by Thomas Perry
Varney had a sudden, unexpected feeling of joy. He had just been through the worst period of his life. All this time, he had been upset about it, but had been quietly determined to wait it out and endure until it was over. He had suffered the humiliation of repeated failure, and the shame of having to be dependent on Tracy and her sons, and the pain of the bullet piercing his forearm. He’d had to maintain his discipline, burn out of himself all weakness and hold to his clarity of purpose while it had all happened. Finally, he’d had to make Mae into a human sacrifice, so there would be no barrier, no human connection to put a limit to his rage.
He had gone from place to place, finding the people who must have had a part in his betrayal, and obliterating them. It had taken him a few days, but now he knew. His rage had made him harder and cleaner, and now the rage was beginning to change into exultation. His period of trial was over: he had won. He wasn’t fighting now; he was just collecting the last of the enemies, bagging them like game. His period of misery and agony had been a test. If he had been weak and undisciplined, he would have drifted lower and lower until he died. But he had used every day of those hard, horrible months working to make himself better and stronger. He felt he was approaching a kind of perfection tonight, not a mere adventurer anymore, but a perfect warrior, tempered and purified.
He stepped around the building after Millikan. This side was even darker, but he noticed the steel rungs of a ladder built into the side of the brick wall for maintenance men to reach the roof—probably to fix the air-conditioning and clean the vents. That was where he would wait for Prescott after he got Millikan. Once again, he marveled at the change in the current of the universe. For months, nothing had gone right. Now, he reached out a hand, and the things he needed simply came to him, like gifts.
He studied Millikan’s form, walking up the aisle of parked cars, the right arm bent, the hand near the lapel of his open coat so he could reach in and pull out the gun. Varney could not allow that gun to come out and make noise. He screwed the silencer on the barrel of his own pistol, stopped walking, and aimed. The bullet would pass through Millikan’s temple, he decided. That would keep some half-conscious nerve impulse from reaching the hand and discharging the gun.
“Last chance, Slick.”
Varney held the gun at arm’s length, but he knew he could not fire. Prescott had to be first. Where had he come from? The roof, of course. Prescott had simply gotten there first. Varney lowered the pistol a few degrees slowly, listening for the sound of Prescott’s feet on the gravel, stepping up behind him to take it. “Last chance?”
“Live or die,” said Prescott. “You pick.”
Varney knew then that Prescott was not going to step forward to take the gun. He ducked, slapped the ground, dove toward the nearest car, and rolled behind it. As he came up beyond the car, his arm already extended over the hood to fire, Prescott’s bullet passed through his forehead.
Hours later, there was a moment when the police had finished with Prescott for a time. He took a breath and looked at the crowd of onlookers beyond the barriers. A familiar shape turned and began walking away, but he had already begun to move, and in twenty steps he had caught her. “Jeanie.”
She turned and looked at him, but she kept walking. “I’m glad you got that man, and he didn’t get you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Will you stop and talk to me?”
She stopped, her arms folded across her chest.
He said, “My name is Roy Prescott.”
She shook her head. “Whoever that is, it’s not somebody I want to know. My time with Bob Greene is over, and that’s okay. I was right that I wouldn’t be sorry it happened. Good luck.”
She turned away and began to walk, but he stayed close to her. “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“What are you going to do?”
She sighed. “What I had always planned to do. If Hobart is dead, then Nolan’s is finished a year or so earlier than I thought. I’m just skipping ahead, that’s all.”
Prescott said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you or mess up your plans. Look, this place is closing because of me. I would like—”
“Don’t give me anything else,” she said. “I don’t need it. Just go away now, so it can be over.”
EPILOGUE
Only about half the seats on the late-night flight to Los Angeles had been sold. Prescott was resting, lying across the seats in row 16 with his eyes closed, so Daniel Millikan had moved to sit alone in row 28. He had turned off the overhead lights as the plane climbed, so he was in the dark beside the plane’s small window, staring down at the rows of tiny yellow lights that formed the traces of streets of one of the towns just west of St. Louis.
He had known that this time would come. It would be over, and he would be alone at night. There was not silence, but the unchanging drone of the airplane’s engines enforced his solitude, keeping him from hearing any sound that was human. It had been months since he had answered the telephone and been surprised by the voice of Robert Cushner. He had been startled, but that could not now, or ever, serve as an excuse. He had decided to give the old man the name and telephone number of Roy Prescott.
How many since then? How many dead? Two police officers and two security guards in L.A., the maid and the clerk at the motel, the ex-husband of Donna Halsey, that woman in Cincinnati and her three sons, the owner of the strip club back there in St. Louis. What was that? Twelve? And possibly more. Prescott had said there was a woman hostage in Minnesota, and this killer would not have let her go. Who else? Of course: the killer himself. He came to Millikan as an afterthought. It was because the decision to call Prescott had included in it the death of the killer. To someone else, Millikan could have protested that it had not been the only possible outcome. But he did not now. He had known it was the best one he could hope for, the ending he had embraced in his imagination at the beginning. That was what you were asking for when you called Roy Prescott. He felt an urge to pray, to seek forgiveness for what he had done. He began silently with “Dear God,” but his mind stalled. The contrition was only a reflex, not real this time. It was only a grasp for certainty, just a reaction to his discomfort at not being able to know he had done the right thing. He stopped, closed down the channel of communication: “Amen,” he whispered. Nobody gets out of this life without doubt.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THOMAS PERRY won an Edgar for The Butcher’s Boy, and Metzger’s Dog was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Vanishing Act was chosen as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. Perry’s other works include The Face-Changers, Shadow Woman, Dance for the Dead, and Death Benefits. He lives in Southern California with his wife and their two daughters.
ALSO BY THOMAS PERRY
The Butcher’s Boy
Metzger’s Dog
Big Fish
Island
Sleeping Dogs
Vanishing Act
Dance for the Dead
Shadow Woman
The Face-Changers
Blood Money
Death Benefits
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by Thomas Perry
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perry, Thomas.
Pursuit / Thomas Perry.
p. cm.
1. Ex–police officers—Fiction. 2. Serial murders—Fiction. 3. Mass murders—Fiction. 4. Murderers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.E718 P87 2002
813¢.54—dc21 2001040365
v3.0