by Thomas Perry
The four people looked lost in the emptiness of the big room. They drifted around in it, like fish swimming the perimeter of a bare aquarium. Jane could see no weapons on any of them, but she assumed they were armed. She moved into position in the garden a dozen yards from the back of the house, turned on the baby monitor she had kept, and watched the people in the house react. They must have heard the click.
"What's that?"
"Do you hear that, too?"
"It sounds like static."
"Where's it coming from—the ceiling?"
Jane said, "It's me. I'm here. We're going to do this quickly. Christine?"
A man's voice jumped in right away to preempt anything the woman would say. "What do you want us to do?" Jane guessed that they had rehearsed this in advance, trying to make sure that Jane didn't hear the impostor's voice.
"Let Christine walk out the glass door at the back of the house and onto the lawn. The rest of you, stand in the center of the room and keep your hands above your heads."
She recognized Beale's voice from her telephone call. "What do we do?"
There was a whisper. "She can hear."
The woman who was supposed to be Christine walked to the sliding door.
"Wait." It was Demming's voice.
The woman didn't stop. She opened the sliding door and stepped into the darkness. She began to walk out into the yard away from the house. She stepped past the rock garden where Jane crouched and onto the lawn.
Jane switched the monitor off and the woman turned around and took a step toward her. "Stop there."
The woman moved her head from side to side, and Jane could tell the woman was trying to see her better. Jane crouched in the shadows a few yards from her. The light from the glass wall of the house was behind Jane and illuminated the woman's features.
Jane said, "You're Claudia Marshall, aren't you?"
"No. It's me—Christine. Don't you even recognize me?"
It was awful to hear her mimic Christine's voice. Jane could tell that the woman had heard Christine talk recently, probably a number of times. Jane said, "I want you to tell me what happened. Is Christine alive?"
"Sure I am." The woman stepped closer again, but she was drifting to Jane's left. Jane could see she was attempting to step out of the light and make Jane easier to see.
Jane said, "Stop."
Then everything around Jane seemed to be in motion. The woman wearing Christine's clothes lifted the dress and pulled out a pistol. She managed to raise it toward Jane before Jane shot her. The woman fell backward onto the grass, a red spot in the center of her chest.
Jane dived to her left away from the glass wall just as shots from inside shattered the pane behind her. Jane rolled once, turning her body to face the house, and fired six shots through the glass at the figures in the big, empty room. She saw Demming go down, but she wasn't sure whether he had been hit or simply dropped to deny her a target. Sybil Landreau swatted the switch by the front door to turn off the lights, and disappeared in the blackness.
Jane had spent the afternoon making decisions about what she was going to do, and she executed the moves that she had planned. She crawled a few feet toward the side of the house, picked up the fishing line, and jerked it so the power to the house was cut. Then she ran along the house to the first of the windows she had left unlatched. She turned on the battery-operated receiver for the baby monitor again.
The voices were stage whispers. "Don't worry. We'll find her, and then get you to the hospital."
"I'm shot through the thigh, Sybil. If I lie here, I'm going to bleed to death."
"Come on, Steve. Tie it off with your belt while we take care of this."
"At least help me move out of the center of the floor, so if she comes back I'll have a chance."
"You're not thinking clearly. You're right where you want to be. She'll think you're dead, and you'll shoot her."
"Listen, Sybil. I really need to go."
"Quiet. Both of you." This time it was Richard Beale's voice. Jane could hear him walking, each step like a hammer blow on the hardwood. There was a click, then another, and the click-click-click as he tried to turn on the outdoor floodlights. "Shit! She cut the power."
Jane switched off the monitor and left it beside the house while she pushed the window open. She used both hands to raise herself to the windowsill, then slithered inside onto the floor and closed the window. She could tell from the dimensions of the room that this was a bedroom. She remained where she was with her gun aimed at the door and waited. When she hadn't heard anything for a few minutes, she rose and stepped to the door. She crouched low and looked down the hallway toward the central room. She could make out the shape of Steve Demming on the floor. She saw no movement, but that meant nothing, because lying still was not only the strategy Sybil Landreau had urged him to follow, but it was also probably the best way to slow the bleeding from his thigh.
She waited, but still heard no movement in the hallway from Richard Beale or Sybil Landreau. She left the bedroom and moved along the wall toward the central room. She heard a click from somewhere behind her, turned toward it, and dropped to the floor.
The muzzle flash blinded her for a half-second and the report was incredibly loud in the bare hallway, but the shot went over her head and pounded into the wall. Jane fired a round at the flash, and then two others below it, but she didn't think she hit anything. The hallway was deserted. Sybil Landreau had fired and then ducked into the last room off the hall, the one with the bars on the window.
Jane made a quick decision. She pushed off the wall and sprinted up the hall toward the room. She dashed along the corridor as fast as she could, switching pistols as she ran. As she approached the final door, she extended her right arm ahead of her with her finger on the trigger.
She saw a faint sliver of moonlight appear on the floor of the dark hall, then widen. She stopped and went flat against the wall as the face of Sybil Landreau appeared.
