would not give anyone a chance to trace him. But she had to do something. She would try Di Silva. She reached for the telephone again. It rang as she touched it, startling her.
“This is Michael Moretti.”
“Michael! Oh, Michael, help me, please! I—” She began to sob uncontrollably. She dropped the telephone, then picked it up again quickly, terrified he had hung up. “Michael?”
“I’m here.” His voice was calm. “Get hold of yourself and tell me what’s wrong.”
“I—I’ll—” She took in quick, deep breaths, trying to stop the trembling. “It’s my son, Joshua. He’s—he’s been kidnapped. They’re going to—kill him.”
“Do you know who took him?”
“Y-yes. His name is F-Frank Jackson.” Her heart was pounding.
“Tell me what happened.” His voice was quiet and confident.
Jennifer forced herself to talk slowly, recounting the sequence of events.
“Can you describe what Jackson looks like?”
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