Dead Aim (32 page)

“You think the boyfriend won’t go to the police?”

“Probably not. But if he’s not calling them right now, it doesn’t matter what he does, as long as we don’t leave any prints.”

Debbie nodded. “I’ll go see where she kept her luggage and get started with the packing.”

“Make it real. There will probably be a few cops here the day after tomorrow who will notice if we forget her makeup bag.”

“I know that,” muttered Debbie. She disappeared into the long walk-in closet. Emily could tell that she had not enjoyed killing Mrs. Altberg and was feeling resentful about this evening. Being alone with Debbie made Emily uncomfortable sometimes, but tonight was worse. She was a little bit afraid of her.

They did not speak again until the bag was packed and the bedroom straightened. Then Emily took out her cell phone and dialed Mary’s number.

“Hi,” said Mary.

“Hi,” said Emily. “We’re going to open the gate. When you get here, pull all the way down the driveway to the house, and then turn off your headlights and pop the trunk. Okay?”

“I’ll be there in about five minutes.”

Emily and Debbie lifted the body and carried it down the stairs in the dark, then outside, where they laid it on the grass next to the driveway. Emily went back inside, pressed the remote control to open the gate, picked up the suitcase, and turned off the last of the lights. At the front door she set the lock, pushed the code she had memorized to turn on the alarm, then stepped out and closed the door. She sighed. It was going to be a long drive back to the ranch, and then a couple of hours of digging before this awful day would finally end.

Paul Spangler was packing his belongings when he heard the familiar flat-handed slap on the door jamb that was the military knock. He simply turned the knob so it was unlocked and let it swing open as he turned away and walked back to the bed, where his suitcase lay open.

Parish stepped inside and closed the door, then stood with his back against it. “I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

“I know you do, Michael,” said Spangler. “Thanks for that.” Both men let their voices relax, as they always did when they were alone. The old, natural South African way of pronouncing English words came back, the traces of Afrikaans thicker on Spangler’s tongue and palate than on Parish’s.

Parish said, “The girls will have the whole business cleared away by dawn. There won’t be a trace. They’re like deer, their eyes always open, and their ears twitching. They already feel what you feel about this. They’ll never blame you, or even remind you of it.”

“Nah, old friend,” said Spangler. “I know they wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t either.” He stepped to his closet, took a handful of hangers with shirts on them, and laid them on the tightly made bed beside the suitcase.

“I’ve made a few bad shots myself, Paul,” Parish said quietly. “You might remember one in Uganda.”

Spangler sat on the bed, both legs stiff and his heels touching the floor. “I remember.” It had been a deep forest patrol along the border between Uganda and Zaire, searching for rebels in a place where all of humanity seemed to have spun off into violent factions, so the problem was not merely sighting groups of armed men but identifying their political affiliations before they opened fire. Spangler had been in command, a captain when Parish was still a lieutenant. That had been when Parish had still been called Eric Watkins, but when Spangler looked back on those times now, Parish always came back to him as Parish. The name Eric Watkins had only been a stage he had passed through.

Parish had been walking point for the patrol, with three soldiers. Spangler had known that Parish would be farther forward than was necessary or advisable in this thick bush, sometimes two or three hundred yards, where if he met resistance the straggling column that Spangler was leading along the jungle track could do little to help him. But when the two had arrived to enlist, Spangler was given the superior rank because he was older, so he did not exercise his nominal authority over Parish unduly. Parish liked adventure, so he could have it. Spangler listened to the sounds of the forest: the calls of birds, buzzing insects, the whispering of billions of leaves and stems—what Spangler thought of as the sounds of heat.

The noises were abruptly replaced by the hammering of an automatic rifle. Before the first burst ended there were others, overlapping. Spangler’s men had already split apart to crouch in the bush on either side of the trail, listening, but Spangler had held his ground. He had instantly identified the shots as Parish’s troops firing their FN
FAL paratroop rifles. He waited for answering fire, rounds of a different caliber or automatic fire of a different frequency. The rebels they had encountered in this district had been traveling in gangs of forty or sixty, and when they opened up it was a cacophony of Eastern-made AK-47’s and SKS’s, sometimes a few British or American-made hunting rifles, even a shotgun or two.

He sorted the possibilities, then signaled his men to spread wide and advance toward the sounds. The silence could mean either that Parish’s men had gotten jumpy and opened fire on imagined enemies or that real enemies had ambushed and killed them. Either way, Spangler had to bring his men through the thick vegetation toward the spot.

When they reached a clearing, on the other side he could see Michael Parish and his men standing around looking peculiarly grave. He halted his troops, sent word to maintain their cover, and proceeded alone. Parish met him in the middle of the clearing. “Paul,” he whispered. “It seems we’ve made a slight error.”

“What is it?”

“We heard fairly serious sounds of brush being pushed aside, some branches breaking and all that, so we opened up. It turns out we’ve killed a troop of gorillas.”

“Have you identified what army they belong to?”

Parish leaned closer. “No. Gorillas. Apes. A silverback, about four females, a couple of young ones. Concentrated fire. As long as we saw any bushes moving, we kept it up.”

Spangler had looked around him, over his shoulder, to be sure his men were still in position. “What do your men say?”

“They’re no more eager to let the others know than we are.” He shrugged.

Spangler assessed the situation quickly. He and Parish had come here together and enlisted. They had verified each other’s lies about their former ranks in the South African army and their time in service. Their troops were not all volunteers, and the ones who were tended to
be the sort who couldn’t return to their villages. If he and Parish allowed these men to believe their two officers were buffoons, their lives would be in danger.

Spangler said, “How about this? You caught some poachers in the act. You fired on them and chased them off.”

