Son of Fletch by Gregory McDonald Read Free Book Online

up, cross-legged on the bed. Instantly, she was picking her fingers.
    “Because of Jack.”
    “Who’s jack?”
    “Carrie, I think he’s my son.”
    Her head snapped to look at him.
    He sat up, too. “I knew a woman, once, named Crystal Faoni. She was a journalist, too.” Fletch spoke rapidly. “At a journalists’ convention we made love, once. This boy’s name is John Fletcher Faoni. He’s one of the escaped convicts. Or, at least, he says that’s his name. He seems to know about Crystal, about me.”
    “Faoni.” She spoke slowly. “You recognized his name last night, at the roadblock. That’s why you began making sandwiches when you got home.”
    “It’s not that common a name.”
    “Your
son!?
Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I wasn’t sure.”
    “I mean, why didn’t you ever tell me you have a son?”
    “I never knew he existed until he walked through the French doors of the study last night. Crystal is one of these women who wanted to have the baby, raise the child on her own. I believe that’s true.”
    “She never let you know?”
    “No.”
    “Are you upset about that?”
    “Of course.”
    “How did you know he likes tuna puffs?”
    Always Fletch was amazed at the acuity of Carrie’s questions. Next to hers, District Attorney Alston Chambers’s questions were vague. “Last night he would have eaten re-fried roadkill.”
    She put her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry.”
    “Attempted murder,” Fletch said. “He took a shot at a cop.”
    “E=MC 2 !” Such was Carrie’s expletive. She considered the theory of relativity the most
outlandish
thing she had ever heard of.
    She looked out the window. “It’s stopped raining.”
    “I think it will be a bright, hot day.”
    “The fields got a good wetting,” she said.
    “It flattened the corn.”
    “It will spring up again.” She got up off the bed. “Why are you putting up with this? Even if he is, maybe, your son, he tried to kill someone; I mean, you have no responsibility for him. How old is he?”
    “Curiosity.”
    “You know what curiosity did to the orangutan.”
    “What did curiosity do to the orangutan?”
    “Go ask him. He’s still sitting over in the Memphis Zoo. You saw how hellfire angry he still is.”
    “You heard the sheriff last night. For some reason, these escapees went well out of their way to come here, to this farm, this house, specifically. This kid, Jack, led them here. Why?”
    Carrie said, simply: “To kill you.”
    “Why?”
    “You’re his father. You popped his mother and left her. You ignored him all his life.”
    “No,” Fletch said. “He knows I never knew of his existence. The only thing is, well, I never called Crystal, an old friend, and said,
How’re ya doin’?
That’s not a capital crime.”
    “This is a crazy, mixed-up kid. He shot a cop.”
    “Shot
at
a cop. Supposedly.”
    She looked down at him. “What do you mean, ‘supposedly’?”
    “He said he fired a .32 at her. I just gave him my .32 to load. I watched him. It seemed to me he had to figure out how to load it. I don’t think he knew how to chamber a bullet. He seemed to have a revulsion toward the gun.”
    “He should have,” Carrie snapped. “What would you expect? And he shot at a woman cop?”
    “Blue is blue,” Fletch said. “I guess.”
    “You’re making up excuses,” she said. “You think he’s your son, and you’re trying to like him.” She was reading Fletch’s face. “You think this boy has anything but green water between his ears?”
    Fletch thought of the conversation he and Jack had had about
Pinto
. “Enough to be a pest.”
    Forearms folded over her breasts, Carrie said, “These bastards. In this house!”
    “There are still two outside. I guess I ought to go get them. Bring them in.”
    “Into this house?”
    “This old house has been occupied by worse, I expect,” Fletch said. “Yankees, probably.”
    Carrie was listening. “What’s that? Someone playing the