Deadly Pursuit (12 page)

20

Kirstie ran along the boardwalk, the tattoo of her sandals on the planks thumping in rapid counterpoint to the beat of her pulse.

Her fear had been steadily swelling, battening on itself, as she traversed the island. A sense of desperate urgency possessed her, yet a corner of her mind stood back from her escalating panic, appraising it with cool skepticism, reminding herself that her terror had no logical basis, no solid foundation at all.

The swamp matched her mood. Past the railing of the boardwalk lay clumps of mangroves divided by narrow channels of brackish water. Things flitted among the trees’ twisted roots and branches; ribbons of glossy darkness slid soundlessly through the ooze. But no detail was visible, nothing specific, only a teasing impression of movement, as indistinct as the forebodings that shadowed her awareness.

She was certain of only one thing. She wished Jack Dance had not come here. She wished he had stayed a hundred miles—a thousand—from Pelican Key.

The boardwalk completed its zigzag course and deposited her on the marly loam near the cove. She emerged onto the mud flats, out of breath and flushed from running.

She scanned the area, looking for Jack’s dinghy. It wasn’t there. She saw nothing but mud and seaweed and a few reddish egrets harassing the minnows in tidal pools.

Had Jack lied about beaching the boat here? Had he come ashore someplace else?

Then her drifting gaze fell on a mound of palm fronds a few yards away. Something grayish and rough-textured, like whale skin, was concealed beneath.

The runabout. Thank God.

She approached the boat. At first she assumed the fronds had been blown over it by some freakish breath of wind, but as she got closer, she saw how carefully the leaves had been arranged.

Camouflage. Jack had hidden the dinghy. But why?

Kneeling, she brushed the fronds away. Inside the boat she found a suit jacket and pants, expensive items, badly soiled and wrinkled.

She remembered wondering if Jack had slept on the island last night. Now she was certain of it.

In the bow were three bulging grocery bags stuffed with canned goods and other nonperishable supplies. Near them, a manual can opener and an emptied can of peaches.

“He came here last night,” Kirstie whispered. “Brought enough food for a week. Slept till dawn. Woke up, had breakfast, then went for a walk—and found me.”

And he had left the boat hidden. Had not wanted it to be seen.

A flurry of splashes and beating wings. In one of the tidal pools, an egret chased down a minnow and snatched it up greedily.

Hunter and prey.

The thought shocked her into action.

She sledded the dinghy through the mud and launched it in the shallows. Climbing aboard, she paddled with her hands till she was out far enough to lower the outboard motor.

She jerked the starter cord. The motor sputtered and died.

A second try. Still nothing.

Oh, hell, was it out of gas? She should have brought a can with her.

She searched Jack’s supplies and found no extra fuel. Dammit. Goddammit to hell.

Panic surged again, threatening to overwhelm her. She forced it down, made herself test the motor once more.

Don’t yank the cord this time, just give it a good firm pull. Easy. Easy ...

The motor coughed, rattled, nearly faltered ... then caught.

Relief weakened her. She eased the throttle arm forward, and the dinghy headed out of the cove toward open water—and the reef.

21

“Think about it, Stevie,” Jack said smoothly, while Steve listened, hating him. “If not for your little lie and subsequent silence, I would have been arrested seventeen years ago, and none of those other women would be dead now.”

Steve knew what Jack was doing, of course. Trying to manipulate him by preying on his conscience. Jack was a master at exploiting weaknesses to gain control. Throughout their friendship he had always been the leader, the dominant personality. Even as a teenager Steve had been conscious of the subordinate role he played; and though sometimes it galled him, he’d been willing to go along. He’d taken a kind of comfort in surrendering his independence, allowing himself to be pushed and pulled by a force stronger than himself.

But not this time. He wasn’t a kid anymore.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Steve said brusquely.

Jack merely smiled. “Of course you don’t. Truth hurts. Especially this sort of truth. Seven women have died since Meredith. Seven women you helped to kill.”

Steve blinked. “Six. There’ve been six.”

“You’re behind the curve, pal. Another young lady was found dead in Phoenix two weeks ago, on Saturday morning. Veronica Tyler, but everybody called her Ronni. I didn’t, though. Not when I put that needle in her neck. I called her ... Meredith.”

Steve gripped the transom with his free hand. The sudden pounding of his heart was like the onset of an anxiety attack. Fear always came on like this whenever he learned of another victim.

“Jesus,” he heard himself breathe. “Oh, Jesus.”

Jack watched him coolly. “Guess you were already on the island by then, huh? Voluntarily out of contact with the outside world?”

“We arrived that day. First thing in the morning.”

“Just as well. Hearing about poor Ronni might have spoiled your vacation. I figure you came here to get away from it all, anyway.”

That was true, but not the whole truth. Yes, he had fastened on the idea of revisiting Pelican Key as a way to escape from the news reports, the mounting body count. But he had also felt an almost mystical yearning for the island. It stood in his mind as a symbol of the most precious part of his life, his years of innocence, the time before Meredith’s drowning and Jack’s false alibi and the beginning of guilt.

Irrationally he had hoped that by returning to Pelican Key he could erase that guilt, wash himself clean of sin, find renewal and redemption.

