Bloodline

  Jack stared at the page. Was that why he’d relocated in Rego Park? Just to hook up with Dawn Pickering?

  It didn’t make sense. How could he have known about her?

  Jack found the answer on the preceding page:

  Hank found her!

  Her name is Dawn!

  Dawn Pickering!

  She lives in Queens!

  Everything Daddy promised

  is coming true!

  Hank found her? Hank Thompson?

  Had he hunted her up as a favor to his brother, or was he interested in her too?

  Jack shook his head to clear it. This was like peeling the proverbial onion. Every time—

  He froze at the sound of a door slam. He pushed open the closet door and heard pounding footsteps on the foyer stairs. They sounded too heavy for Dawn. Could only be Bolton.

  Shit! Now what?

  Jack slipped the notebook back into the lockbox and returned it to its place on the shelf, then stepped out to the window. The Miata in the driveway hadn’t been there when he’d driven past before.

  He sidled to the hallway door. From somewhere below came the sound of retching followed by the splatter of liquid hitting liquid.

  Whoever had rushed in was making Jackson Pollock art in the main-floor toilet. Jack needed a way out. Couldn’t use the route he’d entered, so he’d have to improvise. Maybe the vomiting would provide cover enough to slip past and let himself out onto the deck.

  Moving in time to the retching and groaning, and pausing between, he reached the main floor. To his left the steps down to the front door beckoned. Immediately to his right lay a closet door, then a long console table, then the bathroom. Beyond that, the family room/kitchen area and the sliding doors to the deck.

  Trouble was, the bathroom door was open. He didn’t think it possible to vomit with your eyes open, so if he timed it just right, he might be able to flash past in mid-retch without being seen.

  He was inching toward the door, waiting to make his move, when he heard the toilet flush. Bad news. He yanked open the closet door, ducked inside, and closed it after him—but left an inch-wide gap. Peering through it he saw Bolton lurch out of the bathroom and stagger away toward the family room. Now, if he’d only veer off to the kitchen for some water…

  But no, he plopped himself in a chair in direct line of sight through the foyer. No way Jack could slip out unseen.

  He weighed his options. He could wait and hope Bolton fell asleep. Or until Dawn came back and they went up to bed—and hope that no one opened the closet door along the way.

  Another solution slithered to the fore.

  He reached back and touched the grip of his Glock. He could step out of the closet, walk over to him, and tap a couple of nines into his brain.

  Why not? Be doing the world a favor. The guy was a loaded gun ready to go off.

  But Jack wasn’t into doing the world favors.

  Certainly would solve Christy’s problem, though.

  Of course, she’d be the prime suspect. If she didn’t have an alibi—if she was home from rehearsal, sitting alone, waiting for her Dawnie to call—she’d be in big trouble.

  Even though she’d eventually be cleared, he couldn’t put her through that.

  And after she was no longer a suspect, the agency behind Creighton might come looking for him. He hadn’t been careful here. It had started out as a simple B and E with no one to be the wiser. A murder scene was a whole different animal. Who knew what kind of trace evidence he’d left?

  He removed his hand from the Glock and rubbed his face. He used to have patience for this kind of waiting. Lately, though, his patience had gone south. He wanted out of here. And soon.

  Had to be a way.

  Jack tried a long-distance Vulcan mind meld to make Bolton move his ass toward the kitchen, but it didn’t work.

  He glanced down at the console table just outside the closet door, bare except for Bolton’s keys. Must have tossed them on his way to the bathroom. No help there. Jack wanted out, not in.

  Then he spotted the red button on the car remote. The panic button. Might be worth a try.

  He dropped to one knee. Then, moving as slowly as possible, he widened the door gap a centimeter at a time until he could slip his hand through. Staying low, he stretched to the table, then to the keys. He pulled them a tad closer. When the remote was in reach, he pressed the panic button.

  Outside, Bolton’s car alarm started honking and wailing.

  He ducked back as Bolton pushed himself out of his seat and stagger-stumbled into the foyer.

  “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! I’ll kill the motherfucker!”

  Down the stairs, out the front door, and into the night.

  Jack got moving as soon as Bolton was out of sight. Staying in a crouch he ran to the sliding glass door, let himself out onto the deck, and closed it behind him. He righted the fallen chair, slid the table back to where it belonged, then jumped to the ground.

  A minute later he was on the far side of the fence and cutting through the woods toward his car.

  But the question pursued him: What was so special about Dawn Pickering? Bolton’s “Daddy,” Jonah Stevens, the wellspring of his son’s abnormal DNA, had promised his son something.

  What?

  12

  There. Found it.

  Jack sat alone in his apartment’s front room, hunched over the Compendium of Srem at the round oak table with the paw feet. The glow from the hanging lamp lit the table and nothing else. The rest of the apartment lay dark around him.

  He’d rather be doing this over at Gia’s.

  He pulled his copy of Kick over and compared its cover image to the one in the book.

  Identical. He could have superimposed one on the other. But below the one in the book were printed five words: The Sign of the Q’qr.

  It looked unpronounceable. Que-quer? Was that how you’d say it?

  Everything else read as English. Why not that? Unless it was a word that had no translation. Like a name.

