Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

“I am telling you the truth.” She stared at him for a few moments, motionless, and then the tears came. “I am. I am,” she said softly, and turned her face to the floor.

There was no doubt that she was lying. He stood up. The beach house was like the others in the row: it faced the sea. It had no lower-level windows on the street side, but presented to the world a plain front and a plain, closed garage door. Mallon had little reason to be afraid to leave a light on, but he decided to be careful. He switched the light off and took a step.

“Good-bye, Diane.” He walked toward the front door.

“Wait!”

He stopped.

“Please!” she begged. “You’re going to leave me like this? The house is closed up, and so are all the others along here. There’s nobody to find me. I’ll die.”

“Most likely,” he said. “I guess if I die, you will too.” He opened the door to step out.

“Wait!” she yelled. “I’ll tell you.”

He closed the door, turned on the light, walked back, and sat beside her again. “I’ll listen to it. All I ask is that it be true.”

“It will be,” she said. “If you go without knowing more than you do, they’ll kill you.”

“Why?” he said. “Why? I’ve asked you that over and over.”

Her face assumed a hard, empty look. “No reason.” She gazed into his eyes, and her expression became a grim amusement. “Does that surprise you?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “It’s true. The people involved in this-all the ones you’ve seen, anyway-were doing it because it gives them a thrill.” She watched him for a reaction. “It’s the sport of kings, the real one, you know. If you happen to be the sort of wealthy person who has gone to all the famous cities and to all the remote resorts that aren’t famous because just knowing the name of them is enough to make you cool, and you’ve worked your way through all of the other big-ticket extreme sports, then this is the option.”

“The big-ticket extreme sports?”

“You know. Having a helicopter drop you on some unreachable mountain nobody has skied before, buying a big sailboat to take across an ocean, setting speed records with racing cars. I guess people like that used to go shoot animals in Africa, but that’s lost its aura. Those two that came for you tonight-Markham and Coleman-that’s what they were in it for: fun.”

“How in the world did you ever get involved with people like that?”

“Through my practice. I’m a servant of rich people: all kinds of rich people. If you manage money, you can’t have too many requirements other than that the money belong to them. This business is too competitive for that.”

“You got into this mess for thrills?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes. Tears seeped from the corners. Then she opened them again. “Not everybody gets a thrill. I got into it because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Just before I came to Santa Barbara, when I was still in civil litigation in L.A., I defended a client named Carl Hayward. He wasn’t a very nice man, and I didn’t much like him, but that isn’t supposed to enter into legal representation. He was being sued. He had bought a restaurant about three years before. As I understood it, what happened was this: he hired an old male chef and one male kitchen helper, but everybody else who worked for him was a young girl. It was a crummy neighborhood, but it was a well-known old restaurant that was a favorite spot for people to go after plays or concerts: lobsters, big steaks, lots of liquor. It stayed open twenty-four hours a day, so he needed three shifts, but most of the business was between ten at night and six in the morning. Because it was that kind of place, he made the customers pay premium prices. Every night at about three A.M. he would come in and count the money. That was the time when things would begin to slow down. He put the cash in a bag, made out a deposit slip, and sent out one of the young girls who was getting off her shift to take it to the bank to drop in the night-deposit slot on the way home. One night, there was somebody waiting. The girl was a sixteen-year-old, who wasn’t supposed to be working at that hour or in a place that served liquor. She got killed.”

“This was a civil suit?”

She nodded. “The girl was a runaway from New Mexico. Her parents were drug cases who hadn’t even bothered to look for her when she left. But she had a brother. His name was Billy. He was five years older. He had been in jail when she left home, but she’d kept writing to him. He was still in jail when she got killed. When he got out, he got a good lawyer on a pro bono basis. Carl Hayward got me. Everybody expected us to settle. Hayward had clearly not checked anybody, least of all Tara, for age, or asked to see identification. She looked, if anything, younger than sixteen, and Hayward made no secret of the fact that he always had one of the girls carry the money because he didn’t want to get robbed. Three or four of them would get off at once, and it might be a different one that had the money each time. But he knew that he was putting them in danger, because at least once before, men had stopped the wrong girl and ended up with nothing but a purse full of tips. I let them go to court, and I won.”

“How?”

“A combination of things. I had a feeling about the jury. They weren’t all old ladies with pearls, but I could tell they were conservative. The brother’s record might be enough for some of them. I used it. I portrayed him as a creep who was happy to use his own young sister’s death to ruin an honest businessman and get rich. I said he was a vulture. I used the letters she sent him in prison, and said that if it was a dangerous situation, he knew it. I said he was like a pimp, who had encouraged her to work a dangerous, illegal job so she would send him money, and then tried to cash in, to sell her even after she had died.”

“Go on,” he said.

She frowned. “I was young, and I wanted so badly to win. I thought it was my job to use everything I could find or invent to get my client off. The opposing lawyer was Reynolds Phelan. You probably don’t know who that is, but every lawyer in the state does. He was president of the bar association when I was in law school. When the case was over, he waited for me outside the building. I actually thought he was going to congratulate me. He said that what I had done was disgusting. I’ll remember that forever.” She lapsed into silence.

“I’m waiting,” he prompted.

She sighed. “That was my first indication that things were going wrong. I started to get other indications right after the trial. Billy was not going to forget either. He had been in for manslaughter. Billy was very tough. In jail he got meaner and smarter. He started threatening me right after the trial. He had been in jail with men who were experts at intimidating people. They had taught him to do it without getting caught. There were calls late at night, always from pay phones. I would leave home for the office in the morning, and there would be a scary man across the street, staring at me with a smirk. The same when I left work for home. But it was never Billy. Not once. And each one was replaced by another after a couple of times. I told the cops. But the cops can’t charge somebody under the stalking law if he’s standing across the street once or twice. I told friends, I told colleagues, but nobody could help. Finally I was at a party.”

“A party?”

“Yes. It had gone on and on, and I started to hate being alone. I started working more, going out a lot more, just being with people so I wasn’t alone. A woman I met at a party told me that a mutual friend had told her about my problem and she had a suggestion.”

“What was it?”