Frenzy (42 page)

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Authors: John Lutz

BOOK: Frenzy
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Quinn wasn't sure if what she said was true, but he didn't have time to give it the test of reasonableness.
Boomerang strutted into the room, and when Quinn and Pearl were looking at him, Craig and Ida broke for the door to the hall. Boomerang got in the spirit and dashed with them. Caught up with them in two large bounds. Quinn and Pearl followed.
The door to the hall burst open. Jody was there, still talking on Pearl's cell phone with Pearl's mother. She extended her foot daintily and tripped Craig Clairmont. Ida tripped over Craig. Quinn tripped over Ida. Pearl managed to leap over them all but fell and skidded to a halt near the stairs. She caught a glimpse of Boomerang streaking down the hall toward God and cat knew where.
She quickly struggled to her feet, and staggered over to help Quinn handcuff Craig and Ida before they could gather their senses.
Jody took several steps backward, the phone still pressed to the side of her head.
“So now you can go back to sitting with the same people for dinner?” She was asking her grandmother.
She grinned at the obviously affirmative answer on the other end of the connection.
If a person was persistent enough, things had a way of working out.
 
 
“The insurance company has agreed to let the heirs cancel their claim and place the bracelet in a vault,” Quinn said to Ida Beene and Craig Clairmont in an interrogation room at the precinct house. “We won't make any media statement about that.”
Craig and Ida silently nodded in unison. They both looked small and pale.
“It's possible that we haven't enough to charge you, or to get a conviction, but the people who cut off your brother's finger and killed him in an attempt to make him talk, probably the same ones who tortured and killed Alexis Hoffermuth, are still out there. There isn't enough evidence against them, either, to trigger an arrest.”
“Damned legal system!” Craig said.
“You want some advice?”
Craig shrugged. “Why not?”
“You and Ida should make arrangements for the kid, maybe with Ida's sister or Social Services, and then move far away.”
“Arrangements?”
“I'm thinking long term,” Quinn said. “You wouldn't want Eloise to talk about what she might have overheard. You need to cut ties completely to guarantee her safety.”
He didn't say Eloise would be better off with a family that didn't deal in jewel theft.
“My sister's place in Queen's is no good,” Ida said. “I have an aunt back in Ohio.”
“That'd work,” Quinn told her. “And there's one more condition. Eloise takes Boomerang with her to Ohio.”
“Done,” Craig said. “But the damned cat will probably find its way back.”
Later, in the brownstone, Jody questioned whether the deal Quinn had made was entirely legal.
“Maybe the outcome isn't exactly legal,” Quinn said. “But it's just. And it gives the kid a chance.”
Jody looked to her mother.
But Pearl was as impossible to read as Quinn.
Jody shook her head and grinned. “You two!”
“Three,” Pearl said.
Epilogue
May 16, 11:37 p.m.
 
J
ody wasn't along on this one. Fedderman and two uniforms had the front door of Willard Ord's house in the Village covered. The back door was being watched by two more uniforms and a plainclothes detective from the nearby precinct house. In the front and back of the building were also Emergency Service Unit sharpshooters, the NYPD equivalent of a SWAT team. In dangerous situations, the safest strategy was to overwhelm the suspects.
Pearl and Quinn stood to the side, and Quinn reached over and rang the doorbell.
Within a few moments, floorboards creaked softly inside the old brick building in the Village. A yellow porch light to discourage bugs flickered on, and the door opened.
Willard Ord stood in the doorway. He was wearing what looked like a white bathrobe and glossy black wing-tip shoes with black socks.
“You're police,” he said with a smile. “You don't need any identification other than your eyes.”
Quinn could see beyond Willard a table covered with cards and poker chips. There were three chairs at the table, and three beer cans on it.
“Are you alone in the house?” Quinn asked.
“Yes. In fact, I'd just gone to bed when I heard the doorbell.”
There were shouts from around the back of the house, and several gunshots. Most of the shots, and the last of them, sounded as if they came from ESU sniper rifles. ESU snipers always hit what they aimed at, and they shot to kill.
Quinn and Pearl both had their handguns aimed at Willard, who shrugged.
“I'm alone now,” he said.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
 
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
 
Copyright © 2014 John Lutz
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
 
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
 
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-2830-6
 
 
First electronic edition: October 2014
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3548-9
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3548-X

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