Death Benefits (21 page)

“Yep.”

Walker sat perfectly still, not thinking, just enduring the thoughts that swept through his mind. Walker knew that his life had been irrevocably altered, not just because this would change the future, but because it had already changed the past, going all the way back. He had not wanted ever to be the kind of person who did this. Everything he had thought and done while he was growing up in Ohio had been predicated on the empty faith that if he did what he had been taught—controlled his temper and appetites, struggled against the subtle diminishing effects of resentment and spite, spent his time working and learning things—he could expect something better than this.

The enormity of what he had done frightened him. He searched through his impressions, grasping for excuses: he had not intended to kill anyone; not made a decision; not been given a chance. But his mind could not hold on to the arguments. In the second when he had thrust his arm forward with the gun clutched in his hand, he had not felt anything but the urgent need to hold it steady on the man’s chest and fire first.

Stillman’s legs crossed Walker’s line of vision, and he let his eyes follow them. Stillman stepped close to the man in the window, reached in, and turned the man’s face. “Have you ever seen this guy before?”

Walker grimaced and shook his head. “No.” He involuntarily turned to look at the man he had shot. “The other one either.”

Stillman looked down at the man in the window. “We saw two guys in that alley in Pasadena, and three more out by Gochay’s house. Now these two. It’s starting to feel like a lot of people.” He bent over to search the dead man’s pockets. He found a wallet and looked inside. “Nothing but a license and one credit card, which means they’re both fake,” he muttered, and put it back.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” asked Walker.

After a beat, Stillman seemed to notice him. “What?”

“They’re . . . dead. We just killed two men.”

Stillman took a deep breath, then let it out, and said in a voice that was tired but patient, “I’m not much troubled by ethical considerations, no. I made all my decisions on the subject a long, long time ago. If somebody tries to kill me, he’d better do it on the first try, because only one of us is going home.” Walker was silent. After a moment, Stillman said, “I know what you’re feeling. It’s not going to do anybody any good. You don’t get to go through life with clean hands. I’m sorry.”

Walker involuntarily looked at his hand, and noticed the gun still in it.

“Leave the gun where you’re sitting,” Stillman said. “Don’t wipe it off or anything.” He watched while Walker gently placed the gun on the ground and stood up. “Go take a look in that guy’s pockets.” Walker hesitated, but Stillman said, “Go ahead.”

Walker knelt by the body and felt inside the coat. There was a wallet, but it too had only one credit card, a driver’s license, and some cash. He found a heavy metal rectangle he guessed was an ammunition clip for the pistol, took it out, verified the impression, and put it back. There was something else in the breast pocket that was long and hard, so he pulled that out too. It was a case for a pair of eyeglasses.

He opened it, and found a pair of sunglasses. He closed it again and was about to return it to the pocket.

“What’s that?” asked Stillman.

“Sunglasses.”

Stillman said, “Here.” He took the case, then slipped it into his own jacket pocket.

“What are you—”

Stillman interrupted. “We don’t have time. This is a story the police had better hear first from our point of view.”

As they reached the car, Walker saw the security lights go off again, returning the house and the two dead men to the darkness. He closed his eyes and felt his heart once again begin to beat in a frantic rhythm. The security lights had timers, so all of it, from the first shot until now, must have taken five minutes. It seemed a very short time.

22

The lawyer’s name was Diernholtz. He arrived an hour after Walker and Stillman had been brought into the police station, then said to Walker, “It’s getting so you can’t discharge a firearm into a living human being anymore without having people ask a lot of prying questions. I hope you didn’t answer any of them yet.”

Walker shook his head.

“Good for you,” said Diernholtz. “The call I got from your company said you would know that much. Now, before you make your statement, I assume you did shoot that man?”

“Yes.”

“Self-defense, then. I’ll be with you when they interrogate you.”

The interrogation took hours, but then it simply ended. Walker was left in a room by himself that had no bars. For a time he paced, and for a time he sat. Finally, after the sun was high, he laid his head on the table and slept, then awoke and paced again. It was late afternoon before the police captain came in.

