Runner

by Thomas Perry

  She listened closely and watched the trees brighten more and more, and then stepped away from the trunk to face him. The man on the motorcycle was thirty feet away, moving toward her. As soon as he saw her he sped up, as though he intended to run her down. As he came toward her, Jane took two steps in one direction and then the other, as though she were transfixed, unable to decide what to do.

  The motorcycle roared toward her, but she stepped aside at the last second and flung her jacket over his head and across his face. The motorcycle seemed to jerk as he tried to brake, then tried to turn it and lay it down. The motorcycle went ten feet past Jane into the trunk of an oak tree. The man was thrown over it, half-turned in the air, and hit the tree beyond it.

  The motorcycle was still running, lying on the ground in front of the tree with its light on and the rear wheel still spinning and the engine roaring. Jane knelt there for a second and turned it off, then approached the injured man cautiously.

  He was conscious, and Jane saw him try to move his right arm toward his jacket pocket, realize from the pain and immobility that it was broken, then try to reach across his body with his left. She saw the gun before he could get a grip on it, kicked his ribs, and snatched it out of his pocket. She held it to his head.

  "You have one chance, and it's right now. What's your name?"

  "Pete Tilton."

  That was one of the names Christine had told her, so she accepted it. "Is Christine in that house?"

  "No."

  "Is she all right?"

  "I'm not. I'm really hurt bad. Just call an ambulance and go. Nobody will come after you for this if you'll help." He tried to raise his head as though he wanted to sit up but couldn't.

  "Is Christine dead?"

  He moved convulsively, trying to catch Jane's legs in a side-kick and bring her down where he might be able to wrest the gun away with his left hand. Jane stepped backward and fired.

  "What was that?" asked Ruby Beale.

  "Probably nothing. A backfire," Andy Beale said.

  "I haven't heard a backfire in twenty years."

  On the couch in the great room, Andy Beale had his arm around Ruby. He said, "Sometimes, when people are under a lot of stress, it gets into their dreams. They can wake up enough to walk around, and still be dreaming."

  Ruby took two deep breaths and blew them out through her nose. "It wasn't a dream, Andy. I saw her. And if you had just looked right away when I pointed, you would have seen her for yourself."

  He spoke very gently. "You saw me order Pete and Steve and the girls to go out there to look around, and so far nobody has found any sign of her. They're all still at it, but as the time goes by, the chance gets slimmer. You know, sometimes—I'm not saying this is one of those times—we see things with our heads instead of our eyes."

  She turned her whole body to face him. "Just what are you getting at?"

  "There's no such thing as a ghost, Ruby."

  "So. You did see her."

  "No, I didn't."

  "What do you think is crazier—to see something and admit it, or see it and tell yourself you couldn't have, so you didn't?"

  Andy Beale thought for a moment, then shrugged. "When you're at that level, who cares? Take your pick."

  She stood up and went to the elevator. "Sometimes you're a real jackass, you know?" She punched the button and the doors closed.

  Andy Beale heard it going up to the third level, where the master suite was. He knew that it was probably his job to follow her up there and make a convincing apology for being insensitive. That was just another way of saying he was a jackass, and it only applied after the fact when she wasn't mad anymore. He knew what was required of him, but tonight he couldn't bring himself to do it just yet.

  31

  Jane was back in Sharon's house taking a shower by one-thirty A.M. She knew it was a good idea to wash thoroughly after discharging a firearm into a person, but that was all she allowed herself to think for the moment. It was not until she had finished the shower and was soaking in Sharon's tub that she allowed herself to turn her attention to what she had done to the man on the motorcycle.

  The first conclusion she reached was that she didn't especially regret killing him. She had needed to do the same thing to other people several times in the past. Right after college, when she had started making the hunted disappear, it had not occurred to her that she would ever kill anyone. She was only going to help people who were in danger run away. It had been a simple, logical proposition for her. Saving a life could never be wrong.

