In for the Kill (20 page)

New York, the present

After Ella left the Pepper Tree, Pearl walked over and joined Jeb at his table near the front of the restaurant, where it was brighter and there was a view of the street.

He took a sip of his draft beer, which was in a tall, graceful glass he'd lifted from a round coaster that had the green outline of a tree on it with the name of the restaurant.

"You spooked my friend," Pearl said, settling into the chair opposite Jeb.

He smiled. "Your witness?"

"Not technically, as she didn't witness the murder, but she knew the victim."

"She thought she knew me, too. I assume that's what you mean by my having spooked her. I get that stuff all the time, people thinking I'm somebody else. It must be something about my face. I should have been a spy."

"I like your face," Pearl said.

A skinny waitress who tended to act shy and clasp her hands together came over and Pearl told her she wasn't eating but would have another glass of Pellegrino. Pearl knew it was politically insensitive to think of the woman as a waitress, but in the restaurant's white blouse and yellow-checked apron uniform, she looked as if she'd stepped out of a fifties Norman Rockwell painting. As she was watching the aproned woman walk away, something outside, across the street, caught her eye.

"Excuse me," she told Jeb. "I'll be right back."

He watched her leave the restaurant and walk directly across the street to a girl in a baggy red shirt and jeans. The girl saw her approach and looked for a second as if she might bolt, then she seemed to change her mind and stood facing Pearl with her arms crossed, cupping her elbows as if she were cold.

They talked for a few minutes, then Pearl turned away and weaved and timed her way through traffic to cross the street back toward the restaurant. The girl followed, though it didn't appear that Pearl was aware of her.

Pearl remained unaware until she'd sat back down at the table with Jeb. Lauri was standing over her, looking not exactly angry, but determined in a way that reminded Pearl of Quinn.

"I asked you not to follow me," Pearl said, "and specifically not back in here."

"I only want to make sure you understand I wasn't spying on you," Lauri said.

Pearl looked at Jeb, the man who should have been a spy. "She's been shadowing me all day, staying out of sight while she observes me. Would you call that spying?"

Jeb looked up at the girl--young, attractive, short blond hair, a tiny diamond stud in her nose. "I'd have to say you
were
spying," he told her with a smile. "Unless you're selling magazine subscriptions."

"I'm not."

"Then what
are
you doing?"

"You could call it a learning process."

"She wants to be a cop," Pearl explained. She introduced Lauri and Jeb, who shook hands.

The skinny waitress returned with the Pellegrino. After placing glass and bottle on the table, she looked at Lauri and clasped her hands.

"Nothing for me," Lauri said. "I'm just intruding."

The waitress gawked.

"Sit down," Pearl said to Lauri. She didn't want a scene. She wasn't used to dealing with teenage girls and had a feeling this situation could get out of hand within seconds.

Lauri sat down next to her and looked up at the waitress, who was still gawking and pressing her hands together. "I've changed my mind. I'll have whatever she's drinking."

The waitress broke a jittery smile and retreated.

Jeb was grinning.

"You seem amused," Pearl said, feeling simultaneously irritated and helpless.

"You should be flattered someone like this is following you," Jeb said.

Lauri smiled at him.

"Why do you want to be a cop?" he asked her, obviously charmed. Lauri could spread bullshit almost as skillfully as her father.

"My dad's a cop, and Pearl is. Was. Is again. I guess they're two people I admire."

Now Pearl couldn't help but feel flattered. And like some kind of Grinch because she'd tried to discourage Lauri.

Jeb still wore the amused smile. Pearl thought it was amazing how fast he and Lauri had developed a mutual admiration. Or was it all for show? For her benefit? Two adventurers, chiding the cautious, professional Pearl. Maybe silently laughing at her. Pearl wasn't sure if she liked that.

"Is she breaking any laws?" Jeb asked.

"She's interfering with a police officer," Pearl said. "A homicide detective at that."

"Jeez!" Lauri said. "I only followed you to lunch,"

"Where I went to interview a potential suspect."

"He's awful good-looking for a suspect," Lauri said, grinning at Jeb.

"Not Jeb, the woman I came here to meet first. The woman you saw leave. And she's not a suspect. He's not a suspect. Unfortunately, nobody's a suspect."

"So now you're at lunch? This is just social?"

Pearl sighed. "You could say that."

"Why don't you join us?" Jeb said.

"Love to. If it's okay with Pearl."

"Of course," Pearl said, defeated. "I give up. I can't fight both of you when you gang up on me."

"Ever think of being a journalist?" Jeb asked Lauri.

"Now and then, I have to admit." She gave a little shiver. "It seems romantic."

Pearl thought she might be troweling it on too thick, but Jeb didn't seem to notice.

A lesson here. Unless he's just trying to get my goat.

