Mortal Pursuit

by Brian Harper

  “No one,” she whispered. “A friend.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Just a friend, I had a question about a recipe-“

  “Who did you call”

  Barbara shut her eyes and gave up all hope of life.

  “The police,” she answered almost calmly.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ …”

  It wasn’t the gunman who’d spoken. It was Charles and, incredibly, he sounded angry.

  She looked past the gun and saw her husband glaring at her, his eyes unnaturally large, his cheeks unnaturally white.

  He always had hated to lose an argument.

  “Damn it, Barbara.” Charles swallowed, nearly choking on speech. “I thought we agreed-“

  “That no one could penetrate the perimeter” This was funny. She coughed out a broken laugh. “Well, I hate to be obvious about this, dear … but it looks as if somebody did.”

  13

  Headlights splashed on a wrought-iron gate.

  “Some spread, huh” Wald smiled. “And no noisy neighbors.”

  Trish didn’t answer. She peered into the darkness beyond the gate, her pulse ticking in her ears.

  Leaning out, Wald pressed a button. Brief silence, then the crackle of a man’s voice. “Yes”

  “Police.”

  “Oh. Yes.” A cultivated voice, mildly flustered. “One moment, please.”

  Trish peered past Wald and saw a security system control panel below the intercom. The display flashed a message: SYSTEM DISARMED.

  A moment later the gate eased open automatically, operated from inside the house.

  Wald drove through, guiding the Chevy down the long driveway. Trish scanned the yard, big and full of shadows. Fear caressed her with cold fingers.

  “Funny,” she said evenly. “Porch light isn’t on. Or any floodlights, either. You’d think…”

  “If they saw a prowler, they’d light up the yard Yeah. Like you said-funny.”

  The house was a sprawling ranch with the red tile roof emblematic of southern California. The side walls were whitewashed stucco, the facade a seamless sheet of quarried granite.

  Distantly Trish wondered how much the place was worth. Her mind stalled at two million dollars, but the likely figure was far higher.

  “I read a profile of Charles Kent in the News-Press.” Wald’s words cut into her thoughts. “He’s a lawyer, practices in Santa Barbara.”

  “Lawyer,” she echoed. It was the only word she’d picked up.

  “Criminal defense. His clients are high rollers. TV stars, athletes, corporate types. They get busted for DUI or a gram of coke, and Charlie gets them off. Usually with a minimum of publicity.”

  “Nice work if you can get it.” The statement was meaningless, a reflexive response to whatever he’d just told her.

  “Yeah, Mr. Kent does all right. He’s not paying the mortgage, though. Well, actually there is no mortgage. This property has been in the Ashcroft family since the nineteen hundreds. House itself isn’t that old, of course; the original was torn down and replaced in the seventies. Anyway, all Charles had to do was marry Barbara.”

  “Barbara Ashcroft.” The name registered in Trish’s memory. “She was featured in the gossip columns when I was a kid.”

  “You mean yesterday”

  “I mean fifteen, sixteen years ago,” she snapped, tired of Wald’s jibes.

  Then she realized this smiling banter was simply an attempt to lighten the mood, relieve her tension.

  “Sorry,” she added in a chastened voice.

  Wald nodded. “You’ll hold up fine,” he said, the remark out of context but fully understood.

  The blue-and-white eased to a stop behind a black Porsche parked near the detached garage. The Kents’ car Or did they have guests

  Wald killed the engine. The sudden stillness seemed explosively loud.

  “Let’s do it.” He threw open the driver’s-side door. “And Robinson … watch your back.”

  He was out before Trish could read his expression and gauge his seriousness. She wondered if he was just being cautious, or if he felt what she felt-an indefinable foreboding.

  Opening the door, she glimpsed herself in the sideview mirror. Her eyes were wider than usual. Cobalt eyes, startling and intense.

  In the academy dormitory there had been jokes that she wanted to be a cop only because the uniform would go so well with her eyes. Right now it seemed as good a reason as any.

  She swung out of her seat. Stood.

