by John Lutz
Quinn moved away from the doorway, closer to them. Avis watched him, his hooded dark eyes unblinking, the gun steady against Pearl’s ear.
“That’d be near enough,” Avis said.
Quinn stopped and stood still.
“He’s gonna shoot you,” Pearl said. “Then me.”
“Or you and then him,” Avis said.
“What are your demands?” Quinn asked. But he knew Avis didn’t have demands. Pearl had it right. Avis simply wanted Quinn and Pearl, in whatever order, to leave this world before he did. Even if Avis by some wild chance was able to kill Quinn and make his escape, he’d still shoot Pearl.
Quinn tried to figure what he had to work with. Avis was skilled at using Pearl’s body as a shield. He was crouched with his head behind and slightly to the side of Pearl’s so that he was peering over her left shoulder. Only his left eye and the left side of his forehead were exposed. Quinn hadn’t actually shown his revolver to Avis, but he was sure Avis knew it was there in Quinn’s right hand, alongside and slightly behind his right thigh where it couldn’t be seen. If Quinn’s right arm began to rise to point his weapon, the bloodbath would begin.
Then Quinn saw the one possibility Avis had left him. Quinn was more familiar than Avis with the old Springbok revolvers, which had been used probably exclusively by Avis’s son Martin and the Quest and Quarry clients. Most likely the ones at Avis’s farm were simply stored there. The revolver in Avis’s hand wasn’t cocked. The hammer was still forward and would have to be thumbed back before the gun would fire.
The amount of time it would take Avis’s thumb to cock the revolver and for Avis to squeeze the trigger was the amount of time Quinn had to act and make whatever he did work. Seconds.
And the slight exposure of Avis’s eye and tanned forehead was a difficult target, even in these close quarters.
Seconds.
Seconds that might save Pearl’s life or end it. That might be ticking away now in Avis’s head.
Quinn knew that if he did chance it and take the shot, he’d have to move first in order to have time.
He did move first. Instantly and decisively.
As his hand came up with the bulky old .38, Quinn saw Avis’s stubby thumb moving toward the Springbok’s hammer.
Seconds.
Quinn turned off every other part of his mind, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.
The room rocked with the deafening blast of gunfire.
One shot. Before either Avis or Pearl could react.
Quinn saw a red mist appear like a halo around Avis’s head, saw a fragment of skull and hair spin back and away. Avis’s arm fell away from Pearl. They both toppled backward.
Avis lay still on his back. Pearl rolled to the side and scrambled to her feet. She was trembling, and there were flecks of blood and what looked like gray brain matter on her left cheek.
Quinn had moved forward after the shot without realizing it. He and Pearl stared down at Avis’s motionless figure. A large piece of Avis’s skull was missing above his left eye. Without the vitality of life he looked diminutive and harmless.
Quinn and Pearl noticed at the same time how close it had been. Avis had managed to cock the pistol in the second before he’d died.
Instinctively, Quinn kicked the gun away from the dead hand, halfway across the room.
The bullet that had taken off part of Avis’s skull had also broken a window, allowing the breeze to enter through the shattered pane. A curtain blown in the wind momentarily created a shadow on the wall that looked like a huge feathered wing.
For the first time in her life, Pearl fainted.
82
Perhaps it had been the pain that made her lose consciousness. Or maybe Lavern had simply fallen asleep.
It was the pain that had awakened her. With each breath, the ribs on her left side seemed to catch fire. She was still holding on to the shotgun barrel, the butt of its wooden stock resting on the bedroom floor.
She had no idea how long she’d slept or been unconscious. From where she sat she couldn’t see the clock.
Hobbs was still snoring, but not loudly. The TV was still on beyond the foot of the bed, tuned to the news, still muted. Yellow closed-caption letters crawled past at the bottom of the screen while an impossibly beautiful blond anchorwoman mouthed each syllable with red, red lips.
Lavern looked beyond the TV, saw light edging the drawn shades, and knew it was morning. Early morning.
Hobbs suddenly snorted and coughed, then resumed snoring. He was sleeping more lightly now. He might wake up soon.
Something on TV caught Lavern’s attention. The closed-caption lettering indicated that the anchorwoman was talking about the Slicer being shot to death in some woman’s apartment. It had turned out that he wasn’t also the .25-Caliber Killer—but the man gunned down earlier by the police was his son, who’d procured the victims for his father. The son, who’d arranged urban ‘hunts,’ had apparently killed no one directly, but had seduced and prepared women for his father to murder and butcher.
