Crimson Joy

by Robert B. Parker

  "I don't know," Susan said.

  "His symbolism is private. He could attack me, he could…" She shook her head. "… anyone," she said.

  "Okay," Quirk said. "We'll start looking for him. I'm still on vacation but I can reach a lot of cops who'll look for him too."

  "You have a picture?" I said.

  "Yeah, got it from the security firm."

  "Susan's going to stay with me," I said. "He might turn up at her place."

  "We'll cover that," Quirk said. "How about the ex wife I looked at Hawk.

  "Be happy to watch her," Hawk said. "

  "Less you want me for backup."

  "No," I said. "I'll stay close to Susan."

  Hawk looked at Susan. "You be careful," he said. "You need me, you call Henry." Susan smiled. "Yes," she said. "Thank you."

  Hawk went out with Belson and Quirk.

  My office was quiet.

  "What do we do?" Susan said.

  "Zee muzzer," I said. "We stake out zee muzzer."

  "You think he'll go see his mother?" Susan said.

  "Hadn't he transferred a lot of his feelings for her onto you?"

  "Yes."

  "So maybe if he deflects his rage, he'll deflect it at her. Possible?"

  I said.

  "Possible," Susan said.

  "Besides," I said, "I'm pretty sure he won't come here."

  CHAPTER 30

  I was driving a black Jeep that year, with a hard top and all sorts of accessories that would have made the one I drove in Korea blush. Susan and I parked up the street a little from Felton's mother's house on the shore drive opposite King's Beach in Swampscott. She had the first floor of a three-story house that had gone condo when everything else had.

  "Gun in your purse?" I said to Susan.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Purse unzipped?"

  "Yes."

  "Good," I said. I had my gun in a shoulder holster under my Red Sox warm-up jacket. I had the jacket unsnapped. The weather was mid-fifties and sunny. I shut the motor off on the Jeep and sat with the window half open and the smell of the ocean coming in.

  "Is this in the bodyguard manual?" Susan said. "Take woman you're protecting to look for the man you're protecting her from?"

  "I thought you were protecting me," I said.

  "From what?"

  "From becoming so swollen with seed that I burst," I said.

  "I do what I can," Susan said.

  It was bright morning. Young women with small children, older women with small dogs, and now and then an old man with a cane walked along the ocean front, which stretched for several miles through Swampscott and Lynn and out along the causeway to Nahant. The street ran along the seawall. A sidewalk bordered the street and an iron fence bordered the sidewalk. Past the fence was a ten-foot drop to the beach and the ocean that rolled in from Portugal. An oil tanker moved imperceptibly along the horizon from Boston Harbor, not long out of Chelsea Creek.

  "I can't leave you alone, and I have to find Felton. So we do it together," I said.

  "I know," Susan said. "If it weren't so deadly, I'd kind of like it.

  Makes me feel like Lois Lane."

  "Well, you're with the right guy," I said.

  In my rearview mirror I saw Felton. He turned the corner from Monument Avenue and headed along the shore drive on my side of the street, carrying a small blue gym bag. He was dressed all in black and looked like an extra in a Rambo movie.

  "Felton," I said. "He'll walk right past you, lean over and kiss me."

  Susan had great reflexes. She was leaning across from her seat and her face covered mine as Felton went past on the sidewalk beside the Jeep. I could see him with one eye through Susan's hair. He was watchful in the exaggerated way of a kid playing war. He walked past us and turned in at his mother's house.

  "Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good," I said to Susan.

  Susan sat back up in the seat, looking toward Felton. "What now?"

  "I don't know," I said. "What's his mother like? If he confesses, will she help him?"

  "I have only his perception of her. If it's accurate, she will be solely interested in how to prevent damage to herself. If helping him would hush it up, she'd help. If turning him in would make her safe, she'd do that. Her concern with others' opinion of her seems nearly paralyzing, in her son's report of it."

  "Why would he be here?" I said.

  "I don't know."

  "Is he likely to be especially vulnerable in front of his mother?"

  "Yes," Susan said.

  "Okay," I said. "He's clearly dressed up in his battle gear. He looks like the Hollywood version of a cat burglar."

