Killer Move (31 page)
Authors: Michael Marshall
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, struggling the phone out of my jeans and passing it to her. “Who’s it say?”
She looked at it, and I felt the temperature in the car drop a couple of degrees. “What?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m hardly in a position to be a bitch about it.”
“Steph, I’m driving. I can’t see the phone. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She handed it back to me. The screen said:
I’m at home. There’s weird stuff happening and I’m scared. Please call. Karren.
I did a U-turn that nearly got us killed.
“I
t’s just about us now,” she says.
Hunter isn’t sure that’s ever going to be true, but he happily follows her out across the crabgrass. He’s not sure life ever just lets people be alone. It’s always on your case. Life is a dog that needs human attention at any cost and will worry at you until you give it some.
After a moment he notices that what they’re walking on isn’t grass after all, though, which surprises him—he’s pretty sure he sat here in his car only yesterday and saw how much this place of theirs had been changed. Tonight this couple acres of the key seems to have reverted to scrub, however; tilting palm trees, straggly grass over sandy paths, a little swampy in parts.
A few minutes gets them down onto the beach. It’s sunny there, so bright that it threatens to burn out into white. Sometimes evenings are like that, he supposes.
He holds her hand, and they walk along the waterline, watching their own bare feet. She asks him about where he has been and what he has done. He doesn’t want to talk about it. That period was only ever a time of waiting, and it’s finished now, and of no account.
He doesn’t want to hurry, either, but he knows they have to keep moving. He knows there is someone on this beach with them.
When he eventually glances back, he sees her.
She is a long way behind, struggling a little in the sand. She is alone. She has had nowhere else to go in all these long years, and so she’s waited for him.
There’s nothing Hunter can do about her. She will always be there, some way back along his beach, forever following him. But she is fat, and old, and he and Katy are young. They can outwalk her, probably.
He thinks so, anyway.
They can try.
He thinks he hears a voice, then, though it could just be the rustle of the waves. The Breakers was always a dumb name for a place on this side of the peninsula. You don’t get the big waves here. You just get these little guys, coming in and out like breaths.
He hears the voice again, louder, more urgent.
For a moment he wonders if the white surrounding them might not be the sun after all, and if the shadows over the beach are not merely from the wisps of insubstantial clouds up above but rather those of people leaning over a hospital bed.
It doesn’t seem likely.
He rejects the thought, hooks his arm around Katy’s shoulders, and kisses her neck.
“Let’s see how far we can get,” he says.
She smiles, and nods.
And they walk.
“Y
eah, he’s dead,” the voice says. “Mark the time and tell the cops.”
I
t took fifteen endless minutes to get back to the turn off the highway, during which Steph took some convincing that this was a good idea. I wasn’t sure myself. My gut instinct was screaming loud, telling me to get the hell out of town, now now NOW, but I knew that if Karren was suddenly finding herself part of the cleanup, then I couldn’t just drive away. We’d never been close, but if you get to the point where you’ll let others be hurt through inaction, then darkness has fallen in your life.
I got Steph to try calling Karren back, but there was no answer. There was nothing I could do before I got there, so I just drove, fast, and on the way learned from Stephanie that Nick had started being attentive almost from the day he joined the magazine, that she’d politely resisted all this time, and it was only the pictures she thought I’d taken of Karren—and a lot of wine—that had broken her resolve yesterday afternoon. Nothing had actually happened, nothing would have happened, she said. I believed her, at least ninety-nine percent. I was certainly prepared to believe by now that all it took was a couple of tiny modifications, for someone to move the walls just a little, for a life previously solid to look like it had been made of cardboard all along.
Karren’s apartment was in a development a couple of streets back from the bay, half a mile north of downtown, an area favored by young professionals with money to spend and no kids to get to school. It was a three-story block, the building surrounded by small but well-tended gardens and angled so the upper stories got half-decent views of the bay. Karren had got into the development early. A smart buy. She was a smart woman. I knew the place a little, having once sold property in it.
As I parked in the lot, however, I realized I didn’t know the number of Karren’s apartment.
“Come into the driver’s seat and lock the doors,” I said. I reached into the footwell on her side and picked up the gun. Steph stared at it.
“How have you got a gun, Bill?”
“Long story.” I got out. “You see anybody approaching, anyone
at all,
just drive. Get away from here, okay? When you’re safe, call me. Okay?”
