Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

“I suppose,” said Mallon.

“Then there is no point at all that you’ve been keeping in the back of your mind, hoping it wouldn’t come up because you don’t want to talk about it?”

Mallon sighed. “I don’t like talking about my personal life, if that’s what you mean, but there are no guilty secrets. I went to school, then the Air Force, then worked as a parole officer in San Jose, then a contractor. I haven’t found a woman I wanted to marry yet, but-”

“Wait,” interrupted Logan. “You were a police officer in San Jose?”

“Well, parole officers work for the state Department of Corrections, but I worked out of the office in San Jose. It was only four years, and it was a long time ago, in the seventies.” He noticed the expression on Logan’s face, so he short-circuited the question. “No disciplinary actions, nothing on or off the record. I just decided to quit because four years was enough.”

“Have you told the police that you’d been a sworn peace officer?”

“No. Do you think it would have helped?”

“Probably not. At least not on a homicide. Ex-cops are all trained to shoot people, and once in a while, one of them does. They also have guns. Do you still have yours?”

“No. I turned mine in when I quit, over twenty years ago.”

“No others?”

“No.”

“All right, Mr. Mallon,” said Logan. “I’ll try to find out what the police and the district attorney have in mind. Don’t go anyplace where we can’t reach you quickly. I may want to talk some more.”

Mallon went home to wait. Four hours later his telephone rang. It was Diane Fleming again. “Robert?”

“Hi, Diane.”

“The coroner’s office is going to announce their finding tomorrow morning. They’re going to rule it a suicide.” She paused for a moment, apparently waiting for some expression of relief. “It’s a preliminary finding, but there’s really no doubt. There’s nothing about it that’s out of place or unexplained. Brian Logan and his people have already gone home.” She waited. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he sighed.

“You still sound unsatisfied.”

“I am.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I still don’t know anything about the girl. I want to know about her.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

Diane sounded tired, as though she were determined to humor him but dreading what he might demand. “There are people who do that sort of thing for a living. Do you want me to hire a private detective?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I know the one I want.”

Mallon punched the numbers on the telephone, listened to the ringing, then heard the connection. A voice came on that he had not heard in years.

“Lightning Quick Bail Bonds, Harry here.” Harry was now probably about sixty, but the voice was still the same. It was hard, even a little challenging. For Mallon it brought back a clear picture of the short, broad-shouldered frame and the prizefighter’s face with the smeared right eyebrow where the hair never grew in right over the scar. Mallon could feel his facial muscles contracting into a smile.

“Harry,” he said. “This is Bob Mallon.”

“Bobby!” came the voice. “How are you doing? I heard you were in Paris. You calling from Paris? You sound like you’re right here.”

“I’m in Santa Barbara.”

“You went all the way from Paris to Santa Barbara and didn’t even stop in to say hello? What the hell’s the matter with you? I practically raised you from a pup.”

“No, you didn’t. I didn’t meet you until I was a full-grown dog. And I’ve never been to Paris, Harry. Santa Barbara is where I live.”

“Good,” said Harry. “Paris is too good for you. What are you calling for? Don’t tell me you need bail? What the hell did you do?”

“I called because I wanted to talk to Lydia. Is she around today?”

“You’re in luck. She just came in,” said Harry. He yelled, “Lydia!” A few seconds later, he said, “She’s going to take it in her office. Nice to talk to you, Bobby.”

“Take care, Harry.”

Lydia Marks came onto the line, her voice still carrying a very faint trace of a southern accent that Mallon had always assumed wasn’t real, the husky smoker’s rasp in her throat maybe a bit deeper than last time. “Hello, Bobby.”

“Hello, Lydia. How’s business?”

“The same,” she said. “You’d think there’d be less competition to lend large sums of money to people accused of stealing.”

“You would. But if you’re complaining, you’re probably doing okay.”

“Nobody in jail wants to stay,” she admitted. “I’m just getting too old to keep tracking the bastards down afterward to keep them from ruining us. You have to remember I’ve been doing this since the days when you and I were parole officers, and I’m still doing it.”

“I suppose most of them get away from you now that I’m gone.”

“None of them do,” she huffed. “I don’t know what I ever needed the likes of you for.”

“It was me that needed you,” he said. “When you quit, I had to leave too.”

“Are we nearly getting around to why you called?” she asked wearily.

“Yes,” he said. “I want to hire you.”

“To do what?” Her voice was suspicious.

“Something like what we used to do together in the old days.”

“Not a chance,” she snapped.

“Whatever you’re remembering wasn’t me,” he said. “I was married at the time, and I know I wasn’t cheating on her.”

“Your mistake. Why do you need a detective?”

“I need to find out what I can about somebody.”

“Gee, I’d love to help you,” she said without enthusiasm, “but I just don’t know. Things around here-”

“I know your time costs more than it used to, and I know you don’t want to go because you have a lot of business and don’t want to be out of town, distracted from it. So I’ll pay you an outrageous amount of money, if you’ll just help me out. Come on, Lydia.”

“Who are we talking about?”

He said, “It’s a young woman who committed suicide here a couple of days ago. The police haven’t even got a name yet. I… met her before she did it. She was on the beach. She tried to drown herself, but I pulled her out.”

Her voice changed. This time there was an unaffected curiosity in it. “You really care about this, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you live these days? What’s the address?”

“It’s 2905 Boca del Rio in Santa Barbara.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can get a plane.”

“Thanks, Lydia.”

Her voice hardened again, but unconvincingly. “Don’t thank me. You’re going to pay full price for anything you get, you rich bastard.”

It was late afternoon when she arrived in Santa Barbara. Mallon watched her from behind the window blinds as she got out of the back seat of the cab, handed a bill to the driver, and waved him away from her wheeled suitcase. As the cab drove off, she slung her big purse over her shoulder, extended the handle of the suitcase, hung her carry-on bag over it, and pulled it up his driveway.

She did not look as he had expected her to, and he had not been prepared: she did not show the ten years since he had last seen her. Her face seemed nearly the same to him, although he knew he was probably not seeing wrinkles that were there, maybe now appearing at the corners of the big, light brown eyes. He could see that she still had the hourglass figure that, when Mallon had worked with her, used to cause whispered, longing comment among their colleagues in the overwhelmingly male office. The narrow waist curving out to wide hips and shoulders had, even then, been out of fashion with other women, but no man had ever agreed with that assessment. There had been a kind of defiance to her attitude about her appearance: the business suits she favored had seemed tailored to show the curves.