by Stuart Woods
Billy watched as Tirov picked up a handful of gravel and threw it at the portal outside the master bedroom, some of it striking the back doors, then he stepped into the kitchen and hid behind the kitchen island. The dog, Bob, began to bark ferociously, throwing himself at the back doors. Stone would be getting up, now.
Then Billy heard something crashing through the brush where he had thrown the rattlesnake meat. He turned and pointed his weapon in that direction, and he was astonished at the size of the thing that emerged. It looked more like what he thought a grizzly should, not a black bear. It made for the kitchen door, moving quickly, headed for where it no doubt knew food could be found.
Tirov heard the noise, too, and turned to face it as it came through the door. He fired two quick rounds at the roaring hulk before it overwhelmed him.
58
Bob’s furious barking woke Stone. Gala was not in bed. Stone reached for his .45 on the night table, but it wasn’t there. He rolled over to Gala’s side and searched her bedside drawer; her pistol was gone, too.
“Bob, be quiet,” Stone said, and the dog obeyed for a few seconds. The kitchen was two rooms away, and some sort of noise was coming from there, but he couldn’t place it. Then came a sound that he recognized: the unmistakable roar of a bear.
This was followed by two gunshots—loud, but not his .45.
Stone got out of bed, stepped into slippers, and let himself out the outside door, leaving Bob barking again, shut in the bedroom. He ran along the back walkway, and as he got through the kitchen door he heard Gala scream at him.
“Stone! Stop!”
He stopped and saw the bear wrestling with somebody, a man. Gala was a few steps away, pointing her gun.
“Boris!” she screamed. “Get out of the way!”
The bear had his jaws locked onto Boris, between the shoulder and the neck. Stone started to move toward them.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t,” Billy said from behind him. “Let this play out. It’ll be over soon.”
“Boris!” Gala screamed again. “Get clear! I don’t want to shoot you!”
Tirov’s feet were off the ground, now, as the bear reared back and shook its head.
“Are you armed?” Billy asked.
“I was, but not anymore. Gala must have taken it.”
Gala turned and saw Billy and Stone. “No, don’t shoot! You’ll hit Boris!”
“In just a minute, Boris isn’t going to care,” Billy said.
The bear had taken Tirov to the floor and was savaging him. Tirov was moaning and making gurgling noises.
“Gala,” Stone said, as quietly as he could, “where is my gun?”
She looked baffled for a moment, then reached into the pocket of her robe and took out the weapon. Stone strode over and took it from her.
“Don’t shoot Boris,” Gala pleaded. “I’ve already shot the bear twice.”
Stone racked the slide on his little .45, swept Gala aside with an arm, and walked toward the bear and Tirov. She tugged at his sleeve. “Don’t shoot Boris, please!”
Stone pushed her away again, then walked over to the beast and shot it twice in the head. It collapsed on top of Tirov and lay still.
“I think that did it,” Billy said.
Gala ran over, buried her hands in the bear’s fur, and tried to pull it off Tirov.
Stone pulled her gently away, and Billy joined him.
“Gala,” Billy said gently. “That bear weighs about three hundred and fifty pounds—you’re not going to budge him.”
“But Boris could still be alive,” she protested.
Billy took her pistol out of her hand and set it on the kitchen island. He reached around the bear and found Tirov’s wrist. “He has no pulse. He’s as dead as the bear.”
Gala rested her head on Stone’s shoulder and wept loudly.
Billy opened kitchen drawers until he found a box of plastic bags. He pulled one over each of his feet and tied a knot in it.
“Now listen, both of you,” Billy said. “You’ve handled this very well, but it’s time to call the police. It’s also time for me to leave, but remember, I left earlier tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow, Stone. Good night, Gala.”
She answered with a sob.
Billy walked toward the rear of the property, sticking to the flagstones as far as possible. He made his way to the fence, climbed it, and went to his car. He sat down in the car, pulled off the plastic bags and put them into the door pocket, then started the car and drove away. Five minutes later he turned onto the Santa Fe bypass, which led to the airport.
—
Stone picked up the phone and dialed 911.
“Nine-one-one operator. What is your emergency?”
“Is this call being recorded?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, because I’m going to say this only once. There is a bear in the house, and it has attacked an intruder and killed him. I have shot and killed the bear. We need the police and an ambulance for the man, and whatever kind of vehicle is needed to remove a very large bear.” He gave his name, the address and phone number, then hung up.