The waitress returned with a second bottle of Pellegrino. Lauri ordered a vegetable omelet, then ice cream for dessert. Throughout the meal she continued to charm Jeb, knowing he was the way to get Pearl to agree to be her mentor. Or so she thought. Pearl knew better. These two people didn't understand police work and its dangers.

Or its subtleties.

She didn't mention to either of them the presence of Wormy slouching bonelessly in a doorway across the street, waiting for them to emerge from the restaurant. Apparently he'd been following Lauri while she tailed Pearl. Maybe he was trying to protect Lauri. Or assuring himself of her fidelity.

Either way, Pearl wasn't going to confront him. She decided to let the situation ride for a while. She didn't want to get Lauri into trouble by telling Quinn about her persistence in shadowing her. Also, if Quinn learned about this, he'd learn about her assignations with Jeb, and Pearl wasn't quite ready for that to happen. And if Lauri was secretly hanging around Pearl, what harm could Wormy do? The two kids were apparently in love--at least Wormy was, judging by the way he was mooning around. Maybe he should be the one to convince Lauri to pursue something other than a cop's career.

Pearl had to admit there was something about this that amused her, Lauri inexpertly tailing her and not noticing Wormy inexpertly tailing
her.
A procession of incompetents.

When the time was right, Pearl would tell Quinn about this and he'd find it immensely amusing. They'd share a big laugh.

When the time was right.

That night Pearl lay in bed unable to sleep, listening to the window air conditioner humming away in its mechanical battle with the heat. Its low monotone was punctuated by night sounds of the city, muted and diminished in number by the late hour.

Rather, the early hour. Pearl knew it would start to get light outside pretty soon. The dark between the blind slats would become gray, then the gray at the edges of the windows would brighten, and warm sunlight would find its way inside. Pearl, who felt as if she'd had two minutes of sleep though she'd gone to bed at eleven o'clock, would have to get up, shower, and dress.

She wanted to remain comfortably in bed. She asked herself why it was necessary to struggle upright, trudge into the bathroom, and stand nude under running water. Why did people do that? How did that kind of thing ever get started?

Surely there must be a better way.

She rolled onto her stomach, punched her pillow with gusto, and tried to enjoy what little time she had left in bed, but her head began to pound.

She knew what might really have disturbed her sleep. It was the way Ella Oaklie had thought she recognized Jeb when he walked into the Pepper Tree.

Ella had seemed so sure Jeb was the man she'd met with Marilyn Nelson not long before Marilyn's death. And Pearl didn't agree with Jeb that he had the type of face that would cause him often to be mistaken for someone else. Of course, that could be because of the way she felt about him.

Might Jeb actually be the man Ella had met? Jeb using the name Joe Grant?

Pearl punched her pillow again and told herself she was being too cynical. That was why she'd quit the department and become a guard in a quiet, efficient bank where everyone was polite and almost everything worth stealing was locked away in a vault with walls three feet thick. Banks were orderly islands of calm.

Not like the outside mad world where people died horrible deaths for no apparent reason, where questions evoked more questions instead of answers, where a teenage kid followed a burnt-out cop on a dangerous job and was in turn followed by a human worm.

Where a killer might change identities as easily and consciencelessly as if he were changing clothes.

Pearl decided it was time to turn off her mind and turn on the shower. As she climbed out of bed and padded barefoot toward the apartment's tiny bathroom, she wondered if it actually was possible to be too cynical.

She told herself the answer had to be yes. That Jeb Jones and Joe Grant were simply two different people.

The answer had to be yes.

Bocanne, Florida, 1980

Myrna sat in the worn gray vinyl recliner and watched her flickering TV screen. Television wasn't much in the isolated shack. The blues on the screen were greens, and the fleshtones so yellow it appeared that everyone was jaundiced. Myrna didn't have cable, being so far from town, and she couldn't afford one of those new revolving dishes. The beat-up antenna on the house's roof had been struck by lightning and hadn't worked worth a damn since. Sam used to climb up there and adjust the thing toward the signal, but now Sam was gone.

He was sure as hell gone.

And so was Sherman.

Myrna set her beer can on the floor, then got up from the recliner and took a few bent-over steps so she could change the channel and pick up local news.

The truth was, she didn't much care about the quality of the picture. What interested her was information. The TV was at least good enough to receive local channels, and since Sherman had disappeared, Myrna always watched the noon and nightly news.

It had been almost a month now since she'd pursued her son through the swamp, sending piercing spotlight beams into the blackness, calling for him to return, knowing he could hear her or at least hear the rumbling and rattling of the old pickup truck.

But he hadn't replied. When she'd turned off the truck's engine from time to time to listen, her calls were met only with the teeming, vibrant indifference of the swamp. It had been infuriating, almost like an insult.