“It’s the best we can do.”

“Then I’ll go and brief the noncoms while you talk to your men and get the story straight.”

Spangler had been especially long-winded in his briefing, then posted pickets and gave his men a rest to allow Parish and his men the time to mutilate the gorillas’ bodies a bit with knives. By the time the main column was allowed to advance to the spot, it appeared that the animals had been butchered for the lucrative trade in their hands and feet. Since the missing parts were not to be found anywhere, it was clear that the poachers must have gotten what they wanted before their escape.

Many years had passed since that day in the forest. Spangler marveled at the way looking at Parish and listening to his voice seemed to bring it all back in absolute clarity.

“We’ve been in some scrapes,” Parish said. That was the other part of the story, and Parish needed to say nothing more to trigger Spangler’s emotion. They had been in battle together.

“We have,” Spangler agreed. “And your bringing me along on this has got me permanent residency in the States and a good supply of dollars. I thank you for it. I’ve tried to be sure you didn’t regret it. And this is the time when I think I’d better save you the work of asking me to leave.”

Parish said, “If I wanted you to leave, I know that I could ask you, and you would go. I also know that I would never have to wonder if I could trust you to keep still about our business here.”

“Of course,” said Spangler.

Parish continued. “What happened today was that you, as scout, had to step in to protect the rest of us, because the amateur hunter fell
apart. You had to fire from two hundred yards out standing on a moving boat in a heavy sea. When Emily and Mary told me what had happened, and that you had shot Altberg twice under those conditions, I was planning to congratulate you on your fine shooting.”

Spangler looked surprised. “What? Why?”

“I figured you must have made the determination to drop the client and scrap the hunt. Once he’d had his chance and ended up grappling with the target for the gun, it was a perfectly reasonable decision.” He smiled. “I didn’t suspect that the first hit was a wild shot until I asked where you were and Mary told me you had gone off alone.”

Spangler shook his head and chuckled sadly. “When I squeezed off that shot and saw the wrong one go down, I was paralyzed for a few seconds. Mary kept her head and brought the boat around, and all I could think of was to fire a second round into him on the way in, rather than leave him wounded and ready to talk. I hauled Emily up over the side and fired once at Mallon on the way out to sea, to no purpose. It was a balls-up debacle. I made a bloody ass of myself. After thirty years of shooting, I was useless.”

Parish began to pace the floor. “I won’t deny that I’m speaking as your friend, and I certainly won’t deny that I’ve owed my life to you on more than one occasion. If you were past usefulness, I admit that I would surely try to find you something to do around here where you wouldn’t hurt yourself. But it isn’t that way. You’re the best sniper I ever saw, and the only combat pistol instructor I would have around me. I don’t want to lose that. I can’t run this place with teachers who’ve done nothing but shoot at paper targets and beat up punching bags. I need a professional soldier who stood when the blood flowed. You know that. You also know that David Altberg isn’t the first friendly-fire casualty either of us has had. There were times in Africa when I would send my men into the bush, set my rifle on full auto, and kill anything that came back at me.”

“Michael, it’s not remorse or something,” said Spangler. “It’s a different
kind of feeling.” He looked anxious, tormented. “You’ve seen it, just as I have. A man’s luck will be wrapped around him like a coat. Then one day, it’s gone. He seems to wake up one morning, and the day looks different to him. The next thing anybody else knows, his mates are toting him back in a body bag.”

“Are you getting superstitious?” asked Parish.

He shook his head. “All I know is that things have started to go wrong.”

“Paul, you’ve devoted years to this business. You and I built this building we’re standing in. I’m sure you were right before when you said you had a supply of dollars, because God knows, you’ve never stood any man a drink. But now is when it’s starting to pay off. You can’t walk away now. You’ll be rich in a year.”

Spangler said nothing for a moment. He knew he was being manipulated. He had seen Parish do it to other people many times before. He always did it in a respectful, distinct, earnest voice, looking and sounding so sincere that it seemed to the listener as though the words were forming in his own mind. Michael’s alert eyes were unblinking, watching the listener’s face to determine which themes provoked signs of resistance, and which caused the impervious will to weaken. When Michael talked about money, he did it in a way that made Spangler’s chest tighten with greed, and his heart sink at the thought of revenue forfeited. When he invoked loyalty, Spangler found himself gripped by a surge of it. Even when Parish said something badly, a listener would not resist him, but feel sympathy for him, convinced that he was simply a soldier after all, and capable only of plain speech.

“You remember what it was like in the old days, Paul. We would see those rich bastards like Bill Finney pass us by in their sports cars, and just marvel at the way the world worked, that it would put scum like them on top. Well, it’s our turn now. They’re lining up to come here. If you’ll stay on a little longer, you’ll be as rich as any of them.”

“Michael, what happened today was a mistake,” said Spangler. “If we make mistakes, it’s over. I just don’t want to ruin this for you and the others.”

“Don’t worry. It’s safe. We’ve been doing the hunts for years without trouble, haven’t we? I almost never agree to do one in this state—until Mark Romano, they’ve been spread over the country, everywhere except California. And he was more than a year ago.”

“And because of him, this Marks woman, and now Mallon. All of those hunts had problems,” Spangler reminded him.

“And all of the problems have been solved—or they will be soon.”

“Well—”

“They have,” said Parish. “And you’ve been part of that. The truth is that I need you. I’ve always thought that you deserved more, and I’ve intended to be sure you got it. You should be rich, and I don’t want you to leave until you are. It would kill me to see a man like you going off with your hat in your hand, knocking on doors looking for a job. When you retire from this, I want you to never have to work another day.”