Steph didn’t move. I stuffed the gun down the back of my jeans, the way I’d seen Emily do it. Thus ended my entire knowledge of firearms. “Honey, are you hearing me?”
She jerked back to life.
“Yes,” she said. She was lost in a combination of fear and dopiness that was hard to know how to deal with. “But I’ll move over slowly, okay? I really ache. All over.” She sounded about eight years old.
“Sure, honey. Of course. I’ll be back soon. I’m going to shut this door now. Lock up after me, okay?”
She nodded. I shut the door. She locked it. We gave each other a thumbs-up.
I trotted across the lot, glancing back when I got to the entrance to the building. Steph was laboriously hoisting herself into the other seat. I felt a twist of love for her that was so deep and sharp it hurt, and I wondered if I shouldn’t leave Karren to sink or swim. She was just background, after all. Part of the filler God provides so you’re not so aware of the joins and silences. But I thought back to the younger man I’d been—or hoped I’d been—and knew I couldn’t leave without at least checking whether she was okay.
At the entrance to the building I realized there was another method of finding which was her apartment. I didn’t know the number—but I could work it out. I changed course and went around the side of the block instead. When I got there I walked quickly backward into the grassy area, looking up at the windows.
I’d seen pictures of this structure recently, of course. The earliest photos in the sequence planted on my laptop had been designed to establish the environment, to make it look like the work of a voyeur homing in on his prey. The rear face sloped back, floor by floor. The window shown in the pictures had been on the extreme right middle floor. Now that it was in front of me, I recalled Karren extolling the virtues of a corner balcony, of having bought that apartment off-plan.
And there it was. There was a light on, but it was dim. I watched the windows as I tried calling her number again. She still wasn’t picking up.
I ran back around to the front of the building. I didn’t know what else to do but start pressing buttons on the entry phone. The first one with a 2 at the front was 201. A man’s voice answered, and was quick to tell me he wasn’t Karren. So then I tried the last number that started with a 2—204, which I hoped would be at the other end of the floor, thus at the other corner.
It rang, but nobody answered.
So maybe that was hers. But now what? I glanced back at my car and saw Steph in the driver’s seat. Her head was bent forward, and I thought once more—
Christ, just leave it.
It’s not like Karren was involved—why would they
need
to do anything to her? I could call her again and leave a message saying I’d gone out of town, that if she was concerned about anything she should call the cops (the ones in Sarasota, not Longboat, and certainly not Sheriff Barclay) and lock her doors and take care and blah blah blah. It wasn’t as if I was going to be able to offer her more than that, anyhow.
Would that do?
Could I just leave it at that and live with myself?
I was on the verge of deciding I could when a pair of car headlamps swept into the lot from the main road. I took a couple of hurried steps into the shadow of a knot of palms by the entrance. When the car was parked I saw that the occupant was a large, harried-looking man in a suit, carrying a folder stuffed with papers. He saw me.
“Help you?”
“Hope so,” I said, reaching for the persona I’d used in countless meet-and-greets, good old Bill, the chap you’d trust to find you and your newly pregnant sweetheart somewhere perfect and yet affordable to start living your dream. “Supposed to be picking Karren up for drinks. I know she’s in, but she’s not answering.”
“Karren? Karren White?”
“Right. I’ve tried calling up from the back but she’s got music on loud. And we’re running late.”
The guy looked at me. “You her boyfriend?”
“Hell no.” I laughed. “See the car over there? That’s my wife. Karren and I work together. Far as I know she doesn’t even have a boyfriend right now. Waiting for Mr. Right, you know how it goes.”
The man smiled, evidently cheered by the prospect of his neighbor being as single as he’d let himself hope, during long evenings alone in his apartment surrounded by paperwork and the remains of microwave meals.
We went to the door together. He let himself in, and let me follow. I thanked him without making a big deal about it, and as he went to the mailboxes I ran up the stairs, thinking: this is how people get killed, sometimes—someone is helpful to the wrong guy.
U
p on the second floor I hurried to the far end. Two things about the door to 204 were immediately obvious. First, it was open, hanging slightly ajar. Second, there was a piece of Shore Realty letterhead taped to the door. Someone had written a single word on it in big clear capitals. And underneath they’d put a smiley face.
I stared at it. The three dots and a little curved line. The word
MODIFIED
.
There was no doubt now, but I could still go forward, or back. I could push open the door, or I could back away and run.
