The Mermaid Murders

Chapter Four

Time stopped.

“Drop your gun,” McEnroe whispered.

Jason did not move a muscle. He could not have moved if his life depended on it, and there was a good chance it did. A perfect and boundless stillness washed through him as he waited for the shot. That terrifying bang that always came a split second after the worst had already happened.

“Drop it,” McEnroe hissed. His hand was rock steady.

It wasn’t even fear Jason felt so much as numb inevitability. He knew he needed to think past the pistol aimed at him, but he could not tear his gaze from the black hole of the barrel pointed at his face. A suicide special. A cheap, compact, small-caliber weapon. Equally special when used for homicide.

Getting shot in the chest with a .22 or a .25 was almost always fatal. That high velocity bullet would ricochet around tearing up organs and everything else in its path like a murderous pinball machine. Getting shot in the head…

Jason let his Glock slip from his fingers. It hit the ground in front of him with a dull thud.

McEnroe slid gracelessly the rest of the way out the window, pistol trained on Jason. There was no more than three feet between them. Too far—and not far enough.

“Don’t move,” McEnroe whispered. “I’ll blow your head off if you even twitch.”

Jason said nothing. There were no coherent thoughts in his brain to speak. He had already done the unthinkable by dropping his weapon.

McEnroe began to walk backward, still leveling his pistol at Jason. Jason stayed motionless, hands at his sides. McEnroe should have made him lock his hands behind his head. Like this, he could tackle McEnroe, wrestle him for the gun.

He didn’t move.

McEnroe turned and sprinted for the trees.

Jason bent and scooped up his Glock. He could take McEnroe out right now. An easy shot. A clean shot. Bam. Right between the shoulders.

You can’t think about what it feels like to get shot.

He raised his weapon. Opened his mouth to shout a warning. The words didn’t come.

McEnroe vanished into the trees.

What the fuck did you just do?

He had to go after McEnroe. It was his job. His duty. He could not continue to stand there like a statue. But he could not seem to…unstick his limbs. He felt paralyzed. His right shoulder was throbbing painfully as though he’d reinjured it. The reality was he was unhurt, and Rebecca’s murderer was getting away.

Metal rings scraped on a metal rod. The curtains next to him suddenly fluttered open, and Kennedy leaned out the window. “Where is he? Where did he go?”

Jason’s lips parted as he stared at Kennedy’s tense, hard features.

He could lie. He could say he didn’t know. That McEnroe had escaped before Jason made it to the back of the house.

The fact he even considered this lie for however brief a moment shocked him. Like it wasn’t already bad enough?

He said through stiff lips, “He ran for the woods. He pulled a gun on me.”

Kennedy shouted, “Then what the hell are you standing there for?”

That broke the spell. Jason launched himself after McEnroe as Kennedy—with a lightness surprising in a man his size—jumped down from the window ledge.

As Jason’s feet pounded the soft, uneven ground, he scanned the treeline for motion or color. He saw nothing.

It was a relief to run. Dodging bullets was preferable to facing Kennedy. Or his own thoughts.

What the fuck? What the fuck?

How could you have done that?

He could hear Kennedy shouting to Gervase, but he didn’t hear the words. He didn’t need to. No time to think about any of it now. Somehow he had to make this right. All his focus needed to be on locating and apprehending McEnroe.

In thirty seconds Jason was across the firebreak. He plunged into the shadowy cool of the woods.

It was like passing through the door into a different world. The tall army of trees seemed to absorb all sound. The temperature dropped an instant few degrees, and visibility grew uncertain. He slowed, listening. From a few yards ahead he could hear crashing sounds as McEnroe piled through bushes and brush in his headlong flight. He was making no effort to be quiet, no effort to conceal his passage. He was desperate.

So was Jason. He charged after him.

High overhead a startled flock of birds took flight.

Twigs snapped to his right. Jason brought his weapon up. Several yards down Kennedy was moving on a parallel line with him.

Wouldn’t that be brilliant? Shoot Senior Special Agent Sam Kennedy by mistake?

You should not be here. You are a danger to yourself and everyone on your team.

The unbidden thought frightened him, made him angry. It wasn’t true. He had made a mistake, but he would fix it.

He paused.

Behind him came the crackle of a radio, instantly muffled. That would be Gervase coming up from the rear. And ahead of him…more sounds of cracking wood. Quieter now, more surreptitious. McEnroe had stopped panicking and was using his brain.

Where are you?

Jason listened, tuning out Gervase’s muted voice speaking softly into his shoulder mic, Kennedy’s careful progress through prehistoric-sized ferns…

There. The brush and splinter of something large moving swiftly through dense overgrowth.

