Quinn, still with a straight face, said, "Get out, Feds."
Fedderman picked up his suit coat from where it was draped over the back of his chair and went to the door. He looked back at Pearl. "The Waverton Hotel. You remember the room number?"
"You can figure it out," Pearl said. "You're a detective."
Fedderman shook his head with mock sadness. "You actually got off in a hotel room with a guy named Jones."
"Get out, Feds," Quinn said again, before Pearl could answer or reach her gun.
Fedderman managed not to grin until he was out the door.
"Asshole!" Pearl said.
Quinn was already at his computer, scanning the fingerprint image into their system so they could search for matches in unlikely places. He started with remote and small-town police departments that hadn't merged their files with national data bases.
The NYPD tech whiz had set them up for something like this so they could work separately on their computers through different connections. Quinn said he'd take the eastern half of the country, and Pearl should take from the Mississippi west.
Sure, that covers only a couple of time zones.
She rolled her chair closer to her desk and began the Internet search. It wasn't likely to produce results, but staying busy was the best thing for her.
After three hours they'd gotten nowhere. If Pearl's stomach hadn't been so knotted, she would have been hungry.
She sat back, pinched the bridge of her nose, and bowed her head.
"Want to break for lunch?" Quinn asked. He still didn't seem angry.
Pearl didn't look up. "I'm sorry. I really am."
She was hoping he'd reassure her, tell her it was all right, that she hadn't known Jeb Jones would become a suspect, that who she slept with was personal and her own business
What he said was, "It's done. We go from here."
"That's goddamned obvious," Pearl said.
"Then let's do it. I'll buy you a pizza."
She knew that was all she was going to get from Quinn for now. She needed loving, holding, comforting, forgiveness. She'd get pizza.
When they were settled in with pepperoni pizza slices and beer at D'Joes, a tiny restaurant down the street, they made awkward small talk and then lapsed into silence.
Until Quinn took a long pull of beer, licked foam from his upper lip, and said, "Has it occurred to you that if Jeb Jones is the Butcher he might have you in mind for one of his victims?"
Of course it had occurred to Pearl, but she'd been keeping it at a distance. Now she felt her heart turn cold. Her throat tightened and she could only shake her head no, lying to Quinn. Some things were none of his damned business.
"You're a brunette he obviously finds attractive. Why not you as the subject of one of his puzzle notes? Why not you-"
"Enough, Quinn!" She took a vicious bite of pizza and chewed hard.
"Okay, but give it some thought."
Pearl knew what he was thinking. She could be used as bait. Would she be willing?
Would she?
But he never actually suggested it.
The thing was, even though she knew Jeb could be a killer, a part of her still wouldn't accept it. Maybe Quinn understood that, or at least part of it.
When they returned to the office it was still too warm, but mercifully quiet. Con Ed had broken off their work out in the street, maybe for lunch. Quinn and Pearl settled in at their computers to resume their Internet search. Pearl did give what Quinn had said some thought.
She phoned his daughter, who'd just reported for work at the Hungry U.
Keeping her voice low so Quinn wouldn't overhear, she said, "Lauri, I have a question about Jeb Jones, my friend you met at the Pepper Tree. Remember him?"
"Mr. Hot," Lauri said.
Jesus! Teenage girls!
"Have you seen him since?"
Lauri didn't answer right away.
"Lauri, I need the truth from you. It's important."
"I've seen him a few times. We even had lunch once."
Surprised, Pearl actually said, "Huh?"
"Don't get mad at me, Pearl. None of it means a thing. I only did it to make Wormy jealous."
Sure. Why wouldn't any woman prefer Wormy to Mr. Hot?
"How did you happen to get together the first time?" Pearl asked.
"We just happened to bump into each other."
"How? Where?"
Lauri gave a long sigh.
"Lauri, damn it!"
"Okay, I saw Jeb again when I was following you. He was sorta hanging around outside the Pepper Tree when you were inside having lunch with some woman. We talked and agreed us being there would be our secret. Then I saw him again, a few days later, and we talked again and went for lunch. He was sorta in disguise, in jeans and wearing a Red Sox cap. It was almost like he was following you like I was and didn't want to be spotted."
Almost?
Pearl didn't say anything for a while. Quinn might be right. She might be a prospective victim.
"Pearl, you okay?"
"Yeah, Lauri."
"I really gotta get to work."
"Go, and thank you."
Pearl hung up the phone and sat stunned and wondering, trying to come up with some plausible reason other than her impending murder why Jeb might have been secretly watching her.
If he was the Butcher, why hadn't he already killed her?
The answer was obvious-she was useful. He was using her to keep tabs on the investigation.
"Something here," Quinn said, excitement in his voice, but also puzzlement.
He was leaning almost close enough to his computer to take a bite out of it.
"I've got a match on the print."
47
Pearl was up out of her chair and leaning over Quinn, balancing with her hand on his shoulder so she could see his computer monitor.
"It's not a criminal, military, or federal employee site," he said. "It's the Florida Department of Children and Families archives."
Pearl read the information on the screen. The print was a ninety percent match with the right middle finger of the 1980 print of a lost child in Florida identified as Sherman Kraft.
Pearl ran the name through her memory and came up with nothing.
She continued to watch as Quinn played the computer keys and mouse. They followed the thread and the story unfolded:
In Harrison County, Florida, in August of 1980, a boy about ten was found dazed and wandering along a swamp road. His clothes were bloody and ragged. He had an injured leg, was malnourished, and appeared to have been living for some time in the swamp. He also remained in a state of shock and refused to utter a sound.
Local news referred to him simply as "the Swamp Boy" until four days after he was found, when his newspaper photo was recognized as that of Sherman Kraft. He was the son of a woman who lived in a remote house on the edge of the swamp, more than ten miles from where he was found. When authorities went to the house they learned little more. It was deserted, and Sherman's mother, Myrna Kraft, was missing.
Apparently she was never found. There was speculation of foul play, and of her simply running away after losing, or deserting, her son. The archival accounts were concentrated on Sherman, so there was nothing more of substance about Myrna.
Quinn and Pearl kept following the thread, and later, infrequent news accounts told of how Sherman finally began to speak, but never of his experiences in the swamp, or what had led to them. Memory block. Nature's protective device. He was like someone who'd survived a terrible car crash and could remember nothing of it. The rest of his mind was apparently unaffected. Tests on the boy revealed an amazingly high IQ.
Mesmerized, Quinn and Pearl read on about how he'd lived in a series of institutions and foster homes, all the time receiving special treatment and education because of his remarkable intelligence. High academic achievement and scholarship opportunities led him to graduate magna cum laude from Princeton in 1989 at the age of nineteen. He was thought to be brilliant but antisocial and arrogant. After a series of jobs ranging from restaurant manager to bond salesman, he disappeared.