  Susan was watching with me as Felton went to his mother's house and went in the front door.

  "He's got his gym bag. Maybe he's got clean socks and a toothbrush in there. But maybe he's got rope and tape and a thirty-eight caliber gun," I said. "If we caught him with the murder gun, we'd have him."

  "It would be good to have hard evidence," Susan said.

  "It would be intensely stupid to walk around carrying the murder weapon, knowing there's people after him," I said.

  "It would be a way to be caught," Susan said.

  "If he wants to be," I said.

  "Part of him wants to be," Susan said. "It's probably what brought him to therapy. And caused him to write and make the phone calls."

  "And come here, to his mother's, in the light of the midday sun," I said. "Let's go in."

  "And then what?"

  "We'll see what develops," I said.

  "Do we have the right, in front of his mother?"

  "Suze, up to now I've played mostly your game. But now we're in my park. Now we do it my way," I said.

  "Because?"

  "Because I know more about this than you do. Because this is what /

  I do."

  Susan was silent for a moment, looking at Felton's mother's house.

  "And maybe," I said, "he's come with the rope and the gun for his mother."

  Susan nodded slowly and opened the door on her side.

  CHAPTER 31

  The front door opened into a small hallway with tan figured wallpaper.

  Stairs led straight up to the second floor. To the right was a small dining room with a mahogany table, two corner cabinets. To the left was a living room that ran the depth of the house and was papered in beige with large red flowers. Felton sat toward the back in a bright red velvet wing chair. His mother sat on the sofa, which was covered with a floral throw.

  "Well, who's this?" Mrs. Felton said. She was a sharp faced little woman, her hair tightly permed and colored a honey-brown. She had on a gray-green dress and green high-heeled shoes.

  "My name is Spenser, Mrs. Felton. And this is Dr. Silverman."

  Mrs. Felton frowned a little at the Dr. Silverman. Doctors were male.

  And Silverman sounded Jewish. Felton was absolutely motionless in his chair. The gym bag was on the floor at his feet. He looked at a point in space somewhere between me and Susan.

  "What do you want?" Mrs. Felton said. "You should have knocked."

  "Do you know what your son's been up to, Mrs. Felton?" I said. Soaping windows? Peeking in the girls' locker room, putting a tack on the teacher's chair? Her face got hard and the lines became immobile and her eyes slitted. She turned toward Felton.

  "What does he mean, Gordon? What have you done now?"

  Felton remained rigid and still and not looking at any of us. "Nothing."

  Felton said. "I don't know them."

  "Dr. Silverman is your son's psychotherapist," I said.

  The lines in her face deepened and the face got icy.

  "Psych ?" she said.

  "Psychotherapist," I said. "Dr. Silverman is a psychologist. She had been treating your son."

  Mrs. Felton's features were so pinched that they seemed centered in her face.

  "What did he say?"

  "About you?" I smiled. "It's pretty long to summarize."<
br />
  "Gordon, what have you been telling about me?"

  Felton maintained his rigidity.

  "I don't hold with all that psycho logic business. Most of those doctors are crazier than the patients."

  "Surely, you would know," I said.

  We all waited. The silence was very forceful. I had no idea where I was going. I just wanted us all together there in a stressful environment for as long as I could keep us. If I pushed too hard, Felton would probably bolt. If I searched his bag too soon and found clean socks and a toothbrush, it would score one for Felton, and I didn't want his psyche scoring any. If I came right out and told his mother what he was, she might faint, or throw a wingding, or simply deny it and order us out. That too would prop Felton up.

  We were still standing just inside the living room, me forward, Susan slightly back of me. There was a back door from the living room, which probably led to the kitchen. But Felton would have to get up from his chair and go around it to reach the kitchen. Probably a back door out from the kitchen. If he could make it before I stopped him, I'd lost more steps than I thought I had.

  "Gordon," Mrs. Felton said. "Just what is this business?"

  "Nothing."

  Felton said. His voice was flat, and nearly lost somewhere back in his throat.