Jason charged after, abandoning stealth and relying on sheer speed.

His oncoming rush must have startled McEnroe who suddenly popped up about a yard ahead, red and yellow shirt a sudden flash of color in the blue-green gloom. McEnroe’s pale face turned briefly toward him, eyes wide in alarm.

Kennedy was shouting a warning, moving into firing stance.

Christ, don’t shoot me. Please don’t shoot me…

Jason barreled on, bursting through bushes and tackling McEnroe. His arms locked around a skinny waist—McEnroe wriggled frantically, kicked at him—and they both plunged over the side of an embankment.

There was a sickening dip in Jason’s belly as the earth fell away and gravity took hold.

They landed on the hillside, rolled, kicking up dead leaves, pine needles, and loose soil, McEnroe sputtering obscenities all the way down. It seemed a ways, but fortunately it was not a steep drop.

They tumbled to the bottom, Jason on top. He scrambled up, planting his knee in the small of McEnroe’s back and pressing the muzzle of his Glock against McEnroe’s skull. He was shaking with adrenaline and fury as he fumbled McEnroe’s pistol from his back waistband.

“Move again and I’ll blow your head off.”

McEnroe cried, “You broke my fucking leg, man!”

“Good. I wish it was your neck.” McEnroe’s legs seemed to be moving just fine, however, and Jason dug his knee in harder. “Quit kicking. I’m warning you.”

Kennedy came down the embankment at a quick easy jog, holstering his weapon at the sight of Jason atop McEnroe.

He reached the flatland at the same time Gervase appeared over the crest.

“Tony, you dumbass.” Gervase gave the all-clear into his mic.

“You have no right! I didn’t do anything!” McEnroe howled.

“Then why’d you run?” Kennedy asked. He helped Jason haul McEnroe to his feet. McEnroe’s jeans were torn, and there was a long gash in his leg, but it was not life-threatening or even apparently incapacitating. He made another clumsy kick toward Jason.

Gervase pulled his handcuffs out as he reached the bottom of the hill. He snapped them around McEnroe’s skinny wrists. “Now you’re under arrest,” he said.

The satisfaction in his voice made Jason wonder if this was what Gervase had hoped would happen. He hadn’t had more than the most circumstantial of evidence against McEnroe, unlikely enough for a warrant to search, let alone arrest. McEnroe trying to make a run for it definitely strengthened the case against him.

Except…what case? All they had so far was a missing girl, and maybe McEnroe was right. Maybe Rebecca had taken off for reasons of her own.

Why was everyone so eager to believe something worse had happened to the girl?

Gervase hauled his prisoner back up the embankment, McEnroe protesting the injustice and his innocence every step of the way.

Jason started to follow but was halted by Kennedy’s voice.

“You want to tell me what happened back there?” Kennedy’s eyes were like blue steel.

“I told you what happened,” Jason said curtly. “He pulled a gun on me.”

“You hadn’t already pulled your own weapon?”

He wasn’t going to lie about it. Even if he’d wanted to lie, not having pulled his own weapon in that situation would not put him in a much better light. “Yes. I had.”

“You’re saying McEnroe got the drop on you?”

Had he? Jason was no longer sure who’d had those precious few seconds of advance warning. Had he frozen, or had McEnroe raised his weapon first? He couldn’t remember. There was only one appropriate answer.

He nodded curtly.

Kennedy continued to watch Jason, granite-faced and unbelieving. To Jason’s relief, he did not pursue it.

They followed Gervase up the hill in silence.

* * * * *

“I don’t know,” McEnroe said.

He had been saying the same thing for nearly thirty minutes.

They had already covered the basics. McEnroe was twenty-two, had been born in Dudley, Massachusetts, and had graduated from Shepherd Hill high school. Following high school he had applied to and been rejected by the air force. A stint in junior college had followed, but he had dropped out after his first year. He had held a succession of low-paying jobs and was currently employed part-time in the local feed store. His income was bolstered by some kind of disability pay. He was unmarried and had no children. Two years ago he had been diagnosed with Lupus which was how he had come by a hardship cultivation registration to grow his own medical marijuana.

“You don’t know what you argued with Rebecca about?” Kennedy inquired. “How much had you had to drink?”

McEnroe shook his head and rested his face in his hands. It was clear to Jason they were not going to get anything useful out of McEnroe, that this was tantamount to trying to squeeze blood from a stone. But it was Kennedy’s party, and Gervase seemed to be enjoying the game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, so Jason kept quiet.

If the day had illustrated anything, it was that he and Kennedy could have been working for two entirely different law enforcement organizations, so unalike were both the scope and focus of their investigations. It wasn’t just what they investigated, it was how they investigated.

