Dead Aim

by Thomas Perry

  Parish stepped inside and closed the door, then stood with his back against it. “I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

  “I know you do, Michael,” said Spangler. “Thanks for that.” Both men let their voices relax, as they always did when they were alone. The old, natural South African way of pronouncing English words came back, the traces of Afrikaans thicker on Spangler’s tongue and palate than on Parish’s.

  Parish said, “The girls will have the whole business cleared away by dawn. There won’t be a trace. They’re like deer, their eyes always open, and their ears twitching. They already feel what you feel about this. They’ll never blame you, or even remind you of it.”

  “Nah, old friend,” said Spangler. “I know they wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t either.” He stepped to his closet, took a handful of hangers with shirts on them, and laid them on the tightly made bed beside the suitcase.

  “I’ve made a few bad shots myself, Paul,” Parish said quietly. “You might remember one in Uganda.”

  Spangler sat on the bed, both legs stiff and his heels touching the floor. “I remember.” It had been a deep forest patrol along the border between Uganda and Zaire, searching for rebels in a place where all of humanity seemed to have spun off into violent factions, so the problem was not merely sighting groups of armed men but identifying their political affiliations before they opened fire. Spangler had been in command, a captain when Parish was still a lieutenant. That had been when Parish had still been called Eric Watkins, but when Spangler looked back on those times now, Parish always came back to him as Parish. The name Eric Watkins had only been a stage he had passed through.

  Parish had been walking point for the patrol, with three soldiers. Spangler had known that Parish would be farther forward than was necessary or advisable in this thick bush, sometimes two or three hundred yards, where if he met resistance the straggling column that Spangler was leading along the jungle track could do little to help him. But when the two had arrived to enlist, Spangler was given the superior rank because he was older, so he did not exercise his nominal authority over Parish unduly. Parish liked adventure, so he could have it. Spangler listened to the sounds of the forest: the calls of birds, buzzing insects, the whispering of billions of leaves and stems—what Spangler thought of as the sounds of heat.

  The noises were abruptly replaced by the hammering of an automatic rifle. Before the first burst ended there were others, overlapping. Spangler’s men had already split apart to crouch in the bush on either side of the trail, listening, but Spangler had held his ground. He had instantly identified the shots as Parish’s troops firing their FN FAL paratroop rifles. He waited for answering fire, rounds of a different caliber or automatic fire of a different frequency. The rebels they had encountered in this district had been traveling in gangs of forty or sixty, and when they opened up it was a cacophony of Eastern-made AK-47’s and SKS’s, sometimes a few British or American-made hunting rifles, even a shotgun or two.

  He sorted the possibilities, then signaled his men to spread wide and advance toward the sounds. The silence could mean either that Parish’s men had gotten jumpy and opened fire on imagined enemies or that real enemies had ambushed and killed them. Either way, Spangler had to bring his men through the thick vegetation toward the spot.

  When they reached a clearing, on the other side he could see Michael Parish and his men standing around looking peculiarly grave. He halted his troops, sent word to maintain their cover, and proceeded alone. Parish met him in the middle of the clearing. “Paul,” he whispered. “It seems we’ve made a slight error.”

  “What is it?”

  “We heard fairly serious sounds of brush being pushed aside, some branches breaking and all that, so we opened up. It turns out we’ve killed a troop of gorillas.”

  “Have you identified what army they belong to?”

  Parish leaned closer. “No. Gorillas. Apes. A silverback, about four females, a couple of young ones. Concentrated fire. As long as we saw any bushes moving, we kept it up.”

  Spangler had looked around him, over his shoulder, to be sure his men were still in position. “What do your men say?”

  “They’re no more eager to let the others know than we are.” He shrugged.

  Spangler assessed the situation quickly. He and Parish had come here together and enlisted. They had verified each other’s lies about their former ranks in the South African army and their time in service. Their troops were not all volunteers, and the ones who were tended to be the sort who couldn’t return to their villages. If he and Parish allowed these men to believe their two officers were buffoons, their lives would be in danger.

  Spangler said, “How about this? You caught some poachers in the act. You fired on them and chased them off.”

  “It’s the best we can do.”

  “Then I’ll go and brief the noncoms while you talk to your men and get the story straight.”

  Spangler had been especially long-winded in his briefing, then posted pickets and gave his men a rest to allow Parish and his men the time to mutilate the gorillas’ bodies a bit with knives. By the time the main column was allowed to advance to the spot, it appeared that the animals had been butchered for the lucrative trade in their hands and feet. Since the missing parts were not to be found anywhere, it was clear that the poachers must have gotten what they wanted before their escape.

  Many years had passed since that day in the forest. Spangler marveled at the way looking at Parish and listening to his voice seemed to bring it all back in absolute clarity.

  “We’ve been in some scrapes,” Parish said. That was the other part of the story, and Parish needed to say nothing more to trigger Spangler’s emotion. They had been in battle together.

  “We have,” Spangler agreed. “And your bringing me along on this has got me permanent residency in the States and a good supply of dollars. I thank you for it. I’ve tried to be sure you didn’t regret it. And this is the time when I think I’d better save you the work of asking me to leave.”

