Phillip Margolin - Fugitive

“WHAT DO YOU really think about the possibility of Hass being the sniper?” Amanda asked when Cordova was gone.

“I meant what I said. I just don’t see it. Gary is a psycho. He wants to see suffering up close. A long-range shot doesn’t sound right.”

“What about Tuazama?”

“Oh, he’d do it all right. He doesn’t kill for pleasure. I don’t think he knows what pleasure is. He’s a technician. If a person needs to be dead, Nathan kills them. It’s like fixing a flat tire for him.”

“If he’s that dangerous, what do I tell him about the diamonds?”

“I can’t do it. It would dishonor Bernadette’s memory.”

“If that’s your decision, I think we should use some of the money I have in trust to hire a bodyguard.”

“That’s not going to help. If Tuazama wants me dead, nothing’s going to stop him. That’s another reason why I can’t give him the diamonds. Once he has them, he won’t have any reason to let me live. Those stones are the only thing keeping me alive.”

Charlie was going stir crazy but he didn’t dare leave his hotel room with Tuazama on the loose. He called room service for dinner, watched an in-room movie, then tried to get to sleep. The moment he closed his eyes, he thought about Tuazama, and his pulse rate accelerated. He finally fell asleep from exhaustion at 1:30, after downing several small bottles of booze he found in the minibar. At 2:17, the jarring ring of the bedside phone cut into Charlie’s brain like a razor.

“Who the fuck is this?” he asked after fumbling in the dark for the receiver.

“Charlie?” a woman asked. It was a voice he would never forget. Charlie sat up and turned on the lamp on his end table.

“Sally? What’s going on? It’s two in the morning.”

“I have to see you.”

“When?” Charlie asked, still groggy from the shock of being jarred out of a deep sleep.

“Now, tonight.”

Charlie thought Sally sounded desperate but he had no intention of leaving the safety of his hotel room in the dead of night.

“Didn’t you hear me? It’s two in the morning. I was sound asleep.”

“It has to be now.”

Sally’s voice trembled and that made Charlie pause. The Sally he knew was never out of control.

“What’s so important that it can’t wait a few hours?”

“It’s about your case. There’s something I have to show you. It can’t wait until morning.”

“I don’t even know where you live. I don’t have a car.”

“Get a taxi. I’ll drive you back.”

Sally gave him directions to her house.

“That’s in the middle of nowhere,” Charlie said. “I’m not going to hell and gone tonight. Besides, if this is about my case, I want my lawyer along.”

“No! This can’t wait until morning. It has to be now,” she repeated. “And you have to come alone. I know something that will help you get your case dismissed.”

“What do you know?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone. I have to show you. Please.”

Charlie was wide awake and wise enough to know that there was no way he would be able to get back to sleep. If he didn’t go, he’d be up all night imagining what Sally wanted to show him.

“All right, I’m coming, but this better be good.”

“Thank you, Charlie. Thank you.”

Sally hung up and Charlie sat on the edge of the bed reviewing what had just happened. She’d said she could show him something that would get his case dismissed. It sounded too good to be true. What could she possibly know now that she didn’t know twelve years ago?

Sally hadn’t sounded happy or confident. She’d sounded desperate and panicky, emotions he would never have associated with her. What was she afraid of and why couldn’t she wait until morning to show her evidence to him? It was very confusing, but he was too tired to work out the problem and too revved up to fall asleep. He called the front desk, asked them to get a taxi for him, and got dressed.

THE CABBIE WAS a grizzled, talkative Ukrainian who spent the early part of the ride giving Charlie his unsolicited opinion of the current state of soccer in the United States. Much to Charlie’s relief, he shut up after they left the highway and the signs of civilization faded away. It was spooky driving through the sparsely populated farm country in the dark.

Even with Sally’s directions the driver almost missed the narrow entrance to her estate. The woods closed around them as soon as they passed through the break in the stonework, giving Charlie the unsettling, claustrophobic feeling that he was inside a coffin of leaves. His anxiety didn’t ease when they drove out of the forest. In daylight, the colorful flower beds and bright green lawn made Sally’s antebellum mansion look cheerful. At night, with only the pale rays of a half moon to illuminate it, the house resembled a skull.

When they drove up to the front of the house, Charlie looked for some sign of life and finally spotted dim yellow light seeping through the curtains in a downstairs room.

“Stop here,” Charlie said when the cab reached the front door.

“You want me to wait?” the driver asked.

Charlie thought about that. Sally had said she would drive him back to town, and he had a cell phone.

“No, you can go.”

Charlie got out and the cab drove off. There was a soft breeze, a faint smell of freshly mown grass, night sounds, and nothing else. He was spooked, so he turned in a slow circle to make sure no one was behind him. He had almost completed his turn when he thought he saw movement where the woods ended and the lawn began. He peered into the darkness. The space between the low branches of a tree seemed to disappear and reappear. He strained to find the cause but heard and saw nothing. He blamed the phantom on his imagination and climbed the porch steps.

No one had left a light on, so it took Charlie a moment to find the doorbell. The chimes echoed hollowly in the downstairs hall. As Charlie waited for Sally, there was a faint sound behind him. He turned toward the yard but still saw nothing. When he turned back, his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark and he noticed that the front door was not flush with the frame. He pushed and it opened. Charlie hesitated before stepping inside. There was a glow at the end of a long hall. Charlie inched toward the light and called Sally’s name. He was waiting for an answer when he saw the dog. It lay on its side partially hidden by a low cedar chest that stood against the staircase to the second floor. Charlie assumed the collie was sleeping. Then it dawned on him that, sleeping or not, the dog would have come awake when he called to Sally.

Charlie walked to the chest and peered over it. The collie’s head was in a shadow and it took him a moment to see that it was resting in a puddle of blood. He jumped back, almost tripping over his own feet. If Charlie’s DNA contained a gene for common sense, he would have fled. Instead, he picked up a brass candlestick from the top of the chest and started down the hall toward the light. His feet made no sound on the carpet and he could hear his heart beating rapidly. Charlie’s heightened senses focused on the open doorway at the end of the hall. As he inched closer, he could see a rug, the end of a couch, and part of a table.

Charlie pressed his back to the wall and slid sideways toward the room, brandishing the candlestick like a club. When he reached the doorway, Charlie paused and took a deep breath. Then he spun through the door, his arm raised above his head.

He was in a large living room and the light he’d seen from the end of the hall came from a table lamp that stood next to a phone. Next to the end table was a straight-backed, wooden chair. Sally Pope was secured to it by duct tape. Her head had fallen forward. She was wearing a white nightgown that showed the blood that drenched the front of it to maximum effect.