The Boyfriend (34 page)
Authors: Thomas Perry
Till waited a couple of seconds for the Boyfriend to panic and shoot at the open doorway, then stepped around the jamb to the inside with his rifle ready. He moved steadily but quietly from room to room. Till stopped at the front door. He could see big holes in the wood with moonlight showing through.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor, but there was nobody left in the house.
“They’re in the other house,” said Moreland. “Good thing we moved over here.” He sat on the floor in the living room of their new house watching their old house through the window. He had seen a man’s silhouette in an upper window.
“Who are they?”
“I can’t tell. Maybe friends of those thieves.”
“What are they doing?”
“I’d guess looking for us,” he said. “First thing is to go get the pistol I gave you, and the suitcase I brought from the other house. I’ll stay here and watch them.”
“What if it’s the police?”
“Then we’ll have to be sure we kill them and get out before the other cops get here. Now do what I said.”
“What I mean is, if we’re unarmed and don’t try to hurt anyone, the police will arrest us,” said Sharon. “If we have guns they’ll shoot us.”
“That’s true, but they aren’t the police. If I’m wrong, they’ll yell it out: ‘This is the police. Come out with your hands up.’”
She dragged the heavy suitcase to him, and he opened it and began selecting things and pulling them out. She said, “Can’t we just leave? They don’t know where we are yet.”
“Just be quiet now. I’ve got to hear what they’re doing.”
Sharon stood in the empty living room, not certain what to do. Being quiet seemed to be an unassailable idea, so she obeyed. He seemed so busy and preoccupied with the men that he didn’t care what she did.
She had been feeling depressed since the night the men had come for the pipes and wires. One thing she and Michael had not even talked about was that those men had not actually come here to kill him and rape her. When Michael had made her go outside to help him drag the bodies to their van, not one of them had been carrying a gun. In their van and their truck had been wrenches, screwdrivers, a couple of hacksaws, and some power tools.
She felt terrible that she had shot the man coming in the window, and thinking about him had somehow broken the mechanism that had kept her from doubting Michael. For a couple of days she had been asking herself why she had trusted Michael. At first it was because she had a big old crush on him. And after Gabe was killed, she needed to trust somebody, and Michael was all that was left. She had tried to cling to him, to believe in him, to do everything he said. Each time she’d wanted to turn back, what had kept her from doing it was her shame at what she’d done so far.
And now, tonight, she was going to get killed. She deserved it, she knew. She was terribly sorry for what she’d done, and she knew the bad things had been destined to catch up with her. She watched Michael crawling around below the window with a gun in his hand. He was peeking out at the house where they used to live and trying to assemble a big long rifle of some kind at the same time. She had never seen anything like it. When he attached the barrel, it looked as long as an old flintlock from a museum.
Sharon put the pistol he had given her on the counter between the empty living room and the empty dining area and walked into the foyer. She thought about saying good-bye, but she knew that was a bad idea. She didn’t take anything but her purse. She quietly opened the door and stepped outside.
Sharon felt the warm, still air as she walked down the front path, stepped off the curb, and started across the street. Suddenly, she heard footsteps coming toward her from behind. She sensed it was Michael, so she ducked and ran hard to the side. He grabbed for her, but overran her. He stopped and turned to her.
His voice was a whisper. “What are you doing to me? I saved your ass. I took care of you.” He held out his hand to her, but kept his pistol pointed in her direction, apparently unaware of the contradiction. “Get back inside.”
“I can’t, Michael.”
He aimed his pistol at her head and began to step backward away from her, moving to get closer to shelter before he made the noise of shooting her. Sharon could see that there was no reason for her to run, because he couldn’t possibly miss.
Behind him, he heard the garage door of the house he’d just left rise on its squeaky springs, and he turned. A voice called out, “You’re going to want to do something else.”
“What?” Moreland kept turning, tilting his head, searching frantically to spot his target. The voice had to be coming from the garage. “Who are you?”
Jack Till shouted a second time. “What do you think, boy? You up to pistols at sixty feet?” He stepped forward from the shadowy rear wall of the garage of the house where Moreland had come from, and stood beside where Moreland’s car was parked facing outward. He had his pistol in his left hand hanging down by his thigh. “Come on. Just you and me. Bring your weapon down to your side, and we’ll play quick-draw.”
Moreland couldn’t believe it. This was the man he’d seen in Boston, the one who had shot up his car. Behind him, Moreland heard Sharon push off and begin to run, trying to get away from him.
Moreland’s mind judged the timing instantly: take the pistol shooter down, hit Sharon before she made it to cover, and then dash back to the house and wait for any others in ambush.
Moreland didn’t lower his weapon; he just crouched, pivoted, and raised his arm to aim at the man with the pistol.
As he did, the car’s headlights came on. After hours of the desert darkness, the glare was searing, blinding Moreland. He fired to the right side of the left headlight, where he figured the man must be.
Till had leaned into the car’s open window to reach the switch. He heard the bullet dislodge air by his leg as he raised his pistol. He held his sights on his brightly lit target and squeezed the trigger while the Boyfriend fired again hastily, trying to make up for the first miss. Till’s bullet passed through the Boyfriend’s head, and his body fell to the street.
Till left the headlights on, stepped down the brightly lighted driveway to the body, knelt, and felt the neck for a pulse. He stood and saw the girl walking toward him tentatively, as though she might decide to run again. She gave a long, despairing sob, and he held her, waited it out, and then said, “Are you Sharon Long?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said. “Why did you do that? It’s crazy.”
“To make him think about me instead of you.” “To save me.”
“Yeah.” Till took out his cell phone, then looked down at her, frowning. “Sharon, I’m calling for help now. But before anybody comes, you need to listen to me. You got kidnapped in Springfield, and that man made Gabe go into the bank. Then he dragged you out here. That’s all you know. Never say anything different to anybody.”
“Why do you want to help me?”
“It’s for all of us—you, the families of the girls he killed, a bunch of cops you don’t know, and me. You’re the first one we could get to in time,” Till said. He turned away as he put the cell phone to his ear. “Hello. My name is Jack Till, and I would like to report a shooting.”
Catherine Hamilton was a high-class hooker. Now she is dead, shot point-blank in the bedroom of her LA apartment, and the police have already dismissed it as just another sad case of a client-escort relationship gone sour.
But the dead girl’s parents won’t let the case rest. They’ve employed Jack Till, ex-LAPD homicide turned private detective, and now he’s deciphered a pattern in similar deaths across the states. The cities may be different, but the girls have something in common: they are all pictured wearing the same gold love-token around their necks.
What if these murders are not the work of a menacing outsider? What if the killer is the one person these girl’s trust? What if he’s their boyfriend?
“One of the greatest living writers of suspense fiction” —
New York Sun
“A master of nail-biting suspense” —
Los Angeles Times
Thomas Perry is the author of 19 novels. He is an Edgar Award-winner and a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Southern California.
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First published in the United States in 2013 by The Mysterious Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
First published in the UK in 2013 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Thomas Perry, 2013
The moral right of Thomas Perry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781781850831
ISBN (XTPB) 9781781850848
ISBN (MMP) 9781781852200
ISBN (E) 9781781852217
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