For an instant, Christy floundered, at a loss for a response. Without a body, she looked like a fool. Then she remembered—
"Where were you last night?"
"Was that when he was murdered?"
"No, that's when you kidnapped a man."
"Really? Let's see… I was eating dinner at Peter Luger's with a game producer from Konami." He looked at Dawn. "I told you about that, right?"
She nodded. "He was pitching our game concept."
He turned back to Christy. "Now, I wish I could show you the receipt from the restaurant, but I didn't pay for dinner. I can have the producer back up my presence."
"You do that."
"I will. Meanwhile, where am I keepin this person I supposedly kidnapped?"
"He escaped."
"Well then, he must have pressed charges against me. How come I ain't been arrested?"
"He won't press charges and you know it."
"I know no such thing. When this man reported the crime, did he at least say when it happened?" He grinned. "I mean, what's the point of havin an alibi if we don't know the time of the crime."
Christy knew then that she was beaten. He'd played her like the proverbial fiddle, coming on all calm and rational while making her look like a scatterbrained paranoid.
Just what Jack had said would happen.
He raised his eyebrows. "Don't tell me there's no police report of this crime either."
"You know damn well there isn't."
He spread his hands in a gesture of supplication. "Mrs. P, do you hear yourself? You've been accusin me of two terrible crimes that never happened."
Christy wanted to shout that they damn well did happen but knew that would make her look more unbalanced than she already did.
"Look," he said. "Because of my feelings for Dawn, and because you're her mother, I'm gonna forget this ever happened—"
"Don't you—"
"—because I know you're upset about the difference in our ages."
"She's still in high school, damn it!"
"I'm aware of that. And I know I'd be just as upset if positions was reversed. But she's a woman now, and we have feelins for each other that won't be denied. I hope that you'll eventually find it in your heart to accept our relationship and give up usin these outrageous accusations to try to break us up. It ain't gonna work." He hugged Dawn against him. "We're in this together for the long run." He turned her toward the door. "Come on, Dawn. Let's go."
As she stepped through the door Dawnie looked over her shoulder and said, "Really, Mom, that was totally pathetic."
Christy stood frozen, paralyzed. She wanted to run to the door and scream for Dawn to come back. But that wouldn't work.
She's right: I am pathetic.
The very thing Jack had warned her about had happened. That man had driven a wedge between her and Dawnie—and she'd provided the hammer. He'd been so convincing, made such a good case for his innocence, that she'd almost started to doubt his guilt herself.
His guilt…
A wave of dizziness swept over her and she dropped into a chair.
What proof did she have of his guilt? Nothing. Just Jack's opinions. What if he was conning her? Without police reports, who could say a crime had been committed. What if—?
Wait. What was she thinking? She had to trust someone, and the same instinct that warned her against that man told her she could trust Jack.
She hoped she was right about him, and prayed he was having some luck finding hard evidence against this son of a bitch.
7
"Sounds to me like you shouldn't be expecting to ask him any follow-up questions," Abe said after Jack finished telling him about his Hank Thompson interview. "Not likely."
Holding a chip laden with green glop before his mouth, Abe said, "Looks awful, tastes wonderful," then made it disappear.
Jack had brought tortilla chips and a container of Gia's homemade gua-camole.
"I can't believe you've never had guacamole before."
"I was raised kosher. What do I know from Mexican food?"
"You haven't been kosher since the Roosevelt administration—Teddy's."
Abe sighed. "I should get out more already."
He dipped another chip, but on the way to his mouth some of the guacamole slipped off and landed on the cover of Rakshasa.
"Oy. Sorry."
Yesterday he'd dropped off the pair of Jake Fixx novels and asked Abe to give them a look while Jack concentrated on Kick.
"Did you get to read it?"
A stubby finger transferred the green dollop from the cover to his mouth.
"Skimmed is more like it. A novel maven I'm not. I prefer my fiction to pretend to be true."