“We argue all the time,” McEnroe said. “It didn’t mean anything. I was tired of it, that’s all.”

“What kind of things do you argue about?”

McEnroe moaned. And Jason could have echoed him.

“Okay,” Kennedy said with suspicious affableness. He knew they had McEnroe for as long as they needed him. There was the little matter of pulling an unlicensed, unregistered Raven Arms MP-25 on a federal officer, not to mention disarming that law enforcement officer, resisting arrest…there were any number of charges with which to hold McEnroe. “What’s going on between Rebecca and Patricia?”

“Huh? How would I know?” McEnroe said with what seemed genuine astonishment.

“They were arguing the night of the party. Were they arguing about you?”

“Me?”

The alarm was genuine.

“How long have you been partnered with him?” Chief Gervase asked, jolting Jason out of his thoughts.

“Me?” Jason said with almost the same emphasis as McEnroe on the other side of the two-way mirror. “I’ve never worked with him before today. This is temporary.”

“Ah,” Gervase said, “that’ll be Wisconsin.”

What exactly had happened in Wisconsin? Jason only knew what SAC Manning had told him, which was that Kennedy had so antagonized the other members of the taskforce through his overbearing and bullying tactics, it had affected the course of the investigation. Kennedy—and the Bureau—had been called out on the evening news by the governor. Jason would have liked to pump Gervase for information, but gossiping about a colleague was out of bounds, so he’d have to do some web reconnaissance that evening. At the very least he needed to know what he’d got himself into.

He made a meaningless sound of acknowledgment.

“You’ll learn a lot,” Gervase said. “Just don’t get in his way. It’s his show and his show alone. He doesn’t like the bit players.”

What the hell did that mean? Did Gervase feel like Kennedy was overstepping his authority? It had been Gervase’s choice—his suggestion, in fact—to leave the interrogation to Kennedy. Just as it had been his decision to bring in Kennedy in the first place. Jason turned to study the older man’s profile. Gervase’s smile was bleak. He continued to watch the interrogation room.

“We’ll be out of your hair before you know it,” Jason said. “I’m supposed to be back in Los Angeles in a day or two.”

Three days, Manning had told him. A week at the most. Just enough time for Kennedy to reassure and advise the locals. Reassure them no mistakes had been made last time. Advise them on how to proceed this time.

“A day or two? I hope that’s true. I don’t mind admitting I’d prefer thinking McEnroe is our perp to the possibility of a copycat killer. Or…”

Jason nodded. Understandable. Also a lot more likely.

On the other side of the glass, Kennedy was silently reading—or rather pretending to read—through the file on the table before him. He closed the file and said, “Tell me about your relationship with Martin Pink.”

“Here we go,” Gervase said with quiet satisfaction. “He was just playing with him. Now he’ll go in for the kill.”

McEnroe looked stunned. “My…what? I never knew him!”

“You’re neighbors.”

“No, we’re not! Pink’s been in prison for years. Way before I ever moved out here.”

“Are you trying to tell me you aren’t aware the house you’re living in formerly belonged to Susan Parvel’s parents?”

“Is that true?” Jason asked the chief.

“Yep.” Gervase’s face was grim.

“No,” protested McEnroe. And then, defensively, “Well, so what if it did? The property was cheap. That was all years ago. The Pinks are all gone now. Why shouldn’t I live there?”

“I bet a lot of people could tell you why.”

McEnroe blinked at Kennedy’s stern face. He looked increasingly confused and scared.

Kennedy said, “The Parvels used to have one of those big above-ground pools. Susan used to go for long night swims during the summer. And one evening when she was out there floating in the water, staring up at the stars, Martin Pink came along and dragged her out of that pool. Her parents were out having dinner with friends. There was no one to hear her screams except Pink’s mother and brother over the hill. Pink dragged Susan into the woods where he raped and murdered her.”

McEnroe was gazing at Kennedy like a rabbit hypnotized by a cobra.

Kennedy said, “After their daughter was murdered, the Parvels had that pool taken down and planted a bed of roses in its place. Are you telling me you didn’t know any of this?”

McEnroe shook his head, but whether he meant no or you’re out of your mind was unclear.

Where was this line of questioning going? It made no sense to Jason. It was a horrible story, yes, but what was the point? He glanced at Gervase, and Gervase was smiling with sour satisfaction.

Kennedy said, “And then along comes you, Tony. You rip that rose garden right out without a second thought. And of all things, you replace it with a hot tub. A hot tub. How many young girls did you plan on luring into that hot tub?”

Gervase laughed quietly. He glanced at Jason. “Don’t worry, Agent West. You’ll be back in L.A. with plenty of time to spare.”