Between Dusk and Dawn

by Alfie Thompson

  The news jabbed through Jonna's heart. Not Sam, she cried inside. Please, no, not Sam. He didn't do it. Sam didn't kill those women. And in a million years, he wouldn't have killed her.

  "Madden?" His "what" was slow in coming. "Have you checked at all on Quentin Kincaid?"

  "Agent Connors has several agents and every crime computer in the country looking for anything at all on the man." Madden was obviously relieved that was all she asked.

  "Have they found anything?"

  She heard him speak to someone with him. "Connors says we'll start getting reports back any time now."

  "Thanks, Rod," she said sincerely. "And thanks for keeping me informed."

  "You know you can ask me for just about anything." On the last three words, his voice was a shade harder than she'd ever heard it and she interpreted it to mean, don't ask for any favors for Sam. And Sam, in the eyes of Rodney Mad­den, county sheriff, had been tried and convicted. He was convinced they had arrested the right man, that Sam was a vicious murderer.

  "If I stop by when I get to town, can I see him?" Please, Madden, this one's for me.

  She heard his hesitation. "He needs to see a lawyer."

  "I'll try to convince him if you let me. Just let me know," she said. "I'll be back at Moss's in a half hour or so."

  He felt compelled to tell her going to Moss's was a pre­caution she didn't need to take now. The killer was in his jail. They said their goodbyes and Jonna hit the button on the phone thought­fully.

  "You're a fool," she said aloud to the phone, but she didn't believe that either. As Moss had told her last night, "You know Sam. These guys don't. You've seen him with both your head and your heart. You have the most at stake," he'd finished his pep talk. "For everyone else, this is a game of fact and fantasy."

  For once, she allowed herself to listen only to her heart. And her heart knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Sam wasn't a killer.

  Jonna grabbed a few more clothes, stuffing them in a duffel bag, then turned out the lights and made her way downstairs. She sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the phone to call her lawyer.

  She was startled to find the line dead. Hot heart started racing until she reminded herself this kind of weather al­ways played havoc with the utilities. The wind had picked up. The rain and the thunder and lightning couldn't be far behind.

  And she should be on her way before the elements quit playing around. She started to turn out lights and changed her mind. She wasn't leaving a dark house. And she wasn't coming back to one tomorrow.

  Jonna swung her bag over one shoulder, and hung her purse from the other, unzipping the front pocket to find the keys as she opened the door.

  She looked up and froze.

  A man with frizzy blond hair stood waiting, as if he'd just rung the bell and expected her to fling it wide and invite him in. His thin lips stretched across largish teeth, forming a re­pulsive grin.

  "Finally, we meet," Quentin Kincaid said.

  Jonna knew her time had come.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dolly will hate this one, Quentin thought. Jonna was beautiful, Dolly was plain. Jonna was successful, every­thing Dolly touched turned to mud. Jonna was graceful and shapely; Dolly was lumps and bumps, although she man­aged to convince herself—and her "friends"—that her bumps were in all the right places.

  And he would totally enjoy his dear mama's bitter ha­tred.

  Jonna Sanders was everything Dolly could never be. Yet exactly like her—a bitch who would use any man to get things she didn't deserve.

  Jonna Sanders's eyes widened in fear. Then her nose lifted arrogantly and he knew she was also just like Denise Bar­ton, a Miss Snooty-Tooty with her nose always in the air.

  In college with him, dear, sweet Denise Barton had treated him like a pariah. She'd shunned working on any of the dual projects, even though they had both been constantly touted as the most talented students in the department.

  And when she had been the recipient of the NAGA award instead of him, he'd known she wasn't above sleeping with every member of the committee who made the final selec­tions.

  It was her fault Conger-Fox Graphics had fired him. It was her fault Dolly had kicked him out of their apartment. "Prove you're not as worthless as your father," she'd ad­monished him, cutting off the allowance that was rightfully his. "Let's see you support yourself."

  He was supporting himself, though dear Mama wouldn't think he was doing so well if she saw the way he lived. But he'd found both the job and the life-style suited him.

  Now this bitch had lost him his position at G. Wells, one of the nation's largest clipping services. Where else could he keep in touch with so many fellow alums than through the trade journals he'd been paid to peruse and cut to pieces—though now, they were mostly cutting and pasting online? Where else would he have found a prize like Jonna Sanders for The Record?

  "You didn't appreciate my congratulations?" he asked, sweeping an arm toward the bloody letters she'd obviously tried to wash away. Quentin pooched out his lower lip and mimicked a disappointed pout. "I'm so hurt. I gave it my best college try."

  He reached for the arm that hung loose over her purse. She let out a hoarse scream. He laughed. She couldn't even do that well. The purse and bag she carried crashed to the foyer floor.

  He held up his hands, backing a step—only a step—away. "Oh, I'm sorry, dear Jonna Sanders, I didn't mean to frighten you." Not much anyway.