I reached behind and pulled out the gun. I gently pushed the door. Beyond was a short wide hallway. It was dark. I stepped in, leaving the door open behind me. On the left, the hall dead-ended after a couple of feet in a wall with a couple of hooks on it. A smart blue jacket, a purse I semi-recognized. Both Karren’s.
I looked the other way. There was a doorway on the left-hand side, four feet away. I crept along to it. A glance showed it was a half bathroom. Small, no windows. It smelled operating-room clean.
I backed over to the other side, keeping close to the exterior wall. I moved sideways along the corridor, heading toward the point where it hit the end wall and where there was a wide gap into the main apartment.
I flashed back in my head to the visit I’d made to a property in this block. It hadn’t been a corner property—so the layout might not be the same. Given the length of this hallway, however, and how close I’d been to the extent of the building when I got to Karren’s door, I thought the gap I could see likely opened onto the main living space, a large room with double aspect glass doors onto the wrap balcony I’d seen from the gardens below.
I took another slow, silent side step. I stood motionless for half a minute, listening. There was the sound of a car on some road, followed by a horn, even farther away. Both had a clarity, despite their evident distance, that made me wonder if the doors to the balcony were open. I hadn’t noticed from outside. I put my other hand around the handle of the gun, the way I’d seen Hallam do it. I took the final step to the side, and looked through the gap in the wall.
The living room. A couple of dark red couches, three lamps, a coffee table partially obscured from my position by a big easy chair. Pale carpet. There was a bookcase against the wall on the right, with more books than I would have expected. Everything was very tidy.
There was nobody there.
Now what? Should I call out? Would that be sensible or dumb? How was I supposed to know? I opened my mouth, took in a couple of long, slow breaths. All I could hear was a ringing in my ears.
I took a step forward, to the threshold of the room. I noticed something on the near end of the coffee table, now revealed from behind the chair. A couple of small rectangles of cards, a few other pieces of paper, and Karren’s cell phone.
I thought maybe I should call out. If Karren was in the apartment, in the kitchen or bedroom or bathroom, she’d be scared witless to see a man coming into her living room—especially if she’d already started to become nervous about things happening in her life. But if she
was
here, why hadn’t she responded to the last call? And even if she was shocked to see someone here, she’d realize soon enough that it was me.
But I couldn’t get a call to come out of my throat. I took another couple of steps into the room instead. From there I could see that the things on the table looked like photographs: three stubby rectangles, like Polaroids. The other pieces of paper had the thin, curling shape of cash register receipts.
I moved diagonally toward the table, one step at a time, keeping my eyes—and the gun—trained on the door on the right, gateway to the rest of the apartment. I could see a kitchen, a couple of dim underlighters, a corridor that would lead to the bedrooms.
I got to the table, glanced down. Then looked again, properly. The receipts were for credit card transactions. I recognized the number, the last four digits. It was the number of my Amex card—the one I’d used in Jonny Bo’s with Hazel—the card Sheriff Barclay already told me had been cloned to buy the gun that had killed his deputy. One of the receipts was for several hundred dollars, from a store called Hank’s Sporting Goods. It seemed likely that was the one. There were a few more, for similar sums, but I didn’t get as far as logging where they’d been spent, because I saw what was in the photos.
In the first, my swimming pool, taken from the living room of the house. In the second, the mangled body I’d seen floating there. In the third, that body, naked and facedown on a floor, before someone had undertaken the work of removing pieces of it.
Only someone who was part of the game would have access to these things.
I realized then that Karren White had been on the edges of everything that had happened in the last week. She worked in the same office. She knew my movements, was party to everything I did in working hours every day—and for months and months before.
She was the person who took the first alleged meeting with David Warner, and was then removed from the scenario to make way for me—dressed up such that I’d be only too pleased to step into her shoes.
She was the person who’d been conveniently in position at her window for someone to take the pictures.
I’d even phoned her a couple of times over the last forty-eight hours, handing her up-to-the-minute information about where I was and my state of mind.
I realized that it was possible I’d maybe been very dumb indeed, and that maybe Karren hadn’t called me here because she was scared.
“Hey, Bill,” said a voice. “Cool gun.”
I jerked my head up to see a woman in a robe leaning in the doorway to the kitchen. Her arms were folded. She looked relaxed and slightly amused.
It was Cass.
