Thomas Perry: Dead Aim

Parish had known in advance what he was going to do next, and now he executed the plan quickly. He turned off the flashlight as he moved toward the door, snatched up his rifle, and sprinted straight for the top of the hill. He wanted to get there and take a firing position in time to see Mallon break cover to move toward the origin of the shot. He reached the top, just inside the edge of the woods, knelt, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and waited for something in the landscape to move.

He heard the sound of a footstep behind him, and that told him he had guessed wrong. He turned to bring the rifle around to fire at his opponent. But too soon there came the familiar, loud pop of gunpowder that Parish had learned to love, and he died on his belly and looking up at the dark shadow-shape of a man.

It was bright. There was an instant when Diane believed it was only another variation on the dream. It always had a stern, angry figure who had found out what she had done. Sometimes it was her mother, who had always been so sweet, with a voice like velvet and hands as soft and soothing as warm water, but who in the dream came back knowing of Diane’s guilt and ready to punish her. Most often it was a male figure, a nightmare version of a judge. This time it was Robert Mallon.

The impression lasted only a fraction of a second, until she tried to roll over and cover her eyes to go back to sleep, and felt the cramped, sore feeling that made her eyes open. Her face had been pressed against the floor, her left shoulder, hip, and knee all hurt, and her neck was stiff. She considered trying to roll to her stomach, but the feeling was returning to her arms in needle stings, and it reminded her that they were taped behind her. She was afraid that if she were on her stomach, she would have a difficult time getting up again. Slowly, painfully, she extended her taped ankles and pushed her heels on the floor, raised her head, and rocked to sit up. She could not do it.

She was in the living room, and she saw that the sun was already bright and hot outside, but the front of the house faced roughly northeast, and the sun would not reach the tall windows that looked out on the ocean until afternoon.

When she saw Mallon, she gasped. He seemed not to have heard her. He kept staring out at the ocean, motionless. He still had the same clothes on, but now they were rumpled and dirty, and his face looked bruised and swollen on the right side.

She said, “It would have been kinder to shoot me while I was asleep.” She shook her head in despair. “It serves no purpose to make me feel sadness and fear like this.”

He turned toward her. His eyes were tired, not angry. He contemplated her for a moment. “I’m not going to kill you. If that’s what you want, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

“Then why did you come back?”

“I’m going to do what I said, which was to let you go.”

She began to cry. At first it was great silent sobs that kept her from catching her breath to talk.

He knelt on the floor. He took out his pocketknife, cut the tape on her wrists so her hands were free, then the tape on her ankles. She got to her knees, very slowly and tentatively, then reached to the wall and steadied herself to stand. She said apologetically, “I have to go to the bathroom.” He nodded, and she walked there unsteadily.

She came back a few minutes later. She stood in the center of the empty living room tugging at her hair and muttering to nobody, “I look so awful.” She heard her own voice and said, “Who cares, right?”

He walked toward the front door, and she followed. She turned her head to look around at the empty house. She was surprised to see that it was pretty in daylight, completely different from the place where she had been locked at night. Then the door closed on it.

She followed him to her car, and said quietly, “You’d better drive as far as you can before you stop. Parish won’t stop looking.”

Mallon stared at her for a few seconds. Then he said, “He’s stopped.”

“I don’t understand.” She looked confused, not allowing even a possibility that what he had said could be literally true.

“Parish is dead. A lot of the others are too-the hunters.”

After a long pause, she said, “What are you going to tell the police?”

“The truth.”

“About me?”

“Not you. I gave my word that I’d let you go. If they find out Parish had your name in his records or something, that’s your problem.”

She was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she nodded. “Thank you.”

He opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

She sat in the passenger seat and waited while he went around the car, got in, and started the engine. When he pulled out of the driveway and turned toward the north, she said, “But what are you going to do afterward? Just go back to live in Santa Barbara and pretend that nothing happened?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m going away.” He looked up the road as though he were trying to read something figured on the pavement ahead. “Maybe I’ll try to build something.”

After that, he seemed to forget she was beside him. As he gathered speed, he kept turning his head to the left to watch a long line of brown pelicans gliding low over the rolling Pacific swells.