  He put on his best leer, the one he'd learned so well from Dolly's lewd and lascivious friends. "But aren't you going to invite me in?" How well he remembered that phrase. They'd used it when they'd come to his bedroom door. He stepped forward into the entry, and she, trembling satisfac­torily, cringed away.

  "I was so hoping you would show me your brand new award. Could I see it, Jonna Sanders?"

  She blinked and he realized he was being very impolite. "Please?" he asked cordially.

  She nodded carefully, never taking her eyes off him.

  "Good. Where is it?" he asked, speaking as he would to a child. Her hand floated up and around, gesturing vaguely behind her.

  "Where?" He reached for her arm again. That seemed to be the only thing that made her move.

  She dodged and said shakily, "Upstairs."

  "Could you show me?"

  She stared at him unblinkingly.

  "Pretty, pretty please?" Damn, she was dim. It proved the only way she could have won anything was by buying it with the disgusting little hiding place between her legs.

  "Come on," he said impatiently, and shoved her farther into the house. He stepped inside and closed the door be­hind him. "Show me, damn you!" he said, and then gave her his most charming grin.

  * * *

  "I don't know what to think anymore." Sheriff Madden pulled up a folding chair outside Sam's cell. He handed Sam the report he'd just been faxed, ran a hand over his balding head and sat down. "You're right about one thing, this guy is strange."

  "He's a killer," Sam said, realizing it was Quentin Kincaid's name emblazoned across the top of the page. "And he's still on the loose. And he's still after Jonna." He tried to sound calm, despite his mounting desperation. Sound­ing as feverishly insane as he felt would not help his cause.

  "Read it," Madden said. "I'd really like a second opin­ion. Tell me what you think."

  "What did Connors say?" Sam leaned over the paper to comply.

  "He hasn't seen it. He's in Wichita filing some docu­ments in the federal court." Madden looked away sheep­ishly and Sam knew the "documents" had something to do with him. "I probably shouldn't be showing these to you."

  The report was a background summary sent by the San Francisco headquarters of the Bureau. Their massive com­puter hookups all over the country had pulled together an almost frighteningly thorough profile in an amazingly short period of time. Sam read, growing more horrified with every line.

  Quentin Kincaid's father had died in a freak accident with a conveyor belt at
the airport where he worked when Quentin was two. The offending airline had made a very large cash settlement and—after Dolly's continual threats to pursue a suit anyway—the merry widow also received lifetime passes for the two on the airline. According to several family members, Dolly had considered the passes a pretty good exchange for her husband's life. She'd always wanted to travel and Quentin's father was a ne'er-do-well.

  For the next several years, travel was just what she did, often leaving Quentin behind with "friends," until they were tired of being taken advantage of and were no longer friends.

  When he was six, Dolly took him to San Francisco where, on encouragement from her most recent boyfriend, a real estate broker, she'd spent what was left of her settlement on an apartment building in a fashionable neighborhood. She and her son and a constant parade of new "friends" occu­pied the penthouse apartment. Renting the apartments be­low gave Dolly her livelihood.

  Dolly had been an indulgent mother at times, sparing no expense to nurture Quentin's artistic talents, buying him lavish toys, dressing her young son like Little Lord Fauntleroy complete with "sweet little bow ties'' —perhaps for longer than she should have. One former neighbor briefly described a major battle when an eleven-year-old Quentin refused to don the required garb.

  On the surface, it looked as if Quentin had led a petted and pampered life, but several of Dolly's renters suspected it was more than a little difficult for the boy. Especially when he made the mistake of outgrowing his other, more important use to Dolly Kincaid. Many of the men Dolly had adorned her apartment with over the years had been overtly fascinated with young boys and Quentin no longer helped attract them. "Dolly just didn't appeal to normal guys," one neighbor was quoted. "But she couldn't stand not hav­ing a man around so she was inclined to take whatever she could get. After several drunks and beaters, she figured out that her poor little boy could be a very attractive asset to certain types. And they were almost always nice to her. Why wouldn't they be?"

  Sam flipped the page to one of the attachments referred to and saw for himself that the current residence of at least two of Dolly's former live-ins seemed to support the spec­ulation. They were residing in California prisons for certain crimes against juvenile males.

  "Bizarre, huh?" Madden asked.

  "That’s not the word," Sam mumbled and shivered, squinting in the dim light.

  Madden got up and switched on the lights and Sam took the papers to his bunk.

  During Quentin's teen years, his mother railed against Quentin's lack of ambition and accused him of being "just like his father."

  Somehow, he managed to win an art scholarship to North East Texas State where he'd done fairly well. There were no reports of trouble anyway, except that his peers reported that he was 'weird.'

  "Denise was in his class," Sam pointed out to Madden.

  "I know," the sheriff replied and shifted restlessly around on his chair. "But Jonna would have graduated two years before he enrolled at NET," he added.

