Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

He watched Christiana and Edward, two of the customers, engaged in a whispered conversation across the room. After a moment he saw that their hands were touching. Suddenly Christiana seemed to sense that she was being observed, and turned toward him, so he smiled and drew his eyes away. Excellent. Those two people would leave with this camp experience mixed up in their minds with sex, remembering it with the same irrational glow. Maybe they would return, and they would both be very sincere in their praise of the place to their friends.

“I wanted to thank you, Michael.”

Parish turned his head to the left. David Altberg was beside him. “You’re welcome, David. It’s been a pleasure to have you in our program.” He had been watching Altberg for weeks, and he knew that Altberg was not here just to take the obligatory leave of his host. Women who wanted to talk to him about something in confidence or speak seriously always planted themselves in front of him and looked into his eyes. Men stood beside him and looked at whatever he was looking at. Parish was ready for what Altberg would say: he had been waiting.

“I… have a couple of friends who have been through the program with you in the past, and we’ve talked about it some,” said Altberg. He glanced at Parish’s face for signs that he should not proceed, but Parish looked politely interested. “I got the impression that you also sometimes offer… advanced instruction, for people who have been through the general course and want to do more?”

Parish nodded. “That’s true. We can offer training at any level. Who are your friends? It’s likely I’ll remember them.”

“Well, Ray Darville? Carl Fortin?”

Parish leaned closer and dropped his voice a bit. “I think I know the sort of thing you had in mind. We can talk tomorrow about arranging something, if you’d like. You could stay on after the others leave.”

“Great,” said Altberg. “I’ll do that.”

“Why don’t you meet me here in the lodge tomorrow at, say, two o’clock, after I’ve seen the others off?”

“I’ll be here,” Altberg said. “And thanks.” He stepped forward, turned to face Parish, shook his hand, and moved off.

In a moment, Debbie was at Parish’s side; she stood on tiptoes to put her face close to his ear. “Don’t tell me you’re arranging another expedition already.” He glanced at her and saw that she was wearing a long yellow summer dress with thin straps. The effect was disconcerting, because the dress revealed her soft, curved feminine silhouette, but the upper part left bare the lean, sinewy muscles in her upper back and shoulders.

Parish shrugged. “We’ll see.” He turned to watch her face. “Interested?”

She pursed her lips and squinted. “Not right away.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And not with creaky old geezers like David Altberg. Would I have to?”

He shook his head, and whispered too. “No. It’s nothing that’s likely to demand your skills. There’s a loose end that I could take care of, and give David his thrill at the same time.”

Parish watched her move off into the party. He was often intrigued that there were people who thronged around Debbie. Some were women who seemed to ignore her acerbic manner and see her as a heroine, a big sister. She demonstrated throws in her class by using the most formidable male students as opponents, and some of the women had never imagined such a thing before. Other admirers were men, who seemed to see only the curves she had accentuated in her body through fifteen years of brutal workouts, and not understand that what she had been doing was fortifying herself against that kind of attention. People understood parts of Debbie. Parish suspected that he was the only one who knew that her indifference to men applied equally to women: she had no interest in sharing her bed with anyone, and not much interest in talking to them.

In the corner of his eye he caught Mary O’Connor’s red hair. Her head turned, she walked past Christiana and Edward, then stopped in front of him. “Michael, will you help me with something out here?”

Parish nodded, then followed her out onto the porch. When she was sure they were alone, she said, “Debbie says you’re going out again right away.”

Parish smiled. “I was going to talk to you about it later. It’s just come up in the past few minutes. A client came to me.”

“You’re using them to get rid of your own problems, aren’t you?”

“It wasn’t about me at all,” he protested. “The detective came here asking about Catherine Broward’s suicide. Catherine seems to have had a kind of inner weakness that we didn’t detect while she was here with us.”

“She was sorry she did it,” said Mary O’Connor. “She told me the next day, and I guess she never got over it. Is that so hard to understand?”

Parish looked at her with detached interest, then scanned the area around them to be sure none of the guests were close enough to the porch to overhear. “To be so eager for the hunt one day, and then be consumed by regret the next is certainly not a sign of stability. But she obviously couldn’t help it. I think we owed her at least enough to protect her memory from some kind of accusation, don’t you?”

She laughed, her eyes glittering, and pushed back her long red hair. “Oh, Michael. You’re so good at this. You don’t care about her, but you think I do.”

“You’re wrong. I feel terribly sorry about her,” he said. “We made a commitment to her to protect her privacy. That isn’t over, is it?”

“I suppose not,” said Mary. She looked at him over the edge of her glass. “Debbie told me you got her a ten-thousand-dollar tip.”

“Did she tell you why?”

She ignored his question and pursued her own train of thought. “And Emily too.”

Parish nodded. “That hunt was a mess. The careful plan we laid out for them was just an inspiration for an evening of improvisation. They opened up while Debbie was within a foot of the target, Emily wasn’t in position yet, and I was still outside. Ten thousand wasn’t enough.”

Mary looked at him for a moment, turned and took a step, then stopped and said, “Keep me in mind.”

“As soon as it came up, I was thinking of you.”

“Who else?”

“I’m not sure at the moment. Emily to handle the client. And I think Spangler.”

She cocked her head, thought for a moment, then nodded. “Spangler would be fine with me. We could be a couple. We’d look good together.” She turned and walked back in to the party. After ten seconds, Parish followed and took his place along the wall.

Mary joined Helen Corrigan and two other students across the room at the hors d’oeuvres table, tolerated a few minutes of their chatter, then stepped over to Edward and Christiana to distract them from each other long enough to get them to include David Altberg. Then she made her way through one more circuit of Parish’s admirers stiffly, her face held in a fixed smile that made her facial muscles tired after a few minutes. She was taller than most of the guests at this party, and her bright red hair was easy to spot above the other heads, so she felt conspicuous.

She acknowledged the women’s compulsive but vague politeness: “I enjoyed the experience very much,” rather than “Thank you so much for” this or that. All of the students had met her, because she filled in and helped out in the classes, sometimes working the firing line on the range, teaching students to clear jams or rearranging their limbs in proper shooting stances. She often worked with Debbie, assuming the various fighting kamae, or showing students how to roll and recover. Debbie needed to perform the roll, but she never let a student throw her. Mary supposed few of the guests knew what she was doing there. They probably thought she was some sort of advanced student who stayed on and on.