  The verse below that was even more frustrating:

  And then the Seven became One

  But the One could not hold

  And all with him were vanquished.

  Yet though the Q’qr was cast down it endured

  The Q’qr died yet lived on

  The Q’qr is gone yet remains

  Absent from sight

  But present in deed

  Present in spirit

  Present in body.

  What the hell did that mean? The lines might have rhymed or had some cadence in their original tongue, but now they were simply a clunky progression of contradictory statements about…what? A stick figure?

  The author was obviously telling a story, but seemed to assume that the reader knew the details. Jack figured it was like showing a drawing of an egg sitting on a wall and reciting “Humpty Dumpty” below it. If you weren’t familiar with the nursery rhyme and didn’t know Humpty wasn’t real, you’d be left scratching your head. Just as Jack was scratching his.

  The bigger question that remained was where Thompson had come up with the figure. He’d said in a dream. If that was true, where had his dream come from?

  Shaking his head, Jack copied down the lines and bookmarked the page. Then he began to leaf through the rest of the Compendium, looking for other appearances of the figure. The book was thick, the pages thin. He had a long way to go.

  MONDAY

  1

  Jeremy awoke feeling rank. He’d puked three more times during the night and still had a funky taste in his mouth. But at least his stomach had settled. In fact, he felt hungry.

  But not for Work’s extra spicy Buffalo wings. He’d never try those again. From now on it’d be strictly sandwiches and burgers when he ate there.

  He turned over and found the bed empty. Where was Dawn? She’d come home last night and gone straight into nurse mode. Got him some Pepto and rubbed his back and gave him sips of Gatorade. Nice try, but it all c
ame back up again.

  He heard the toilet flush and a few seconds later Dawn came in. She wore a short T-shirt and a thong and nothing else, and the sight might have put a little wood in Mr. Willy if she hadn’t looked like hell. She wobbled on her feet and her face was the color of three-day-old grits mixed with some of that lime Gatorade she’d been spooning into him last night.

  She groaned as she dropped onto the bed like a hundred-pound sack of corn feed and pulled the blanket up to her neck.

  This was her second morning in a row like this.

  “You okay?”

  Another groan. “Like totally not. Like anything but. I think I caught what you have.”

  “Had. I’m feeling much better.” He gave her arm a squeeze. “All thanks to you.”

  She pulled her arm away and pouted like a cranky child. “Sharing a bed’s okay, but not a virus.”

  Virus…Jeremy had been under the impression he’d had food poisoning. But Dawn hadn’t eaten anything Jeremy had. Could you catch food poisoning? He didn’t know all that much about medicine, but he didn’t think so.

  So maybe it was a virus. But if not…

  He bolted upright.

  “Puh-lease!” Dawn said. “Do not rock the bed!”

  “Sorry. You…” Had to be careful here. Didn’t want to spook her. “You felt this way yesterday too, didn’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” She looked at him. “Tell me you’re trying to say I gave this to you.”

  “No-no. Not at all. But you know, these viruses, sometimes they hit you like a ton of bricks and sometimes they sneak up on you for days, and when they finally hit you look back and say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s why I was feeling so crummy.’ Was it anything like that?”

  She closed her eyes. “I didn’t feel so hot yesterday morning, but I didn’t hurl or anything. Felt like I could have, though. Didn’t even want my morning coffee.”

  Jeremy tried to hide his excitement.

  Could it be?

  Suddenly she was out of bed and running for the bathroom. He heard her puking. An ugly sound, but if the reason was what he hoped, it was like music.

  He put on a concerned expression as she stumbled back to the bed and sat on the edge.

  “You all right, darlin?”

  She gave him a look. “Oh, I’m just fine. I just love totally puking up my guts. If I didn’t know better, I’d be scared I was pregnant.” She turned to face him. “You don’t think I could be pregnant, do you?”

  He wanted to scream YES! but kept his expression straight.

  “I don’t see how, darlin, what with me havin a vasectomy and all.”

  “I know, but I feel so totally rotten.”

  “It’s the virus, I’m sure.” He reached over and stroked her upper arm. “But you know what? Just so’s you’re not worrying about it—because if I know you, I know you’re gonna dwell on it—we’ll pick up one of those pregnancy test kits and give it a try.”

  “Oh man, that’s scary. I do so not want to be pregnant. That’s like the totally last thing in the world I need right now.”

  And the thing I need most, Jeremy thought.

  2

  “Well, you were right,” Levy said. “Whoever those strands of hair came from, Jonah Stevens fathered her.”

  As usual, Levy had refused to discuss anything on the phone, so Jack had had to meet him for a face-to-face. He’d refused to go to Rathburg and Levy hadn’t wanted to return to the city, so they’d compromised on Yonkers. Jack hadn’t been to the Argonaut Diner in a while, and it seemed like a good choice, especially since he was heading for Forest Hills after this.

  They’d grabbed a rear booth. The place had burned to the ground back in the late nineties, but was restored to its former tacky nautical-themed splendor. Jack had fond late-night memories of platters of Disco Fries—French fries slathered with melted cheese and gravy. Yum. He wondered if they were still on the menu. Yeah, he could check, but it was almost as thick as the Compendium.