"Like histories and biographies and newspapers?"
"Exactly. I need that pretense already. Take that away and my mind wanders."
"Did it stay on track enough to finish the book?"
"Barely."
"And?"
"As I said, I'm no maven of the novel, but for a Pulitzer Prize I don't think this P. Frank Winslow should be holding his breath."
"I don't care if he's any good. How close is he to what really happened?"
"Very. Too."
"Should I be creeped out?"
"Like a thousand hairy spiders crawling all over you."
"Swell." Jack shook off the sensation. "How the hell—?"
"The little details, they're different, but the big ones he's got: the ship, the big blue breeyes from India—maybe you should have been interviewing him instead of Thompson."
"Maybe I will." No, he definitely would. Had to. He could not let this go. But later. Now… "What do you remember about the Atlanta abortionist murders?"
Abe slapped a hand to his head. "Oy, the head spins from the change of subject. Whiplash I've got. Call a lawyer."
"Sorry. That was what I was about to ask you when you glopped on the book."
"Atlanta abortionist murders?" Abe drummed his fingers on the counter. "About twenty years ago, no?"
"Almost. It was all anyone was talking about for months."
"And this sudden interest comes whence?"
He told Abe about finding the Google search on Gerhard's computer.
"It's been bugging me, wondering if Gerhard had found a connection between Bethlehem and the killings."
"You did your own search, I assume?"
Jack nodded. "Yeah. 'Jerry Bethlehem' plus 'Atlanta abortionist murders' got no hits. Couldn't connect him to the Creighton Institute either."
"Well, if you say he's in his mid-thirties, he would have been a teenager back then."
A little gong sounded somewhere in Jack's brain. Teenager…
"It's coming back," Abe was saying. "Two abortionists in two centers in the same week. Two dead doctors, correct?"
"Correct." Jack saw where Abe was going. "You think one of the doctors might have been connected with Creighton?"
Abe jerked a thumb at his computer. "One way to find out." He wiped his hands on his shirt, leaving green streaks. "You remember their names?"
"No way. Too long ago. You'll have to pull up an article."
"Such a help you are."
Abe attacked the keyboard and after some vigorous tapping and clicking, he pulled out a pen and scribbled on a pad.
"Horace Golden and Elmer Dalton. Let's see if either one of those ever worked at Creighton." After more tapping Abe shook his head. "No connection—at least online."
"What about the killer? What was his name?"
Abe said, "I just saw it: Jeremy Bolton."
As Abe began to type, a connection hit Jack with the force of a blow.
"Oh, shit!"
"What?"
"Jeremy Bolton… Jerry Bethlehem: J-B… J-B. It can't possibly be, can it?"
"Let's find out."
Jack already knew the answer. Because he recalled now that the biggest shocker of the story, what had kept it in the news for months, was the discovery that the killer turned out to be a teenager,
an eighteen-year-old. Jack remembered because he had been about the same age. He'd wondered what it took to kill someone in cold blood.
He no longer wondered.
Abe slapped a hand on his counter. "It says here Jeremy Bolton is serving two consecutive life sentences at the Creighton Institute." He frowned. "How did he go from an Atlanta courthouse to a New York funny farm?"
"Probably some federal civil rights charges got filed somewhere along the way. What's he look like? Any photos?"
Abe clicked around, then turned the monitor toward Jack.
"This is all I can find."
Jack saw an old black-and-white newspaper photo of a pimply, baby-faced kid facing the camera but staring past it. He looked nothing like Jerry Bethlehem.
But that didn't mean a thing. Jack figured if he had a beard himself now, no one would be able to look at him and recognize the kid in his high school yearbook. Be pretty hard even without a beard.
"It can't be him," Abe said. "Two consecutive life sentences already. A thirty-inch waist I'll have before he's free."
"Maybe he escaped."
"We would have heard. News like that would be all over."
Jack grabbed the mouse and clicked through a couple of the hits from Abe's search. As he read the articles it all started coming back.