  "The other two would have been there a decade or two before he was," Sam mumbled as he continued reading the report.

  Quentin hadn't blazed a trail of success in his chosen ca­reer as a commercial artist. Though he'd been hired and fired by most of the graphic arts and advertising firms in San Francisco, he was obviously talented—apparent by his nomination for the award Denise had won.

  Madden had been watching Sam's progress through the report. "Do you happen to know what his alibi was the night your sister was killed?"

  "His mother. Dolly Kincaid. She said he was with her, that they'd gone out to a late dinner after the awards ceremony before going home." Sam felt sick. He'd talked to her himself.

  "Why would she lie?" Madden asked.

  "Probably habit," Sam said, shaking his head at the sheriff’s innocence. "With this kind of history, it can't be the first time she's been questioned by some authority or another. She's probably learned to say whatever she be­lieves will lead to the fewest questions and the least amount of trouble." Sam leapt from the bed. "He worked with Denise." He began to pace. "How could they possibly miss all these connections when they investigated her death?"

  "He'd been in Chicago nine months by the time Denise was killed," Madden answered impatiently, as if he'd puz­zled over the question long enough to anticipate it from Sam. "She only worked in the same company for six weeks—in different departments—and that was almost two years before her death. Then they classified her murder as a bungled robbery, if you remember, no reason to check into distant past work associations."

  Sam clamped his lips tightly. He wasn't going to mention the award again. It was insignificant—not the kind of thing someone would kill for. He hadn't tied it in as a motive un­til he'd sat in Barry's office and read about JoAnne from Connecticut and her death... it seemed like eons ago.

  Sam slowly handed back the report through the bars. "He's still loose," he said quietly.

  Madden avoided his eyes, and a white line formed around his mouth. Sam felt sorry for the man but found little com­fort in knowing the kindly sheriff was torn between his doubts and his responsibilities. Jonna was still at the bas­tard's mercy.

  Madden's gray eyes finally met Sam's. "It’s not a week­end. He's always killed on weekends. Why would he break the pattern now?"

  Sam gulped back a protest. That was a pattern he hadn't seen and Madden had thought about this long and hard before he had come to get a second opinion from an accused murderer.

  "Darn it all, Sam." The sheriff burst from the chair. "I don't know what to do."

  "Let me out of here."

  Madden's gaze pinned and analyzed Sam. "You're a hell of a mess," he finally said. "We aren't used to dealing with maniacs here, and now I've got two on my hands." He struggled with his uncertainties and Sam prayed.

  Madden finally walked quickly to the door.

  "What are you going to do?" Sam called.

  "How the hell should I know? Wait, I guess," he contra­dicted himself. "We should be getting another report on what this maniac is doing now sometime soon." He waved the papers above his shoulder.

  "It may be too late." Sam held his breath.

  "Jonna's at Moss's. How would Kincaid find her there?" He opened the door, looked back at Sam and released an exaggerated sigh. "We've probably got several days before we really need to worry," he finished, offering logic he'd obviously been giving himself.

  The heavy door thunked shut between them and stone-cold despair knotted Sam's stomach. Probably. The key word was probably. But what if they were wrong?

  * * *

  Jonna led Quentin upstairs, stumbling over a step or two as she tried to walk and watch him at the same time. He leered at her, prodding her from time to time. He didn't have a gun that she had noticed, but then her brain was just starting to function again. And it ran uncontrolled and rampant in all directions.

  It flitted past prayers, for herself and one for Sam- please, God, let him come—then stuttered and tripped over on the realization that she loved Sam. She might never see him again, might never have the chance to make love to him and tell him. She didn't find any comfort in knowing she'd been right for once.

  Oh God, would he survive without someone's love?

  She cast a glance behind her as Quentin followed her to her office. He was as pale as his hair, emaciated. He looked weak. What kind of chance would she have if she ran?

  As if reading her thoughts, he curled long cold fingers around the back of her neck and squeezed. She shivered and tried to resist his loathsome touch.

  His grip tightened and he pushed her ahead of him. He was more powerful than he looked, she decided. He care­fully stayed between her and the catwalk leading to the stairs.

  Her gaze flicked quickly about the room while his fo­cused on the small statuette she'd casually dropped on the corner of her desk. Funny, how unimportant that little tro­phy from the Architectural Society of America had be­come. She lifted it, hefted it subtly, evaluating it
s potential as a weapon as she finally wiggled from his grasp.

  She surprised him—and herself—by holding it out to him like an offering.

  "You can have it if you want," she said and amazed her­self again at how calm she sounded.

  His pale face twisted and flamed a brilliant, furious red. "You are my prize." The fist holding the statuette swung.

  Jonna ducked before she realized his aim wasn't directed at her. The statuette crashed on her desk, then flayed at her cherished blown glass castle. Glass exploded and flew ran­domly around the room and Quentin seemed totally caught up in a fury of destroying things.