Dead Aim (24 page)

“I don’t believe for a minute that they’re coincidental,” Mallon insisted. “That’s the whole point of going to talk to the police.”

“I know, I know,” said Diane. “And I’ll try to convey that. But another thing we want to avoid right now is giving them the impression that you’re one of those people who are eager to spend a lot of time hanging around the police and guiding them in one direction or another.”

“I don’t see how they could imagine I killed Lydia.” He had let his irritation creep into his voice.

“I’m not comfortable saying what they might or might not imagine,” said Diane.

“But it’s silly.”

“Silly is no defense. Let’s just keep this simple. Right now you’re
upset because of the death of a good friend, and probably don’t really feel like talking to the police. I’ve got to call them anyway, so I’ll start out by speaking for both of us. If they need more information from you directly, we can cooperate fully without acting strangely.” She stood straight, glanced at her watch, and then met his eyes with a benevolent stare. “That’s my legal advice. Do you disagree?”

He shrugged. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “Go ahead.”

She picked up the paper. “Then I’d better call them while it’s still believable that I just saw this.” She walked him to the door. When they reached the outer office she said, “Sylvia, can you please get the Los Angeles Police Department for me?” She set the newspaper on Sylvia’s desk, tapped the article, and said, “Find out what division this was in, and call them.” Then she looked up at Mallon, patted his arm sympathetically, stepped back into her office, and closed the door.

As Mallon walked along De la Guerra Street, then up Anacapa toward his house, he kept feeling an urge to stop and go back. He wanted to wait for her to finish talking to the L.A. police so he would know right away what he should be doing. It wasn’t possible that what he was supposed to do was simply sit at home and wait. Lydia Marks had been a friend of his. She had been shot to death working for him. How could he do nothing?

As soon as he reached his house, he called Diane’s office, determined to tell her that he was going to call the Los Angeles police himself. Sylvia said, “I think she was just getting ready to call you.”

Diane’s voice came on the line. “Robert?”

“Yes,” he said. “Did you get through to them?”

“Sure,” she said. “They’re a police force. Somebody’s always home, and they can’t just not answer the phone. I told them what we know.”

Mallon waited for a second or two, but she did not go on. “What did they say?”

“I talked to one of the detectives who’s working on the case. He was very polite, and very appreciative. He took my name, address, and
phone numbers. I gave him yours too, of course, but I also got him to agree to call me if he needed to talk to you.”

“He didn’t think that was odd?”

“No,” she said. “Because it’s not. Everybody is familiar with the right to an attorney—the Miranda warning and all that. But there’s a part that not everybody knows. If they’ve already been notified that you have an attorney, then they have to include the attorney. That doesn’t mean they won’t talk to you anytime they feel like it, but it does mean they’ll let me know, so I can get Brian Logan to go with you and protect your rights.”

“I guess that’s reasonable,” said Mallon. “But what I meant was that people who just want to give information to the police don’t usually do it through a lawyer, do they?”

She sighed. “You just never learned to behave the way people with your kind of money do. I guess that’s why I like you. But people in your situation don’t usually deal with authorities in person, and they never do it alone.”

“Did you tell them everything?”

“Sure,” said Diane. “I think I already said that.”

“Aren’t they going to call me?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I think it will depend on what direction their investigation takes. You have to remember that even though Lydia might have been working on your case at the moment when she died, her death might not have been connected with it. Over her career, she must have worked on hundreds of cases, and a lot of them left somebody angry. She was the one in the bail bond business who traced the clients who skipped out on their bail, wasn’t she? If the police think we can help them, they won’t be shy. But I don’t know what the evidence they have in hand tells them. They may already have found out that it’s not related to your case, and they would not have told me at this stage.” She paused. “They may be tying up the last loose end right now.”

P
arish had quietly appeared in the gym so that he could look in on Ron Dolan’s early martial arts class. Today was this group’s last at the camp, and he liked to leave them with the impression that they’d had more of his personal attention than he had actually given them. He had left the gym and was on his way to the firing range when it occurred to him that he had not seen Debbie or Emily this morning. He walked into the cabin at the end of the long path, and saw Debbie barefoot, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, perched on a chair hugging her bent legs so her knees came up to serve as a chin rest.

He said, “What’s up?”

She turned her head farther than it seemed she should be able to and looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes moved to see Emily lying on her back on the single bed in the corner, with her hands clasped behind her head. She said, “We came together to bitch, Michael. You should get out while you can.”

“It sounds like something I should hear.” He stepped up to Debbie, took one of her hands, and gently tugged as he walked toward Emily’s side of the room. Debbie let the arm straighten, then yielded to the steady pressure and brought her feet to the floor to walk with him.
When he reached the bed where Emily was lying on her back, staring up at the rafters, he sat on the very edge, then moved his hip against hers and pushed. “We’re joining you.” She slithered closer to the wall, and he and Debbie sat.

Emily rolled to face them, lying on her side. “She could kill you with her hands,” she said thoughtfully.

Parish looked at Debbie, put his arm around her waist, and said, “So? You could kill me in some other way.”

Emily persisted. “Even lion tamers sometimes go into the cage at the wrong time and get torn apart.”

“And while it’s happening, maybe what they feel is … ecstasy. That’s what their lives were all about, isn’t it—that the danger was real all along? And just being near those beautiful creatures, tempting them and teasing them.” His eyes glittered as he smiled, reached out a hand, and softly touched Emily’s cheek. He let his hand linger there for a second, but when she brought her hand up to brush it away, it was already gone. Her laugh seemed to escape in spite of her.