Suddenly the screen was split, and another woman appeared, a lanky redhead. The blond anchorwoman was on the other half of the screen, interviewing her. They were discussing the reasons why the father-son team of killers acted as they had. Lavern would have turned up the sound so she could hear their voices, but she was afraid to risk waking Hobbs.
The redheaded woman, Helen something, was explaining the emotional trap the son had been in, and the societal, sometimes-ancient forces that had acted upon both father and son. Reasons and motivations stemmed from all of this. Motivations to kill. Excuses for killing.
None of it sounded like justification to Lavern.
Yet here she was with a shotgun beside her, waiting for her husband to wake up so she could kill him, so she could do to him what he would otherwise eventually do to her.
I have the courage to kill him, but not to leave him.
But did she really believe that? And wasn’t there more to it?
She understood for the first time that she might leave Hobbs and learn how to live without him, but if she killed him he’d be with her always.
Always.
She made sure the shotgun’s wooden stock was firmly planted on the floor, then used the gun as a cane to help her stand up from her chair.
Lavern took a few careful steps. It hurt, but she could walk.
She leaned the shotgun against the bed, where Hobbs would see it when he woke up and think about what might have happened.
Then she limped from the bedroom and went outside. Lavern was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, carrying yesterday’s pain, but right now she didn’t care.
It took her twenty minutes to hail a cab and tell the driver to take her to the Broken Wing Women’s Shelter.
83
Quinn would have smoked one of the Cuban cigars he’d recently bought from Iggy, his supplier, but he knew it wasn’t worth the disapproval and barrage of air-freshener bombs hissing their incense all over his apartment. As if it weren’t his apartment.
He stared at the ceiling and considered how things had worked out.
The case had become clearer in the light of further research, as they all did in the post-arrest phase. The evidence was being added to, reexamined, reclassified, and analyzed. There would of course be no trial, with Martin Hawk and his father both dead.
This one had what the pop psychologists called closure.
Fedderman had returned to Florida, where he thought he could live cheaper and there were a few places that served what tasted like New York deli food. He’d said he might take another fling at golf.
Renz’s reputation was at its high point. A mayoral bid didn’t seem so far fetched at the moment. He and Quinn talked frequently, still arranging and organizing material to develop the full story of what had happened, how this familial team of killer and enabler had evolved. But much of the story was lost in the past and the wooded hills around Black Lake, Missouri, and would never be known. From tim
e to time Renz would mention that someday he might write a book about the case. Being a published author was important in politics, locally or nationally.
Berty Wrenner, as well as most of the surviving Quest and Quarry clients, had been tried and convicted, and the rash of modern-day duels in the city had soon abated.
Quinn’s reverie suddenly ended with the grating ring of the intercom. He glanced at his watch and climbed out of bed.
Pearl identified herself, and he buzzed her in, then unlocked the apartment door and returned to the bedroom to pull on some pants.
He was sitting on the bed working socks on his feet when Pearl walked into the room. She was wearing jeans, black boots, and a black leather jacket. She had a folded Post tucked under one arm.
She said, “You’re running late, Quinn.”
“I took a shower last night,” he said. “I’ll get dressed, and we can get right outta here.” He’d promised Pearl he’d go with her to visit her mother at the Sunset Assisted Living home in New Jersey. She had to appear there at least every month or so to keep the staff on their toes. She felt it was her duty. She hated to go alone. Quinn understood why, but on another level he kind of liked Pearl’s mother.
Pearl sniffed the air. “You been smoking, Quinn?”
“Not in months,” he lied.
“Smells like smoke.”
“It lingers.” He nodded toward the folded newspaper as he struggled to put on his shoes. “Anything going on?”
“Nothing unusual. A guy on the Lower East Side killed himself with a shotgun outside a women’s shelter. Put the barrel in his mouth and used a bent wire hanger to push the trigger. Made a big mess in the street.”
“You’re right,” Quinn said. “Nothing unusual.”
He went into the bathroom and peed, washed his hands, used deodorant, splashed cold water on his face, then combed his hair. It stuck up kind of funny on one side, but what the hell. He went back to the bedroom and found a clean shirt. Added a conservative blue tie. Pearl’s mother would like that.
