The Burglar

by Thomas Perry

  30

  Elle had committed so many burglaries over her career that sometimes it seemed as though the walls of a house were made of butter. This time the locks were a model that she had admired when it first came out. She had bought one at a beautiful hardware store catering to designers and architects and practiced for days picking it until she could do so in a couple of seconds. It was even pretty—a handle instead of a knob, done in a dull nickel finish without unnecessary decoration. That was why so many really tasteful homes—like this one—had it.

  She was feeling a bit off-balance because of the backpack on her shoulders tonight. She went to the nearest couch, sat down, slid the weight of the pack off her shoulders, and stood.

  She took inventory as she unloaded the pack there. She took out the 26 numbered thumb drives, 48 computer discs (also numbered), and 116 pages of computer-printed storytelling containing everything she had been able to find out about the case. There were references, like footnotes, to act as a guide to the particular recordings that proved what she had written. A reasonably smart person could use her narrative to pick which recordings to watch and in what order and know who was on each recording, without spending more than a day or two with a headache. A slower or more thorough person could watch many more recordings and read many more pictures of documents and end up with the same impression, but with many more days of headaches.

  She set the backpack beside the pile of records, then went up the stairs from the foyer like smoke floating upward into the hallway. She found the man’s bedroom, stood in the doorway, and looked at him asleep on his bed. He slept on a bare sheet in a pair of boxer undershorts.

  She studied his position carefully. He had one arm in the middle of the bed at about the level of his head and the other stretched out so his arm bent at the wrist and his hand hung over the edge of the bed. He was bigger than she had imagined him from his pictures—at least six feet two inches and about two hundred pounds—and from here most of that looked like lean muscle. Her plan could be done, but if she made a mistake, all she could possibly do was shoot him.

  She watched and began her approach. As she moved she thought about cats. Because she had spent so much time in other people’s houses at night she had learned to watch their cats. They would sit in a shadow unmoving until they became a part of it, and then they seemed to dissolve and flow into the next place of deep darkness, usually not in a straight or direct course, or even continuously, but from one shadow to the next when they felt the urge. She imitated what they did on her trip to the bed.

  When she arrived beside the bed, she was already kneeling with her head below the level of the mattress. She gauged the distance from the wrist to the steel frame of the bed. It was too long for the chain of her handcuffs to reach.

  She spent ten seconds pulling the cuffs open and mentally practicing the order of necessary movements so they would be fast. Then she reached up for his wrist. She closed one handcuff on his wrist and in a single motion drew the other downward far enough to click it shut on the steel bed frame. Then she threw herself backward fast, so he couldn’t leap on her before she was out of the danger zone.

  She stood in the center of the big bedroom, her legs tensed and ready to make a run for the stairs.

  He wasn’t awake. He was just lying there, his breathing still deep and untroubled. Finally she adjusted her ski mask and switched on the overhead light.

  “Wake up, Sammy!”

  He stirred and blinked his eyes. “What? What’s wrong?” He seemed to sense the inappropriateness of what he’d said. He tried to sit up and noticed the handcuff. He rattled the other cuff against the frame and looked over the bed at it. He finally performed the only maneuver he could and lifted himself off his stomach, turned, and sat. He squinted at her. “Are you a girl?”

  Elle smiled through her ski mask. “Boy, if you had guessed wrong on that one, some guy would be kicking your teeth in about now. But yeah, I’m a girl.”

  “Are you here to rob the house or something?”

  “No, Mr. Zucker, I brought you a gift. I found out you’re the one in the DA’s office who’s been assigned to the murder of the people at the Kavanagh house. I’m here to tell you I’ve solved the case and bring you all the evidence you could want to prove it. I left it all downstairs on your couch.”

  He said, “You know, you could go to jail for a long time just for being here like this.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you or rob you. When I leave, you can go down and pick up the goods and spend the next couple of days on it. You’ll be a hero.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to the police?”

  “I tried with the first stuff I acquired, but they don’t seem to have done anything. Maybe they haven’t watched it yet. I may even have given it to the wrong police force. But you’re the right prosecutor, correct?”

  “Correct. But you’ve broken a lot of laws already tonight. You may not like the next time you see me.”

  “Don’t get hung up on legalities.”

  “I’m a lawyer. It’s what I do.”

  “In the morning go downstairs, look at the evidence, and be a human first. I’ve brought you the whos and hows of about eight violent deaths, with proof to convict somebody of each one. This is your chance to do something for law and order—the real kind. Most people don’t deserve to be murdered. I’m trusting you because I looked into who you are and I think you’re the one to do this. You’re clean, honest, smart, and good at your work. I’m some of those things too, but I’m handing it over to you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The evidence fairy.”

  “Nice name. Good costume too. Why are you doing this?” “You’ll figure out how I fit into this when you’ve seen the evidence. I don’t think you’ll figure out who I am, exactly. The discs, drives, papers, et cetera are all copies I made for you while wearing surgical gloves. If you do figure out who I am, you’ll see I’m not the one you want.” She turned away from him.