He said, “You both have legitimate complaints. Which one are we talking about?”

Debbie said, “Last night, Michael. The idea was to have those two do their own hunt, wasn’t it?”

Parish nodded. “Yes. It was.”

“Well, what I was doing wasn’t what a tracker usually does. I had to take a big risk to lure that target into the restaurant in the first place. She wasn’t some man I could get to follow me by batting my eyelashes. When I got her there, I had to find a way to signal Emily without her sensing that I was doing it, then sit there for fifteen minutes talking about the camp and about Catherine before anybody else even arrived.”

“You did it brilliantly,” he said. “I heard every word over the radio. That little bit of an implication that you were a bad girl but you regretted it, and that you needed her protection, I think that was what kept her there.”

Debbie gave an embarrassed smile, but she knew she was being seduced, so she gave his shoulder a push. “I did what was necessary. But at that point, my part should have been over. I signaled Emily, I gave her fifteen minutes to bring the two all-stars up and point them in the right direction. I waited, and talked. When they got there, I was supposed to get up and go to the bathroom, wasn’t I?”

Parish nodded. “That was certainly the plan. I know it didn’t go smoothly—I was there—and I’m very sorry.” He turned to Emily, waiting.

Emily said, “I did everything the scout is supposed to do. I found the restaurant, I got the two of them into safe places where they could wait, then brought them forward when it was time. So what do they do? They fuck it all up. They burst in there while Debbie is still at the table. Coleman was already reaching for his gun when he stepped in the door. If Debbie hadn’t been the fucking martial arts nightmare girl, she never would have been fast enough to keep the target from turning the hunt into a slaughter.”

Parish looked apologetically at Debbie. “She’s absolutely right,” he said. “You kept the target’s gun out of her hand and disabled her with that pepper spray. I’m still amazed at how quickly it happened.”

Emily went on. “And
then
they open fire. Debbie’s lucky they didn’t shoot her too. And what do they do next? With the bartender and the waitress gaping at all of us, they turn around and start to leave!”

Parish nodded. “I saw you drop the witnesses before you left. I admired your presence of mind. I was as disappointed as you are that Coleman and Markham didn’t do it themselves.”

The two women looked at each other and rolled their eyes, then stared at Parish.

He said, “They asked me for a challenge. I knew that bagging a private detective in public was sure to be exciting, but I didn’t anticipate that Miss Marks would be that challenging. I took into account the possibility that she might be armed in some way, but I didn’t know
she’d be alert enough to her surroundings to cause a serious risk. She was very good.”

Debbie’s eyes narrowed. “But did you know how bad
they
would be? She saw them pulling out guns as soon as they were in the door, but it took an eternity for them to fire. I practically had to kill her myself—hold her there, disarm her, and disable her before they could even pull a trigger. Did you know they were that bad?”

“No, never,” said Parish. “But I knew if it turned wrong, then you would be up to it.” He tightened his arm to give her an affectionate squeeze. “I also knew that, from looking at you, she would never imagine that you would be capable of doing much harm. So if she had managed to get off a shot, you were not going to be the one she aimed it at. She would shoot Mr. Coleman or Mr. Markham.”

Emily eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not putting up much of a defense.”

Parish half-turned to see her better, leaned down, took her hand in his and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I apologize again for my mistake. I don’t think excuses are what you want, really. I have none.”

“You could at least offer a little resistance.”

He shrugged. “You’re both describing this situation accurately, just as you read the situation correctly last night. The tracker and the scout were in position and prepared. They saw that the clients weren’t going to be able to handle things, so they stepped in. The tracker took responsibility for the target, and made it an easy kill. The scout took charge of the environment and kept it safe: no interference, no witnesses left alive. You forgot nothing, and we all got home. It’s the way the hunting party is supposed to work. I’m very pleased with that part of the experience. It confirmed my faith in the professionals I chose to run this hunt. But I can’t defend my decision to let those two clients go after big game.”

Debbie put her arms around Parish and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Oh, Michael. You’re such a weasel.” She stood up and stretched, then
stepped into her sandals and said over her shoulder, “I have a class to teach.” She slipped out the door silently.

Parish turned to Emily. “I have to go speak to the two clients. They’re probably already waiting for me. Do you want to come along?”

She lay on her side and squinted up at him as though judging his sincerity. Suddenly she sat up. “All right.”

They left the cabin and walked across the field and down the paved road toward the main lodge. “We have to keep in mind,” Parish said, “that these men are our customers. They pay us for all of this.”

“The customer is always right?” She watched him closely.

“We run a service for spoiled, childish people who have lots of money. Most of them have never done anything useful to get it. When they’re tired of their houses, they hire an architect and a decorator, then go off to Europe. When the house is done, they come back and tell people they did it all themselves. And this is the part that you need to know: they mean it. They believe what they’re saying. If you understand that, then you own them. Right now those two are probably very pleased with themselves, unaware that you and Debbie did everything for them. They should be aware that you and Debbie performed valuable services, but they’re feeling very potent and brave right now. That’s the way we want them to feel when they leave.”

“Whenever you talk about clients, you sound as though you don’t even like them.”

He glanced at her in surprise, then laughed. “Let’s just say the customer is limited in experience, but perfectible. You can’t judge him by the standards we use for ourselves.”