  "Well, I'll tell you one thing," Mrs. Felton said. "No boy had a better mother. I never left him for a minute. I was always there when there was trouble. I stood on my head for this boy all his life."

  I looked at Felton.

  "That right, boy?"

  Felton seemed to come back from wherever he was. He looked away from the fixed point in space and refocused on Susan.

  "See," he said. "See what she's like?"

  "Gordon," his mother said, "what on earth are you saying? Don't you dare speak to me that way."

  Felton was still looking at Susan.

  "Was I speaking to her?" he said. "No, I was speaking to you. But she says I shouldn't speak to her that way."

  "Gordon, don't you dare," his mother said.

  "See?" Felton said. He was smiling slightly. "It's good you came here, Doctor. Now maybe you'll believe me about her."

  I looked at Susan and made a very slight headshake. Susan was silent.

  "Gordon, that's enough. If you're in some kind of trouble, I want to hear about it. And I don't want any more fresh talk."

  Felton turned and looked at her slowly, his body motionless, only his head moving. He held the look.

  "Aw, Ma," he said, "fuck you."

  She rocked backwards as if the phrase were physical, all the blood drained from her face. She spoke in a whisper. "What?"

  Felton stood up suddenly.

  "Just fuck off, will you. You been saying how you stood on your fucking head for me all my fucking life and I don't want to hear it anymore. Dr.

  Silverman knows. You stood me on my head. You didn't love me. You never loved anybody. You loved me when I did stuff you liked and didn't love me when I did stuff you didn't like, and none of it had any logic.

  You frigid bitch, you ruined my life, that's what you did."

  I felt like cheering, except it was too late. The short, happy life of Gordon Felton. His mother seemed not to have heard him.

  "Gordon, you may not use that language in my house.

  You'll have to leave. And you'll have to take your friends with you."

  She sat very straight.

  "Language?" Felton's smile had widened. "Language? You mean like 'fuck you'?" He stared at her. "You know what I've done?" he said.

  "Gordon, I'm your mother. You do what I say."

  "You know what I've done?" Felton said again. "You know the Red Rose killer?" His face was bursting with mirth and pleasure. His cheeks were flushed. "Huh? You know that guy, Ma? Guy ties up colored girls and shoots them in the snatch?"

  Mrs. Felton turned and looked firmly at the inexpensive tole lamp at the end of the couch.

  Felton threw his arms wide, his face alight with laughter. "Ma, that's me. I did that, Ma. How do you like them apples, huh, Ma? Your boy Gordon is famous."

  His mother whirled around at him.

  "Shush," she hissed. "You just shush, this minute. I don't want to hear another word. I have friends to think of. You don't care what you do to me, do you?"

  "What I do to you, Blackie? I'm the fucking serial killer, Blackie, and you did it to me."

  "Don't call your mother by her first name," she said.

  "I refuse to listen." She resumed her examination of the lamp.

  Felton stood with his arms apart, his chest heaving, the smile beginning to narrow. His mother gazed steadfastly at the lamp. He looked at her staring away from him and shook his head once. He looked at Susan.

  "You?" he said.

  Susan shook her head slowly.

  Felton stared at her and his eyes slowly filled with tears. He shook his head again and shifted his wet gaze at me.

  "So, Big Daddy," he said. "It's you and me."

  "What's in the bag, Gordon?" I said.

  His eyes dropped. He'd forgotten it. He looked back up at me.

  "My stuff," he said.

  His face remained teary, but it began to be shrewd.

  "You got a warrant?" he said. His eyes began to move around the room.

  I took my gun out from under my arm.

  "Right here," I said.

  Mrs. Felton saw the gun. Apparently she wasn't as fixated on the lamp as she looked.

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," she said.

  I walked across the living room and picked up the gym bag from the floor between Felton's feet. I handed it to Susan. She unzipped it. "There's some duct tape, clothesline, and a revolver," she said, "and some of those sanitary gloves made out of saran wrap or whatever." I was looking at Felton. He stared back at me, the tears still muddling his eyes.

  "Gotcha," I said.

  Felton smiled faintly. He shrugged his shoulders. From the couch his mother hissed at him.