  “Wait.” He rattled the handcuffs.

  “I’m sorry about the handcuffs. But you’re bigger, stronger, and faster than I am, and you would have overpowered me in the first few seconds. You’ll have to dismantle the bed, and that should take you long enough so I can get out of here.” She looked at him. “Maybe not by much.”

  He nodded. “I suppose. But I’ll probably see you again.”

  She said, “I hope not. In case you don’t, have a nice life.” She stared pointedly at the empty side of his bed. “And find yourself a nice woman. You’re a catch.” She turned and walked quickly out of the room.

  As he pulled the mattress and then the box springs off his bed to get to the steel frame, he listened for her running footsteps and then for the sound of a door or a window so he could tell the responding officers a direction, but he heard nothing.

  When he had painfully loosened the two nuts at the end of the frame with his fingers so he could disconnect the horizontal pieces, he hurried downstairs and found her gone. He also found the printed narrative, the discs, and the thumb drives.

  He knew he shouldn’t delay calling the police to pick her up, but as he looked at the things stacked and arranged on his couch, he had the feeling that hunting for her was not a higher priority than getting dressed. She was, at most, a witness, not a killer, and she was sure to have left a print or DNA somewhere on this much stuff.

  He went to his home office, found the box with the handcuffs and the gun that the City of Beverly Hills had issued him when he’d been formally sworn in three years ago. He tried the key that had come with his handcuffs and unlocked the set she had put on him. Then he took his laptop out of his briefcase and carried it out to the living room.

  31

  Denny Wilkins heard a knock on his apartment door. At first the sound was very faint and tentative, but then it was hard and loud. He hurried to open the door and find out what was so urgent. He swung it open and standing before him was L, the woman he had been thinking about for
a couple of months. Her beautiful face was smiling at him.

  He said, “L! Hi! What are you—I’m glad to see you. What a nice surprise.”

  She was still smiling. “Yeah, it is. Of course it’s not a surprise to me, because I was the one who came here.” She stepped back and looked up the street and down and even behind her. “It looks good in daylight.”

  “I thought you were avoiding me,” said Denny.

  “Well, yes and no, to tell you the truth. You and I had sort of an unusual start. And then for—whatever it was—five weeks?”

  “Seven, I think. It was a Thursday night, so seven yesterday.”

  “For seven weeks and one day I didn’t get a call from you. I mean, I may not be the best and most beautiful person you’ve ever been with, but you have to admit I did my best to be pleasant.”

  “Pleasant?” he said. “You are the best and most—”

  “Shhh!” She winced and shook her head.

  He continued. “I somehow lost your number off my phone that night. I went back to the bar the next couple of nights, and I found Ricki at a table, but she knew nothing, and then Sal, who was able to get me your number for two hundred bucks.”

  “Sal? My friend Sal charged you two hundred bucks for my phone number?”

  He nodded. “And it was real. It always went to voice mail but the recording was your voice. So I kept trying.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I had thought, Wow. I went to bed with him just like that because he was brave and a gentleman, and we were a really good match, compatible and neither of us weird or creepy, but no call the next day? No attempt to get in touch? Despicable. But I recently got access to that old telephone again, and I listened to all the messages you had left. One a day, huh? And some really nice compliments too. So I thought I’d stop by and see how you are.” Her smile reappeared. “How have you been? Do you have a girlfriend yet?”

  “No,” he said. “When you said it would just happen, it sounded true, so I haven’t rushed it.”

  “Then I’m free to answer your messages. Yes, I will go to dinner with you. And the movies. And the beach. And we can drive down the coast a bit for a picnic. And go running up in the hills. And to a Dodger game. And—”

  “Is there any of those things you’d like to do today, right now?”

  “No. Right now I’m just stopping before I go out of town for a while. Maybe for a week or two, or maybe a month if it’s still hot here then. My suitcase is in the car. Trust me, we all still love the three hundred sixty-five days of good weather in L.A., but near the end of the summer like this it can get to be too summery for human life, you know? You see mirages in your own driveway. When I get back I’m going to be looking for jobs.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’ve mostly been living off what I inherited from my grandmother. Obviously that can’t go on forever. I’ll start trudging from office to office applying when I get back and it’s cooler.” She paused. “You look so sad. Do you want to come with me?”

  “Yes!” he said. He looked wide-eyed, either because he hadn’t expected the invitation or because he was surprised to hear his own answer. “Yes. Definitely. Can you come inside for a few minutes while I pack?”

  “Sure. In fact, I’ll help you. Men don’t know how to fold things. They get to a nice hotel, take a shirt out of a suitcase, and it looks like old aluminum foil.” She stepped inside and closed the door.

  A minute or two later an observer might have been able to see her small, delicate-looking hand move the edge of the front curtain a half inch to check for pursuers, but there were no pursuers and no observers. Within ten minutes the pair were miles away and gaining speed.