Dead Aim

by Thomas Perry

“They arrived after I did. They might not have known I was already there, but they certainly knew I would be. I think that’s why one guy came ahead alone. They wanted to see whether I had arrived.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “How could they possibly have known?”

  “How could they possibly have gone to a particular block on a narrow, dark street in Malibu to find me if they didn’t?”

  In the light from the bathroom doorway, he could see her eyes. She had been rigid and tense, but now she was beginning to be frightened. “You’re scaring me. Do you think they tapped our phone call? That they heard what we were planning, and then came to wait for us?”

  He shook his head slowly, never taking his eyes off hers. “We never said aloud where we were going to meet, remember? You said it was the place we once looked at together.”

  “Did they follow you?”

  “No chance,” he said. “I took a taxi to the edge of Malibu. I went down to the beach for a time. Then I went back up on the road and walked there that way after it was dark.”

  “Then maybe they followed me,” she said. “Oh, Robert, I’m sorry. I never saw them.”

  “You got there after they did.”

  She said, “This time, yes. But I drove down there earlier. I didn’t want to sit around in a hotel waiting and then run into traffic and be late, so I left early. I drove through once as soon as I got to Malibu, just to be sure I remembered which house it was. Then I went to a movie.”

  “Why didn’t they follow you to the movie, and stick with you? It’s a great place to meet someone.”

  Diane shook her head, her body rocking impatiently. “How do I know? I don’t even know if they did follow me. They didn’t find me, did they? They found you.”

  All the time while Diane was talking he watched her. He could actually see her in the act of thinking: grasping at alternative explanations, but rejecting this one as too transparently foolish, that one as incriminating. “No matter what they saw,” Mallon pointed out, “they couldn’t have known that the time for them to show up was ten.”

  She shrugged. “Then they did tap the phone call.”

  “No,” said Mallon. “They didn’t. You told them.”

  “No.” Diane began to move on the carpet, pushing herself slowly to get farther away from him. “No, I didn’t. I would never do that. I don’t even know who they are, and I’m your friend. I work for you. We’ve known each other for eight or nine years. Why would I want to help somebody kill you?”

  Some instinct or memory or warning came into Diane’s mind, and she stopped moving away. She seemed to have difficulty preparing herself. “There’s no reason at all. We can’t let ourselves get paranoid and turn on each other,” she said, and she began to move a bit closer.

  Mallon could see what she was thinking, as though it were printed on her forehead. She knew he was armed. She did not want to be ten or twelve feet away from him, close enough for him to be sure of hitting her if he fired, too far away for her to do anything to stop him. She was smiling with a sincere, concerned look in her eyes as she moved closer. Without any shade of change in her expression, and without a change in the direction of her movement, she sprang.

  Mallon’s reaction was a simple reflex, a lunge to the left to avoid her. She managed to land a single, hard blow that missed his throat but stung his chest near the shoulder. Her other hand was already at his jacket pocket, groping for the gun. Mallon swatted her arm down and held her wrist. He used it to spin her around, then pushed to get her to the floor face downward. He straddled her as she struggled, then clamped his left hand around the back of her neck to hold her there.

  He leaned to the right to grasp the roll of packing tape he had left on the floor after he’d covered the broken window, and she used that moment to twist and push down with her legs to try to roll him off. He managed to snatch the tape, then flop his weight onto her back to keep her down.

  In spite of his size and weight, she never stopped struggling to overcome him, and from the first few seconds he had been aware that she was better at this than she should be. She used every chance to keep him from gaining control. Every time he tried to shift his position, she would feel the direction of his motion and push off to try to accelerate it and free herself. They fought in silence in the near darkness, their breaths now coming in heavy, hard gasps.

  At last, she had worn herself out trying to lift him. He was able to clamp both her wrists behind her, and wrapped five turns of the tape around them to hold them.

  “What?” she gasped. “Why … what do you … want?”