He led Gala to the sofa and sat her down. “The police or the sheriff will be here soon. Take some deep breaths. When they arrive, tell them exactly what happened, except for the part about Billy being here. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Why didn’t it kill the bear when I shot him?”
“Because you shot him in the back with a .380 caliber, and that wasn’t powerful enough. I shot him twice in the head with a .45, and that would have stopped a rhinoceros.”
Stone sat down beside her to wait.
59
Gala sat up, leaving him with a wet shoulder. “There are some things I have to tell you,” she said.
“Perhaps it would be better if you wait until morning. We still have the police to deal with.”
“No, I have to say it now, while I have my courage up.”
“What could you possibly say to me that requires courage? You know you can tell me anything.”
“It’s about Boris.”
“I don’t see any need to discuss him ever again.”
“I have a need. Please listen to me.”
Stone sighed. “All right, you have my undivided attention.” That was, perhaps, an overstatement, given that there were two corpses, a man and a bear, in the room.
“Boris and I had a difficult marriage, and an even more difficult divorce.”
“I think I’m already aware of that.”
“Still, there was some part of me that still wanted him.”
Stone moved over on the sofa so that he could face her. “Which part of you was that?”
“Part of my heart, I guess you’d say.”
Stone stared at her, and a couple of things tucked away in the back of his mind suddenly came to the forefront. “Are you sure that’s the right body part?”
“All right, that part of me, too. Especially that part.”
Stone was thinking about the screen of his iPhone, and the merging of a green dot with a yellow dot. Twice. “Let me guess—the day you went riding and encountered Tirov in the wood?”
Gala nodded. “Yes.”
“And when you went to London and had lunch at Claridge’s?”
“Yes. On my way out, I ran into Boris in the lobby and went with him to his suite.”
“I see.”
“I know I was unfaithful, and I’m sorry.”
“You never pledged your faith to me, we never got that far.”
“Nevertheless, I felt unfaithful.”
“And yet you fucked him. Twice.”
She nodded. “Again, I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.”
She started to sp
eak again, but she was interrupted by the doorbell. “We’ll talk more later.”
“I’d rather not. I’ve heard enough,” Stone said. He got up and went to the front door.
60
A man in a sheriff’s uniform and another in a suit stood there. The man in the suit said, “I’m Detective Rhea, and this is Deputy Sheriff Smith. You have an emergency?”
“I’m Stone Barrington. Please come in. The emergency is over, but there’s a lot to deal with.” He led them to the kitchen. “The man under the bear broke into the house, but I think that before he could do anything further, he was attacked by the bear. We’ve had a bear here before.”
“Do you live here, Mr. Barrington?”
“No, I’ve been visiting for a few days. This is Gala Wilde, whose house this is.”
“Why are there two guns on the island, there?” the detective asked.
“We both fired at the bear. Gala got here first and shot her twice in the back with a .380. I arrived and shot her twice in the head with a .45.”
“That would do it,” the deputy said. “Who’s the guy under the bear?”
“His name is Boris Tirov. He’s Ms. Wilde’s ex-husband, who has been harassing and threatening her since their divorce last year.”
“I read about him in the newspaper,” the detective said. “And I interviewed him after he got shot on his movie set. He struck me as crazy.”
“He struck me that way, too,” Stone said. “He’s been threatening me, as well. He thought I cost him a deal at a movie studio.”
“Are you something in the movies?”
“No, I’m an attorney in New York. I serve on the board of a movie studio in Los Angeles.”
“Ms. Wilde,” Rhea said, “you got anything to add to Mr. Barrington’s account of things?”
Gala shook her head.
The detective looked at his watch. “We ought to have an ambulance here any minute now. I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with that bear. I’ve got a man working on it, though. Maybe the three of us can get it off Mr. Tirov, so we can check his vital signs?”
“It’s worth a try,” Stone said. “She must weigh three hundred and fifty pounds.”
The three men stood on one side of the bear, grabbed its legs and, with a great deal of effort, rolled it off Tirov.
“That’s a he-bear,” the deputy said, pointing. He picked up Tirov’s wrist. “No pulse.”