Jane fired, but the face was pulled back. The door slammed, and Jane heard the lock bolt slide into its receptacle. Jane moved across the corridor to the other wall, took ten more steps quietly, and stopped just past the wooden door. The doorknob was on the right, the hinges on the left. Jane knew where Sybil Landreau would be standing at this instant. She would have her back to the wall, close to the hinge side of the door, waiting for Jane to kick it in.
Jane aimed her pistol two feet to the left of the door and about four feet up from the floor and fired three rapid shots into the wall. Then she moved a few feet to the end of the hall. There was no return fire, no sound of movement from inside the room. Jane waited for a minute, then two minutes. She took three steps, brought her right leg up, and gave the door a hard stomp-kick just below the doorknob.
The wood at the doorknob splintered, and the door flew open. Jane saw Sybil Landreau sitting beneath the window, and fired. Sybil Landreau dropped her weapon and toppled to the side, inhaling with a raspy whistle and exhaling with a bubbling sound, as though her lungs were filling with blood. Only then did Jane realize the woman had already been wounded by her shots through the wall. Jane stepped close and picked up the gun Sybil had dropped, then knelt over her. "Where's Christine?"
Sybil smiled, her eyes burning with a sudden intensity. "Dead."
"The baby?"
"Dead."
"Who killed her?"
"You did, bitch."
Jane stood and moved to the door, stepped out, and then closed the door behind her to keep the hallway dark. She still had one more person to hunt. She moved to the bedroom where she had entered the house, went back to the window, and looked out.
Richard Beale was still somewhere within the house and grounds, unhurt. The place where he could hide and control the most space that Jane might cross was out in the back yard, but she couldn't see him. Jane stayed where she was for a few minutes, staring out the window into the dark and carefully identifying each unmoving shape, but she saw no sign of him. She quiet
ly stepped out into the hall again.
Jane silently approached the central room, but didn't go in. She knew that Demming had been lying there waiting for her to come within range of his gun. She came to the end of the hall and looked across the big room at him.
He was still lying in the center of the empty hardwood floor with his gun in his right hand. But now the pool of blood beside his leg had grown. His left hand was holding the end of a belt tightened around his leg above the wound.
Staying back in the shadows, Jane leaned into the room to try to spot Richard Beale. She heard the sound of a car engine starting outside.
Jane hurried back the way she had come, climbed out the window quickly, and dashed across the back lawn and around the far end of the garage. She saw the big black Escalade, then made out Richard Beale in the front seat. She ran along the garage behind the vehicle toward the blind spot on the passenger side. When she reached the back of the vehicle, he suddenly threw the Escalade into reverse and backed it toward her.
She dived to the side as the Escalade slammed against the garage door, bumping it inward and breaking the vehicle's left taillight. Jane stayed low and moved forward on the vehicle's right side, but Richard lowered the side windows and fired several wild pistol shots in her direction. Jane could tell some of his shots hit the inside of the car, the frame. Others splintered the front door of the house and broke a window somewhere behind Jane, but none of them were low enough to hit her.
Richard Beale shifted into drive. He was clearly not interested in chasing her down right now. He simply wanted to leave this place. He jerked the vehicle forward toward the front gate. Jane could tell he was pressing the remote control and waiting for the gate to open for him. The backup battery allowed the motor to engage, move the gate an inch or two until the padlock stopped it, and then begin to retract. Richard would press the button again, and it would move, stop, and reverse over and over.
Richard stopped the vehicle in front of the gate, jumped down from the driver's seat, and ran to the iron barrier. He stood there, half-hidden by the bulk of the black Escalade, tugged on the padlock, aimed his gun at it and fired a round, tugged it again, then ran to the smaller pedestrian gate, and found it padlocked, too.
Beale climbed back into his SUV, put it into reverse so he could swing it around, then backed it into the gate. The iron gate gave a musical sound as the chain snapped and the gate's wheels jumped off their track, but it didn't open. Jane moved toward the vehicle in the dark. Richard got out, stepped on the front bumper, walked over the hood to the roof of the SUV, and prepared to jump over the gate to the street.
Jane moved into position in the bushes a few yards from his vehicle, where she had hidden earlier. "Where is she, Richard?"
He turned toward her voice, trying to make out her shape in the darkness. "Sybil shot her. It was an accident. She was trying to get away. "
"Where's the baby?"
"It died when she did. This was all for nothing." He turned toward the gate again.
"Richard! Don't!"
He jumped from the roof of the SUV toward the pavement on the outside of the gate, and Jane fired two rounds. As he dropped, the muscles in his legs turned limp and unresisting. When he landed he collapsed and lay still beyond the gate.
Jane stepped to the small pedestrian gate, unlocked the padlock and took off the chain, slipped out to the street and knelt beside Richard. She felt his carotid artery, but could detect no pulse. She saw that the side of his head was wet, looked more closely, and realized that one of her shots had passed through his temple. She moved to his feet, bent and grasped his ankles, dragged him inside the gate, and left him hidden from the street by the tall hedge.
She looked back at the huge, dark house, and began to move to the area near the glass door at the back of the house. Claudia Marshall was lying on her back as she had last seen her. Her eyes were fixed, gazing sightless up at the sky, and her mouth had fallen open.
