Dead Aim (7 page)

“Right,” Logan muttered to himself. It was clear that he had already finished reading the statement. “Is there anything else that you forgot to mention to the police?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mallon. “I was there for quite a while, and I tried to bring back every detail.”

“Good,” Logan said. He had a very warm smile when he used it, but to Mallon the effect was startling, like a bright light being switched on. “Now. The only other thing that might come up is anything from your past that we don’t know.”

He said it so carefully and cautiously that Mallon needed to reassure him. “I understand,” said Mallon. “There’s nothing that I can think of.”

Logan ignored his reassurance. “Ever been arrested?”

“No.”

“Not even a traffic ticket?” He was openly preparing to be triumphant, as though he had surprised clients with this many times.

“I’ve had parking tickets—I think three in my life—but no moving violations.”

“Ever seen a psychiatrist for any reason?”

“No.”

“You’ve been divorced.” Logan said it as though he were vindicated now that his probing had hit something undeniable.

“Yes,” said Mallon. “It was about ten years ago. Her name is Andrea, and she still lives up in San Jose.”

“If the police went to her and asked her about you, would she say good things or bad things?”

Mallon frowned. “As far as I know, nobody gets divorced because they’re brimming with delight about the other person. I assume she wouldn’t be very complimentary, but she wouldn’t say I was a criminal or something.”

“Did you ever hit her?”

“Of course not.”

“Push her or threaten her?”

“No,” said Mallon.

“Is there any chance she might say you had?”

Mallon was overcome with frustration. “It wasn’t that kind of thing at all. We had arguments, but they weren’t physical. They were pretty dull stuff. I worked too much, and she was always lonely and bored, so she spent too much. It was that kind of thing. And we didn’t argue very much—maybe if we had talked more, it would have saved the marriage. As it was, we both wanted the divorce. The biggest arguments were about that. She wanted everything we owned, had built, or inherited converted to cash instantly and split half and half. I knew that was what was ultimately going to happen, but I wanted to do it a lot more gradually: keep my business going and buy her out over time. She got her way, and we haven’t had any contact since the final decree.”

Logan said, “All right. How about other women?”

“You mean now?”

“During the marriage.”

“No.”

“Did she cheat on you?”

“I don’t really know. If she did, I never caught her at it. I think that
she wasn’t involved with anyone until after the divorce was final. By then I had left town, and it was none of my business.”

“Were you in the military?”

“Air Force. In the seventies.”

“Honorable discharge?”

“Sure.”

“Were you ever formally disciplined or charged with anything?”

“Never.”

Logan scrutinized Mallon as though he were a particularly difficult witness. “Is there anyone you know of who might come forward or be turned up by the police and might say anything negative about you?”

“How can I possibly answer that?”

“I’m thinking of women, particularly. That you came on too strong, or you made them uneasy, for instance.”

Mallon held up both hands and shrugged his shoulders. “Over the years I’ve dated some women who liked me a lot, and others who didn’t especially warm up to me. I can’t imagine any of them saying I was dangerous.”

“I’m thinking especially of the time since you’ve resided in Santa Barbara,” said Logan. “After all, you are a heterosexual male who—you are exclusively heterosexual?” He watched Mallon nod. “Who has lived here all this time without forming a permanent relationship with a woman. It isn’t illegal, but it might raise questions in people’s minds.”

“I suppose,” said Mallon.

“Then there is no point at all that you’ve been keeping in the back of your mind, hoping it wouldn’t come up because you don’t want to talk about it?”

Mallon sighed. “I don’t like talking about my personal life, if that’s what you mean, but there are no guilty secrets. I went to school, then the Air Force, then worked as a parole officer in San Jose, then a contractor. I haven’t found a woman I wanted to marry yet, but—”

“Wait,” interrupted Logan. “You were a police officer in San Jose?”

“Well, parole officers work for the state Department of Corrections, but I worked out of the office in San Jose. It was only four years, and it was a long time ago, in the seventies.” He noticed the expression on Logan’s face, so he short-circuited the question. “No disciplinary actions, nothing on or off the record. I just decided to quit because four years was enough.”

“Have you told the police that you’d been a sworn peace officer?”

“No. Do you think it would have helped?”

“Probably not. At least not on a homicide. Ex-cops are all trained to shoot people, and once in a while, one of them does. They also have guns. Do you still have yours?”

“No. I turned mine in when I quit, over twenty years ago.”

“No others?”

“No.”

“All right, Mr. Mallon,” said Logan. “I’ll try to find out what the police and the district attorney have in mind. Don’t go anyplace where we can’t reach you quickly. I may want to talk some more.”

Mallon went home to wait. Four hours later his telephone rang. It was Diane Fleming again. “Robert?”

“Hi, Diane.”

“The coroner’s office is going to announce their finding tomorrow morning. They’re going to rule it a suicide.” She paused for a moment, apparently waiting for some expression of relief. “It’s a preliminary finding, but there’s really no doubt. There’s nothing about it that’s out of place or unexplained. Brian Logan and his people have already gone home.” She waited. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he sighed.

“You still sound unsatisfied.”

“I am.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I still don’t know anything about the girl. I want to know about her.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

Diane sounded tired, as though she were determined to humor him but dreading what he might demand. “There are people who do that sort of thing for a living. Do you want me to hire a private detective?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I know the one I want.”

M
allon punched the numbers on the telephone, listened to the ringing, then heard the connection. A voice came on that he had not heard in years.