  But after she had helped a number of victims begin new lives, she began to realize that some time, one of the enemies would find his way to her. On the day it happened, she had not made a slow, reasoned decision to kill. Instead she had acted instinctively in a second, and then recognized that this, too, had been part of her original decision. The moment she invented the profession of preventing murderers from getting to their victims, she had already made it inevitable that one of them would try to kill her. Her only choice would be to die or kill him. The first time, and every time after that, she had chosen to kill.

  Tonight Jane's feelings were complicated. She was tired, but she was also acutely aware that time was passing. From the day when she had arrived in Minneapolis and found Christine's apartment abandoned, she had been racing to find her. She had to keep trying every way she could, and to press every advantage. Tonight she had a slight advantage, and if she used it in time, it might cause some anxiety and confusion.

  Jane dressed and went out into the night. She took with her the telephone number from Richard Beale's personnel file, and drove to Kearny Mesa. She stopped at a brightly lighted supermarket on Balboa. The pay phone was on the wall outside under the front window. She put in a few coins and dialed.

  "Yeah?"

  "Richard Beale?"

  There was a brief, breathless silence, then "That's right. Who's this?"

  "I'm not surprised you're awake. I suppose your parents called you."

  "Who is this?"

  "You know who it is, and you know I'm not going to tell you a name, so stop asking." Jane kept her eyes moving from the street to the supermarket parking lot. "The man who came after me tonight—Pete Tilton, right?—is dead. I want you to know I can do the same to the three you have left, to anyone else you hire, and to you. Tell me what happened to Christine."

  "I don't know anybody named Christine."

  "Tonight I told your friend he had one chance to answer, but he decided not to take it. This is your chance. Be sure you take it."

  "You can't call people up and threaten them."

  "Is Christine alive?"

  "I don't know her."

  "Good night, Richard. I'll see you very soon."

  The telephone went dead. Richard Beale stood with the receiver in his hand until it began to make clicking noises and he remembered to press End. Had she been trying to trick him into saying something incriminating on a telephone and record it? What was she doing?

  Demming had said the woman who had helped Christine was crazy. Crazy people weren't interested in going to court. A person who drove toward another car on a dark highway, perfectly willing to crash into it, was not anybody Richard Beale knew how to interpret. He was used to people who wanted something comprehensible, like collecting next week's paycheck.

  Demming was just going to have to kill her. He should have already. It was part of the package. Demming's only purpose was to solve problems. Whatever the hell that woman was talking about with Pete Tilton, it didn't sound good. She certainly wasn't a problem Richard could tolerate.

  Richard picked up his car keys from his dresser, looked at himself in the full-length mirror and ran his hand through his hair, then stepped to the doorway and reached for the light switch, but he thought better of it. If he came back an hour from now, he didn't want to walk into the bedroom and find that crazy bitch waiting for him in the dark.

  He went downstairs to the kitchen and stopped at the new securi
ty door into the garage. He turned on the garage light, peered through the peephole, and made sure the garage was safe before he entered.

  Richard got into his black Porsche, locked the doors, started the engine and shifted to reverse before he pressed the garage door opener. As the door rolled upward, he was already turned around in his seat, checking to be sure she wasn't in the driveway waiting for him. As soon as the door was up far enough for the Porsche's roof to clear it, he backed out quickly, pressed the button to close the garage, and drove off.

  He had already told his mother he was on his way to the house in Rancho Santa Fe, or he might very well have changed his mind about going out there right now. The disturbance there and the phone call could easily be some sort of scheme to lure him out alone in the middle of the night. There was absolutely no doubt now that the woman was the one who had broken into his house. It wasn't just some coincidence that a burglar had chosen to hit the place today.

  A simple thief was an impersonal threat, and had more reason to fear Richard than Richard had to fear him. But a madwoman was a different thing entirely. Facing a woman who didn't care if she got killed was like facing somebody who was already dead. It made the hair on the back of Richard's neck stand up.