Two EMTs carrying a litter came into the kitchen. They set it down and regarded the mauled man before them. “Damn,” the older of the two said. “Once I saw the body of a guy who had been mauled by a tiger. It wasn’t as bad as this.” He knelt beside Tirov and pressed a stethoscope to the unwounded side of his neck. “Deceased,” he said. “How long, you reckon?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes,” Stone said. “I checked his pulse after I shot the bear.”
“There’ll be a crime scene investigation team here pretty soon,” Rhea said. As he spoke, a team of others arrived, carrying luggage.
“Hey, Tom,” their leader said to Rhea.
“Hey, Mack. This is Mr. Barrington and Ms. Wilde. That fellow over yonder is named Boris Tirov.”
“Is this how you found him?”
“Nope, he was under the bear when we got here. We had to move him to see if Tirov was still alive. He wasn’t. Hope we didn’t mess up your scene too much.”
“You did what you had to do,” Mack said, then he started taking pictures with a digital camera and taking measurements. When he was done he stood back. “You charging anybody, Tom?”
“The DA will have the final say when he reads my report, but I doubt very much if anybody will be charged. I mean, the bear’s dead.”
“I’ve got a front-end loader from the county coming to deal with that carcass,” Mack said. “Maybe if everybody grabs a handful of hair, we can get it out the door. You want the hide, Mr. Barrington? Make a nice rug.”
“No, thanks,” Stone said. “I’d like to forget it as soon as I can.”
The front-end loader arrived and made it around the house. Six men grabbed what they could and dragged the bear outside and onto the loader’s scoop. They went back inside, and the EMTs loaded Tirov’s bloody corpse onto their litter and departed.
Rhea handed Stone a card, and Stone gave him his and Gala’s contact information.
“You going to be around for a while, Mr. Barrington? There might be an inquest.”
“I’ve got to go to New York this morning,” Stone replied, “but if you need my testimony, I’ll come back.”
“Well, I guess the cause of death is clear enough, unless the coroner finds some bullets in Tirov. No human being could have done what that bear did to him.”
Stone saw them to the front door and came back to the kitchen, where Gala was still sitting on the sofa. “God, what a mess,” he said, looking around at the bloody kitchen. “You go to bed, and I’ll tidy up here.”
Stone was still wide awake. He found a mop and bucket and some cleaning fluids and started in.
—
The sun was well up when he finished. He showered and dressed, packed his things, and got Bob and himself some breakfast. When he was ready to go, he found a pad and wrote a note.
Gala,
I confess I’m baffled by the things you told me last night. For the life of me I don’t understand how you could want both Tirov and me, and I don’t find it flattering or even acceptable.
I’ll leave the Range Rover at Landmark Aviation. You can send for it when you get up.
I thank you for the good times.
Stone
Stone got Bob and his bags into the car and drove to the airport. On the way he called Fred and asked him to meet them at Teterboro. Half an hour later they were climbing out of Santa Fe, headed east. The skies were clear all the way, and he had a good tailwind. He made it to Teterboro nonstop, landing with an hour of fuel reserve.
Fred was there with the car to meet him. “Good flight, sir?”
“A perfect flight,” Stone replied.
Bob came down the steps and flung himself at Fred. They all got into the car and headed home.
—
Stone had spent most of the trip trying to put Gala out of his mind. He hadn’t succeeded, but he had time.
Fred pulled into the garage, and Stone got out. Joan came through the inside door.
“There’s someone here to see you,” she said. “He won’t give me his name. He said those people in Palm Beach sent him.”
“Dicky Chalmers?”
“Right. He’s waiting in my office.”
“Send him in.” Stone walked into his office and set his briefcase on the desk. He poked through the messages and found one from Dicky Chalmers.
I’m sending you a client—you’ll like him.
Stone looked up and found a rather seedy young man standing in his doorway. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties and was dressed in the current youth fashion. Stone thought of it as “adolescent lumberjack”: jeans, checkered shirt, tail out, vest, hoodie, scraggly beard, and unkempt hair.
“I’m Laurence Hayward,” he said. “Richard Chalmers said I had to see you.”
“Had to?”
“I’m being pursued,” he said.
“Who’s pursuing you?”
“Everybody.”
Oh, God, one of those, he thought. “Well,” Stone said, “you’d better close the door and sit down.”
—
To be continued . . .
Author’s Note
I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.
However, if you have access to the I
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If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is probably because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.
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