  The warm night enfolded her like a blanket. Crickets sang, and somewhere a toad croaked in counterpoint. The sky was clear, the wide scatter of stars undimmed: no moon tonight and no city lights here.

  Wald came around the car, and Trish saw that his holster flap was unfastened. She unhooked hers also while following him along the flagstone path toward the front door.

  Time ran slowly, a sluggish current. Her senses were heightened, small details vivid to her: the click of her shoes on the stones, the low sputter of the radio clipped to her gun belt, a thread of blonde hair escaping from the barrette and beating gently against her left ear.

  She was conscious of the tension in her abdomen, the strain in her shoulders. Dull aches, like the pleasurable soreness after a full workout in the gym.

  Ordinarily she felt an unspoken confidence in her lithe body, her low resting pulse rate, her stamina and endurance. Her arms were toned daily by biceps curls and triceps extensions, legs strengthened by calf raises, squats, and lifts. Shoulder presses and rowing exercises firmed her back. Abdominal crunches and bent-knee sit-ups kept her belly tight.

  Tonight she was aware of how little any of that meant, how ridiculously vulnerable she was.

  It would take one bullet to stop her heart. Just one.

  She wished she were wearing a vest, Kevlar or something like it, heavy and solid. Beneath her summer uniform-open-collared short-sleeve shirt and lightweight pants-there was nothing but cotton underwear, damp with sweat. She might as well be walking naked up the path, a target painted on her chest.

  The door opened as Wald reached it. Limned in the light of a foyer was a man of perhaps forty-five in a double-breasted navy blazer and a silk shirt.

  She knew who he had to be even before he told them.

  ” ‘Evening, officers. I’m Charles Kent.”

  Wald handled the interview. “Mr. Kent, you called nine-one-one”

  “That was my wife. She imagined she saw someone in the yard.”

  “Imagined”

  “Yes, well, the security system wasn’t triggered.”

  He stood in the doorway, making no move to let them in, displaying none of the automatic courtesy to be expected of someone in his social class. Trish thought he seemed nervous, but maybe she was projecting her own anxiety onto him.

  “No system is foolproof,” Wald said mildly. “I’m surprised you didn’t turn on the yard lights as a precaution.”

  “Well, I did, of course. But not seeing anything, I turned them off.”

  “Under the circumstances, didn’t your wife object”

  “Not at all. She realizes she was mistaken.”

  “Perhaps we could speak with her.”

  “She’s somewhat embarrassed about the whole thing.”

  “There’s no need for embarrassment. May we see her”

  “The fact is, we have guests, and it could be awkward. I mean, for her to explain matters in front of them. You know.”

  A bead of sweat glistened on his forehead. He was nervous. Trish didn’t doubt it now. Of course, many people were nervous around cops, but this man was a trial attorney.

  “I’m not sure I understand.” Wald spoke with the poised professionalism that had deserted Charles Kent. “Your wife did telephone nine-one-one”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then she must have believed she saw something. I’m sure she isn’t the type to make prank calls. Is she”

  “No … certainly not…” He was trapped. “Oh, all righ
t. Come in.”

  Before entering, Wald cast a sharp sidelong glance at Trish, wariness in his eyes.

  She didn’t need the silent warning. Quite obviously Mr. Kent was hiding something.

  Maybe his wife had been drunk when she’d phoned, and he was fearful of gossip.

  Maybe.

  Trish took a last look at the yard, then drew a breath of courage and followed Wald inside.

  14

  So this was how the other half lived.

  The words, foolishly predictable, flitted through Trish’s mind as she stepped across the threshold into the first mansion she had ever entered.

  The foyer floor was stained parquet. The walls were black slate. A potted rhododendron, ten feet tall, its twelve-inch leaves an impossibly deep green, loomed on one side of the doorway, opposite a pair of oak sliding doors that must open on a coat closet.

  Where the left wall ended, there was a rack of tubular shelves displaying vases of crystal and earthenware, each piece individually lighted by small hidden bulbs, the total effect as artful as a museum exhibit.

  Don’t be intimidated, she told herself. They’re rich and you’re poor, but that doesn’t make them better than you.