  He leaned close, so his lips were right behind her ear. “I promise I won’t hurt you. I want you to tell me the truth.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Mallon had used parts of three rolls of packing tape to bind Diane’s wrists and ankles, then to connect the ankles and wrists.

  He knelt beside her on the empty living room floor, and she recoiled from him. He said, “Diane, I’m not going to harm you. But you’ve got to tell me why they’re trying to kill me.” He stared into her eyes, and he could tell she had been listening to him and studying him. Her eyes were a bit calmer.

  She took two or three deep breaths. “You didn’t have to do this to me. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just panicked because you took away my phone. I thought it was so I couldn’t call for help, that you were planning to hurt me.”

  “And your gun,” he said. “I found that too.”

  Her brows tilted in hurt. “Don’t you think that’s the best evidence you have that I only wanted to help? I never did anything with it.”

  “Why did you come to meet me with a gun?”

  “Because we’re in danger. I own it because I’m a female attorney who lives alone. I bought it when I was just starting out in general practice in Los Angeles, and lived in a neighborhood that seemed scary to a girl from a small town. That was a long time ago, so I hardly ever thought about the gun until now. After those men followed me home from work this week, I threw a few things into a suitcase, put the gun into my bag, and took off. At the time, I was very glad I owned it.” She sighed, and looked as though she might cry. “Now I’m sorry.”

  Mallon said, “Diane, if you’ll tell me the truth, I’ll let you go. Why are you involved with these people?”

  “Involved?” Her eyes looked scared again. “I’m not involved. I was only trying to help you, and now they’re after both of us.”

  “They’re not after both of us. They’re after me, and you’re helping them. Why are they so interested in killing me? What is it you think Lydia and I found out? Who are these people?”

  She looked at him as though he were speaking a language she did not understand. “I don’t know any more than you do. Robert, you know me. I’m an honest person. I don’t consort with any criminals. I’ve never even represented any. I went into a general civil firm right out of law school and, when I had some experience, moved to Santa Barbara to open an office with a specialty I liked. You’re one of my best clients. I have no reason to harm you.”

  Mallon said quietly, “Stop it. I’m giving you a chance to tell me the truth. Don’t you understand what that’s worth?”

  “I am telling you the truth.” She stared at him for a few moments, motionless, and then the tears came. “I am. I am,” she said softly, and turned her face to the floor.

  There was no doubt that she was lying. He stood up. The beach house was like the others in the row: it faced the sea. It had no lower-level windows on the street side, but presented to the world a plain front and a plain, closed garage door. Mallon had little reason to be afraid to leave a light on, but he decided to be careful. He switched the light off and took a step.

  “Good-bye, Diane.” He walked toward the front door.

  “Wait!”

  He stopped.

  “Please!” she begged. “You’re going to leave me like this? The house is closed up, and so are all the others along here. There’s nobody to find me. I’ll die.”
>
  “Most likely,” he said. “I guess if I die, you will too.” He opened the door to step out.

  “Wait!” she yelled. “I’ll tell you.”

  He closed the door, turned on the light, walked back, and sat beside her again. “I’ll listen to it. All I ask is that it be true.”

  “It will be,” she said. “If you go without knowing more than you do, they’ll kill you.”

  “Why?” he said. “Why? I’ve asked you that over and over.”

  Her face assumed a hard, empty look. “No reason.” She gazed into his eyes, and her expression became a grim amusement. “Does that surprise you?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “It’s true. The people involved in this—all the ones you’ve seen, anyway—were doing it because it gives them a thrill.” She watched him for a reaction. “It’s the sport of kings, the real one, you know. If you happen to be the sort of wealthy person who has gone to all the famous cities and to all the remote resorts that aren’t famous because just knowing the name of them is enough to make you cool, and you’ve worked your way through all of the other big-ticket extreme sports, then this is the option.”

  “The big-ticket extreme sports?”

  “You know. Having a helicopter drop you on some unreachable mountain nobody has skied before, buying a big sailboat to take across an ocean, setting speed records with racing cars. I guess people like that used to go shoot animals in Africa, but that’s lost its aura. Those two that came for you tonight—Markham and Coleman—that’s what they were in it for: fun.”