He’d been wrong. He had escaped from nothing.

And now Jack Dance was here, facing him across five feet of creaking wood, and there could be no escape, not ever.

A plane hummed past, low over the northeast horizon, wings glinting silver in the sun. Steve followed it with his eyes, wishing he were on it, flying away from this place, from his own past, from himself.

“You’ve thought a lot about those women I killed, haven’t you?” Jack asked. “You’ve been torturing yourself for six months.”

Torture. Yes. That was the right word. And with every new victim, the wheel of the rack had turned a little more.

“What’s it done to you, Stevie? How’s your sleep been? Your work? Your marriage?”

He didn’t want to answer. But something inside him, the timid, obedient part of himself that had always responded to Jack’s greater strength, made him speak.

“It’s been hell,” he whispered, surprised by the croaking rasp of his own voice. “I kept wanting to call the police, but I wasn’t certain it was you—wasn’t totally certain even about Meredith, let alone the others. And if I told, I’d be incriminating myself. Even if you were innocent of the murders, I’d be guilty of providing a false alibi.”

“That’s true,” Jack said, and again Steve saw through his technique, saw how he reinforced the idea of guilt, guilt, guilt, like a dramatist obsessively emphasizing a favorite theme. A transparent ploy, yet it was working, wasn’t it? Despite Steve’s best efforts to resist manipulation, it was working.

“So I would wait and hope they’d catch the guy and he would be someone, anyone, other than you. I kept expecting to hear about a break in the case. It was making me crazy. But nothing ever happened except the FBI and the cops would say they were pursuing various leads ... and every two months or so, another woman would die.”

The horizons wheeled slowly, the boat as their axis. Steve imagined himself on a slow-motion carousel, turning, turning. There was something dreamlike and fascinating in the lazy spinning of the world.

“Does Kirstie know any of this?” Jack asked.

“Not a thing. She thinks I’m going through some sort of midlife crisis. Probably thinks our marriage is coming apart. Shit, maybe it is. I don’t know.”

“Tough to hold all that inside you for so long,” Jack said with a pale imitation of sympathy.

“Yeah. And there was one other thing. Not just the guilt. Fear. Of you.”

“Me? Why?”

“I’m the only one who knew your alibi was phony. Suppose you decided I was dangerous to you. That I might make the connection with Mister Twister and go to the authorities. Suppose you decided to launch a preemptive strike.”

Yards away, the water blurred into bubbles and ripples as a school of baitfish, jumping madly, fled some unseen pursuer.

“Sounds like you were getting a little paranoid,” Jack said. “Coming after you never even entered my mind.”

Steve thought that was probably true. Jack could never have seen pitiful, hero-worshiping Stevie as a threat.

Still, he hadn’t been sure. And last night, when Anastasia woke him with her growling, he had been almost certain Jack had tracked him down. Searching the house, the Beretta cocked and ready, he had expected to find Jack folded batlike inside every patch of shadow.

“You looked happy enough to see me on the beach,” Jack said.

Happy? Steve nearly smiled at that. He had been stunned, staggered, his worst fear realized. Yet at some deeper level he had not been surprised at all. It was as if Jack’s arrival had been predestined, as if the two of them were chess figures moved by unseen hands into opposition with each other.

“I tried to act natural,” Steve answered, wishing he could make himself stop talking. “After all, I still didn’t know why the hell you were here. Then you asked if Kirstie and I had watched TV or listened to the radio since we came to the island. And I started to think there might be something in the news about you. That break in the case I’d been waiting for.” Steve gazed at him over the shiny gun barrel. “They identified you, didn’t they?”

“I’m on the run.”

“Well, you picked the wrong place to hide out.”

“I’m not so certain of that.” Jack leaned back against the gunwale, arms folded across his chest. “Think for a minute, Stevie. Just think about what you’ve gotten yourself into. The feds know who I am. And they’re after me. It’s a coast-to-coast manhunt. Now, don’t you think they’re going to look into my background? I’ll bet they’ve got cops or field agents in New Jersey interviewing our high-school friends and neighbors right now. How long will it take before somebody mentions Meredith Turner’s death?”

Steve’s chest tightened. He began to see where Jack was leading. “Not long,” he said softly.

“A day or two at most. Then they’ll make the same connection you did: blond hair, blue eyes, looks a lot like the girls I’ve done on my weekend escapades. So they’ll look at the police report, and guess what they’ll find. Jack Dance was eliminated from consideration as a suspect—because his best friend, Steven Gardner, provided him with an alibi. Now, given my subsequent behavior, how credible is that alibi going to be?”

“What’s your point?” Steve asked, though he already knew it.

“The point is, friend of mine, that pretty soon Uncle Sam will know you lied to cover for me. Which makes you my partner in crime. An accessory to murder. That’s a felony offense, and there’s no statute of limitations on it. And in a well-publicized case like this, they’ll have no choice but to prosecute. It’ll be an easy conviction. They’ll put you away.”

“You can’t threaten me.”

“Not a threat. A simple fact. A small army of nice men in dark suits will be hunting you, Steverino, right along with yours truly. They’re going to be real interested in talking to you. And you’re not going to have a hell of a lot to say.”

