by Thomas Perry
“We’ll keep everything you’ve said in mind. If we need anything more, we’ll get in touch.”
Mallon looked at him in surprise. “You mean just go as though nothing happened? Or is what you’re saying that nothing did happen?”
Detective Long sat down across the desk from Mallon and leaned closer on his elbows. “Look, Mr. Mallon,” he said. “I can’t really keep you here. The only place to sleep is a cell. I can’t give you any answers unless something you described—the body, the boat, the two men and the woman—turns up. Do you have any friends you can call, and maybe stay with them tonight?”
Mallon watched him stand up, so Mallon stood up too. “Maybe I will.” He felt the detective’s hand on his back. He was ushering him in a slow, affable way, toward the lobby.
“Do that,” said Long. “We’ll let you know as soon as we find anything out.”
The detective walked Mallon to the front door like a host, opened the door for him, and gave him a little wave as Mallon descended the front steps. When Mallon had walked fifty feet, he turned and looked back to verify that the detective had gone back across the lobby into the office. He had not asked Mallon to call in and let the police know where he could be reached. He was probably already filing a report that said Mallon was a harmless local eccentric who had lately gotten into the habit of making false reports to the police.
CHAPTER 21
It was easy to tell from the row of lighted windows visible through the trees that the house David Altberg had lived in was large. Like the others that lined this part of Benedict Canyon, it was set back from the steep, winding road behind an eight-foot wall with an electric gate. Mary O’Connor slowed down as she came to it, then pulled the car to a stop beside the wall, turned off the headlights, and waited.
Debbie slipped out her door, climbed onto the hood, then stepped onto the roof, pulled herself over the wall, and was gone. Emily stopped beside Mary’s window long enough to make a long-suffering face to show her distaste for this job, then repeated Debbie’s climb to the top of the wall. She paused there to watch Mary’s departure.
Mary stared into the rearview mirror to be sure there were no cars approaching. She pulled back out onto the road and drove off, reached a comfortable speed, and then coasted down the slope toward the Beverly Hills flats.
Emily looked at her watch. She had twenty minutes before Mary would turn around and begin the drive back. In forty, Emily and Debbie should be outside again, waiting. She swung her legs to the inside of the wall, turned, and lowered herself partway, then dropped to the ground.
Emily crouched in the dark and stared at the house. This was not a job that Michael could charge some amateur for the pleasure of performing. David Altberg had been sixty-three years old, so his wife was probably about the same. Customers wouldn’t pay for the sport of blasting an old lady.
Through sliding glass doors she could see broad, well-lit interior spaces. There was a big foyer that led into a living room with a wide stone fire pit in the center and a copper hood that vented it, the sort they had in some ski lodges. Two walls had bookcases to the ceiling, but in each, only the bottom shelf held a row of coffee-table books. The rest of the shelves were filled with little statues, baskets, framed photographs, vases. Emily had been to rich people’s homes in L.A. before. If they owned any real books, they were always placed in some closed room where they would not pollute the decor.
Emily looked into the darkness among the dwarf evergreen shrubs along the path from the garden to the house and made out Debbie’s shape. She was stretched and flattened in a posture from one of the innumerable martial disciplines she had studied. This one made her look very feline: she had the cat’s ability to remain motionless and simply not look like something that was alive. After a time, Emily’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she could see that Debbie’s eyes were on her, waiting for her to move.
Emily stayed low and advanced on the sliding glass doors. They were often easy to force because the locks were not good, and even if she decided they were not the best way in, they would give her a good view of the whole first floor. She stopped at the side of the glass, her body shielded from view by a solid stretch of wall about three feet wide. She looked in, making her eyes move carefully along the walls she could see, noting everything. The chairs and couches showed no signs that anyone had sat in them recently, and nothing was left out of place near them. The fresh flowers in the purple vase on the table meant that the wife had not gone away during the extra week her husband had been at the self-defense camp for the “advanced course.”
Emily kept the palm of her left hand pressed lightly against the wall as she looked, so she could feel any small inaudible vibration in the building. When she had satisfied herself that nobody was in sight, she stepped quickly in front of the glass door and stopped. She looked at the alcove near the front door and found the alarm keypad. It was turned on, its red light glowing steadily in the upper left corner. But the display on the right side was blinking.
She glided quietly along the outer wall of the house until she reached the next set of windows, then looked at the keypad again. The display was blinking a succession of numbers: 8, 39, 41, 8, 39, 41, 8. Emily understood the common alarm systems. This signal meant that the perimeter was armed, and an alarm would go off if any of the doors or windows were moved, but there were three points that had been left only partially closed. Alarm installers labeled the access points starting on the ground floor, making the front entrance number one. Thirty-nine and forty-one were undoubtedly upstairs windows. Eight intrigued her.
She looked at the front door. To the left of it was the hallway leading to other rooms. To the right was a small, high window. That would be number two. The first set of floor-to-ceiling windows with a sliding door where she stood was number three, the second four. She moved quickly back along the side of the building, counting. Five was the solid door that probably led to some kind of service room or pantry, and six was the small louvered glass window beyond. Seven was the first set of bay windows on the back side of the house. Through them, she saw eight.
