Urge to Kill (15 page)

“Jesus,” Pearl said.

Butterfield shrugged. “It’d be easier to feel sorry for him if he hadn’t been living off kids’ drug money for years.”

“He in any condition to have a conversation?” Quinn asked.

“Sure. I wouldn’t say he’s eager to leap outta bed, or even able, but he’s conscious and not in a lot of pain.”

Butterfield led them to Room 620 and then told them to go on in and he’d wait out in the hall.

It was a small room with only one visitor’s chair, and that with a stack of folded linens on it. Sunlight sneaked in through slatted blinds. It smelled as if someone had been hanging around there chewing spearmint gum.

The three detectives stood close to Vernon Lake’s bed as he regarded them with rheumy brown eyes. He was an African American man in his thirties, with a powerful upper body and a sharply defined face of ebony planes made darker by black stubble. The bed was cranked up so he was almost in a sitting position. His midsection was swathed in white gauze, as was his right bicep. An IV unit with two plastic packets of medication hanging from its metal stand was feeding clear liquids into a vein on the back of his left hand. His wrists were handcuffed to the steel bedrails.

He didn’t smile as he looked up at them. “You ain’t doctors.” He sounded tired, but didn’t slur his words, obviously not too drugged up with painkillers to know what he was saying.

“Healers of society,” Quinn said, flashing his shield.

“Not my society.”

“We got some questions for you,” Pearl said.

“Then maybe I oughta have my lawyer here.”

“You got one?” Fedderman asked.

“Public defender. Name of Sophie Murray.”

“She’s a tough one,” Quinn said. “You might wanna call her at a certain point. All we want from you are a few answers about Joseph Galin.”

“Don’ know him.”

“He’s the guy you paid for protection while you were dealing. Back when he was a cop and we were all younger and better looking.”

Lake pressed his head back into his pillow and said nothing.

“We can offer you a deal,” Quinn said, “if you give us some answers and don’t play the hard ass. You know Galin’s been shot and killed. Maybe you even did it.”

“Talk that way,” Lake said, “an’ I want my lawyer.”

“Hear me out before you decide. We’re not interested in pinning Galin on you. We know you’re innocent. You know you’re going up for a long time on the drug charges, not to mention trading shots with another dealer. He’s gonna be okay, by the way, just like you.”

“I been tol’ he was dead.”

“Then somebody’s jerking you around.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time for that. All cops do, ain’t it, jerk us plain folks around?”

“Some cops sometimes,” Quinn admitted. “Not me, not now. All we want’s some straight information about Galin. He’s dead now, so if you owed him something, it doesn’t matter.”

“I din’ owe that man nothin’.”

“We want Galin’s killer,” Quinn said. “We’ve got no interest in you otherwise. What we’d like to know is, was he dirty?”

“Why should I—” Lake decided in mid-sentence to be silent. His powerful neck muscles flexed as he scrunched his head farther back into his pillow. He was obviously going to be stubborn.

“ ’S’cuse me, please.” Quinn stuck his head outside the room’s door and said something to Butterfield, then ducked back in.

Lake glared at him without moving his head. “Don’ matter what you do. Till I get—”

“Shut up,” Quinn said, hardening his tone. “Be a smart asshole for once and shut up till you know the game and decide whether to play.”

Lake seemed to relax, but only slightly. This was the kind of cop talk he knew. His breathing was loud and rhythmic in the quiet room.

There was a knock on the door. Quinn went to it and was handed something, then closed the door and came back to stand again by Lake’s bed. He was holding a Bible.

“You a religious shit-head?” he asked Lake.

“Long-ago Baptist, if it be any of your business.”

“I’m a religious man, through and through. It’s why I’m a cop. I don’t miss church on Sundays, and I try to live by the good book. You believe me?”

“Don’ believe a thing you say.”

“That hurts me. I’m gonna offer you a trade. You don’t want it, then we can do the lawyer thing and you can talk or go mum or whatever, but the deal will be off the table.”

“That legal?”

“For Christ’s sake, I’m a cop.”

“Yeah, that’s what I be thinkin’.”

