Mortal Pursuit

69

“Come on, boss,” Tyler growled, “do her.”

Cain didn’t bother to answer. His gaze remained fixed on Trish Robinson.

“You know me,” he said softly.

It was not a question. He had heard her astonished whisper, had seen the recognition in her eyes.

Slowly she nodded. “I know you.”

“How”

“Marta Palmer.”

The name was meaningless to him. He waited.

“She was nine years old. You picked her up as she was walking home from school.” Her voice was low and steady, the voice of a judge pronouncing sentence. “You made her take you to a secluded place, an abandoned farmhouse she knew about. And when you got there, you raped her, and you killed her, and you left her in the field with a jump rope tied around her neck.”

The jump rope was what did it. He remembered that detail. The rest was largely lost in a haze of distance, but the jump rope stood out in his mind with photographic clarity. He could see the braided red-and-white cord, the rubber handles. Could see his wrists twisting as he jerked the line taut. Could see the girl’s eyes swelling, her lips skinned back in a leering rictus.

Marta Palmer. Yes. He remembered.

But …

“How could you know”

He seized Trish by the shoulders, whirled her away from the counter, slammed her against the opposite wall.

“That was fifteen years ago.” He leaned close, his mouth inches from hers. “How the hell could you know”

She did not blink, did not stammer.

“Because,” she said simply, “I was there.”

A beat of silence.

Cain flicked his gaze away from her, directing it down a deep well of memory, then refocused on her face.

“There were two of them,” he breathed. “Two little girls.”

“Yes.”

“Walking home together.”

“Yes.”

“You were the other one.”

“Yes.”

He saw it in his mind: a blurred kinescope of that September day. Two schoolgirls on a tree-shaded road. Wavering spots of sunlight dappled their hair, blonde hair, shiny and soft.He’d had other girls, girls no older than these-but never two at once. The challenge prompted him to stop his red convertible alongside the pair, under a maple tree’s spreading bouquet of golden leaves.

One girl was tall for her age and flirtatious, eager to show off an imagined sophistication. She was an easy mark.

Her friend was different. Quiet. Wary. Cain remembered a thin, thoughtful face and perceptive eyes.

Blue eyes. Trish Robinson’s eyes.

“You tried to coax us both into the car,” Trish whispered, providing commentary for the filmstrip unspooling in his thoughts. “Too hot to walk, you said. Hop in. You’d take us up the road.”

His usual M.O. at the time. He’d been unscarred then. Presentable. Tanned and windburned after days on the open road.

“You put a cassette into the tape player. Said we could listen to some tunes.”

The taller girl had accepted his offer, mischievously aware that she was breaking her parents’ rules, smug in her rebellion.

“Marta went along,” Trish breathed. “I didn’t.”

Cain nodded slowly. “You told her not to go.”

“Yes. I told her.” She shut her eyes against the memory. “But she went anyway. And … and I …”

“You ran. And bought yourself fifteen years.” He smiled. “I hope you made the most of them.”

“For Christ’s sake, boss.” Tyler sagged against the counter. “What the hell are you waiting for Make her dead.”

“Haven’t you been listening” Cain asked evenly. “Officer Robinson is a voice from my past.”

“She’s a damn bug you can’t squish, that’s what she is. Now’s the time”-he coughed, grimacing, his hand pressed to the stab wound-“to stomp her once and for all.”

Cain nodded. Objectively he knew Tyler was right. He had Robinson where he wanted her. Just pull the trigger, and she would be dead, no threat ever again.

But …

As a child she had been meant for him.

And when he looked into her face, he saw her not as a woman of twenty-four, exhausted and injured, wearing the ragged remnants of a police uniform, but as a nine-year-old girl in shorts and a T-shirt, toting a bookbag, her hair brilliant in an aureole of sun.

The clarity of the image, its visceral, almost tactile reality, was what decided the issue in his mind.

Cain holstered his Glock, then spun Trish around, mashing her face against the wall, and yanked her arms behind her back.

She still wore the handcuffs, but the chain had snapped.

“Shot ‘em off, huh” He chuckled. “Too bad. Those bracelets looked real good on you. Luckily I got a brand-new pair.”

He dug in his pocket. Produced the cuffs taken from Wald’s belt. Snapped them over her wrists.

“Boss,” Tyler mumbled, “we really don’t have time for this.”

Cain was unfazed. “Of course we don’t. Not now. But later …”

He turned Trish to face him. Cupping her chin, he tilted her head at an angle.

“Later you’ll cry like Marta did. You’ll call for your mommy too. And after you’ve cried and screamed for a good long while, I’ll put a rope around your neck and I’ll finish you just the way I would’ve done it on that farmhouse porch.”

He wanted her to flinch from the words, but she merely stared at him, those blue eyes seeing too much.

“Move,” he snapped, and pushed her roughly toward the door.

She staggered, her left knee buckling. He caught her from behind. For the first time he noted the bandage on her leg.

“What’s this, Trish Bullet” His tongue clucked in mock sympathy. “Somebody poke a hole in you”

She nodded in answer, pain squeezing her mouth in a bloodless line.

“Well, my friend’s hurt just as bad.” He tossed a glance at Tyler, stooping awkwardly to retrieve his Glock. “Maybe worse. And he’s still ambulatory. Now march.”

She took another step, nearly fell again. Cain held her up by the collar.

Through gritted teeth she gasped, “I can’t.”

“Then I’ve got to carry you. But if I do, I’ll make sure you’re not faking it.” He slid his gun barrel slowly under her nose, letting her smell the lubricant. “You know what it means to be kneecapped, Trish”

A slow swallow rippled down her throat. She looked down at the Glock, then at his face, and he read the anguish and the fury in her eyes.

“March,” he said again, and let go.

With what must have been a concentrated effort of will, she stayed erect.

Her leg was shaking as she advanced another step, but this time she did not totter, did not fall. Head lowered, sweat shining on her face, she hobbled across the threshold, not looking back.

She had guts. Cain conceded that much as he followed her out the door. The little rookie would have made one hell of a cop. If she had lived.