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."
8
Dawn sprawled naked on the bed beneath Jerry, panting in the afterglow of her fifth and final orgasm, the biggest and maddest of this bout of lovemaking.
God, sex was great. How had she gone without it for so long? Not that she'd been like a total virgin when she'd met Jerry, but pretty damn close. One drunken, clumsy, fumbling, all-too-brief encounter in the back of a minivan last year hardly made her experienced. Pretty much she'd done it just to do it. Hadn't even liked the guy all that much. Terry had been okay—at least less of a jerk than most of the guys in her school—but so not what she was looking for in a steady. She realized now she'd been totally clueless about what she was looking for until she'd met Jerry.
She watched him as he levered himself up and rolled away. She totally loved every part of his long lean body, especially his beard when it rubbed against her cheek, and her nipples, and the insides of her thighs. But she loved most of all the part that was slipping out of her now.
She almost laughed. God, I've become such a slut. I should get an I luv COCK bumper sticker.
As he wiped himself off she felt a flash of concern. They never used protection. She knew she was clean, but what about Jerry? He'd had a lot more years to pick up an STD or two. He swore he was clean, and she believed he believed that, but he might be mistaken. So far, so good. And as always, the flash of concern was just that: a flash.
And as for pregnancy, no worry. He'd told her he'd been "fixed"—a vasec-tomy ten years ago when he decided he didn't like this world enough to bring a child into it.
She totally agreed with that. Have a child and watch him or her grow up into dorks like she'd gone to school with? No way.
And somehow that made her think of Mom, and like how she'd always been working to make her a better person. Yeah, Mom. Charging her every time she used "like" or "totally." How eorny was that?
Like totally—totally-totally-totally.
There. That would have cost $2.50.
Mom loved her—Dawn had no doubt about that. But maybe she loved her too much. So totally too much that she'd started making up stories about Jerry.
Looking at Jerry she wondered for the millionth time what he saw in her. She knew she wasn't pretty—plain and thick-waisted, to tell the total truth. Didn't have like a great ass or the bodacious tatas that tended to bring the opposite sex sniffing around. She'd wound up preferring books to boys because boys had so totally not gotten her, and she'd never really gotten them.
She now knew why: Because they were boys. Jerry was a man.