Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

“We’ll keep everything you’ve said in mind. If we need anything more, we’ll get in touch.”

Mallon looked at him in surprise. “You mean just go as though nothing happened? Or is what you’re saying that nothing did happen?”

Detective Long sat down across the desk from Mallon and leaned closer on his elbows. “Look, Mr. Mallon,” he said. “I can’t really keep you here. The only place to sleep is a cell. I can’t give you any answers unless something you described-the body, the boat, the two men and the woman-turns up. Do you have any friends you can call, and maybe stay with them tonight?”

Mallon watched him stand up, so Mallon stood up too. “Maybe I will.” He felt the detective’s hand on his back. He was ushering him in a slow, affable way, toward the lobby.

“Do that,” said Long. “We’ll let you know as soon as we find anything out.”

The detective walked Mallon to the front door like a host, opened the door for him, and gave him a little wave as Mallon descended the front steps. When Mallon had walked fifty feet, he turned and looked back to verify that the detective had gone back across the lobby into the office. He had not asked Mallon to call in and let the police know where he could be reached. He was probably already filing a report that said Mallon was a harmless local eccentric who had lately gotten into the habit of making false reports to the police.

It was easy to tell from the row of lighted windows visible through the trees that the house David Altberg had lived in was large. Like the others that lined this part of Benedict Canyon, it was set back from the steep, winding road behind an eight-foot wall with an electric gate. Mary O’Connor slowed down as she came to it, then pulled the car to a stop beside the wall, turned off the headlights, and waited.

Debbie slipped out her door, climbed onto the hood, then stepped onto the roof, pulled herself over the wall, and was gone. Emily stopped beside Mary’s window long enough to make a long-suffering face to show her distaste for this job, then repeated Debbie’s climb to the top of the wall. She paused there to watch Mary’s departure.

Mary stared into the rearview mirror to be sure there were no cars approaching. She pulled back out onto the road and drove off, reached a comfortable speed, and then coasted down the slope toward the Beverly Hills flats.

Emily looked at her watch. She had twenty minutes before Mary would turn around and begin the drive back. In forty, Emily and Debbie should be outside again, waiting. She swung her legs to the inside of the wall, turned, and lowered herself partway, then dropped to the ground.

Emily crouched in the dark and stared at the house. This was not a job that Michael could charge some amateur for the pleasure of performing. David Altberg had been sixty-three years old, so his wife was probably about the same. Customers wouldn’t pay for the sport of blasting an old lady.

Through sliding glass doors she could see broad, well-lit interior spaces. There was a big foyer that led into a living room with a wide stone fire pit in the center and a copper hood that vented it, the sort they had in some ski lodges. Two walls had bookcases to the ceiling, but in each, only the bottom shelf held a row of coffee-table books. The rest of the shelves were filled with little statues, baskets, framed photographs, vases. Emily had been to rich people’s homes in L.A. before. If they owned any real books, they were always placed in some closed room where they would not pollute the decor.

Emily looked into the darkness among the dwarf evergreen shrubs along the path from the garden to the house and made out Debbie’s shape. She was stretched and flattened in a posture from one of the innumerable martial disciplines she had studied. This one made her look very feline: she had the cat’s ability to remain motionless and simply not look like something that was alive. After a time, Emily’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she could see that Debbie’s eyes were on her, waiting for her to move.

Emily stayed low and advanced on the sliding glass doors. They were often easy to force because the locks were not good, and even if she decided they were not the best way in, they would give her a good view of the whole first floor. She stopped at the side of the glass, her body shielded from view by a solid stretch of wall about three feet wide. She looked in, making her eyes move carefully along the walls she could see, noting everything. The chairs and couches showed no signs that anyone had sat in them recently, and nothing was left out of place near them. The fresh flowers in the purple vase on the table meant that the wife had not gone away during the extra week her husband had been at the self-defense camp for the “advanced course.”

Emily kept the palm of her left hand pressed lightly against the wall as she looked, so she could feel any small inaudible vibration in the building. When she had satisfied herself that nobody was in sight, she stepped quickly in front of the glass door and stopped. She looked at the alcove near the front door and found the alarm keypad. It was turned on, its red light glowing steadily in the upper left corner. But the display on the right side was blinking.

She glided quietly along the outer wall of the house until she reached the next set of windows, then looked at the keypad again. The display was blinking a succession of numbers: 8, 39, 41, 8, 39, 41, 8. Emily understood the common alarm systems. This signal meant that the perimeter was armed, and an alarm would go off if any of the doors or windows were moved, but there were three points that had been left only partially closed. Alarm installers labeled the access points starting on the ground floor, making the front entrance number one. Thirty-nine and forty-one were undoubtedly upstairs windows. Eight intrigued her.

She looked at the front door. To the left of it was the hallway leading to other rooms. To the right was a small, high window. That would be number two. The first set of floor-to-ceiling windows with a sliding door where she stood was number three, the second four. She moved quickly back along the side of the building, counting. Five was the solid door that probably led to some kind of service room or pantry, and six was the small louvered glass window beyond. Seven was the first set of bay windows on the back side of the house. Through them, she saw eight.

Eight was a set of floor-to-ceiling windows with a slider to match the ones on the opposite side of the house. She could see that there was a set of extra contacts on the inside of the sliding door’s track, so the door could be opened a few inches and the alarm turned on. If the door was opened any wider than it was now, the alarm would be triggered.

She could feel her heart beginning to beat more quickly, and an excited flush came to her cheeks. She had been feeling despondent and irritable since the problem on the beach in Santa Barbara today. The first mistake-when David had suddenly reached for his gun in Mallon’s sight-had taken her by surprise. She had tried to stop him, but he had been unwilling to be stopped. After that, the errors had piled up so rapidly that there was nothing she could do. Spangler had seen that there was a problem, tried to get David out of trouble by firing from a rocking boat, and hit David instead of Mallon. Emily had considered snatching David’s gun to dispatch Mallon, but she had seen Spangler aiming for a second shot, so she had moved back out of the line of fire. She had stepped back, but Mallon had not. In a second he was already kneeling over the body, presumably to get his hand on the gun. All Emily could do was escape. She’d had to sprint down the beach to the water, and hope he didn’t have the presence of mind to kill her while she was fighting her way through the surf to the boat. Everything had gone wrong on the hunt. Since then the balance had begun to be restored, a bit at a time, each step bought with extra care and work. First they had needed to remove David Altberg’s body. Now they must clean up the rest of what he had left behind.