  Levy ordered a stack of buttermilk pancakes and Jack a western omelet with a pot of coffee. He’d been up late last night, poring through the Compendium. No luck on finding another Kicker Man. Hadn’t seen another mention of Q’qr either. He’d leafed all the way through, but had barely scratched the surface of the text.

  “Three kids in three states. How many towns did this guy alley cat through? How many more little Jonahs are running around?”

  Levy shrugged. “Who knows? I’d love to find out. Turns out your client scores as high as her two half brothers—they make an unholy trio of oDNA carriers.”

  “So she could explode at any minute too?”

  “Doubtful. She doesn’t have the trigger gene.”

  Jack eyed him. “You said you couldn’t discuss this over the phone. You could have simply said, ‘Yep, Jonah’s the daddy.’ Must be something else is going on.”

  “There is. I—”

  The waitress—a lot younger and tons better looking than Sally from Moishe’s—brought their orders. Jack watched fascinated as Levy drowned his pancakes in syrup and tore into them.

  “Hungry? Haven’t eaten since, oh, maybe the Depression?”

  Levy swallowed a huge mouthful. “My wife’s on this low-carb kick.”

  “I thought low carb’s fifteen minutes were over.”

  “Not in my house. You can get scrambled egg whites and turkey sausage for breakfast—and it’s not as bad as it sounds—but finding a piece of bread for toast is like searching for a pot of gold.”

  “So you make up for it when you’re out.”

  “Better believe it.”

  Jack worked on his omelet awhile as Levy gobbled, then he ran out of patience.

  “You said there’s more. Give.”

  Levy leaned back. “Going on the assumption that the hair and the envelope came from the same woman, I had some folks at the agency run her prints.”

  “As expected.”

  “I discovered some interesting things about your client.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Such as?”

  “She was born Moonglow Garber.”

  “Moonglow?”

  Christy had said her mother was weird, but Moonglow…sheesh.

  “Raised by a single mother—just like her half brothers. Without the trigger gene she was pretty much like everybody else. Had an uneventful childhood up until somewhere around her eighteenth birthday when she disappeared for four weeks.”

  “Disappeared where?”

  “Not known. According to police records she wouldn’t say anything except that she’d been traveling around. Her mother had filed a missing person report and that was how Moonglow’s prints got into the system.”

  “Find anything on the father of her baby?”

  Levy shook his head. “No, but my guess is those four lost weeks were spent with him—she gave birth to a daughter nine months later.”

  “Dawn.”

  “Yes. Dawn Pickering.”

  “Wait. Is that the father’s name?”

  “It’s a good possibility. Moonglow Garber had her name legally changed to Christy Pickering three months before the baby was born.”

  Jack could see her dumping the Moonglow, but why change the Garber unless she wanted her baby to have her father’s name?

  “So I suppose a search for Pickerings is on.”

  “In a desultory way. It’s hardly high priority with the agency, but the good news is it’s not a common name.”

  “Yeah? Somehow it rings a bell.”

  “You know a Pickering?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It just sounds familiar.”

  “You don’t think you could have known the father, do you?” He laughed. “Now that would be a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Really? That’s too bad, because you’ll never guess where your client grew up.”

  “You’re right. I won’t.”

  “Atlanta, Georgia.”

&n
bsp; Jack felt a tightening across his shoulders.

  “Was she there when…?”

  Levy was nodding. “When Jeremy Bolton was doing his dirty work. Do you think—?”

  “She knew him? I asked her just yesterday if the guy she thinks is Jerry Bethlehem could be someone from her past. She says no, and I believe she’s telling the truth.”

  “But she could be wrong. She and Bolton could have crossed paths somewhere when they were kids. It’s just too much of a coincidence to think that this half brother of hers, who was in Atlanta when she was, should make a beeline for her daughter as soon as we lengthen his leash.”

  “No coincidence at all. He was looking for her. Or at least Thompson was.”

  Levy dropped his fork. “What?”

  Jack explained what he’d found in the notebook.

  Levy looked dazed. “He had his brother looking for her?”

  “So it would appear. Last night I was asking myself why he was seeking out Dawn Pickering, but now it’s even more complicated: Why was he seeking out his niece—or half-niece or whatever she is. To have an affair with her? It’s sick. And for the record, Christy’s never seen Hank Thompson before either.”

  Levy shook his head as if to clear it. “Three half siblings in a maze of interconnections that don’t seem to go anywhere. I wonder what it all means, if anything.”

  “Maybe your people can look into it.”

  “Not without a more compelling reason than simple curiosity. If the answers don’t impact on the clinical trial, they won’t care to know.”

  “Swell.”

  That left Jack with the task of telling Christy Moonglow Garber Pickering that the guy dating her daughter was a close blood relative. Would she believe him? He doubted it.

  “I’ll need proof when I lay this on Christy.”

  Levy frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “A lab printout saying in plain English that Bolton—or rather Bethlehem—and Christy have the same father.”

  “Dear God, I can’t do that! The result is from Creighton’s lab. No one can know Creighton is involved. It would mean my head—literally!”