Within a few minutes they were in the Lincoln and on their way, driving through a light snow that the weather forecasters swore wouldn’t amount to any measurable accumulation.
“We can stop at that place across the bridge and get some doughnuts and coffee,” Pearl said.
Quinn nodded, concentrating on his driving and wondering if he should use the wipers. “We can take some to your mother.”
“Whatever,” Pearl said.
The sky seemed a darker gray, and the swirling snowfall thickened. There was no doubt now about using the wipers. Quinn switched them on, and they settled into their metronomic thumpa…thumpa…thumpa, spanning most of the wide windshield. The sound was conducive to thought.
As he did from time to time, Quinn wondered what Zoe Manders was doing these days.
Not that he cared a great deal.
After what had happened with Martin Hawk, Quinn realized that Zoe had been prepared to let him die, while Pearl had saved his life. After all the soul searching and mental machinations, it had come down to that simple truth. It meant something.
So Quinn had left Zoe and resolved to rekindle his relationship with Pearl.
Pearl knew exactly what was going on and why, and she didn’t allow much reason for hope.
But some.
The big car sped on through the snow-roiled cold air, toward an uncertain future. Quinn turned on the headlights so he could see the road ahead more clearly, but they didn’t do much good.
Don’t miss John Lutz’s chilling next thriller…
Coming from Pinnacle in Fall 2010!
MISTER X
URGE TO KILL
NIGHT KILLS
IN FOR THE KILL
DARKER THAN NIGHT
JOHN LUTZ
PINNACLE BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MISTER X
URGE TO KILL
NIGHT KILLS
IN FOR THE KILL
DARKER THAN NIGHT
Highest Praise for
John Lutz
“John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”
—Harlan Coben
“Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster of a tale.”
—Jeffery Deaver
“John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”
—Ridley Pearson
“John Lutz is a major talent.”
—John Lescroart
“I’ve been a fan for years.”
—T. Jefferson Parker
“John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”
—Tony Hillerman
“Lutz ranks with such vintage masters of big-city murder as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Lutz is among the best.”
—San Diego Union
“Lutz knows how to seize and hold the reader’s imagination.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar and two Shamuses.”
—Publishers Weekly
Chill of Night
“Since Lutz can deliver a hard-boiled P.I. novel or a bloody thriller with equal ease, it’s not a surprise to find him applying his skills to a police procedural in Chill of Night. But the ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz is in rare form.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Lutz keeps the suspense high, populating his story with a collection of unique characters who resonate with the reader, making this one an ideal beach read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A dazzling tour de force…compelling, absorbing.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A great read! Lutz kept me in suspense right up to the end.”
—Midwest Book Review
Night Kills
“Lutz’s skill will keep you glued to this thick thriller.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Superb suspense…the kind of book that makes you check to see if all the doors and windows are locked.”
—Affaire de Coeur
In for the Kill
“Brilliant…a very scary and suspenseful read.”
—Booklist
“Shamus and Edgar award–winner Lutz gives us further proof of his enormous talent…an enthralling page-turner.”
—Publishers Weekly
Fear the Night
“A a tense, fast-moving novel, a plot-driven page-turner of the first order…a great read!”
—Book Page
“A twisted cat-and-mouse game…a fast-moving crime thriller…Lutz skillfully brings to life the sniper’s various victims.”
—Publishers Weekly
Darker Than Night
“Readers will believe that they just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl after reading this action-packed police procedural.”
—The Midwest Book Review
Night Victims
“John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror…. He propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.”
—Sun-Sentinel
The Night Watcher
“Compelling…a gritty psychological thriller…Lutz draws the reader deep into the killer’s troubled psyche.”
—Publishers Weekly
“John Lutz is the new Lawrence Sanders. The Night Watcher has enough twists to turn you into a raging paranoid by page thirty. I loved it.”
—Ed Gorman, Mystery Scene
ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ
*Urge to Kill
*Night Kills
*In for the Kill
Chill of Night
Fear the Night
*Darker Than Night
Night Victims
The Night Watcher
The Night Caller
Final Seconds (with David August)
The Ex
Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and
Pinnacle Books
MISTER X
JOHN LUTZ
PINNACLE BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
For Don Mackey
and Vernon Shults
Contents
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part II
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39