  "Run."

  He looked at her as if she'd appeared from the skies.

  "Run, Gordon. We'll say they're lying. No one will know."

  "Ma…"

  "Run," she hissed. Her voice seemed hoarse, almost guttural.

  "Run, run, run, run…"

  "The gun will convict him, Mrs. Felton," I said.

  "It won't. They don't have to know. They don't."

  She stood up from the couch and walked to her son.

  "Would you put me through this," she hissed. "For God's sake, run." She shoved herself suddenly between us. I put one hand on her shoulder. She slapped Felton in the face hard.

  "Run, you rotten brat."

  Felton gave her a look of such horror that it made my throat close. He whirled and dashed for the kitchen. His mother grabbed hold of my gun hand.

  "Run," she screamed. "Run, run, run, run, run."

  I shoved her out of the way and looked at Susan. She had her gun out too. Goddamn.

  "I'll be fine," she said. "Get him."

  I went out the back door after Felton.

  CHAPTER 32

  Felton was across the drive when I rounded the corner. He went down the stairs to the beach. I jammed the gun back in the shoulder holster and snapped the safety strap as I went across the drive after him. When I reached the stairs he was a hundred yards up the beach toward Nahant. I settled into a fast jog on the damp sand. My goal was to keep him in sight.

  The wind off the water was fresh and we were running into it. No world record today. The sand, as I ran, moved and reorganized under my feet and I could feel it in my shins. Felton gained a little on me. I was not perturbed. I knew I could run ten miles, maybe more, and I figured I'd outlast him. Ten miles from here and we'd be five miles out to sea.

  I could feel the sweat begin to form inside my shirt. As I ran I slipped out of my Red Sox jacket and let it fall on the sand. A guy walking a German Shepherd stared at the gun in its shoulder holster.

  The sand was tough. I was heavier tha
n Felton and the more weight it bore, the more the sand shifted and turned as I ran. Ahead of me Felton seemed to float above it, his feet barely reaching down to touch the ground. I lumbered on, fighting the sand, feeling the heavy Colt slapping and bouncing against my rib cage under my left arm. Ahead the beach was interrupted by a mass of tumbled boulders. Felton went up onto the boulders, and started around the promontory. He was out of sight around it by the time I reached the first rock. It was massed with seaweed and barnacles. The whole tumble of rocks was a kind of rusty color and the edges had been rounded by the continuous washing of salt water. I was careful as I climbed among the rocks. It was low tide. At high tide most of the rocks were underwater. The seaweed was wet. Perfect for clambakes; as footing, less so. A wave bigger than the others broke against the rocks, and spray tingled down on me. I steadied myself as I rounded the point of the promontory. Barnacles scraped my hand. Another big wave broke. More salt spray. It was grand work, out in the fresh air, smelling the surf, exercising vigorously.

  Ahead of me the beach returned. Felton had reached it and was hot-footing along it. He glanced back at me as I dropped off a boulder and hit the sand. Felton put it into another gear, sprinting, as the gap between us widened. If he could keep that up, he'd be gone soon. I was beginning to feel pretty good. My legs were loosening and the muscles in my chest and back began to soften a little as I ran, steadily, getting a little more used to the sand. I would have shin splints tomorrow, but right now the muscles were rocking easy in vernal heat.

  Felton stumbled ahead of me. The sand was no help to him either. He looked back and saw me still there and put his head down and moved out even faster. Why he took the route was a puzzle. If he'd stayed on the sidewalk and sprinted up into the neighborhoods that rise from the shoreline, he would probably have lost me by now. He was at least 150 yards out ahead. On the other hand, sweet reason had not been the guiding force for Felton up to now, and there was no reason to expect that it would suddenly appear. He'd run, probably, like an animal, toward the open light. I felt the air going in and out in large, easy breaths, sharp with the smell of the ocean. I felt like a beer commercial. Chasing a murderous psychopath along the verge of the restless sea. It doesn't get any better than this, Gordie. Maybe when I caught him we could exchange high fives and look at beer without drinking it. Ahead of us another promontory, more boulders, a jutt;