  “How in the world did you ever get involved with people like that?”

  “Through my practice. I’m a servant of rich people: all kinds of rich people. If you manage money, you can’t have too many requirements other than that the money belong to them. This business is too competitive for that.”

  “You got into this mess for thrills?”

  She shook her head and closed her eyes. Tears seeped from the corners. Then she opened them again. “Not everybody gets a thrill. I got into it because I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Just before I came to Santa Barbara, when I was still in civil litigation in L.A., I defended a client named Carl Hayward. He wasn’t a very nice man, and I didn’t much like him, but that isn’t supposed to enter into legal representation. He was being sued. He had bought a restaurant about three years before. As I understood it, what happened was this: he hired an old male chef and one male kitchen helper, but everybody else who worked for him was a young girl. It was a crummy neighborhood, but it was a well-known old restaurant that was a favorite spot for people to go after plays or concerts: lobsters, big steaks, lots of liquor. It stayed open twenty-four hours a day, so he needed three shifts, but most of the business was between ten at night and six in the morning. Because it was that kind of place, he made the customers pay premium prices. Every night at about three A.M. he would come in and count the money. That was the time when things would begin to slow down. He put the cash in a bag, made out a deposit slip, and sent out one of the young girls who was getting off her shift to take it to the bank to drop in the night-deposit slot on the way home. One night, there was somebody waiting. The girl was a sixteen-year-old, who wasn’t supposed to be working at that hour or in a place that served liquor. She got killed.”

  “This was a civil suit?”

  She nodded. “The girl was a runaway from New Mexico. Her parents were drug cases who hadn’t even bothered to look for her when she left. But she had a brother. His name was Billy. He was five years older. He had been in jail when she left home, but she’d kept writing to him. He was still in jail when she got killed. When he got out, he got a good lawyer on a pro bono basis. Carl Hayward got me. Everybody expected us to settle. Hayward had clearly not checked anybody, least of all Tara, for age, or asked to see identification. She looked, if anything, younger than sixteen, and Hayward made no secret of the fact that he always had one of the girls carry the money because he didn’t want to get robbed. Three or four of them would get off at once, and it might be a different one that had the money each time. But he knew that he was putting them in danger, because at least once before, men had stopped the wrong girl and ended up with nothing but a purse full of tips. I let them go to court, and I won.”

  “How?”

  “A combination of things. I had a feeling about the jury. They weren’t all old ladies with pearls, but I could tell they were conservative. The brother’s record might be enough for some of them. I used it. I portrayed him as a creep who was happy to use his own young sister’s death to ruin an honest businessman and get rich. I said he was a vulture. I used the letters she sent him in prison, and said that if it was a dangerous situation, he knew it. I said he was like a pimp, who had encouraged her to work a dangerous, illegal job so she would send him money, and then tried to cash in, to sell her even after she had died.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  She frowned. “I was young, and I wanted so badly to win. I thought it was my job to use everything I could find or invent to get my client off. The opposing lawyer was Reynolds Phelan. You probably don’t know who that is, but every lawyer in the state does. He was president of the bar association when I was in law school. When the case was over, he waited for me outside the building. I actually thought he was going to congratulate me. He said that what I had done was disgusting. I’ll remember that forever.” She lapsed into silence.

  “I’m waiting,” he prompted.

  She sighed. “That was my first indication that things were going wrong. I started to get other indications right after the trial. Billy was not going to forget either. He had been in for manslaughter. Billy was very tough. In jail he got meaner and smarter. He started threatening me right after the trial. He had been in jail with men who were experts at intimidating people. They had taught him to do it without getting caught. There were calls late at night, always from pay phones. I would leave home for the office in the morning, and there would be a scary man across the street, staring at me with a smirk. The same when I left work for home. But it was never Billy. Not once. And each one was replaced by another after a couple of times. I told the cops. But the cops can’t charge somebody under the stalking law if he’s standing across the street once or twice. I told friends, I told colleagues, but nobody could help. Finally I was at a party.”