Sherman had surprised her. He'd been raised at the edge of the swamp and knew what it was, how it could kill. Of course, he also knew what might happen if he returned home. But boys that age didn't think logically. Even after she'd given up and returned to the house, she'd waited and waited, thinking he'd stomp up onto the porch and open the door tired and hungry and hopeless, needing his mother.

Sherman had surprised her, all right. It had been almost a month since he'd run away. He must be dead. He'd chosen his own eventual but certain death in the swamp rather than at her hands.

That puzzled Myrna. Sherman
must
have thought there was some slight chance that he might talk her out of it, that she'd show him some mercy. After all, she was his mother. Yet he'd faced up to reality.

Still, he was a boy.

With a man's balls, she thought, not without some motherly pride, as she sat sipping beer and waiting for a commercial to end.

Myrna was human, and Sherman
was
her son. But if time didn't heal, it at least produced a scab. She went days now without thinking about Sherman. There were some bad ways to die in the dark waters of the swamp, and for a long while after his flight her sleep had been interrupted by dreams. But Myrna was a hard and practical woman. That was what the world required of her. She slept well enough, and thought less and less about Sherman as the weeks passed. It wasn't as if she'd had a choice. She told herself that often. She hadn't made the goddamned rules. The world had.
Men
had.

She settled down into her recliner with a beer to watch the television noon news out of Tampa, as she did every day. It had become so routine she'd almost forgotten why.

"Following up on an earlier story..." said the voice from the TV.

One of the regular anchors, a made-up, jaundiced blonde with too much hair and lipstick, was back. "...the child who's come to be known only as the Swamp Boy still hasn't been identified. He was found wandering the road in Harrison County yesterday, his leg injured, apparently by an animal, judging by the bite marks. He was carrying no identification and still hasn't spoken. Doctors say that other than the leg injury he's physically healthy but in a state of shock. They're hoping that someday soon he'll be able to say his name and tell us who he is"--the anchorwoman put on a serious pout and leaned toward the camera--"and what happened to him."

A photo of the Swamp Boy appeared on the screen.
Sherman
. Hair long and tangled, face gaunt, eyes wild--but Sherman.

Myrna put her beer can down on the floor and sat back in the recliner, closing her eyes and digging her fingertips into the warm vinyl arms. She couldn't look at the TV screen.

Harrison County. Twenty miles away. My God! He survived somehow, lived somehow on his own in the swamp. All that time...

He doesn't know his name. Doesn't remember.

But he will. The doctors will give him drugs. Hypnotize him. He'll remember. He'll talk.

Myrna felt a sudden panic and stood up from the chair.

Then she took a deep breath, waited for her heartbeat to slow, and retrieved her beer and finished it in a series of gulps. She hadn't thought this day would come, but at the same time she'd been waiting for it. It was a miracle that anyone, let alone a nine-year-old boy, could survive the night in the deep swamp, but miracles seemed to attach themselves to Sherman. Sam Pickens used to talk about how odd Sherman was, and how smart. How very smart.

He'll know. He'll remember. He'll talk.

Myrna knew what she had to do. She turned off the TV, went directly into the bedroom, and began to pack.

By the time people learned from the photograph who Sherman was and the authorities came to see Myrna, they found only the empty shack. It was assumed something bad had happened to her, that she'd been killed or had become lost and died in the swamp. It wasn't unusual for dead bodies never to be recovered from the swamp's dark landscape. She became simply another brief story, another unsolved mystery. Not the first to live on the edge of the vast darkness and one day disappear into it.

Over the coming years, from her anonymity and place of safety, she would read and hear about how the Swamp Boy was identified and had finally talked. But his story about how he'd wandered away from home on his own to go fishing and gotten lost wasn't at all what had happened. Myrna didn't know if Sherman couldn't remember the truth, or had chosen to lie. The mind could blank out certain horrors, but Sherman could be devious.

As his biological mother, she admitted to a certain satisfaction as she read from time to time about how intelligent he was, how, as a ward of the state, he'd been tested and found to have an amazingly high IQ. He was given favoritism, scholarship opportunities, as he was shuffled through a series of institutions and foster homes. Sherman made the most of those opportunities.

Myrna knew that by now he might remember at least
something
about the time before the swamp, yet he must not have spoken of it, or surely it would have been on the news. She could understand why he would remain silent, considering how people's view of him would change if he revealed his part in what had happened; the boarders who'd disappeared, and whose Social Security checks had continued to be collected and cashed. He'd been a child and wouldn't be in any legal jeopardy, but still, people would have and share their thoughts.

At times Myrna had her own thoughts about Sherman and smiled with motherly pride. Her son. So smart.

Smart enough not to talk.