“Lightning Quick Bail Bonds, Harry here.” Harry was now probably about sixty, but the voice was still the same. It was hard, even a little challenging. For Mallon it brought back a clear picture of the short, broad-shouldered frame and the prizefighter’s face with the smeared right eyebrow where the hair never grew in right over the scar. Mallon could feel his facial muscles contracting into a smile.

“Harry,” he said. “This is Bob Mallon.”

“Bobby!” came the voice. “How are you doing? I heard you were in Paris. You calling from Paris? You sound like you’re right here.”

“I’m in Santa Barbara.”

“You went all the way from Paris to Santa Barbara and didn’t even stop in to say hello? What the hell’s the matter with you? I practically raised you from a pup.”

“No, you didn’t. I didn’t meet you until I was a full-grown dog. And I’ve never been to Paris, Harry. Santa Barbara is where I live.”

“Good,” said Harry. “Paris is too good for you. What are you calling for? Don’t tell me you need bail? What the hell did you do?”

“I called because I wanted to talk to Lydia. Is she around today?”

“You’re in luck. She just came in,” said Harry. He yelled, “Lydia!” A few seconds later, he said, “She’s going to take it in her office. Nice to talk to you, Bobby.”

“Take care, Harry.”

Lydia Marks came onto the line, her voice still carrying a very faint trace of a southern accent that Mallon had always assumed wasn’t real, the husky smoker’s rasp in her throat maybe a bit deeper than last time. “Hello, Bobby.”

“Hello, Lydia. How’s business?”

“The same,” she said. “You’d think there’d be less competition to lend large sums of money to people accused of stealing.”

“You would. But if you’re complaining, you’re probably doing okay.”

“Nobody in jail wants to stay,” she admitted. “I’m just getting too old to keep tracking the bastards down afterward to keep them from ruining us. You have to remember I’ve been doing this since the days when you and I were parole officers, and I’m still doing it.”

“I suppose most of them get away from you now that I’m gone.”

“None of them do,” she huffed. “I don’t know what I ever needed the likes of you for.”

“It was me that needed you,” he said. “When you quit, I had to leave too.”

“Are we nearly getting around to why you called?” she asked wearily.

“Yes,” he said. “I want to hire you.”

“To do what?” Her voice was suspicious.

“Something like what we used to do together in the old days.”

“Not a chance,” she snapped.

“Whatever you’re remembering wasn’t me,” he said. “I was married at the time, and I know I wasn’t cheating on her.”

“Your mistake. Why do you need a detective?”

“I need to find out what I can about somebody.”

“Gee, I’d love to help you,” she said without enthusiasm, “but I just don’t know. Things around here—”

“I know your time costs more than it used to, and I know you don’t want to go because you have a lot of business and don’t want to be out of town, distracted from it. So I’ll pay you an outrageous amount of money, if you’ll just help me out. Come on, Lydia.”

“Who are we talking about?”

He said, “It’s a young woman who committed suicide here a couple of days ago. The police haven’t even got a name yet. I … met her before she did it. She was on the beach. She tried to drown herself, but I pulled her out.”

Her voice changed. This time there was an unaffected curiosity in it. “You really care about this, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you live these days? What’s the address?”

“It’s 2905 Boca del Rio in Santa Barbara.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can get a plane.”

“Thanks, Lydia.”

Her voice hardened again, but unconvincingly. “Don’t thank me. You’re going to pay full price for anything you get, you rich bastard.”

It was late afternoon when she arrived in Santa Barbara. Mallon watched her from behind the window blinds as she got out of the back seat of the cab, handed a bill to the driver, and waved him away from her wheeled suitcase. As the cab drove off, she slung her big purse over her shoulder, extended the handle of the suitcase, hung her carry-on bag over it, and pulled it up his driveway.

She did not look as he had expected her to, and he had not been prepared: she did not show the ten years since he had last seen her. Her face seemed nearly the same to him, although he knew he was probably not seeing wrinkles that were there, maybe now appearing at the corners of the big, light brown eyes. He could see that she still had
the hourglass figure that, when Mallon had worked with her, used to cause whispered, longing comment among their colleagues in the overwhelmingly male office. The narrow waist curving out to wide hips and shoulders had, even then, been out of fashion with other women, but no man had ever agreed with that assessment. There had been a kind of defiance to her attitude about her appearance: the business suits she favored had seemed tailored to show the curves.

She walked with the same energy and determination that he remembered, her eyes making tiny restless movements to take in everything around her as she came. She did not knock at the door, because she had already seen him studying her through the blinds, merely waited for him to get there to open it.

They hugged wordlessly, and then she stepped in, bumping her suitcase up and over the threshold before he could get around her to reach it.

“Don’t pretend you’re a gentleman at this late date,” she said. “I worked with you when you couldn’t afford an extra pair of socks.”

The voice, with its mock-sarcastic tone, made him begin to sense how much he had missed her. “You’re looking great, Lydia.”

“You’re not. You look ten years older.” She brushed past him and sat on the couch. “On the plane I used my laptop to read the Santa Barbara papers. It wasn’t exactly page-one stuff. Tell me what wasn’t in the papers.”

He recited the story again, telling her everything he had told Detective Fowler. When he had finished, Lydia sighed and stared at the wall, her lips pursed.

“I didn’t expect that you would approve,” he said.

“I don’t approve or disapprove,” she answered. “I’m not your mother, and I never had any interest in you myself, except what I could get out of you as a parole officer, which was damned little. You were terrific at holding their hands and sympathizing, but not so hot at tracking them down when they got scarce. Since I’ve known you for a very long time, I will say that I had hoped that by now you would
have outgrown having sex with any young thing who has the impulse, but there’s no reason for you to be the first man who ever did. So let’s get started on finding out who she was.”