“Sit down, Mr. Walker,” he said. “Let me explain the situation to you. We’ve verified that Mr. Stillman was the one who called the police after the incident. The hands of the man you shot have the same powder residue on them that we found on yours, so we know he fired his weapon—presumably before you did, since the one who fires last is generally the one who’s still with us. The second man’s hands have also tested positive to show he had fired a pistol at some point. An assistant district attorney was listening while you gave your statement. Another was with the forensics people at the scene. They just confirmed that they’re not going to file any charges.”

Walker said, “Does that mean I can go?”

The captain paused. “Not just yet. They have recorded it as an instance of self-defense. I’ve been a cop for twenty-two years, and I never saw an armed assailant who died that way.”

“What way?” asked Walker.

“He got thrown through a plate-glass window, managed to accidentally get a piece of glass across his throat, and bled to death. Isn’t that what you saw?”

Walker hesitated. “Yes.” He remembered Stillman raising the big shard of glass and hurling it into the window, so it would break into a shower of pieces mixed with the others. He had been destroying the weapon.

The captain seemed to sense what Walker was thinking. “You don’t know Stillman very well, do you?”

“The company hired him to investigate a fraud case, and assigned me to help,” said Walker. “That was only about a month ago. I don’t know anything bad about him, if that’s what you mean.”

The captain stared into Walker’s eyes for a moment, then seemed to soften. “You’re a young guy. You have an education, a clean record, so I’ll give you something for free.” He leaned forward. “Cops talk to each other. We go to conventions, just like insurance salesmen, take training courses together. Other people probably wonder what we talk about. A couple of times what I’ve heard cops talk about is Stillman.”

“Why Stillman?”

“Did you know he was a police officer?”

Walker returned his stare, and shook his head.

“About twenty years ago,” said the captain. “In Los Angeles. There weren’t any charges against him that were made public, so it’s hard to know the reason he left. I have a few guesses. Since then he’s been in business for himself.”

“The security business,” said Walker defensively.

The captain looked unimpressed with the term. “He’s ready to do a little of everything. Does surveillance, executive protection for companies, handles some stalking cases, quite a bit of insurance work. There have even been a couple of times when somebody was kidnapped and he’s the one who delivers the money and handles the exchange.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Walker. “Is that stuff illegal?”

“No,” said the captain. “He’s got all the licenses a man can have, and nothing he’s done has stuck to him . . .  so far. I can vouch for that, because I just checked.” His eyes seemed to grow more intense. “A surprising number of these cases end up with somebody getting hurt bad. Or killed.”

“Clients?”

“Not clients,” said the captain. “Stillman is the guy you hire if you’ve got a problem you want solved, and you don’t care what it costs and especially don’t want to know how it’s done. What you want is a big . . .  vicious . . .  dog. That’s Stillman. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Walker sat in silence for a moment. “I guess I do. I’m not sure why you’re saying it to me.”

“You just got into a mess, and had to kill somebody to get through it. And you’re in the clear this time: self-defense. I would like to give you some expert advice on self-defense. If whatever it is you’re doing for McClaren Life and Casualty puts you in a position where you have to spend time doing what Stillman does, you might want to look for another line of work.” He stood up. “Pick up your personal belongings at the front desk.”

“Miami police are still unable to identify two slain combatants in a late-night shootout at a Palm Beach residence. At around midnight last night, police responded to a nine-one-one call. When officers arrived just minutes later, they found that two damage appraisers for the McClaren insurance company had apparently foiled a robbery attempt by disarming one of a pair of gunmen. One suspect was shot in the chest, and the second suspect was fatally injured in the struggle for a second weapon. Both men were pronounced dead on arrival at West Palm Beach Hospital.” The woman on the television set gave a practiced look of disapproval, moved the sheet of paper to the bottom of her pile, and said, “Next, a cable snaps on an amusement-park ride, with grisly consequences.”

Walker stared at the woman on the television set as she faded and was replaced by a commercial for stomach medicine. There was an odd diction to television news, a special jargon. Nobody in a face-to-face conversation said “slain,” or referred to anybody as a “gunman.” There was a pitch to the descriptions that was edgy and tense, with no variation, like an unchanging song with the volume always turned up, but the news readers smiled through it, as though they were repeating words in a foreign language.

There was a knock on the door of his room, and Walker let Stillman in. Stillman said, “I just checked in with the cops. Still unidentified. They don’t seem to be in this the way they need to be.”