  Even so, she caught herself glancing down as the floor tiles ended and deep pile carpet began, guiltily afraid she was tracking dirt into the house.

  The foyer opened onto an elegant living room, preposterously large. Any of its corners could have contained the entire studio apartment she was renting for four hundred dollars a month.

  In the adjacent dining area three people sat at a long table under a brilliant chandelier. There was something peculiar in the way they were seated. An image jumped into her mind: posed mannequins on display.

  Now where had that come from

  She and Wald accompanied Charles Kent to the table. Charles made introductions.

  “My wife, Barbara … our dinner guests, Judy and Philip Danforth.”

  Smiles and nods from around the table. Philip picked up a demitasse spoon and stirred a cup of espresso, the spoon clinking musically against the porcelain.

  Trish focused on Barbara, detecting no hint of inebriation or even embarrassment. She sat stiffly in her chair, hands folded near her plate. The hands could have been modeling for a still life, so motionless were they, so attractively toned and textured in the warm overhead light.

  Barbara Kent was perhaps forty, slightly younger than her husband. Superimposed on her face was Trish’s memory of young Barbara Ashcroft of the society pages twenty years ago, heroine of debutante balls.

  Though older now, she was no less striking. The familiar arched eyebrows and high cheekbones were unchanged, and the threads of gray in her elegantly coiffed hair only reinforced her mysterious allure.

  “There are five place settings,” Wald said.

  Trish, preoccupied with her study of Barbara, hadn’t noticed that detail. A rookie error: she should have been looking at hands and laps, not faces.

  “Yes.” It was Barbara who answered, her speech refined but free of artificiality. “Our daughter, Ally. She went to bed early. Upset stomach.” Thin fluttery smile. “I guess her mother’s cooking was too much for her.”

  “You saw the prowler, ma’am” Wald, Trish observed, was casually scoping out the room as he spoke.

  “Yes, well, I really must apologize to you. Officer Wald. And to you. Officer Robinson.” She’d read their nameplates-sharp. “I’m afraid that with all the excitement of the night’s festivities, I got a trifle overwrought.”

  Overwrought. An ice sculpture could not have been more coolly self-possessed.

  “You mean,” Wald said mildly, “you hallucinated a prowler in the backyard”

  Barbara’s silvery laughter struck a jarring false note. “Hallucinated-next you’ll want to test me for LSD, I suppose. It wasn’t any hallucination, just the shadow of a tree. Charles pointed it out to me, and I do feel like such a fool.”

  Trish was looking at the empty place setting, the one used by the Kents’ daughter. A slice of dessert cake, half-eaten.

  She scanned the other plates, saw the same dessert on each. Barbara’s was barely touched. The remaining three had been half-finished-like Ally’s.

  The girl must have left the table only a couple of minutes earlier. Just when Wald buzzed the intercom.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t blame yourself,” Judy was telling Barbara with a brittle smile. “Anybody can make a mistake.”

  “I called the police once.” Philip went on stirring his espresso, the spoon jerking in his hand. “Reported a suspicious person in the bushes near our property.”

  “Turned out to be our next-door neighbor,” Judy said. “His dachshund had gone into the shrubbery in pursuit of a rabbit, and he was coaxing her out.”

  “Damn dog wouldn’t budge, and finally one of the police officers had to crawl in and get her.” Philip laughed, but his face was all wrong, a caricature of mirth.

  “Well,” Barbara said, “it’s good to know I’m not the only one who’s paranoid.”

  Judy and Philip and Charles smiled at this, smiled too much. It was as if they were all playing a game, but Trish didn’t know the rules.

  Then Philip’s smile faded. “The way things are, these days”-he looked hard at Wald-“it’s difficult not to be paranoid.”

  Barbara cut in hastily, as if unnerved by the remark. “Oh, I don’t know. This is a safe area. Nothing ever happens here.”

  “It’s a very safe area,” Charles agreed, nodding vigorously. “Lowest crime rates of any California county this far south.”

  “Is that true” Judy asked Wald.