Eight was a set of floor-to-ceiling windows with a slider to match the ones on the opposite side of the house. She could see that there was a set of extra contacts on the inside of the sliding door’s track, so the door could be opened a few inches and the alarm turned on. If the door was opened any wider than it was now, the alarm would be triggered.
She could feel her heart beginning to beat more quickly, and an excited flush came to her cheeks. She had been feeling despondent and irritable since the problem on the beach in Santa Barbara today. The first mistake—when David had suddenly reached for his gun in Mallon’s sight—had taken her by surprise. She had tried to stop him, but he had been unwilling to be stopped. After that, the errors had piled up so rapidly that there was nothing she could do. Spangler had seen that there was a problem, tried to get David out of trouble by firing from a rocking boat, and hit David instead of Mallon. Emily had considered snatching David’s gun to dispatch Mallon, but she had seen Spangler aiming for a second shot, so she had moved back out of the line of fire. She had stepped back, but Mallon had not. In a second he was already kneeling over the body, presumably to get his hand on the gun. All Emily could do was escape. She’d had to sprint down the beach to the water, and hope he didn’t have the presence of mind to kill her while she was fighting her way through the surf to the boat. Everything had gone wrong on the hunt. Since then the balance had begun to be restored, a bit at a time, each step bought with extra care and work. First they had needed to remove David Altberg’s body. Now they must clean up the rest of what he had left behind.
Emily had found what she needed. She turned around to scan the foliage behind her. A bit of darkness seemed to coalesce and become a deeper bit of darkness and then Debbie stepped closer, and passed through the light to Emily’s side. Emily pointed at the partially opened slider, so Debbie could see it across the room. “See the two extra magnetic contact
s?” Emily whispered. “Too narrow for me. If we move it any wider the alarm will go off.”
Debbie whispered, “Let me see.”
Debbie walked around to the spot. She looked closely at the narrow open space between the door and the end of the track, did a quarter turn to put herself beside it, as though measuring, then faced it again.
She put her right arm inside and let it go in up to the shoulder, rounded her back to get her right breast in past the door, then placed her chin on her shoulder, shrugged, and twisted. Her knees bent, her legs spread apart, and her right side was in. As she slid inward her ear brushed the door, but she continued her turn. It looked to Emily as though she were stepping through the glass instead of past it.
Emily hurried to whisper through the opening into Debbie’s ear. “Find the alarm circuit box. It will be in a closet or cabinet, but it has a green glowing light on the door, so you’ll see it. The key will be hidden near it. When you find the key, unlock the box and flip the off switch on the lower left side. The green light on the door will go out.”
Debbie nodded and set off. She opened the entry closet and closed it, then another near the kitchen. She moved down a hallway, and Emily saw no more of her for a few minutes. She reemerged through the dining room, and quietly climbed the stairs.
Emily leaned on the wall and prepared for a long wait. She stared at the alarm keypad by the front entrance, and as she stared, the red ARMED light and the green POWER light went dark. She took a deep breath, and pushed the sliding door open far enough to slip inside. No alarm rang out. She pushed the door shut and listened. She advanced deeper into the living room, tuning her ears to any small sound.
She climbed the stairs and found Debbie standing motionless at the top, gazing up the hall toward the end. The door was closed, but there was a faint light beneath it.
Emily looked away from it to Debbie and saw a look of distaste on her face. She moved close to Debbie’s ear. “What’s wrong?”
Debbie whispered, “She’s not alone.”
Emily’s eyes widened. It was not unusual, and it was certainly not unimaginable. She should have thought of it, but she had not. It made perfect sense. David Altberg had been a sixty-three-year-old man with a balding head and a pot belly. His conversation had been dull and self-absorbed. The only thing that had made him bearable was his money. At frequent intervals, he had gone off without his wife. He’d mentioned hunting in Alaska, fishing in Florida. And of course, the past five weeks at the ranch. His wife had probably been delighted.
As Emily tried to think it through, she began to hear sounds. There were little cries, moans, and then the sound of a bed squeaking.
Debbie’s lips beside her ear tickled and irritated her. “Let’s kill them both.”
Emily shook her head hard, to cover the shiver. “No. Let’s turn the alarm on again. We’ll hide and wait.”
“What about Mary? She’ll be back in a half hour.”
“She knows enough to keep going if we’re not there. We’ll call her when it’s done.”
She followed Debbie to a room off the upstairs hallway. It was dark, but she could tell that it had been decorated as a kind of sitting room. Debbie went to the closet, opened the metal box on the wall, and reached up to flip the switch.
“Don’t!” Emily said it aloud.
Debbie’s body whirled to face the danger. When she saw nothing she remained with her body tensed, but her face looked puzzled.
