Thomas Perry - Runner

Tonight Jane's feelings were complicated. She was tired, but she was also acutely aware that time was passing. From the day when she had arrived in Minneapolis and found Christine's apartment abandoned, she had been racing to find her. She had to keep trying every way she could, and to press every advantage. Tonight she had a slight advantage, and if she used it in time, it might cause some anxiety and confusion.

Jane dressed and went out into the night. She took with her the telephone number from Richard Beale's personnel file, and drove to Kearny Mesa. She stopped at a brightly lighted supermarket on Balboa. The pay phone was on the wall outside under the front window. She put in a few coins and dialed.

"Yeah?"

"Richard Beale?"

There was a brief, breathless silence, then "That's right. Who's this?"

"I'm not surprised you're awake. I suppose your parents called you."

"Who is this?"

"You know who it is, and you know I'm not going to tell you a name, so stop asking." Jane kept her eyes moving from the street to the supermarket parking lot. "The man who came after me tonight—Pete Tilton, right?—is dead. I want you to know I can do the same to the three you have left, to anyone else you hire, and to you. Tell me what happened to Christine."

"I don't know anybody named Christine."

"Tonight I told your friend he had one chance to answer, but he decided not to take it. This is your chance. Be sure you take it."

"You can't call people up and threaten them."

"Is Christine alive?"

"I don't know her."

"Good night, Richard. I'll see you very soon."

The telephone went dead. Richard Beale stood with the receiver in his hand until it began to make clicking noises and he remembered to press End. Had she been trying to trick him into saying something incriminating on a telephone and record it? What was she doing?

Demming had said the woman who had helped Christine was crazy. Crazy people weren't interested in going to court. A person who drove toward another car on a dark highway, perfectly willing to crash into it, was not anybody Richard Beale knew how to interpret. He was used to people who wanted something comprehensible, like collecting next week's paycheck.

Demming was just going to have to kill her. He should have already. It was part of the package. Demming's only purpose was to solve problems. Whatever the hell that woman was talking about with Pete Tilton, it didn't sound good. She certainly wasn't a problem Richard could tolerate.

Richard picked up his car keys from his dresser, looked at himself in the full-length mirror and ran his hand through his hair, then stepped to the doorway and reached for the light switch, but he thought better of it. If he came back an hour from now, he didn't want to walk into the bedroom and find that crazy bitch waiting for him in the dark.

He went downstairs to the kitchen and stopped at the new security door into the garage. He turned on the garage light, peered through the peephole, and made sure the garage was safe before he entered.

Richard got into his black Porsche, locked the doors, started the engine and shifted to reverse before he pressed the garage door opener. As the door rolled upward, he was already turned around in his seat, checking to be sure she wasn't in the driveway waiting for him. As soon as the door was up far enough for the Porsche's roof to clear it, he backed out quickly, pressed the button to close the garage, and drove off.

He had already told his mother he was on his way to the house in Rancho Santa Fe, or he might very well have changed his mind about going out there right now. The disturbance there and the phone call could easily be some sort of scheme to lure him out alone in the middle of the night. There was absolutely no doubt now that the woman was the one who had broken into his house. It wasn't just some coincidence that a burglar had chosen to hit the place today.

A simple thief was an impersonal threat, and had more reason to fear Richard than Richard had to fear him. But a madwoman was a different thing entirely. Facing a woman who didn't care if she got killed was like facing somebody who was already dead. It made the hair on the back of Richard's neck stand up.

He turned off the freeway at Solana Beach and headed inland. The Porsche was made for this kind of drive, a winding road that was deserted at this time of night, where there were few lights or stop signs. Within minutes he was gliding up the road that led to his parents' house, and then he saw flashing lights far ahead—yellow and blue, but also some red ones that made the grayish leaves of the oak trees look as though they were on fire.

Richard slowed down in increments, downshifting until he was crawling along. Now he could make out cop cars and an ambulance, and people walking around on foot with flashlights. They were grouped around the last intersection before his parents' house, only about half a mile from it. More uniformed men and women were walking around in a stand of oak trees. The cars' headlights and the movable floodlights were trained to throw a steady glow of white light into the grove. The back doors of the ambulance were open, but the paramedics didn't seem to be in a rush.

Richard coasted past with his foot disengaging the clutch, partly to keep from drawing too much attention to himself. He saw Pete Tilton's bright yellow motorcycle lying in the brush under the trees. And not far from it he could see what looked like a sheet over a lump about the size of a man's body. It had to be Pete. Richard lifted his foot to release the clutch and gave the car a little gas, then shifted to second.

Farther on, he could see lights glowing through the hedge. He hoped the cops didn't wonder why everyone at the Beale house was up at this hour, but he supposed whatever had happened to Pete had been noisy. He picked up the other remote control while he was still many yards away, and held his thumb on the button so that when he turned in he didn't have to wait for the gate to open.

He parked in the middle of the paved area, got out of his car, trotted to the front door of the house, and touched the knob, but the door was locked. He took out his keys again and opened it, then froze. Across the foyer, Steve Demming and Sybil Landreau were leaning into the entrance to the great room, each showing only an eye, an arm, and a gun. As soon as they saw Richard they lowered their weapons, and Demming hurried to Richard and locked the dead bolt.

"Sorry for that," he said. "It sounded like your Porsche, but we had to be sure who was driving it."

"It's okay," Richard said. "I just drove by a bunch of cops looking over Pete's motorcycle in the woods down by the corner. It looked like a body beside it. What happened?"

Sybil Landreau said, "We don't—"

At that moment Claudia Marshall stepped out of the great room. "Oh my God," she wailed. "Pete, too?" She dissolved into sobs. Sybil glared at Richard as though he were to blame, put her arm around Claudia, and ushered her up the stairway.

"What's going on? Where are my parents?"

Demming said, "A while ago your mother got up and saw that woman who hid Christine."

"Saw her? Here?"

"She was outside the glass doors along the side wall of the house." Demming pointed. "At first we figured your mother had been dreaming. She said she saw this woman all in black, who kind of dissolved into the darkness. Of course we went to check it out and see if anybody was out there. We couldn't find anything, but Pete figured it was possible that she had been here and gotten away on foot. He figured if he went out on his motorcycle, he might be able to catch her before she got to her car."

"I guess he did," Richard said. "She says she shot him."

"She says?"

"I just talked to her. I was throwing on some clothes to come here and the phone rang. She called to tell me she'd shot him."