.”

  The wire traced another arc, a slow-motion whip.

  Kirstie stared at it, then at Steve, then at the wire again. Her mind seemed frozen; she couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine what Jack was about to do.

  “If she’d taken the pills without realizing,” Steve said, “it might have been different. She would have just gone to sleep. This way ...”

  “This way is harder.” Jack nodded, and the wire swished again, slapping his open palm. “So? I’ve done hard things in my time. Now it’s your turn. Unless you can’t handle it. Unless you’re too weak.”

  Kirstie spoke up. “Don’t let him manipulate you—”

  “Shut your damn mouth.” The absence of emotion in Jack’s voice made the command somehow more dangerous. “How about it, Stevie? You know what’s necessary. Either let me go ahead, or start measuring yourself for prison blues. Your call.”

  Steve stared at Kirstie for a long moment, then slowly closed his eyes.

  “Do it,” he said thickly.

  Jack seized her two arms, twisted them roughly behind her back. Agony screamed in her elbows and shoulders. She let out a small yelp of surprise and pain, and Anastasia barked twice.

  “Sorry, Mrs. G.” The tender skin of her wrists burned as he wound the wire around them. “But I’m afraid this is for your own good.”

  Panic clamped down on her. Bound, she would be helpless, more helpless than she’d ever been in her life. She couldn’t fight back, couldn’t run, couldn’t protect herself in any way.

  “Let go of me!” It was her own voice, pitched to a keening frenzy. “Let go!”

  She kicked her legs wildly. The chair creaked, rocking under her. Anastasia’s whine escalated to a ululant howl.

  “Sit still, goddammit.” Jack knotted the wire in place. “You’re not helping yourself.”

  With the microphone cord he lashed her wrists to the chair’s wooden back rail. Kirstie tugged desperately, needles of fire shooting through her shoulders, lancing her neck.

  Steve still had not opened his eyes. His face was a tight mask.

  Anastasia howled louder. She crouched
on her haunches in a corner, head lifted, shrilling crazily like a wolf baying at the moon.

  “Shut her up,” Jack snapped.

  Steve blinked, unwillingly dragged back into the moment. He glanced down at the dog and seemed to notice her presence in the room for the first time.

  “Ana. Be quiet, girl.” The order, empty of force, fell listlessly from his mouth. There was no expression on his face. “Hey, quiet now. Quiet.”

  The borzoi didn’t even hear him. She lifted her head and pitched another wild, piercing lament.

  And then Jack was moving toward her, a gleam of silver in his hand.

  The knife.

  A flick of his thumbnail, and a wicked blade popped up.

  He seized Anastasia by the ears, jerked her head back—one stroke of his wrist—the blade sliced her throat in a wide arc, choking off her next cry in a frothy gurgle of blood.

  “No!” Kirstie was shrieking now, all dignity lost, shrieking not in fear but in blind fury and grief. “No, no, no, no!”

  Steve stared as if hypnotized, eyes glassy, as Ana’s elegant, angular snout whipsawed wildly, her white coat blushing scarlet, the floor under her feet awash in a sudden lake of blood.

  Kirstie writhed helplessly in the chair, straining at the cords and screaming, screaming, screaming.

  Jack pointed the red knife at her. “Hush. Or you’re next.”

  Her screams trailed off into sobs and whimpers. She blinked to clear her vision, then looked at the two men who were her captors: Jack, grinning, manic, delirious with the ecstasy of the kill; and her husband, dazed, almost comatose, staring dumbstruck at the bloody harlequin still quivering on the floor.

  “Steve”—her words were forced out between shuddering catch-and-gasp sobs—“you can’t let him go on doing this. He’s crazy. He’s insane.”

  Steve’s lips moved. He mouthed one word: Insane. He showed no other response.

  Jack laughed. “No, I’m not.” He crossed to the far side of the room. “I’m a realist, that’s all. I’ll do what’s necessary to ensure my own survival.”

  The dripping blade hacked through the antenna feed line. He jerked the other end out of the radio.

  “And your hubby’s no different. Little Stevie may lack my dramatic flourish”—he knelt and looped the antenna wire around Kirstie’s ankles, lashing them together, then secured her legs to the chair—“but he’s equally committed to staying alive. At any cost.”

  That statement seemed to reach Steve at last. To reach him even though Ana’s death had not. Slowly he shook his head in feeble protest.

  “Not ... any cost.” He coughed, trying to clear his voice of its unnatural rasp, and focused his gaze on Kirstie. “I told him I wouldn’t allow you to be harmed. And I won’t. I swear.”

  She refused to permit him to get away with that. “I’ve been harmed already. In more ways than one.”

  He flinched as if struck. “I’m ... sorry.”

  The words were so small, so obviously inadequate, that no reply was necessary.

  Jack checked all the knots again, then nodded. “You’re not going anywhere. Have a nice night, Mrs. Gardner. Hope you don’t mind the smell of blood.”

  He walked out of the room, chuckling. Steve lingered a moment, seemed to consider saying something more, then turned and departed in silence.

  Kirstie was left alone in the sudden stillness, her only companions a ruined radio and, on the floor a yard from her feet, the motionless body of Anastasia, sprawled in a slowly widening red stain.

  30

  No-see-um’s Bar & Grill was perched like a ramshackle vulture on a wharf overlooking Tea Table Key Channel, southwest of Upper Matecumbe Key. Hot rods and pickup trucks cluttered the parking lot, their fenders nuzzling glittery rivulets of beer-bottle shards. A bored Dalmatian, leashed to a post outside the bar, scratched itself monotonously as Lovejoy and Moore walked past.