Emily stepped closer. “I forgot I closed the sliding door downstairs. She has it programmed to be open to the first contact. If we turn on the system now, the alarm will go off. I’ll go open it.” She slipped out. She could hear the sounds from the bedroom, louder and wilder now. She waited until the noises convinced her that there was no chance that they would hear her, then moved down the staircase, pushed the slider to its former position, and slowly began to make her way back toward the stairs.
She heard footsteps above her head. They couldn’t be Debbie’s. She wouldn’t make any noise. Emily slipped into the corner of the room and hid behind a couch. The sounds resolved themselves into two sets of footsteps. One set was soft and light, and the other heavier, a man’s feet. She waited for a few minutes, then heard them again.
At the top of the stairs she heard the woman’s voice. There was a pouting quality to it. “Are you sure you have to go just like that? David isn’t going to be home until late tomorrow.”
“Sure, that takes care of him,” said a man’s voice. “But Marian isn’t out of town. By now she’s wondering where I am.”
“I’ll call her as soon as you leave, and chat for a while, so she won’t be in such a snit when you get there,” said the woman’s voice. “She won’t be thinking about you at all. But I will be.”
Emily lay behind the couch and waited. She heard them come down the stairs. There was a curious silence. She moved forward a few inches and looked beyond the edge of the couch. It was no surprise that they were kissing. The surprise was that the woman was so young. Mrs. David Altberg was no older than Emily.
Emily pulled her head back and remained still. The kiss ended, the woman pressed her code on the keypad, making eight beeps. The front door opened, and in a few seconds it closed. Emily heard the electric motor of the door opener spinning the screw to slide the garage door up. That was smart, she thought. They had parked his car in the garage, where David’s car usually went. Nobody who came by would see his car parked here. Emily heard the car pull out, and the garage motor hum as it brought the door down again. She waited until the woman walked across the room to close the slider, then returned. Emily slithered to the end of the couch to watch while the woman pushed the keys to engage her alarm again. Then she ducked back.
Emily hoped that Debbie had the sense to be patient. If she appeared before the woman was far enough from the keypad, she might get back in time to push the emergency button.
The woman turned off the downstairs lights and climbed the stairs toward her bedroom. The darkness was reassuring to Emily, because it meant everything had gone perfectly. The sensation was refreshing, a physical release that made her feel free and energetic.
As soon as Mrs. Altberg disappeared at the top of the stairs, Emily began to move toward the bottom step. But then she heard the sounds above her. They came much sooner than she had expected. There was no scream, just an indrawn breath like a gasp, then a heavy thump, a knock as the woman’s head hit something, and a softer, heavier noise that Emily knew was Debbie letting the woman’s body drop to the floor in the upstairs hallway.
Emily took the steps three at a time, pulling herself up with the railing, then dashed past the landing into the hallway. The woman was lying on the hardwood floor, and Debbie was looking down at her, cocking her head to get a look at the face.
“Is she dead?” asked Emily.
“Sure. I thought I’d put her out quickly.” Debbie looked at Emily and shrugged. “I mean, why not? This wasn’t her fuckup, was it?”
“No,” said Emily quietly. “Thank you for taking care of it.”
Debbie gave her an annoyed glance and walked down the hall toward the bedroom. “What now?”
Emily followed her. “Now we pack a suitcase for her, as though she and her husband went away together.” She stepped in past Debbie and looked at the bed, which was in extreme disarray. She moved closer to it. “I guess I’d better make the bed first.”
“You think the boyfriend won’t go to the police?”
“Probably not. But if he’s not calling them right now, it doesn’t matter what he does, as long as we don’t leave any prints.”
Debbie nodded. “I’ll go see where she kept her luggage and get started with the packing.”
“Make it real. There will probably be a few cops here the day after tomorrow who will notice if we forget her makeup bag.”
“I know that,” muttered Debbie. She disappeared into the long walk-in closet. Emily could tell that she had not enjoyed killing Mrs. Altberg and was f
eeling resentful about this evening. Being alone with Debbie made Emily uncomfortable sometimes, but tonight was worse. She was a little bit afraid of her.
They did not speak again until the bag was packed and the bedroom straightened. Then Emily took out her cell phone and dialed Mary’s number.
“Hi,” said Mary.
“Hi,” said Emily. “We’re going to open the gate. When you get here, pull all the way down the driveway to the house, and then turn off your headlights and pop the trunk. Okay?”
“I’ll be there in about five minutes.”
Emily and Debbie lifted the body and carried it down the stairs in the dark, then outside, where they laid it on the grass next to the driveway. Emily went back inside, pressed the remote control to open the gate, picked up the suitcase, and turned off the last of the lights. At the front door she set the lock, pushed the code she had memorized to turn on the alarm, then stepped out and closed the door. She sighed. It was going to be a long drive back to the ranch, and then a couple of hours of digging before this awful day would finally end.
Paul Spangler was packing his belongings when he heard the familiar flat-handed slap on the door jamb that was the military knock. He simply turned the knob so it was unlocked and let it swing open as he turned away and walked back to the bed, where his suitcase lay open.