Quinn held the Bible out flat in his left hand and rested his right palm on it. “I’m gonna tell you this, and I’m swearing to it on the Bible. You tell us what we want to know about Galin, and…well, I can’t guarantee you won’t do some time on the charges against you, but I can and
do
guarantee, on this good book and by all I hold holy, that you won’t serve more than eighteen months.” He handed the Bible over for Pearl to hold. “Now, we can go that way, or we can do this by another book. You can call your lawyer in and we’ll go through the usual bullshit, and maybe you’ll do okay and only get fifteen to twenty years, but this offer will be off the table.”

Lake closed his eyes, thinking about it.

Fedderman walked over and pretended to gaze out the window. Pearl held the Bible and looked at Quinn, standing there with his arms crossed, staring down at Lake. Beneath the medicinal minty scent in the room was the stench of Lake sweating under the white sheet that covered his lower body. Perspiration gleamed on his muscular chest and shoulders, on his broad forehead.

Lake, still with his eyes closed, said, “You can really do this?”

“I can do this.”

“Guarantee me an eighteen-month cap?”

“Eighteen months or less, and you’ll be out,” Quinn assured him.

Pearl felt a queasiness, watching Quinn telling the truth yet misleading a dying man like this. Hard, hard bastard, Quinn. Believable as an emissary from God.

“We got us a deal,” Lake said, opening his eyes. “But you best be tellin’ me the truth.”

“You’ll know soon enough that I am,” Quinn said. He didn’t shake Lake’s hand, but he reached down near the steel cuffs and touched it. Lake replied with a wriggle of his fingers.

The man in the bed sighed. He was going to unload. Quinn had pulled it off. Pearl felt a guilty elation.

“Galin was dirty,” Lake said. “I paid him once a month to lay off my dealin’s an’ to let me know if somethin’ heavy was movin’ my direction. I do gotta say, he kep’ to the deal.”

“How much did you pay him?” Quinn asked.

“Ten thousand a month, then later on he wanted fifteen.”

“He get it?”

Lake snorted a kind of laugh that hurt him and made him wince. “I paid. He be worth it.”

“This go on till he retired?”

“No. Till six, seven years ago, when I went in for a short stretch. Nothin’ to do with Galin, though. Got stopped for a traffic violation, had a trunk fulla product. Shitty luck, was all it was. What it usually is. When I got out, I knew Galin was gonna retire soon.” He smiled. “An’ of course I wasn’t dealin’ then anyways.”

“No need to get into that,” Quinn said.

“I wasn’t surprised when I heard Galin was shot,” Lake said.

“Why’s that?”

“I always had the feelin’ I wasn’t the only one payin’ him. I’d give you the other names if I knew ’em.”

Quinn thought Lake might be lying, but he didn’t want to push it. “You’ve told us what we wanted to know.”

“I gotta ask again,” the doomed Lake said, “you bein’ straight with me? I can count on less’n eighteen months behind walls?”

Quinn took the Bible from Pearl, then gripped it tightly and held it out toward Lake, above the bed.

Pearl thought he looked like a faith healer ready to cast his spell. Was Lake going to rise up from the bed and walk, his handcuffs miraculously opened and dangling from his wrists?

“If you’ve been truthful to me,” Quinn said, “I promise that you’ll be free, Vernon. Within eighteen months, you’ll be free.”

“I been truthful. I swear to God I have.”

“I believe you, son.”

When they left the room, Quinn returned the Bible to Butterfield, who carried it back toward the nurse’s station.

In the elevator going down, the three of them were alone.

Pearl said, “Sometimes you frighten me, Quinn.”

“Vernon Lake’s an asshole who killed his share of people,” Fedderman said. “He knew something that could help us save lives. Quinn didn’t actually lie to the man.”

“That’s what frightens me. And makes me a little queasy.”

“Grow up, Pearl.” Fedderman said.

“Yeah. Grow up, grow old, then die. Makes being born not seem worthwhile.”

“Every right thing you do,” Quinn said, “you don’t feel good about it afterward.”

The bitter November air was sharp and full of scent. It froze the hair in Marty’s nostrils and caught like a blade in his throat.

Eleven-year-old Marty Hawk stayed well to the side and slightly behind his father as they trudged up the snow-crusted rise toward the ridge of trees lined like silhouetted Halloween shapes against the gray sky. When the wind blew, it rattled the ice in the branches. Marty’s breath fogged out ahead of him.