Eighteen-year-old Jeremy Bolton had had nothing in his background to indicate the slightest interest in fundamentalist religion—or religion of any sort, for that matter—and no one found a connection to a single anti-abortion group. But the most bizarre aspect had been his refusal to talk—to anyone about anything. He wouldn't even speak to the attorney the court assigned him. Not a word in his own defense.
His attorney tried to go the insanity route but that didn't fly because up until the murders he'd had a reputation as a loquacious charmer.
"Check it out: the Creighton connection, the initials, the fact that Jeremy Bolton would be in his mid-thirties now… just like Jerry Bethlehem. It's too good a fit."
Abe was shaking his head. "It's no kind of fit. How can they be the same? We'd have heard of an escape. And he can't be on parole—such an uproar that would have caused from the pro-abortion crowd already. So how can he be dating this Forest Hills maidelV
"I don't know. But I'll bet it has something to do with Levy not wanting to report his abduction." He pounded the table. "If I had a connection in the PD I could run Bethlehem's fingerprints and see if they match Bolton's."
"And you'd get these fingerprints where?"
"Easy. Christy says he eats at a certain diner a lot. I just snag a glass or coffee cup from his table after he leaves." He shook his head. "I bet Jake Fixx would have no problem IDing him."
"Being an ex—Navy SEAL who used to work for the CTA, none at all. But a shlub like you…"
"… has got to do it the hard way. Which means a more pointed conversation with a certain Doctor Levy."
8
Dawn sprawled naked on the bed beneath Jerry, panting in the afterglow of her fifth and final orgasm, the biggest and maddest of this bout of lovemaking.
God, sex was great. How had she gone without it for so long? Not that she'd been like a total virgin when she'd met Jerry, but pretty damn close. One drunken, clumsy, fumbling, all-too-brief encounter in the back of a minivan last year hardly made her experienced. Pretty much she'd done it just to do it. Hadn't even liked the guy all that much. Terry had been okay—at least less of a jerk than most of the guys in her school—but so not what she was looking for in a steady. She realized now she'd been totally clueless about what she was looking for until she'd met Jerry.
She watched him as he levered himself up and rolled away. She totally loved every part of his long lean body, especially his beard when it rubbed against her cheek, and her nipples, and the insides of her thighs. But she loved most of all the part that was slipping out of her now.
She almost laughed. God, I've become such a slut. I should get an I luv COCK bumper sticker.
As he wiped himself off she felt a flash of concern. They never used protection. She knew she was clean, but what about Jerry? He'd had a lot more years to pick up an STD or two. He swore he was clean, and she believed he believed that, but he might be mistaken. So far, so good. And as always, the flash of concern was just that: a flash.
And as for pregnancy, no worry. He'd told her he'd been "fixed"—a vasec-tomy ten years ago when he decided he didn't like this world enough to bring a child into it.
She totally agreed with that. Have a child and watch him or her grow up into dorks like she'd gone to school with? No way.
And somehow that made her think of Mom, and like how she'd always been working to make her a better person. Yeah, Mom. Charging her every time she used "like" or "totally." How eorny was that?
Like totally—totally-totally-totally.
There. That would have cost $2.50.
Mom loved her—Dawn had no doubt about that. But maybe she loved her too much. So totally too much that she'd started making up stories about Jerry.
Looking at Jerry she wondered for the millionth time what he saw in her. She knew she wasn't pretty—plain and thick-waisted, to tell the total truth. Didn't have like a great ass or the bodacious tatas that tended to bring the opposite sex sniffing around. She'd wound up preferring books to boys because boys had so totally not gotten her, and she'd never really gotten them.
She now knew why: Because they were boys. Jerry was a man.
Vive la difference!
She looked at him and wanted him again. She felt bad taking him away from their work designing the ultimate unisex video game, but every time they sat down and put their heads together to do some design, they started putting their lips together and pretty soon they'd have everything together.
