7
"Sounds to me like you shouldn't be expecting to ask him any follow-up questions," Abe said after Jack finished telling him about his Hank Thompson interview. "Not likely."
Holding a chip laden with green glop before his mouth, Abe said, "Looks awful, tastes wonderful," then made it disappear.
Jack had brought tortilla chips and a container of Gia's homemade gua-camole.
"I can't believe you've never had guacamole before."
"I was raised kosher. What do I know from Mexican food?"
"You haven't been kosher since the Roosevelt administration—Teddy's."
Abe sighed. "I should get out more already."
He dipped another chip, but on the way to his mouth some of the guacamole slipped off and landed on the cover of Rakshasa.
"Oy. Sorry."
Yesterday he'd dropped off the pair of Jake Fixx novels and asked Abe to give them a look while Jack concentrated on Kick.
"Did you get to read it?"
A stubby finger transferred the green dollop from the cover to his mouth.
"Skimmed is more like it. A novel maven I'm not. I prefer my fiction to pretend to be true."
"Like histories and biographies and newspapers?"
"Exactly. I need that pretense already. Take that away and my mind wanders."
"Did it stay on track enough to finish the book?"
"Barely."
"And?"
"As I said, I'm no maven of the novel, but for a Pulitzer Prize I don't think this P. Frank Winslow should be holding his breath."
"I don't care if he's any good. How close is he to what really happened?"
"Very. Too."
"Should I be creeped out?"
"Like a thousand hairy spiders crawling all over you."
"Swell." Jack shook off the sensation. "How the hell—?"
"The little details, they're different, but the big ones he's got: the ship, the big blue breeyes from India—maybe you should have been interviewing him instead of Thompson."
"Maybe I will." No, he definitely would. Had to. He could not let this go. But later. Now… "What do you remember about the Atlanta abortionist murders?"
Abe slapped a hand to his head. "Oy, the head spins from the change of subject. Whiplash I've got. Call a lawyer."
"Sorry. That was what I was about to ask you when you glopped on the book."
"Atlanta abortionist murders?" Abe drummed his fingers on the counter. "About twenty years ago, no?"
"Almost. It was all anyone was talking about for months."
"And this sudden interest comes whence?"
He told Abe about finding the Google search on Gerhard's computer.
"It's been bugging me, wondering if Gerhard had found a connection between Bethlehem and the killings."
"You did your own search, I assume?"
Jack nodded. "Yeah. 'Jerry Bethlehem' plus 'Atlanta abortionist murders' got no hits. Couldn't connect him to the Creighton Institute either."
"Well, if you say he's in his mid-thirties, he would have been a teenager back then."
A little gong sounded somewhere in Jack's brain. Teenager…
"It's coming back," Abe was saying. "Two abortionists in two centers in the same week. Two dead doctors, correct?"
"Correct." Jack saw where Abe was going. "You think one of the doctors might have been connected with Creighton?"
Abe jerked a thumb at his computer. "One way to find out." He wiped his hands on his shirt, leaving green streaks. "You remember their names?"
"No way. Too long ago. You'll have to pull up an article."
"Such a help you are."
Abe attacked the keyboard and after some vigorous tapping and clicking, he pulled out a pen and scribbled on a pad.
"Horace Golden and Elmer Dalton. Let's see if either one of those ever worked at Creighton." After more tapping Abe shook his head. "No connection—at least online."
"What about the killer? What was his name?"
Abe said, "I just saw it: Jeremy Bolton."
As Abe began to type, a connection hit Jack with the force of a blow.
"Oh, shit!"
"What?"
"Jeremy Bolton… Jerry Bethlehem: J-B… J-B. It can't possibly be, can it?"
"Let's find out."
Jack already knew the answer. Because he recalled now that the biggest shocker of the story, what had kept it in the news for months, was the discovery that the killer turned out to be a teenager, an eighteen-year-old. Jack remembered because he had been about the same age. He'd wondered what it took to kill someone in cold blood.
He no longer wondered.
Abe slapped a hand on his counter. "It says here Jeremy Bolton is serving two consecutive life sentences at the Creighton Institute." He frowned. "How did he go from an Atlanta courthouse to a New York funny farm?"
"Probably some federal civil rights charges got filed somewhere along the way. What's he look like? Any photos?"
Abe clicked around, then turned the monitor toward Jack.
"This is all I can find."
Jack saw an old black-and-white newspaper photo of a pimply, baby-faced kid facing the camera but staring past it. He looked nothing like Jerry Bethlehem.
But that didn't mean a thing. Jack figured if he had a beard himself now, no one would be able to look at him and recognize the kid in his high school yearbook. Be pretty hard even without a beard.
"It can't be him," Abe said. "Two consecutive life sentences already. A thirty-inch waist I'll have before he's free."
"Maybe he escaped."
"We would have heard. News like that would be all over."
Jack grabbed the mouse and clicked through a couple of the hits from Abe's search. As he read the articles it all started coming back.
Eighteen-year-old Jeremy Bolton had had nothing in his background to indicate the slightest interest in fundamentalist religion—or religion of any sort, for that matter—and no one found a connection to a single anti-abortion group. But the most bizarre aspect had been his refusal to talk—to anyone about anything. He wouldn't even speak to the attorney the court assigned him. Not a word in his own defense.
His attorney tried to go the insanity route but that didn't fly because up until the murders he'd had a reputation as a loquacious charmer.
"Check it out: the Creighton connection, the initials, the fact that Jeremy Bolton would be in his mid-thirties now… just like Jerry Bethlehem. It's too good a fit."
Abe was shaking his head. "It's no kind of fit. How can they be the same? We'd have heard of an escape. And he can't be on parole—such an uproar that would have caused from the pro-abortion crowd already. So how can he be dating this Forest Hills maidelV
"I don't know. But I'll bet it has something to do with Levy not wanting to report his abduction." He pounded the table. "If I had a connection in the PD I could run Bethlehem's fingerprints and see if they match Bolton's."
"And you'd get these fingerprints where?"
"Easy. Christy says he eats at a certain diner a lot. I just snag a glass or coffee cup from his table after he leaves." He shook his head. "I bet Jake Fixx would have no problem IDing him."
"Being an ex—Navy SEAL who used to work for the CTA, none at all. But a shlub like you…"
"… has got to do it the hard way. Which means a more pointed conversation with a certain Doctor Levy."