  Parish said, “If I wanted you to leave, I know that I could ask you, and you would go. I also know that I would never have to wonder if I could trust you to keep still about our business here.”

  “Of course,” said Spangler.

  Parish continued. “What happened today was that you, as scout, had to step in to protect the rest of us, because the amateur hunter fell apart. You had to fire from two hundred yards out standing on a moving boat in a heavy sea. When Emily and Mary told me what had happened, and that you had shot Altberg twice under those conditions, I was planning to congratulate you on your fine shooting.”

  Spangler looked surprised. “What? Why?”

  “I figured you must have made the determination to drop the client and scrap the hunt. Once he’d had his chance and ended up grappling with the target for the gun, it was a perfectly reasonable decision.” He smiled. “I didn’t suspect that the first hit was a wild shot until I asked where you were and Mary told me you had gone off alone.”

  Spangler shook his head and chuckled sadly. “When I squeezed off that shot and saw the wrong one go down, I was paralyzed for a few seconds. Mary kept her head and brought the boat around, and all I could think of was to fire a second round into him on the way in, rather than leave him wounded and ready to talk. I hauled Emily up over the side and fired once at Mallon on the way out to sea, to no purpose. It was a balls-up debacle. I made a bloody ass of myself. After thirty years of shooting, I was useless.”

  Parish began to pace the floor. “I won’t deny that I’m speaking as your friend, and I certainly won’t deny that I’ve owed my life to you on more than one occasion. If you were past usefulness, I admit that I would surely try to find you something to do around here where you wouldn’t hurt yourself. But it isn’t that way. You’re the best sniper I ever saw, and the only combat pistol instructor I would have around me. I don’t want to lose that. I can’t run this place with teachers who’ve done nothing but shoot at paper
targets and beat up punching bags. I need a professional soldier who stood when the blood flowed. You know that. You also know that David Altberg isn’t the first friendly-fire casualty either of us has had. There were times in Africa when I would send my men into the bush, set my rifle on full auto, and kill anything that came back at me.”

  “Michael, it’s not remorse or something,” said Spangler. “It’s a different kind of feeling.” He looked anxious, tormented. “You’ve seen it, just as I have. A man’s luck will be wrapped around him like a coat. Then one day, it’s gone. He seems to wake up one morning, and the day looks different to him. The next thing anybody else knows, his mates are toting him back in a body bag.”

  “Are you getting superstitious?” asked Parish.

  He shook his head. “All I know is that things have started to go wrong.”

  “Paul, you’ve devoted years to this business. You and I built this building we’re standing in. I’m sure you were right before when you said you had a supply of dollars, because God knows, you’ve never stood any man a drink. But now is when it’s starting to pay off. You can’t walk away now. You’ll be rich in a year.”

  Spangler said nothing for a moment. He knew he was being manipulated. He had seen Parish do it to other people many times before. He always did it in a respectful, distinct, earnest voice, looking and sounding so sincere that it seemed to the listener as though the words were forming in his own mind. Michael’s alert eyes were unblinking, watching the listener’s face to determine which themes provoked signs of resistance, and which caused the impervious will to weaken. When Michael talked about money, he did it in a way that made Spangler’s chest tighten with greed, and his heart sink at the thought of revenue forfeited. When he invoked loyalty, Spangler found himself gripped by a surge of it. Even when Parish said something badly, a listener would not resist him, but feel sympathy for him, convinced that he was simply a soldier after all, and capable only of plain speech.

  “You remember what it was like in the old days, Paul. We would see those rich bastards like Bill Finney pass us by in their sports cars, and just marvel at the way the world worked, that it would put scum like them on top. Well, it’s our turn now. They’re lining up to come here. If you’ll stay on a little longer, you’ll be as rich as any of them.”

  “Michael, what happened today was a mistake,” said Spangler. “If we make mistakes, it’s over. I just don’t want to ruin this for you and the others.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s safe. We’ve been doing the hunts for years without trouble, haven’t we? I almost never agree to do one in this state—until Mark Romano, they’ve been spread over the country, everywhere except California. And he was more than a year ago.”

  “And because of him, this Marks woman, and now Mallon. All of those hunts had problems,” Spangler reminded him.

  “And all of the problems have been solved—or they will be soon.”

  “Well—”

  “They have,” said Parish. “And you’ve been part of that. The truth is that I need you. I’ve always thought that you deserved more, and I’ve intended to be sure you got it. You should be rich, and I don’t want you to leave until you are. It would kill me to see a man like you going off with your hat in your hand, knocking on doors looking for a job. When you retire from this, I want you to never have to work another day.”

  “If I get us caught, that’s about what will happen.”

  “We should get a medal for this. We’re just giving rich bastards permission to kill other rich bastards. We’re purifying the race, getting rid of the weak and credulous.”

