Jennifer conjured up a picture of him in her mind. She put the picture into words, and Michael said, “You’re doing fine. Do you know where he served time?”
“At Joliet. He told me he’s going to kill—”
“Where was the gas station he worked at?”
She gave Michael the address.
“Do you know the name of the motel he was staying at?”
“Yes. No.” She could not remember. She dug her fingernails into her forehead until it began to bleed, forcing herself to think. He waited patiently.
It came to her suddenly. “It’s the Travel Well Motel. It’s on Tenth Avenue. But I’m sure he isn’t there now.”
“We’ll see.”
“I want my son back alive.”
Michael Moretti did not reply and Jennifer understood why.
“If we find Jackson—?”
Jennifer took a deep, shuddering breath. “Kill him!”
“Stay by your telephone.”
The connection was broken. Jennifer replaced the receiver. She felt strangely calmer, as though something had been accomplished. There was no reason to feel the confidence she did in Michael Moretti. From a logical point of view, it was a wild, insane thing to have done; but logic had nothing to do with this. Her son’s life was at stake. She had deliberately sent a killer to catch a killer. If it did not work…She thought of the little girl whose body had been raped and sodomized.
Jennifer went to tend to Mrs. Mackey. She took care of her cuts and bruises and put her to bed. Jennifer offered her a sedative, but Mrs. Mackey pushed it away.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she cried. “Oh, Mrs. Parker! He gave that baby sleeping pills.”
Jennifer stared at her in horror.
Michael Moretti sat at his desk, facing the seven men he had summoned. He had already given instructions to the first three.
He turned to Thomas Colfax. “Tom, I want you to use your connections. Go down and see Captain Notaras and have him pull the package on Frank Jackson. I want everything they’ve got on him.”
“We’re wasting a good connection, Mike. I don’t think—”
“Don’t argue! Just do it.”
Colfax said stiffly, “Very well.”
Michael turned to Nick Vito. “Check out the gas station where Jackson worked. Find out if he hung around any of the bars there, if he had any friends.”
To Salvatore Fiore and Joseph Colella: “Get over to Jackson’s motel. He’s probably gone by now, but find out if he palled around with anyone. I want to know who his buddies were.” He looked at his watch. “It’s midnight. I’m giving you eight hours to find Jackson.”
The men started out the door.
Michael called after them, “I don’t want anything to happen to the kid. Keep calling in. I’ll be waiting.”
Michael Moretti watched them leave, then picked up one of the telephones on his desk and began to dial.
1:00 A.M.
The motel room was not large, but it was very neat. Frank Jackson liked things neat. He felt it was part of being brought up properly. The venetian blinds were rolled down and slanted so that no one could see into the room. The door was locked and chained, and he had pressed a chair against it. He walked over to the bed where Joshua lay. Frank Jackson had forced three sleeping pills down the boy’s throat, and he was still sleeping soundly. Still, Jackson prided himself on being a man who took no chances, so Joshua’s hands and feet were tightly bound together with the same kind of wire that had been used to tie up the old lady in the house. Jackson looked down at the sleeping boy and he was filled with a sense of sadness.
Why in God’s name did people keep forcing him to do these terrible things? He was a gentle, peaceful man, but when everyone was against you, when everyone attacked you, you had to defend yourself. The trouble with everybody was that they always underestimated him. They failed to realize until too late that he was smarter than all of them.
He had known the police were coming for him half an hour before they arrived. He had been filling the tank of a Chevrolet Camaro and had seen his boss go inside the office to answer the telephone. Jackson had not been able to hear the conversation, but it was not necessary. He saw the covert looks his boss gave him as he whispered into the telephone. Frank Jackson knew immediately what was happening. The police were coming for him. The Parker bitch had double-crossed him, had told the police to lock him up. She was like all the rest of them. His boss was still talking on the telephone when Frank Jackson grabbed his jacket and disappeared. It had taken him less than three minutes to find an unlocked car on the street and hot-wire it, and moments later he was headed for Jennifer Parker’s house.
Jackson really had to admire his own intelligence. Who else would have thought of following her to find out where she lived? He had done that the day she had gotten him out on bail. He had parked across the street from her house and had been surprised when Jennifer had been met at the gate by a little boy. He had watched them together and sensed even then that the kid might come in handy. He was an unexpected bonus, what the poets called a hostage to fate.
Jackson smiled to himself at how terrified the old bitch of a housekeeper had been. He had enjoyed twisting the wire into her wrists and ankles. No, not enjoyed, really. He was being too hard on himself. It had been necessary. The housekeeper had thought he was going to rape her. She disgusted him. All women did, except for his sainted mother. Women were dirty, unclean, even his whore of a sister. It was only the children who were pure. He thought of the last little girl he had taken. She had been beautiful, with long blond curls, but she had had to pay for her mother’s sins. Her mother had had Jackson fired from his job. People tried to keep you from earning an honest living and then punished you when you broke their stupid laws. The men were bad enough, but the women were worse. Pigs who wanted to soil the temple of your body. Like the waitress, Clara, he was going to take to Canada. She was in love with him. She thought he was such a gentleman because he had never touched her. If she only knew! The idea of making love to her sickened him. But he was going to take her out of the country with him because the police would be looking for a man alone. He would shave off his beard and trim his hair, and when he crossed the border he would get rid of Clara. That would give him great pleasure.