LOL!
She loved this townhouse. A bangin' cool place. All this mad chrome furniture and a home theater with a huge screen and a surround sound system to die for. She totally wanted to move in here but didn't want to push things—Jerry might not be ready for that yet. But he would be. And soon. She could tell.
The only thing she didn't like was the painting Jerry had stuck here on the bedroom wall. She didn't know why the turbulent abstract swirls of black and deep purple bothered her, but she always got the totally crazy feeling it was watching her.
Looking at it now made her pull the sheet over her. Weird. And even weirder, she'd touched it once and it felt wet. Ugh.
But Jerry loved it. Said it "spoke" to him. He'd found it in a secondhand store in Monroe. He was always on the lookout for others by the same artist—Melanie Ehler or something like that—but never found any. Dawn was glad for that.
As she was deciding whether or not to reach up and grab his joy stick, the phone rang. Jerry stepped over to it, stared down at the caller ID readout, and frowned.
"Hey, it's your momma."
Dawn felt all the heat rush out of her.
"Don't answer."
He looked at her. "Maybe I should. Maybe it's important."
"Nothing she has to say can be important. Let her leave a message."
"I'm gonna see what's on her mind." He picked up the receiver and said, "Hello, Mrs. P. What can I do for you?"
Always such a gentleman. Even to her. Dawn couldn't believe she'd cooked up those things about Jerry. If she were him she'd so tell her to go to hell.
What had come over Mom anyway? Maybe it was more than love. Maybe it was crazy-mad possessiveness. Yeah, Jerry was twice her age, sure, but so what? It was only eighteen years. So okay, get a little upset, but don't go around accusing him of murder!
And if you are going to make some total bullshit charge, at least make sure whoever he was supposed to have killed is dead.
That wasn't like Mom either. She was usually pretty together and well thought out. If she so wanted to bust them up, you'd think she could come up with something better than that.
Maybe she'd been lied to. Maybe she'd believed because she wanted to believe anything bad abo
ut Jerry.
Dawn was so proud of how Jerry had handled it. Yeah, he'd looked like he was going to go totally nuclear at first, but then he'd calmed himself down and wanted to go over and confront his accuser.
She watched Jerry's frown deepen as he listened. What was she saying? Then he glanced at her.
"Without Dawn? I don't know about that."
Without Dawn? She sat up. What was she saying to him?
Finally he said, "Okay. Give me about an hour." Then he hung up.
"What's going on? What did she say?"
He stared at her. "She wants to talk to me. Alone."
"Why alone?"
"She didn't say. Just said we have to talk—without you around. Maybe she thinks if we have a heart to heart she can somehow convince me I'm wrong for you."
Dawn's stomach spasmed at the possibility. She jumped to her feet.
"And you're going?"
"Look at it this way, darlin: It's a chance for me to turn the tables on her and convince her how important you are to me. If I can convince her that I'll never harm you—in fact, I'll protect you with my life—maybe she'll stop seein me as a threat and get off our backs."
Dawn threw her arms around him.
"Don't go. She's gone totally crazy. She's got a gun, you know. For all we know she's going to shoot you."
He stiffened. "Whoa! Didn"t know about that. But I wouldn't worry about it. She seemed very calm."
Dawn pleaded with him as he showered and got dressed, but couldn't change his mind.
As he smiled and waved on his way out the door, Dawn prayed he'd return in one piece.
9
Jack pressed the doorbell and waited. A few seconds later he saw Dr. Levy peek out through one of the sidelights, then duck back. The door didn't open right away, so Jack reached for the knocker. The door retracted a few inches just as his fingers touched the brass.
"What are you doing here?" Levy said in a hushed tone.
"We need to talk."
"I have nothing to say."
After the way Levy had clammed up last night, Jack had expected resistance tonight. He'd decided during the trip up that the best approach might be to fire his big gun immediately and see if it hit something.
"Not even about Jeremy Bolton?"
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