Read Online Switch by John Lutz - Free Book Online Page B

or cut off his finger.” She laughed, staring directly at Quinn. “They don’t even have enough evidence to arrest us.”
    Quinn wasn’t sure if what she said was true, but he didn’t have time to give it the test of reasonableness.
    Boomerang strutted into the room, and when Quinn and Pearl were looking at him, Craig and Ida broke for the door to the hall. Boomerang got in the spirit and dashed with them. Caught up with them in two large bounds. Quinn and Pearl followed.
    The door to the hall burst open. Jody was there, still talking on Pearl’s cell phone with Pearl’s mother. She extended her foot daintily and tripped Craig Clairmont. Ida tripped over Craig. Quinn tripped over Ida. Pearl managed to leap over them all but fell and skidded to a halt near the stairs. She caught a glimpse of Boomerang streaking down the hall toward God and cat knew where.
    She quickly struggled to her feet, and staggered over to help Quinn handcuff Craig and Ida before they could gather their senses.
    Jody took several steps backward, the phone still pressed to the side of her head.
    â€œSo now you can go back to sitting with the same people for dinner?” She was asking her grandmother.
    She grinned at the obviously affirmative answer on the other end of the connection.
    If a person was persistent enough, things had a way of working out.
    Â 
    â€œThe insurance company has agreed to let the heirs cancel their claim and place the bracelet in a vault,” Quinn said to Ida Beene and Craig Clairmont in an interrogation room at the precinct house. “We won’t make any media statement about that.”
    Craig and Ida silently nodded in unison. They both looked small and pale.
    â€œIt’s possible that we haven’t enough to charge you, or to get a conviction, but the people who cut off your brother’s finger and killed him in an attempt to make him talk, probably the same ones who tortured and killed Alexis Hoffermuth, are still out there. There isn’t enough evidence against them, either, to trigger an arrest.”
    â€œDamned legal system!” Craig said.
    â€œYou want some advice?”
    Craig shrugged. “Why not?”
    â€œYou and Ida should make arrangements for the kid, maybe with Ida’s sister or Social Services, and then move far away.”
    â€œArrangements?”
    â€œI’m thinking long term,” Quinn said. “You wouldn’t want Eloise to talk about what she might have overheard. You need to cut ties completely to guarantee her safety.”
    He didn’t say Eloise would be better off with a family that didn’t deal in jewel theft.
    â€œMy sister’s place in Queen’s is no good,” Ida said. “I have an aunt back in Ohio.”
    â€œThat’d work,” Quinn told her. “And there’s one more condition. Eloise takes Boomerang with her to Ohio.”
    â€œDone,” Craig said. “But the damned cat will probably find its way back.”
    Later, in the brownstone, Jody questioned whether the deal Quinn had made was entirely legal.
    â€œMaybe the outcome isn’t exactly legal,” Quinn said. “But it’s just. And it gives the kid a chance.”
    Jody looked to her mother.
    But Pearl was as impossible to read as Quinn.
    Jody shook her head and grinned. “You two!”
    â€œThree,” Pearl said.

E PILOGUE
    May 16, 11:37 p.m.
    Jody wasn’t along on this one. Fedderman and two uniforms had the front door of Willard Ord’s house in the Village covered. The back door was being watched by two more uniforms and a plainclothes detective from the nearby precinct house. In the front and back of the building were also Emergency Service Unit sharpshooters, the NYPD equivalent of a SWAT team. In dangerous situations, the safest strategy was to overwhelm the suspects.
    Pearl and Quinn stood to the side, and Quinn reached over and rang the doorbell.
    Within a few moments,