Steve couldn’t argue. What Jack said was true.

Years ago, while home from college on summer break, he had consulted the New Jersey Penal Code in a public library. Continuing doubts about what really happened to Meredith Turner had driven him to consider confessing the fabrication of Jack’s alibi. After reading two or three sections of the code, he had changed his mind.

The words of the relevant passages were still imprinted on his memory, as they had been for more than fifteen years: “Every person who, after a felony has been committed, harbors, conceals, or aids a principal in such felony, with the intent that said principal may avoid or escape from arrest, trial, conviction, or punishment, is an accessory to such felony ...

“An affirmative falsehood to a public investigator, made with intent to shield the perpetrator of a felony, may constitute aid or concealment …

“An accessory is punishable by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in the state prison or a county jail not exceeding five years ...”

He knew he could not be tried for having failed to come forward with his suspicions regarding the subsequent homicides; the law could not punish him for a sin of omission. But a judge could impose the maximum sentence for his actual crime—and, under the circumstances, almost certainly would.

A five-year sentence could be served in two years, perhaps less with good behavior.

But even two years would be a long, hard stretch of time. Steve knew about that, too. Pete Creston had told stories ...

Angrily he brushed aside those thoughts. Dammit, Jack’s maneuvers were having their intended effect. He was getting rattled, finding it harder to think straight with fear chewing through him.

He focused his mind, saw a flaw in the line of argument being presented to him, seized on it.

“You’re not helping yourself, Jack. If the false alibi is going to come out no matter what, then I’m screwed whether or not I hand you over. So I might as well do it.”

Jack was unfazed. “Only if you’re a fool. You think by turning me in you can make amends for the past? People won’t see you as the guy who nabbed Mister Twister. They’ll see you as the guy who kept mum while one girl after the next was getting whacked. They’ll scream for your head, Stevie. And they’ll get it.”

“I’m not saying I can make amends. I’m just saying it’s too late for me now. You said so yourself.”

“That’s not quite what I said. And you’d better hope it’s not too late. Because a year or two in prison, Stevie—well, you don’t want to know about it.”

I already do, Steve thought. He said nothing.

“It won’t be one of those country-club places, either. I guarantee it. When I said the public will want blood, I was serious. You’ll be in a maximum-security institution, and your fellow prisoners will be hardened cons. I know what it’s like. Did some time in Lompoc not long ago—fraud charges, not homicide. And even though I’m a pretty big guy, good negotiator, accustomed to dealing with criminal types ... it was the roughest year of my life.”

Steve tried not to listen. But in his thoughts he heard Pete Creston, and that was worse.

“Look at you,” Jack went on remorselessly. “Scrawny yuppie type, wears glasses, can’t do more than three chin-ups without passing out. They’ll eat you alive. Some of those big motherfuckers will want to marry you right off. Guys’ll be fighting over which one gets to go in first, if you catch my drift. I knew a con once, had all his teeth knocked out so the shower brigade could use him better for the kind of games they liked. Teeth got in the way, you see. But a guy who’s all gums—well, using him is just like putting it between Becky Lou’s thighs back home …”

Pete had related anecdotes of the same kind, in countless luncheons, over plates of fettuccine Alfredo and broiled salmon, and Steve had listened, thinking all the time of Meredith, of his own clawing guilt.

“That’s how it’ll be if they like you,” Jack said with a smile like a mouthful of razors. “But if you get on their bad side—watch out. Amazing how creative these sons of bitches can be. I saw one poor schmuck get killed with a plastic spoon. Can you imagine that? Fucking plastic, like something you’d get at McDonald’s with a frozen-yogurt cup. They jammed the handle through his left eye, into his brain ...”

In Pete’s story it had been a screwdriver stolen from shop class—or maybe a bolt removed from a cot. Steve couldn’t remember the details anymore.

Pete Creston was an attorney like Steve himself, but unlike Steve, his specialty was criminal law. His everyday dealings with ex-cons had supplied him with a fund of nightmare fables about life in the joint. For years he had passed along each tidbit, relishing new variations on old horrors. Steve had never stopped him, despite the anxiety the stories produced, the nightmares they left him with. In some perverse way he had felt that by punishing himself, he was atoning for the lie he’d told.

Now the lunchtime stories ran through his mind in lurid counterpoint to Jack’s monologue.

“Two guys in my cell block were diagnosed with AIDS while I was there. They didn’t test HIV positive when they checked in. Guess they picked it up somehow. Nobody inquired into it too closely ...”

Pete had told him about a prisoner raped anally with a shoe. A
shoe
.

“One asshole used to cry in his pillow all night. He knew they were going to get him, just didn’t know when. Waiting for it to happen made him crazy. Finally he tried to kill himself. Chewed open one of his wrists. I mean, literally chewed ...”

A con wrongly branded as a snitch had been ambushed, then beaten so badly his nose was crushed. Like a snail, Pete had said, lifting a forkful of ravioli to his lips, crushed like a snail. His assailants had gagged him with a torn pair of underpants and watched him suffocate, unable to draw breath through nasal passages blocked by shattered bone.