Serial

82

Wayne Westerley lay half asleep in Beth’s bed. Her head was resting in the crook of his arm, and he could hear her gentle breathing. They were both lying nude on top of the sheets, letting the air conditioner cool the room after the heat of their coupling. Westerley absently decided that the gradually dropping temperature had reached a perfect level. He felt satiated and peaceful and could easily doze off.

His cell phone began to vibrate where he’d placed it on the nightstand. Beth stirred but didn’t wake up. With his free hand, Westerley picked up the phone and glanced at it. The county sheriff’s department calling. A good part of the county sheriff’s department was here in bed with Beth. The thought amused him as he pressed the talk key and fitted the phone to his ear.

“Sheriff?”

It was Billy Noth, his deputy. “What’s up, Billy?” Westerley kept his voice low.

“We just got a call from the New York City police.”

Westerley snapped all the way awake, but he didn’t stir. “ ’Bout what?”

“There’s a warrant out for Link Evans to be arrested as a suspect in the Skinner murders in New York. You know, that nutcase who-”

“Yeah, yeah, Billy.”

“I figured you’d want to know,” Billy said.

“I did and I didn’t.”

“I know what you mean, Sheriff.”

Westerley broke the connection.

He was dumbfounded. Still trying to put his thoughts together. Beth had told him Link wasn’t due home until tomorrow from the numismatic convention in Denver. He played again in his mind his conversation with Billy Noth.

The Skinner?

Link?

Westerley considered contacting the New York police immediately; then he realized they’d be able to determine the origin of his phone call. Not only that, if his office got the message from New York, the state police and the Missouri State Highway Patrol almost surely received the same message. They might already be busting their balls on their way to see if they could apprehend Link here, where he lived, where Westerley was in bed with the suspect’s wife.

He wriggled back on the mattress and sat up straight, waking Beth, and switched on the light by the bed.

Beth lay on her side and smiled sleepily up at him. “Something wrong, hon?”

“A few things,” Westerley said.

Link Evans enjoyed being early. It didn’t happen very often. His visit with the woman he’d gone to New York to see had taken less time than he’d expected. She’d provided the opportunity for them to be alone together almost as soon as he’d arrived in town. He figured that if his luck held, he’d be home before ten-thirty. Beth might still be awake. He could surprise her.

Link’s luck did hold. The plane bounced gently twice on landing, then slowed rapidly with the engines roaring on reversed thrust. When the roaring dropped to a lower level, the pilot announced that they’d had a tailwind and were ten minutes early.

Deplaning was smooth and efficient. Link had no luggage to claim, so he was out of the main terminal fast. He’d left the pickup for Beth this trip and driven the Kia to the airport. The shuttle to the lot where he’d left the car was parked and waiting at the curb, as if just for him.

He was away from the airport and on the road in no time, driving fast toward home.

It was ten-twenty when Link slowed the car at the mouth of the driveway and let it roll to a stop. The house was dark. Beth must have gone to bed early.

Rather than wake her, he pulled farther into the driveway and left the car parked off to the side on the grass.

He wasn’t going to bother unpacking tonight, and he didn’t feel like lugging his suitcase all the way up the long drive. He left the suitcase in the trunk, then made sure the car was locked and began walking toward the dark house.

When he got closer, he saw the back end of an SUV that was parked behind the house, where it wouldn’t be seen from the road or driveway. And the house wasn’t completely dark. He noticed soft light escaping from where a shade hadn’t been pulled quite all the way down. Silently, he approached the steady bar of light showing beneath the shade. He moved aside the branches of an overgrown forsythia bush that he’d neglected to prune. Crouching low, he peered inside through the window.

It was the bedroom window.

Quinn tried not to look at the dashboard clock or his watch. Beside him, Pearl squirmed. They’d been making good time before traffic had slowed, and then gradually stopped, on the Interstate. Now they were creeping forward at less than ten miles per hour.

“Way it looks on the GPS,” Pearl said, “we’ve only got a few miles before our turnoff.”

“GPS tell us why we’re crawling along?” Quinn asked.

“Not even if you asked it nice.”

The highway curved, and ahead of them Quinn could see a long line of traffic and flashing red and blue lights. Though it was difficult to know for sure in the dark night, it appeared that traffic was being diverted to a single lane.

No. When he got a closer look, he saw that what had been a single lane was now realigning itself and again becoming two lanes.

There was a state patrol car parked just off the shoulder.

“Looks like an accident,” he said, “and they finally cleared the wreckage off the highway.”

Traffic began to pick up its pace.

They were doing fifty miles per hour and accelerating as they passed the twisted mass of steel that had been a car. A sheet or blanket covered a body that lay on the grass on the side of the road. Yellow lights flashed on the roof of a tow truck that was slowly bumping along, making its way against traffic by driving on the shoulder. A state trooper was frantically waving an arm in a circular motion, as if getting ready to pitch a ball underhand, urging drivers to keep up their speed. Quinn could hear a siren in the distance, probably an ambulance.

“No rush on the ambulance,” Pearl muttered, craning her neck and staring at the body as they passed.

Quinn made no comment, and she said nothing more. Each knew the other considered the accident scene a bad omen.

Concealed behind the forsythia bush at the bedroom window, Link held his breath as he watched Westerley climb nude out of his, Link’s, bed. Beside him lay Beth, Link’s wife. She was nude and on her side, one knee slightly drawn up, her hip rounded and smooth, in a pose Link had seen in dozens of old paintings. She reached out and ran a hand languidly along Westerley’s back as he straightened up.

Link clenched his teeth until his jaws hurt.

It was the way Westerley moved that got to Link-casually and comfortably, as he usually moved, with a wellmuscled animal’s grace and power. As if he was familiar with his surroundings, as if this was his home, his bed, his wife. Pretending might make it so, if you wore a badge.

Mindful to be silent, Link backed slowly away from the window. As he did so, dark clouds scudded across the moon, changing the shapes of still objects and seeming to set them into motion. When Link was in shadow, he moved farther away from the house, toward the garage.

Inside the garage was his steel gun locker with its combination lock.

Inside the locker was his Remington twelve-gauge shotgun.