  He turned off the freeway at Solana Beach and headed inland. The Porsche was made for this kind of drive, a winding road that was deserted at this time of night, where there were few lights or stop signs. Within minutes he was gliding up the road that led to his parents' house, and then he saw flashing lights far ahead—yellow and blue, but also some red ones that made the grayish leaves of the oak trees look as though they were on fire.

  Richard slowed down in increments, downshifting until he was crawling along. Now he could make out cop cars and an ambulance, and people walking around on foot with flashlights. They were grouped around the last intersection before his parents' house, only about half a mile from it. More uniformed men and women were walking around in a stand of oak trees. The cars' headlights and the movable floodlights were trained to throw a steady glow of white light into the grove. The back doors of the ambulance were open, but the paramedics didn't seem to be in a rush.

  Richard coasted past with his foot disengaging the clutch, partly to keep from drawing too much attention to himself. He saw Pete Tilton's bright yellow motorcycle lying in the brush under the trees. And not far from it he could see what looked like a sheet over a lump about the size of a man's body. It had to be Pete. Richard lifted his foot to release the clutch and gave the car a little gas, then shifted to second.

  Farther on, he could see lights glowing through the hedge. He hoped the cops didn't wonder why everyone at the Beale house was up at this hour, but he supposed whatever had happened to Pete had been noisy. He picked up the other remote control while he was still many yards away, and held his thumb on the button so that when he turned in he didn't have to wait for the gate to open.

  He parked in the middle of the paved area, got out of his car, trotted to the front door of the house, and touched the knob, but the door was locked. He took out his keys again and opened it, then froze. Across the foyer, Steve Demming and Sybil Landreau were leaning into the entrance to the great room, each showing only an eye, an arm, and a gun. As soon as they saw Richard they lowered their weapons, and Demming hurried to Richard and locked the dead bolt.

  "Sorry for that," he said. "It sounded like your Porsche, but we had to be sure who was driving it."

  "It's okay," Richard said. "I just drove by a bunch of cops looking over Pete's motorcycle in the woods down by the corner. It looked like a body beside it. What happened?"

  Sybil Landreau said, "We don't—"

  At that moment Claudia Marshall stepped out of the great room. "Oh my God," she wailed. "Pete, too?" She dissolved into sobs. Sybil glared at Richard as though he were to blame, put her arm around Claudia, and ushered her up the stairway.

  "What's going on? Where are my parents?"

  Demming said, "A while ago your mother got up and saw that woman who hid Christine."

  "Saw her? Here?"

  "She was outside the glass doors along the side wall of the house." Demming pointed. "At first we figured your mother had been dreaming. She said she saw this woman all in black, who kind of dissolved into the darkness. Of course we went to check it out and see if anybody was out there. We couldn't find anything, but Pete figured it was possible that she had been here and gotten away on foot. He figured if he went out on his motorcycle, he might be able to catch her before she got to her car."

  "I guess he did," Richard said. "She says she shot him."

  "She says?"

  "I just talked to her. I was throwing on some clothes to come here and the phone rang. She called to tell me she'd shot him."

  "Why?"

  "She said she asked him where Christine was and he didn't tell her."

  "Shit."

  "She asked me, too."

  Demming looked at him closely, as though he were wondering whether Richard understood what he had just said. "Did she say she was going to kill you, too?"

  "Not in those words, but I guess so. And all of you."

  "There! See?" Claudia Marshall was up on the first landing of the staircase. "We've got ourselves stuck in the brain of a psycho. You think she's going to try to find Christine for a while and then give up and go away?"

  Demming shrugged. "You're probably right. Maybe we could arrange to make a trade."

  "What?" Richard was confused.

  "Claudia? What do you think? You're about the right height. We could get you the right wig, and we've already got Christine's clothes. This woman was probably with her when she bought them, and she'll recognize them as Christine's."