  “No-see-um’s.” Moore studied the buzzing neon sign, gaudily pink against the ink-black sky. “What could that mean?”

  “I believe it’s the name of a local pest. The no-see-um. Similar to a gnat, only somewhat smaller.” Lovejoy swatted something invisible that had darted too near his face. “In all probability, I just killed one.”

  The bar was dimly lit, smoky, loud with conversation and country music. Two big men with pliers on their belts played pool in a corner of the room. Fishermen, probably, who wore the pliers to pry the fishhooks from their catches.

  Lovejoy found himself liking No-see-um’s instantly. It lacked the slick, touristy feel of the tiki-bars and hotel restaurants in the area. This was a real place.

  The aroma of cooked fish reached him from the kitchen. His stomach gurgled.

  He glanced at his partner. “When was the last time we ate?”

  “This morning. Breakfast on the plane.”

  “Let’s grab dinner here.”

  They took a table with a view of the water, placed orders with a waitress named Dorothy, and gave her a look at Jack Dance’s mug shot. She hadn’t seen him.

  While waiting for the food, Moore used the pay phone to check in with the sheriff’s station, and Lovejoy showed Jack’s picture to the bartender and assorted patrons. The two pool players were happy to interrupt their game for a chat with a fellow from the FBI.

  “What’s this bird done?” the nearest man asked, chalking his cue tip.

  “We believe he’s guilty of multiple homicide.”

  “Damn straight,” his friend said. “I saw it on the news. Mister Twister. He here?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  A rough elbow nudged him. “Come on, you can tell Bud and me.”

  “What I mean is, there’s simply no way, at present, to ascertain his whereabouts.”

  “Aw, shoot. You must have some reason to be poking around in these parts.”

  “The search isn’t confined to this vicinity. Law enforcement officers are engaged in an extensive manhunt operation throughout the United States.”

  “Well”—the first man, Bud, lined up a shot—“if we eyeball him, we’ll give a holler.”

  “Call the sheriff’s department or the state police.”

  “Will do.” A flick of the cue, and Bud banked the six-ball off the cushion, into a corner pocket.

  Lovejoy found Moore in the hallway near the phone, looking at a collection of salvaged junk from local shipwrecks. A gold coin, a musket, a large pitted sphere identified as a cannonball.

  “New Jersey faxed us that police report,” she said. “Otherwise, nothing new.”

  “No one here has seen Jack.”

  “Any bars or restaurants left that we haven’t checked?”

  “No. And no more motels, either.” Lovejoy pressed his fingertips against the glass surface of the display case. “Maybe we should have gone to Fort Myers, after all.”

  “Too late now.”

  He nodded, studying his reflection in the glass. “Too late.”

  Shortly after they returned to their table, dinner arrived. Moore had ordered the grilled shrimp, Lovejoy the fried fish basket. The portions were huge.

  “I can’t eat all this,” Moore said, astonished.

  “Certainly you can. Consider it a last meal for the condemned.”

  “What did you get, anyway?”

  He hoisted a forkful. “Dolphin.”

  “You’re eating Flipper?”

  “Dolphin fish.”

  He sampled it, then nodded. Delicious.

  Lovejoy thought he could get to like the Keys. Tasty meals, fiery sunsets, no allergens to trigger sinusitis.

  Perhaps I’ll relocate here after I quit the Bureau, he thought, then tried to decide whether or not he was being funny. He couldn’t tell.

  He and Moore passed up Dorothy’s offer of key lime pie for dessert. Two new patrons had entered the bar separately in the last twenty minutes. To be thorough, Moore showed them Jack’s mug shot while Lovejoy paid the tab.

  A woman with bleached-blond hair and a
n armadillo purse squinted at the photo for a long moment, then turned to Moore and quipped, “Looks like my ex.” A burst of raspy smoker’s laughter followed.

  The other new customer was a large, leathery man in his sixties, cutting into a turtle steak at the far end of the bar. He shook his head after a silent perusal of the mug shot. “Afraid not. Who is he?”

  “Suspect in a homicide case.”

  “I might have guessed. Lord, what’s this world coming to?”

  Moore found him familiar. She searched her memory, then found the visual match she was seeking. Mr. Brundle. Of course. Wonderful old Mr. Brundle, who had managed the grocery store in her Oakland neighborhood for decades, giving away candy bars and comic books to the kids, until one summer night an angel-dusted punk had put three jacketed hollowpoints in his head.

  Like Mr. Brundle, this man was big and mellow and tough, with the same salt-and-pepper hair, the same slightly paunchy, lived-in body, the same wise, knowing eyes.

  He noticed that she was staring at him. Taking no offense, he extended his hand. “Chester Pice.”

  “Tamara Moore, FBL”

  His smile was slightly sad. “When I was your age, a black woman couldn’t sit in the front of a bus or eat at a lunch counter south of the Mason-Dixon. Now here you are—Miss Tamara Moore, a special agent of the FBI.”

  “Sometimes I almost wish I weren’t.”

  “Like tonight?”

  “Like tonight.”

  He traced his finger over the mug shot. “This fellow the reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Evil-looking man, all right. It’s the eyes that give his soul away. Shark’s eyes, flat and dead. What’s his name?”

  “Jack Dance.”

  Pice took another bite of turtle steak, then frowned. “Jack Dance. Funny.”

  “What?”

  “I could swear I’ve heard that name somewhere.”

  “He’s been in all the papers.”

  “I don’t read ’em.”

  “And all over the TV.”

  “Don’t own one. No radio, either, except for my communications gear.”

  “Then ... how?”

  “I can’t say.” He pondered the problem, then shrugged. “Conversation, maybe. Someone might’ve mentioned this news story to me. Sure. That must have been it.”