  “A party?”

  “Yes. It had gone on and on, and I started to hate being alone. I started working more, going out a lot more, just being with people so I wasn’t alone. A woman I met at a party told me that a mutual friend had told her about my problem and she had a suggestion.”

  “What was it?”

  “Her boyfriend had talked her into going to this self-defense camp, kind of for laughs, really. They had gone together, and she was hooked. It had changed her life. She had been afraid all the time, and now she wasn’t. I had noticed her earlier in the evening and wondered about her, and I think it was because of that. She always had a serene look on her face, but she carried herself with a kind of swagger. She walked straight up to people she had never met and was comfortable talking with them—very easy, very friendly, just as she was with me. I knew she was telling the truth. I let her write down the name and phone number on a slip of paper for me. Overnight I thought about it, and called the next day.”

  “Was the camp what she said it was?”

  “It was. I learned to use a gun. I don’t mean just how to aim it and hit something consistently. I mean how to care for it, how to carry it concealed, how and when to take it out and fire it, how to move during a firefight. None of that stuff is obvious, and some of it is even counterintuitive intentionally, so your opponent can’t anticipate it. I went to classes in hand-to-hand combat. I know it doesn’t look as though I learned much—”

  “Yes, it does,” he interjected.

  “Well, I did. I’m pretty rusty now, and I couldn’t do what I was supposed to, which was to surprise the opponent. It also works best
if you really want to hurt the other person, or at least don’t care if you do. I care about you.”

  “Go on.” There was a warning in his voice.

  “I went for a month-long course. It was a rule that you had to go for a whole month the first time, and take an all-around basic self-defense course. After that, you could go for two-week intensive courses, even one-week brush-up sessions. The month was terribly expensive for me, but it seemed worth it. I was out of sight for all that time, safe from Billy. I knew nothing to begin with, so every hour I was there made a terrific difference. When the month was over, I had made a lot of progress. I found I didn’t want to leave. I asked if I could take a two-week advanced course. That was even more extreme. It was urban combat: shotguns, things you could do with a car, even some booby traps. When that was nearly done, I went to one of the instructors and tried to sign up for another two weeks. She talked to me for a while, said she could tell that I was scared to go home, where I would be alone again. It wasn’t that, exactly.”

  “What was it?”

  “It wasn’t that I had become fearful of being alone. I had convinced myself that what I was going home to was a fight to the death against Billy—it was that specific—and I wasn’t ready. Do you see? I was easily good enough to not be afraid of living a normal life. I wasn’t good enough yet to go head-to-head against a man who wanted me dead, a convict who had killed somebody before. I told the instructor. A day later, she brought me in to speak with Michael Parish.”

  “The one I met? The owner of the camp?”

  “He’s more than that. Owning something is just money. It’s his, in a different way. The place is him. It’s a reflection of his ideas. All the people who work there look up to him and some of them seem to imitate him—his expressions, his mannerisms. He asked me to talk about what had been bothering me, to tell him everything. So I told him. I started to talk in brief, general terms, but the other instructor, whose name was Mary, kept prompting me. And I spilled all of it. He listened patiently and asked me all the right questions—the ones that convinced me that he cared about me, and was really hearing what I said—and I told him more. Finally, he said, ‘You seem convinced that at some point, you’re going to have to kill him.’ I said no, of course not. Then I said, ‘I hadn’t actually been thinking about it that way. I had only been learning to defend myself just in case. Shouldn’t everyone?’ All the time, he was watching me, not judging me or smiling or looking skeptical or anything, just waiting. And after a while, I said, ‘Well, yes. I suppose I really do think that at some point he is going to either try to get me himself or have one of his prison friends do it. What I’ve been doing here for the past six weeks is get myself ready to survive it. Now that I know more about what that means, I guess I would have to say yes, I have been preparing myself to kill him.’ ”