Jane stepped to the glass door and looked into the big room. Steve Demming was in exactly the same position as he had been in before. She quietly slid the door open and stepped into the hallway. She made her way down the hall to the room where she had left Sybil Landreau. She pushed the door open and stood back, but there was no sound or movement. Sybil was still lying on her side near the wall. Jane stepped in and touched the woman's throat, trying to find a pulse, but she was dead, too. Jane closed the door again and went up the hallway.
As Jane was walking across the living room toward the sliding door, she heard a sound. She whirled and aimed her gun at the man on the floor. "You're alive."
"Help me," said Steve Demming. His voice was strained and weak, but she could hear him.
"Toss your gun so you can't reach it."
He flipped his wrist and the gun slid a dozen feet on the bare floor. "Help me."
"You need to help me first."
"Get an ambulance. There are no phones in the house."
She understood. He had brought no phone because if he had made or received a call, it would prove where he was while Jane was being killed. "Tell me about Christine."
"I can tell you where she is."
"Her body?"
"No. That day, when she tried to get away, this house was already set up like a damned hospital. The Beales had brought a doctor from Mexico to deliver the baby, and a nurse to take care of it. They were still here a week later. And Ruby Beale is a nurse, too—retired. After Sybil shot Christine, they were all over her in five seconds. She's alive."
35
It was already nearly ten in the morning. The sun was bright and hot enough to burn off the protective haze from the ocean. The drive to the Mexican border seemed longer than Jane had imagined it. To her, San Diego had always seemed to be right on the border. But the wealthy parts where she had been spending much of her time had their faces turned to the north. Mexico was present only in the Indian faces of the people who worked in the restaurants and stood at the bus stops. Now, as she drove south on Interstate 5 and then through National City, Chula Vista, and Palm City, she began to see signs advertising attractions in Mexico and brokers who sold Mexican auto insurance to tourists. She pulled off at Palm Avenue and bought a policy. She knew she would never file a claim, but if she was in an accident she didn't want to be detained while the Mexican police sorted things out. A few minutes after that she reached San Ysidro.
Jane took her place in one of the seven lanes of cars waiting to cross the border. She read all of the signs and watched the movement of the cars on both sides of her, trying to be patient and calm because patience and calm were the things that customs agents on every border looked for. Jane had no experience at the southern border, but like most people in western New York, she had crossed the Canadian border frequently. This morning she was dressed in clothes that would make her identical to the hordes of female American tourists crowding the border. She wore a pair of expensive blue jeans, a long-sleeved white blouse, running shoes that showed she was expecting to be doing some walking, big sunglasses, and a baseball cap. She had her Alexandra Crowell identification in a worn wallet at the top of her purse, ready to show the customs officers.
The cars ahead didn't seem to be moving at all, but one at a time the ones at the row of customs kiosks changed. The people inching forward to the kiosks didn't seem worried, but they probably weren't carrying guns and ammunition and ten different sets of bogus identification. When she was given the wave to pull forward she took her turn with the Mexican officers. One of them came to her window.
Jane kept her face relaxed and blank, but looked at him attentively. He glanced at her for less than a second before he waved her into Tijuana and turned his eyes toward the next car.
Jane moved ahead. It had taken over two hours to get through the jam and into Mexico. She wanted to get out of the vicinity of the border, where the traffic was thick, but the traffic came with her and stayed with her—mostly in front of her—down Avenida Revolución. Mexico was crowded. T
he sidewalks were moving streams of people. There were hundreds of small stores and stalls and people selling everything—trinkets, textiles, leather, food. People who were obviously Americans elbowed one another to get closer to displays of brightly painted wooden objects. There were nightclubs, bars, and hotels, and in front of many of them, stalls that seemed to represent all of the great profusion of objects that existed and could be sold by one person to another.
As she made it onto Boulevard Agua Caliente the traffic thinned, and she dared to lift her eyes from the road to look around her more often. But as the sense of crowding eased, she was shocked by the sight of the endless hills on both sides, covered with the small cottages and shacks of poor people, most of them probably squatters, since it was hard to imagine pieces of land being cut into such small parcels. They went as far as she could see, and beyond.
By the time she was away from the border, many of the cars had pulled away onto Route 10 along the ocean toward Rosarito and Ensenada, and she felt a bit less hemmed in. But being on this side of the border worried Jane. Everything was unfamiliar and took extra seconds to interpret. She had seen not only policemen in the area close to the border, but also small contingents of armed soldiers at various corners, watching the passing cars. She wasn't sure what to expect of them. The crowds of people everywhere—half of them Americans—made her feel a bit less worried about standing out. Her long black hair might make an eye passing over a crowd include her with the Mexicans, but she didn't speak Spanish, so the impression was only of value if she kept moving and didn't talk.
She knew she was going to have a difficult time finding the building she was searching for, a hard time getting in, and a hard time getting out. As she moved along Boulevard Agua Caliente, she began to see some of the things Steve Demming had told her to look for. There were whole blocks of pharmacies. People who were obviously Americans, most of them elderly, came in and out carrying large shopping bags. There was even a charter bus parked on a side street with its motor running.