  Richard said, "You think you can pass off Claudia as Christine?"

  "Not forever. Just long enough to get Claudia close to her. Then Claudia puts her out of our misery."

  "I'm in," said Claudia.

  "We don't even have a plan," said Demming. "Don't sign on to be the bait until we at least have a plan."

  "We'll think of something," Claudia said. "I really want to be the one who pops her. I'd like to be close enough when I do it to see the surprise on her face."

  "Richard." The three all turned their heads to see Andy Beale standing beneath the arch into the great room. He was dressed now, wearing a pair of blue jeans that were stiff and dark-colored as though they had just come off the rack, a green flannel shirt, and walking shoes. To Richard, his father looked the way he used to look when they went to the mountain lakes for a week or two during the summers. It was a happy memory, because the lakes in the Sierras had all been too small to be choppy, and his parents had paid attention to him intermittently.

  "I'll be right there," Richard called. He turned to Demming. "What are you going to do now?"

  "We can't do much until the cops get Pete's body out of the woods and finish looking for evidence. I don't think that woman will be back before then. That means tomorrow night, I think."

  Andy Beale called, "Take your time, Richard."

  Richard hurried into the great room after him. Andy Beale sat down beside his wife on a couch along the wall beside the massive stone fireplace. All that stone and mortar shielded the couch from any shot fired from outside. Richard had to take the only seat left, a large leather armchair that he hoped made him hard to see from a distance. He was alarmed at the way his mother looked. The usual healthy plumpness of her face seemed to have been deflated. She was pale and her eyes were red, as though she had been crying.

  "You okay, Mom?"

  Andy Beale said, "It's not our favorite way to spend a night, but we plan to live through it."

  "You okay, Mom?" Richard repeated.

  "I suppose so," she said. "It was a bit of a shock to look down and see her looking up at me in the middle of the night." She glanced at her husband. "Some people didn't think I really saw her. But your friend Mr. Tilton found her real enough."

  "Yeah," Richard said. "I talked to her af
terward. She called me up."

  "She did?" Richard's mother seemed more interested in him than she had been in years.

  "She wants Christine. She said that she asked Pete where she is, and he wouldn't tell her."

  "Oh, my God," said Ruby Beale. "She keeps shooting people until somebody tells?"

  "We don't know that," said Andy. "She wants Christine. She isn't after the baby. She doesn't even know we have him."

  "Well," Richard said, "Steve says she won't be back tonight. She'll be scared of all the cops down the street. I guess I'll probably sleep here."

  Andy said, "Tonight, anyway."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think this will be our last night here, your mother and me. Tomorrow morning I'll be in the office to take a look at the list of places the company has on the market and pick out a house."

  "That makes sense," Richard conceded.

  "Glad you think so. You'll be in charge of getting us packed up tomorrow and moved the next day. I'll want the trucks to arrive at eight in the morning the day after tomorrow. When it happens I'll need to have what's left of your little gang following the trucks from a distance to be sure that woman doesn't show up and go right along with us."

  "Good idea," Richard said. "They might even get a chance to spot her and take care of her right then."

  "Maybe," Andy Beale said. "But that's not why I'm doing it. This is chess. I'm moving your mother and little Robert out of any exposure to danger. That woman has found this house, so we'll castle. This square isn't any good to us anymore. I'd advise you to find a new place, too."

  "I can move in with you until this is over."

  "No, you can't."

  "What do you mean?" Richard was shocked. "It'll make us all safer if we stick together and protect each other."

  Andy Beale sighed. It was late, and he looked old and tired. "There are several reasons. One is that you've got to be out moving around accomplishing things, and that might attract her attention. I want this house emptied, cleaned, painted, and prepped for sale as soon as possible, and that means getting the crews lined up. I want the business running smoothly and I want it protected. Get some real security on the office and other key places, not just a few unarmed night watchmen. That's enough for now."