“You want to see if that lawyer—what’s his name—Diernholtz can get anything? He seems to have a relationship with them, and he’s already on the payroll.”

“Good idea, wrong time. It’s not that they won’t give. They don’t have. They’ve already run their fingerprints, and it seems they’re not in the FBI’s NCIC system. This is not normal.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It means they’ve never been arrested anywhere. People in businesses that involve shooting you tend to get printed at some point. The fact that they’re not isn’t good.”

“I guess not.”

“It means the cops have to use the hard ways—sending pictures around, and so on. They’re a bit busy for that right now. They also seem to think somebody will be in any minute to claim the bodies and tell them who they were.”

“Do you want to take turns hanging around the station to see who shows up?”

“It won’t happen this time. If it did, it wouldn’t happen fast. You can’t just pull up to the back door with a station wagon and drive off with a body. There will be autopsies and so on. Then they have to get the bodies picked up by somebody who has a license to do it, like an undertaker. Waiting isn’t going to do anything but waste more time.”

“What choice do we have?”

Stillman reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the eyeglass case that Walker had found on one of the men.

“You didn’t give that to the police?” Walker was amazed.

“I wanted to take a closer look than I could in the dark, and the police erroneously assumed the glasses were mine,” said Stillman. “I’d like to know what’s printed on the case.”

“So would I,” said Walker.

“Then let’s do it.” Stillman went into the bathroom and snatched three tissues from the box on the counter. He pulled a tiny bottle with a black label out of his pocket. “I picked up some Wite-Out.” He turned on the desk lamp, set the bottle on the desk, then took out the eyeglass case.

Stillman opened the bottle, then used the little brush in the cap to paint over the three lines of print that had been pressed into the side of the case. He used a tissue to wipe the white liquid off the case, then handed it to Walker.

Walker stared down at the case, where the letters were now in clear white. He read them aloud. “Foley Optical, 1219 Main Street, Keene, New Hampshire 03470.”

23

Walker glanced at his watch. He had a few more minutes before boarding time. He took the card out of his wallet and dialed the number of Constantine Gochay.

“Hello?” It was Serena’s voice, but she sounded as though her usual detached manner had been somehow forgotten for the moment.

“Hi,” said Walker. “This is John Walker.”

“I know that,” she said. “Are you all right?”

He hesitated. “Yeah. I’m okay. How are you?”

“Don’t. Don’t do that.” She was Mary Catherine Casey now. “I wasn’t being mean last time, so don’t punish me with that taciturn, manly thing now. You had a horrible experience, and I was worried.”

“How did you know about that?”

“I’ve been reading the on-line
Miami Herald
since your credit card left for Florida.” She paused, as though she were hearing something in the silence. Then her voice sounded amazed and affronted. “You weren’t even going to tell me, were you?”

“I’m not sure what I want to say about it yet,” he said. “It’s . . . something happened, and I’m not really sure what it is—all of it, anyway. I think I need time.”

He heard keys clicking. “Stillman just bought more plane tickets. Boston. Why aren’t you coming home?”

“We found something on one of those guys. Glasses from Foley Optical in Keene, New Hampshire. I guess we must be flying to Boston and then New Hampshire. Stillman wanted me to ask you to see what you could find out about Foley Optical.”

She became Serena again. “Tell Stillman I’ll find out what I can about Foley Optical and about Keene, New Hampshire. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you to ask about that. He hates to go anywhere without a printout of hospitals and hotels and things. I’ll have it ready if you call me from there.”

“Sure. Look, I wasn’t hiding anything from you. I just don’t—”

“You don’t know what happened? You hunted down the men who murdered Ellen Snyder and killed them. That’s what happened,” she snapped. “Don’t you have a plane to catch?”

“Yeah. I—”

“Then do it.” The line went dead.

Walker stared at the receiver for a second, but he heard the muffled female voice echoing above his head: “United Airlines Flight 922 to Boston is now boarding at Gate 52.” He replaced the receiver and looked around for Stillman. He had not seen him for the past few minutes, and now he was gone. Walker picked up his pace, moving to the escalator and then climbing it as it rose. He rushed to the metal detectors, then trotted toward Gate 52.