  Spangler chuckled as he thought, This is what makes it work. It’s the fact that Michael can persuade people that they are deserving, that they must do everything they can to protect and preserve their precious selves. He could convince them that they were too important, too valuable, to have to tolerate the existence of enemies. As Spangler listened, he felt calm. The best argument for staying with Parish was Parish. He could convince people that whatever resentments they had were righteous indignation. The slights and insults they had suffered were capital offenses. Spangler had no problem with that. He had become a soldier at seventeen because he had felt that killing people was not a big price to pay for being freed from a life of farm labor.

  He looked once more at Parish, his misgivings gone. “Thanks, Michael. You don’t need to spend the whole night telling me this. If you want me to stay, it’s good enough for me.”

  Parish clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad.” The two shook hands once, hard. Then they turned away from each other. As Spangler faced the bed to begin unpacking, he heard the door open and close, and Parish was gone.

  Parish walked on the damp grass away from Spangler’s cabin, into the field, where the flow of the lights did not reach. He came to the edge of the woods, where thick bushes had begun to grow in to replace the trees that had been cut. The forest was always trying to expand onto the clear-cut hillsides. He said, “Let’s go.”

  There was no rustling as Mary stood up. She held one of the new rifles that Spangler and Parish had been sighting in all week on the range. She said, “I assume Paul has decided to stay?”

  Parish answered, “Yes. He hasn’t lost his nerve. He was just upset with himself for hitting David Altberg on his first shot when he was aiming for Mr. Mallon. He’ll be fine. He’ll probably be on the range every spare moment for a time, giving himself the illusion that he’ll never miss again.”

  They walked in silence, moving along the ridge toward the firing range. Mary asked quietly, “Would you do this to me?”

  Parish looked at her blankly. “What?”

  “If you thought I had lost my nerve and wanted out, would you let me go, or would you kill me?”

  Parish took the rifle in his right hand and put his left around her waist as they walked. “I didn’t tell you to kill him.”

  “You sent me out there to watch for your signal. And it’s exactly the way he was supposed to shoot Mallon when he missed.”

  “Oh, is it?” he asked without interest. “I’ll have to take your word for it. I wasn’t there.”

  “You would kill me, wouldn’t you?”

  He pulled her close and laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He leaned down and gave her cheek a kiss, then released her and held his watch close to his face so he could make out the faint glow of the dial. “This took longer than I expected. Would you mind putting the rifle back in the rack before you come down? I told Emily and Debbie that I would help with the rest of this.” He held the rifle out to her. “Unless you’d rather do that?”

  “I’m not digging any graves,” Mary said. “I’ll put the rifle away.” She took it from him, stood still, and watched him moving down the hill toward the lodge. She turned and walked in the other direction, toward the storage building at the end of the firing range.

  CHAPTER 22

  Mallon had been awake in his hotel bed for hours, waiting for daylight. At five A.M., he got out of bed, stepped to the window, and opened the curtains. Across the road, he could see the small stucco building with a tile roof that housed public rest rooms, and beyond it, the white beach and the blue ocean. The hotel was quiet.

  He put on a pair of jeans, a baseball cap, and a sweatshirt, went down to the beach, and began to walk, staring at everything washed up by yesterday’s high tide. He tried to force himself to stop imagining that each of the big bundles of kelp was a man, but he walked close to a couple of them to be sure.

  Mallon was trying to keep himself from being angry. He knew that the police department couldn’t afford to have every cop out on the beach all night waiting for the body to wash in, but now that it was dawn they could at least try using metal detectors to find the gun. Otherwise some two-year-old with a sand shovel was going to dig it up and take it home in his plastic bucket. He walked at a steady, quick pace along the same route he had taken the day before. When he got to the stretch of beach where the man had been killed, he saw that
there wasn’t even a marker or a line of police tape.

  Mallon reached a spot that looked to him like the place where the older man had pulled the gun out of his jacket. He looked at the point he had just passed and judged the distance to the next one, then looked out to his right at the ocean. There was nothing on that side that he could use to take his bearings: the Pacific was an unchanging expanse of blue that met the horizon, but he could tell that the tide was low. The surf line was at least fifty feet farther away than it had been when the man was shot. He turned to his left and used the cliffs to verify the distance.

  Mallon walked back and forth on the beach, digging his feet into the sand, kicking it out of the way, sometimes dragging one foot sideways to plow a little deeper. He remembered that it was the way Lydia had searched for Catherine’s belongings the day after she’d died, and it made him feel sadder and more hopeless, and yet more desperate to do something about their deaths. He was the first to walk on this stretch of beach this morning, so the trails he was making were clear and easy to see. He kept widening the area of his search, staring hard at the sand in case he uncovered some part of the pistol without feeling it.

  A wind came up, and he looked back and realized that a lot of time had passed. The places where he’d brushed the surface and exposed the wet, mortar-like sand were dry and powdery now. The wind was blowing the sand smooth again, so he could no longer be sure where he had searched. The sun was much higher, and his sweatshirt was wet with perspiration. He looked at his watch: he had been here for nearly four hours. He turned to look back the way he had come. There were local people on the beach now: adults lying on blankets, children crouching just above the surf, digging. He had seen a few of them on his walks, knew which parts of town they lived in, but had never spoken to any of them. Seeing them made him feel isolated and vulnerable. He had lived here for ten years, but he was a stranger.