  “I believe Ventura County may be slightly lower overall, ma’am.” Wald clearly was perturbed, uncertain how to react to the strange show these people were putting on. “Violent crime rates are about the same. Property crime-“

  “Well, violent crime is what we’re really concerned about,” Philip said with another focused stare.

  “Isn’t everybody” Barbara laughed gaily, but there was no gaiety in her eyes or in the hectic flush of her cheeks. “Fortunately, we needn’t worry about it tonight. The only crime here is the crime of wasting these two officers’ valuable time. Is that a felony. Officer Wald Or only a misdemeanor”

  Wald shot Trish another glance. He sensed it too-the giddy unreality of the scene. The dialogue was almost right, but the performances were badly off center.

  Trish thought of a college word: subtext. There was a subtext here, but she was missing it.

  “If you don’t mind,” Wald said to the Kents, “maybe we’d better look around out back, just to be sure.”

  Barbara wore her frozen smile like a mask. “It’s quite unnecessary.”

  Trish’s gaze drifted back to Ally’s place at the table. Something small and cylindrical and metallic lay under the lip of her plate, nearly hidden from view.

  The empty casing of a 9mm round.

  Her heart stuttered. The breath went out of her, and her fingers tingled, suddenly cold.

  A gun had been fired in this room. Fired into the ceiling-wood splinters littered the floral centerpiece.

  And Ally didn’t have an upset stomach. She was a hostage. She was the off-stage presence who’d prompted these bad actors to deliver their unconvincing lines.

  Abruptly Trish focused on the tapping of Philip’s spoon, a strangely rhythmic sound.

  Three soft clinks. Pause. Again. Pause. Again.

  SOS.

  He had been signaling the whole time. Brave of him … or foolish.

  With effort she held her face expressionless. As surreptitiously as possible, she brushed Wald’s elbow.

  Her partner’s eyes cut sideways, and she nodded almost imperceptibly toward the table.

  He dropped his gaze. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

  It was a small reaction, but enough. Instantly everyone at the table was looking at the cartridge case on the white damask tablecloth.

  Philip stopped tapping. Co
nversation ceased. There was no sound but the soft intermittent crackle of Trish’s portable radio, scanning between the two frequencies used by the dispatchers, and somewhere a whisper of wind chimes.

  She met Philip’s eyes and slowly inclined her head.

  The silence was stretching taut. Wald covered it with a safely meaningless remark. “You say, Mrs. Kent, that it was the shadow of a tree”

  Barbara swallowed. “Yes. That’s right.”

  “You’re sure of that”

  “Quite sure. Charles showed me. Didn’t you, Charles”

  “An olive tree near the gazebo.” He went on staring blankly at the cartridge case, his lips barely moving as he spoke. “Hard to explain, but it threw a shadow that looked just like a crouching human figure. Anyone could have made the mistake.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Wald said.

  Trish wasn’t listening. To Philip she mouthed: How many

  He laid his left hand on the table in a fist. One at a time he extended his fingers.

  Index. Middle. Ring. Pinky.

  Four of them, Trish thought numbly, and then Philip’s thumb curled into view also.

  Five.

  A chill skipped lightly over her shoulders.

  Five intruders. If one was armed, it was safe to assume they all were. Surely one or more of them were watching the table right now.

  From where The windows Or one of the three doorways around the dining area and living room

  The pounding racket in her skull was the steady beat of blood.

  “So you’re certain you didn’t see anything,” Wald was saying.

  Barbara managed an unconcerned shrug. “That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

  “Okay, then. Guess there’s no need for us to hang around. Though I’ve got to admit, that dessert looks damn good.”

  Laughter from Judy Danforth, high and airy and too shrill.

  Wald stepped away from the table, Trish following. Irrationally she felt a stab of shame at leaving. But two cops alone couldn’t handle five armed criminals or rescue a concealed hostage. Their best move, their only move, was to return to the squad car, then radio for backup and the sheriff’s SWAT team.

  “We’ll call it in as a wild goose chase,” Wald said without inflection. “Mrs. Kent, no offense, but try to be more careful next time.”