He held his rifle cradled in his arm, pointed at the ground as instructed. Marty had shot the rifle before, but not with the high-velocity rounds that were in its breach and magazine now.

The rifle was a Mossberg bolt-action 30–06 with Marty’s name artfully carved into its wooden stock. It had been his birthday present last year. He’d practiced with it for months.

Now, finally, his father had decided he was ready.

As they approached the frozen ridge, his father shifted his ancient Winchester rifle to his left hand, extended his right arm to the side, and made a downward motion with the flat of his palm. Man and boy slowed their pace and moved as silently as possible through the snow to the top of the ridge.

The trees and some bent and frozen underbrush lent them cover as they surveyed the lay of lightly wooded land beyond them. Through the trees they could see the wide flatness of the lake, not quite frozen but with sheets of ice in its dark water.

There was movement ahead, and Marty and his father hunkered lower. Marty almost slipped and slid back down the rise, but his father reached over to grab his wrist and steady him. His father raised his gloved hand to his face and held a forefinger in front of his mouth, in a signal for Marty to be silent. Marty watched the steam of his father’s hot breath swirl around the raised finger and nodded. The rifle was getting heavy. He hefted it slightly higher so the tip of its barrel wouldn’t touch the snow.

Marty’s father pointed toward a doe and a large buck with a fine stand of antlers less than a hundred yards away. The two animals had their heads down, feeding on some grass they’d managed to find beneath the layer of snow. The buck raised his head, as if to show off his antlers, sniffed the air, then resumed feeding.

Marty felt his father’s hand squeeze his shoulder, and his father pointed to him, then to the buck.

Marty’s head swam. He didn’t want to kill this beautiful animal, but he knew his father saw it as food as well as prey.

It
was
food.

And it was prey. And Marty was a hunter. At least he would be. He knew what his father expected of him. Marty would do almost anything not to disappoint his father.

His father squeezed his shoulder again, brushing his back as he removed his hand.

Marty raised the rifle and sighted down its barrel at the peacefully grazing buck. He centered the sights on the deer’s large chest, just above the left leg. A heart shot.

The steam of Marty’s own breath rose in the icy air, for a second obscuring his vision. His heart slammed against his ribs and his blood rushed hotly through his veins. The blackened gun sight before him trembled.

He drew a deep breath, as he’d been taught, then slowly and quietly exhaled. They were downwind of the deer, and he knew he could take his time. The animals couldn’t pick up their scent. If he and his father simply were still enough, the deer wouldn’t bolt.

The end of the barrel was now steady. Marty adjusted his aim ever so slightly to the left, allowing for the winter breeze, and ever so gently squeezed the trigger.

The rifle’s sharp report cracked through the still morning, and the stock kicked back hard against Marty’s shoulder. He had to catch himself again to keep from sliding downhill.

When he looked for the deer he saw it beginning to run and was sure he’d missed. He didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad.

Then the deer stumbled, struggled up again, took a few more leggy strides on limbs that refused to work, and collapsed.

“We won’t have to track after that one,” Marty’s father said beside him. Then he laughed and hugged Marty, who found himself laughing and crying simultaneously, and hugging back.

He saw that the Mossberg was lying in the snow and dutifully stooped to pick it up, brushing snow off its bolt action. Should he have worked the rifle’s bolt and readied it for a second or even third shot?

“You did good!” his father said beside him. “How do you feel?”

Marty thought about the question and decided. “Good.”

He looked about and saw that the doe was nowhere in sight. There were tracks in the snow, leading off toward the lake.

His father noticed that Marty had seen the doe’s tracks. He didn’t smile, but he nodded his approval.

Marty and his father topped the ridge and trudged downhill through the snow toward the dead deer, their weight back on their heels. There was no breeze now, and the air was like still crystal that shattered each time their boots broke through the crust of snow. Marty had forgotten to put his gloves back on and his hands were cold. Through the trees, he caught glimpses of brilliant red near the dead buck, like scattered jewels in the snow.

The buck lay on its side, its neck twisted so that its head was at a sharp angle. Its eyes were open and blank. When they were close enough, Marty stooped low and reached toward the animal and petted it.