In for the Kill

51

Jeb Kraft said, "I told you I wouldn't need a lawyer."

The interrogation room was getting warmer, from body heat and because the precinct detectives liked to keep it warm in there. Desperation seemed to rise with the temperature, and desperation struggled to find its voice.

"Don't be so sure," Pareta said to Jeb. "I might as well stay here. You're still talking to the police and need legal counsel, and I'm here pro bono."

He smiled. "I guess you're right. You're a bargain."

Pearl knew he was turning on the charm for his lady lawyer, and knew she was falling for it.

Quinn shifted his weight in his uncomfortable chair, making wood creak, and looked expectantly at Jeb. "We're waiting for the truth, and God help you if it isn't."

"There's no need for that kind of talk," Pareta said.

Quinn didn't have to tell her she was there because she'd been the on-call attorney next in line. Pareta had been overjoyed to find that she might be defending one of the city's most notorious killers until a high-priced, high-profile criminal attorney inevitably displaced her. Now she was simply defending a man wrongly charged. Everyone ignored her. She acted as if she'd expected to be ignored. Just getting in her licks.

Moving forward slightly and resting his elbows on the table, Jeb cleared his throat, and began:

"My name is Jeb Kraft, and I was born in nineteen-eighty-one in Slidell, Louisiana. My mother is Myrna Kraft. My father was Samuel Pickett, now deceased. I attended Yale, not Princeton. My mother's other son, ten years older than I am, is Sherman Kraft. When we-Mom and I-read in a Louisville newspaper about the Butcher murders, we knew it was Sherman. It had to be. He was…never what you'd call normal. Mom said he liked to kill animals and cut them up, dismember them and clean their body parts, as if he were purifying and justifying his act. We knew we had to do something, but we didn't want to see Sherman killed, or kill himself rather than be captured. Blood really is thicker than water, even thicker than the blood of women we never knew. We came to New York to find him and stop him, Mom and I."

Quinn unconsciously fingered the Cuban cigar in his shirt pocket. (Not that he could smoke it here.) "This is the same Sherman Kraft who was found wandering alone in Harrison County, Florida, in nineteen-eighty, and became a ward of the state?"

"It is," Jeb said.

"Where's your mother now?"

"She's staying at the Meredith Hotel, on the East Side."

Quinn knew the Meredith. It was a large hotel and old, but still elegant, the kind of place where mid-level diplomats and airline personnel stayed, as well as tourists who wanted to see the United Nations, which was only a few blocks away. He glanced at Fedderman, who nodded and slipped from the interrogation room. Jeb Kraft didn't seem to notice, but Quinn was sure he had. Jeb didn't miss much.

"Why did you use an alias in your search for your brother?"

"We decided it would be easier that way, for us and for Sherman. We didn't want to attract attention if the police learned his name and it became public. We wanted to get to him first, to talk him into surrendering to the law, to keep him from killing again or being killed himself."

"So you found a way to monitor the investigation," Quinn said. "You established a relationship with one of the detectives."

Jeb glanced at Pearl. "I guess you could call it that. Or I let her establish a relationship with me. I pretended I'd known Marilyn Nelson so I might pique Officer Kasner's interest, and…our friendship developed into something deeper."

Pearl felt her stomach turn over.

"While pretending to give Officer Kasner evidence, you were secretly eliciting evidence from her," Quinn said.

"You could say that."

"Do you say it?"

Another glance at Pearl. "Yes, I do. You have to understand, the entire purpose of our visit was to find Sherman before the police did. To save his life. I'm not saying I wasn't-I'm not-fond of Pearl."

"And all the while Sherman continued to kill."

"We wanted to save the lives of any future victims, too. Of course. We thought we were going about it the right way, letting the police lead us where they were going anyway, then maybe there'd be something we could do for Sherman, make taking him into custody easier and no one would be hurt. Our intentions were good."

"Have either you or your mother had any contact with Sherman since you arrived in New York?"

"No. I swear we haven't."

Quinn wearily dry-washed his face with his big hands and sat back. The wooden chair creaked forlornly again under the strain of his weight. "Do you have any actual proof that your brother Sherman Kraft committed the Butcher murders?"

Jeb blinked at him. "Proof? In the legal sense? No."

"Then why are you so sure of his guilt?"

"Because Mom is."

Pearl saw a subtle change in Quinn; he'd picked up on something. He no longer seemed tired.

"Are you still single, Jeb?"

"Yes. I've had live-in relationships with women, but I never married."

"Any special someone now?"

Jeb looked everywhere other than at Pearl. "No. I'm afraid not anymore."

Pearl wondered how she could ever have been in love with this creep.

"Do you still live with your mother, Jeb?"

"Of course not. I live in an apartment in Boston, where I have my office. I mean, I work out of my apartment. I'm an arbitrageur."

"What is that?"

"It's complicated. I make money off the differences in the exchange rates of currencies and in the fluctuating prices of certain commodities."

"You're a trader."

"Put simply, yes."

"Your mother lives alone in Louisiana?"

"Yes, but we're close in ways other than geographical. We talk on the phone almost every day."

"Why is she staying at one hotel and you at another?"

"I wanted to stay somewhere more suited to my identity as a struggling journalist."

"Your cover."

"Yes. Is there something illegal about that?"

"About inserting yourself in the middle of an active homicide investigation? You bet there's something illegal about it."

"He was searching for his brother," Pareta said. "Attempting to help."

Quinn laughed. "Spare us, counselor. But please tell your client that his best chance of extricating himself from the mess he's in is to tell the truth."

"My advice to my client would be to say nothing more. You've threatened to charge him with a crime."

"He's still charged with a crime-homicide."

Pareta saw this as her turn to laugh. She made a pretty good show of it. "And where's the evidence of that?"

"The point is," Quinn said, "the murder charge hasn't been dropped."

"Then as Mr. Kraft's attorney-"

Jeb raised his hands for silence and as if to calm everyone. "It's okay. The police know about us now. If talking helps to find Sherman, I want to talk. He has to be stopped."

He looked down the table at Pearl, this time meeting her gaze directly. Trying to con her again, she knew.

She looked at the new Jeb the way Quinn was looking at him.

"What do you think, Pearl?" Jeb asked sincerely.

"I think you're guilty as hell. Of a lot of things."

"Let's get back to where we were," Quinn said.

"Which was where?" Pareta asked.

"Mom."