When he arrived at the gate, he saw Stillman coming out of a bookstore carrying a flat white plastic bag. Stillman seemed not to look at Walker, but Walker knew he was aware of him. He strolled directly to the line of passengers and showed no interest when Walker joined him, only handed him a ticket.

Their seats were near the rear of the plane, so they had to stop in the aisle while dozens of passengers ahead of them stood to push oversized bags into overhead compartments, or danced back and forth searching other compartments for an extra inch of space.

After they had found their seats and the plane was taxiing down to the end of the runway, Stillman said, “How are things in southern California?”

“Variable, turning cool,” Walker answered.

“Watch your step with her.”

Stillman waited for a few seconds, then sat back in his seat while the plane reached the start of the runway and the engine noise rose to a roar. The plane began to move, acclerating quickly, and then it was nosing up into the sky. Stillman lifted his bag to his lap, took out a road atlas, and began to turn pages.

After a few minutes, the plane leveled, and Walker said, “What are you doing—figuring out how to get to Keene?”

“Partly,” Stillman replied, his eyes still on the atlas. “Also why to get there.” He noticed Walker’s puzzled look. “A map is an interesting conceptual leap. Travelers spent thousands of years looking at everything from ground level before they thought of making a picture of it from above—long before anybody had ever been above. It’s what places would look like to God.”

“And He tells you why we’re going?”

“He never returns my calls. But if you look at a map, sometimes you can figure out things you might miss if you were on the spot—designs and patterns that you wouldn’t put together.”

“What kind of patterns?”

“Like Keene, for instance . . . ” He held up the atlas so Walker could see the full-page map of New Hampshire. “You have to ask yourself why a criminal would choose to spend time in Keene, New Hampshire. The obvious thing is that it’s about as far from the San Francisco office as you can get without getting your feet wet.”

“It’s certainly not the first place I’d look.”

“Right. It’s small,” said Stillman. “The chart says the population is under twenty-five thousand. That’s a little puzzling, because a person in his line of work usually likes big cities, where he can come and go without attracting attention, there are lots of like-minded individuals, and lots of places to spend other people’s money. But the map suggests some mitigating factors.” He handed the atlas to Walker. “See that?”

“See what?”

“The roads. They’re laid out in a pattern you seldom see—like the strands of a spiderweb—eight highways leaving town at the points of a compass rose: north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, and northwest. If somebody left town just before you got there, you wouldn’t have the faintest idea which direction he went. Then there are borders.”

“What about them?”

“You drive west across the Connecticut River into Vermont, it’s about twenty miles. Keep going another forty and you’re already in New York. Go south twenty miles instead, and you’re in Massachusetts. If you want to fly, there’s a small airport south of the city. There are others in Manchester and Nashua, or Pittsfield, Massachusetts, or Albany.”

“So he looks like he’s in the middle of nowhere, but he can get anywhere,” said Walker.

“Assuming we’re right, and that’s where he lived,” Stillman said. He took back his atlas.

“It’s a quite an assumption, isn’t it?” said Walker. “He could have been there on a vacation five years ago and lost his sunglasses.”

“It’s thin, but not out of the question. It takes a while to get an appointment with an eye doctor, see him, get the prescription, go to an optometrist, get glasses made. It’s not something you can do in a day in a strange town. But there’s still something about it that doesn’t feel right yet, some other attraction to the place that would make him go there. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, that you can only see from a human’s-eye view.”

“Serena said she’d find out what she could about the place.”

Stillman raised his eyebrows. “You ought to hold on to that girl.”

“She hasn’t made up her mind.”

“Then it’s up to you to convince her.”

“I haven’t made up my mind either.”

Stillman glared at him. “If the world is turning too fast for you, then careful analysis will tell you that there are a limited number of things you can do about it.”

During the next couple of hours, Walker found himself several times thinking about what Stillman had said. All of his life he had lived by observing in retrospect what had been going on around him for a period of time, discerning the trends and patterns, then deciding what to do about them. That had always seemed to him to be a rational, wise course of action.

But since the day when Stillman had arrived, everything seemed to happen too quickly; events came at him like punches. Looking at things in retrospect was not a good way to decide whether to duck, run, or hold your ground. It was a good way to figure out how you came to be lying on your back, gazing up at the sky in queasy regret.