Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

“But that’s why you’re here,” said Mallon. “To do the same thing to me.”

“I know,” she moaned. “It’s the same thing again. Only I couldn’t help it, don’t you see? Parish would kill me if I didn’t. This is my fault. You’re my fault. I didn’t imagine that the woman who committed suicide had anything to do with the self-defense school. How could I? They didn’t have her real name then. So I encouraged you to get through your obsession, even wrote up a contract so you could hire Lydia Marks to help you. I put everyone else in danger-Parish, Mary, Debbie, the other instructors, the special customers Parish teaches to kill people-so how could I refuse to help them solve the problem? They would kill me. How could they let me refuse and live?”

“Good question,” said Mallon. “I guess they couldn’t.” He stood. “I’m sorry for you, and sorry for me. I’ve got to go now.”

“You’re not going to leave me?” she asked. “I told you the truth. You’ve got to let me go. You promised.”

“I promised,” Mallon said. “But I can’t let you go until this is over.”

She was appalled, desperate. “But without me, you won’t get through this. You don’t know enough. You’re not good enough. They’ll kill you. Now that they’ve tried, there’s no way they can ever stop hunting you. They’ll keep trying until it’s done. I could tell you things, recognize people you would never suspect were after you. I can get you away from it. That’s the only way. If you leave me and go out there alone, I’ll just die here, waiting for you to get back.”

“Maybe.” He stepped out the door and locked it behind him. He could hear her shouting, but just barely. Out here, the sound of the ocean was much louder, and even tonight’s gentle breeze made it hard to hear anything.

Mallon drove beside the ocean, heading back toward Santa Barbara. There was no question that the people Diane called the hunters and trackers and scouts would be trying to figure out where he and Diane had gotten to. Probably they had expected to hear from her by now. If they found the bodies he had left on that quiet road in Malibu, they would probably assume she was dead.

He was aware that he was going to have to do something quickly, or he was going to die. Diane had been right: there appeared to be a plentiful supply of people from that self-defense camp who had either been eager to join the hunt for him or been induced to join it to protect secrets. If their secrets were like Diane’s, they had little choice but to try to prevent him from drawing attention to the camp. He thought about the police.

Detective Berwell had been trying to trap him into saying something incriminating. The Santa Barbara police seemed to Mallon to have been more receptive to his theories, or anyway more sympathetic, than the Los Angeles police. At least Detective Fowler had seemed to be. Maybe with what Mallon knew now, Fowler would be able to do something. Mallon writhed in the seat to reach his wallet, found Fowler’s business card, picked up Diane’s telephone, and turned it on. Instantly the silence was shattered by the annoying musical ring. The little screen showed him which button to press to answer, but he did not press it. Instead, he turned off the phone for a few seconds, then turned it on again and quickly dialed Fowler’s number.

A male voice answered. “Police department.”

“Hello,” said Mallon. “My name is Robert Mallon. I need to reach Lieutenant Fowler right away. It’s an emergency.”

The cop’s voice was beginning to change from sleepy to irritated when he spoke. “I’m sorry, but Lieutenant Fowler works during the day. It’s now after one A.M. He’ll be here in about six hours, and I’m sure he’ll call you back. But if this really is an emergency, then somebody else can certainly help. Can you explain what the problem is?”

“You don’t know my name-Robert Mallon?” asked Mallon, incredulous. “I’m the man that somebody tried to kill on Cabrillo Beach.”

“Of course I know who you are,” said the cop. “It would be hard not to. If you’re in trouble again, tell me about it. Where are you?”

“I’m in a car, using a cell phone.”

“Are you in danger?”

“Yes, I am. They’ve tried twice more in Los Angeles.”

“Is someone after you now?”

“They’re searching for me,” he said. “They haven’t given up. But I can’t describe them yet, because I won’t know the next set until I see them come for me.”

“Mr. Mallon. Tell me exactly where you are.”

Mallon had a panicky feeling. He instinctively evaded the demand. “I’m on a cell phone. I can’t hear you very well.”

“Are you still armed? Do you have a gun?”

Mallon hesitated. He had never said he was armed. He said loudly, “I guess my battery’s gone. If you can still hear me, I’ll call you again from a regular phone later, when Lieutenant Fowler is in.” He pressed the power button to end the call. If the cop knew about the gun, he knew about Malibu. It had not sounded as though the cop had wanted to help. It sounded as though he wanted to get Mallon into custody.

Mallon was in trouble. He was driving the stolen car of a woman he had kidnapped. He was carrying three loaded guns-also stolen-and undoubtedly had powder residue on his hands from killing the men who had owned two of them. If he went to a police station anywhere, he was going into a cell. He would be in the newspapers, and the hunters would know exactly where he was. Even if the police released him on bail, the killers would be waiting for him. He had killed people. He had done it to stay alive, but at the moment he could hardly look less innocent. Tonight, he realized, the police were as dangerous to him as the hunters.

The term made him think about the people who were trying to kill him. The ones he had seen were spoiled rich people who were paying for the privilege of killing him for a thrill. But the others-Parish and his friends-were professionals who had made killing into a business. As he thought about them, he told himself it was because he was trying to decide what he would do about them, but he was not really considering anymore. He knew. He had to stop them from killing anyone else, and tonight was probably his last chance. He had to do it tonight.

He was calm, able to look at his own predicament from a distance. The facts that had been making him feel hopeless had not changed, but once he had gotten beyond hope, he could see other aspects of them. He was driving a stolen car, but it was Diane’s. It was a car the enemy probably knew. If they saw it coming, they would sense no threat.

Mallon drove on, watching the sights along the freeway to detect signs that the exit for Route 33 was coming. What he had wasn’t a plan. It was a reflex, a fighter’s simple physical movement to block an attacker by striking first, a lunge to rock him backward before he could straighten an arm into Mallon’s face. He was going to drive away from the ocean, northward past Ojai, and up into the hills to that camp. If there was any evidence to prove what these people had done, that was where it would be.

Mallon watched the rearview mirror for headlights, but he saw none after he had coasted off the freeway onto the exit ramp. He kept looking, because on a weeknight after one A.M., any other car on this stretch of road might be one of the hunters. There were no headlights coming toward him either, but the emptiness of the road ahead was little comfort.

The road meandered a bit as it came away from the coast above Ventura, and every time a new stretch presented itself to his sight he strained his eyes to see anything that might indicate someone was watching for him. He envisioned a car just off the highway, maybe parked on a narrow dirt road as though it belonged there, or shielded from view by bushes. If he had been running something like this camp, he would have defended it. After a time, he decided that he had not been thinking clearly. Ojai was still ahead. It was a good-sized town with plenty of traffic most hours of the day. If there was a sentinel somewhere, he would be on a smaller road somewhere north of the town.