Dead Aim (41 page)

The most persuasive indication to him that she was innocent was her plan to drive him out of the area. She was the one who had been most cautious about setting up procedures that he could use to protect himself from ambush. He tried to think of a way to know for certain, but there was only one: he would have to show up to meet her.

M
allon sat in the bushes on the edge of somebody’s front lawn. He felt a faint movement of air, and it gave him hope. It was a hot night, but something was going on far out at sea, and the breath of it was just reaching shore. He had chosen this spot because the interior of the house behind him was dark, and it had the look of a place that was locked up except on weekends. The alarm company signs that said
ARMED PATROL
and
ARMED RESPONSE
seemed to be placed more aggressively than usual, and the sturdy doors and shuttered windows were permanently lit by small outdoor floods.

He stared through the shrubbery at the house three lots to the north. He remembered the day only about a year ago when he had allowed Diane to drive him here to look at it. He had been reluctant at first: the reason for the trip had been that she wanted Mallon, a former contractor, to appraise the building. He had protested that he had never built anything within two hundred miles of Malibu. He had no knowledge of the current codes and regulations in Los Angeles County, he had not worked in almost ten years, and he had not kept up with any of the technological changes that were common in high-end houses, and so could not tell her whether the fixtures he found
wired into the place were godsends or crap. But she had sighed. “Robert. You made millions building houses. I know you’ve kept your license current because I just called the state and they told me.”

“For nostalgia.”

“So take a brief stroll down memory lane with me to look at my wiring and plumbing.” She had smiled. “I’ll buy you a spectacular dinner in L.A. for your trouble.”

“Why do you want me to do it? You’ll have to hire an L.A. contractor to check it just to satisfy the bank anyway.”

“I know. Come on, Robert. If you get a dog, I’ll housebreak it for you.”

“I don’t want a dog.”

“I’ll bring you your next financial statement wearing high heels and a pearl necklace.”

“Really?”

“Well, yes. Other things too, of course. But I really want you to do this for me.” She had frowned. “I need a good investment that includes a tax write-off. This would be a beauty, but only if there aren’t any nasty surprises. You’ve invested in coastal property lots of times since you retired. Won’t you please do me this favor? You’re the only one I know who’s qualified and can’t possibly be interested in making money from it. I need somebody I can trust.”

That had done it. He had come down here with her, and spent three hours on that house. He had climbed onto the roof, checked the crawl space just below it. He had checked the plumbing, and randomly tested a few circuits for her. Finally, he had gone under the house. What he had found was a foundation that had begun shifting because it had not been anchored properly to the rock beneath the sand. A sewer pipe was already stressed, and might break within the next year. She could have paid the million and a half the realtors were asking and come here one day to see that the huge windows on the beach side had popped, and that she couldn’t open the front door anymore.

They had driven home to Santa Barbara speaking in quiet, thoughtful
tones. When he had gotten out of the car, she had thanked him warmly, but sadly. “Your friendship was all that saved me. I’ll never forget it.” Then she had brightened. “I’ll never forget the realtor who tried to sell me that place, either. Can you imagine pulling that on a lawyer?”

He had grinned. “Actually, I can.” He had added, “Not you, of course.”

As Mallon remembered that night, he felt reassured. It was the ordinariness of it, the mundane, comfortable history of his relationship with Diane that made him feel his confidence growing. He had known her for eight years. Could she have been planning to do him harm all this time, and never done it? That made no sense. Diane would show up, and she would do exactly as she had promised. They could trust each other.

He heard the sound of an unseen car off to his left. He had been here for an hour, and this was only the second one to come along this narrow lane. In a moment he would see the shine of the headlights while the car was still far off, throwing faint light on the pavement where it curved. Next the light would brighten, throwing shadows and making the trees in front of the house across the street stand out from the undifferentiated grayness. Then the car would come around the bend, and for a second, illuminate this part of the street before it moved past. He lay flat in the brush and waited. If it was Diane, he would have to let her go by the first time without signaling her—just spot her in her unfamiliar new car, watch to be sure she was not followed, and await her second appearance.

Mallon kept his eyes to the left on the house at the bend. The car noise grew louder, closer. In the still air he could hear the tires tossing up bits of gravel, but the house across the street did not light up. Diane’s car must be moving up the street without its headlights. He detected a change in the engine’s pitch. It was stopped, idling. Why would she do that? Was she being followed? Could she be stopping to
deceive some pursuer into making a premature move to reveal himself? He considered the possibility that the driver could be somebody other than Diane, and decided it was best to stay where he was and wait.

Mallon kept his body down behind the front hedge, but watched the road. He was staring at the bend so hard, expecting a change, that he was not startled when a man appeared there, walking along the shoulder on Mallon’s side. The man stepped into a pool of dim light from a flood at the peak of a garage and Mallon studied him. He was tall and lean, wearing a sport coat and wool trousers in a drab color, with a pair of shoes that had no shine and had thick rubber soles. The man passed out of the glow, and kept coming.

Mallon felt a chill on the back of his neck, the sensation that hairs were beginning to stand up. The man must have walked past Diane stopped in the darkened car in the middle of the street. Neither of them had spoken, or Mallon certainly would have heard it. What if Diane had not come, and the car had belonged to this man?

Diane might have come by here already, not seen Mallon, and made a mess of looking for him. This man could be someone who had followed her. Mallon heard the car engine stop. That meant the driver was still in it: there were at least two people within a couple of hundred feet of Mallon. It also meant that Diane was not here: she would not have turned off her engine.

Mallon kept watching. This guy probably was a solitary resident out for a walk on a summer night. As he had the idea, it felt false to him. This man seemed wrong, somehow. Mallon tried to analyze the impression, to neutralize it, to argue himself out of it, but it was not working. The man was walking along with a kind of stiffness, his head held high but his arms and legs not quite moving naturally. It was as though he were just pretending to be loose and relaxed. And his clothes gave Mallon a strange feeling. The sport coat and the pants seemed too formal for the beach, and the night was uncomfortably
warm. Mallon was wearing a sport coat because it was the darkest piece of clothing he had brought with him. He was using it to conceal himself. Why was this other man wearing one?

The man kept walking along the shoulder of the road, striding purposefully toward the house where Mallon was supposed to meet Diane. Mallon was a longtime daily walker who lived in a city full of walkers, and he was expert in the ways people looked when they walked on trails or the shoulders of roads. This one was strangely different. His body showed tension. He seemed to be straining to get to the house quickly.

The man did not change his pace, but he suddenly turned his head to look at the nearby houses, and then to glance over his shoulder. His head faced forward again, and his right hand reached inside his sport coat. The hand did not emerge. It simply stayed there as he walked. The man passed another driveway while Mallon waited for his hand to reappear. The next house had two pillars at the edge of the driveway topped by small electric lanterns. As the man passed the house where Mallon was hiding, Mallon was only thirty feet away, and he could see the man’s face. Everything became clear and sharp, so he could study the man’s expression. The head was up and slightly forward, the brow was set in concentration, but the eyes were wide, eager, excited.

As soon as the man’s right arm shifted, Mallon was sure. When the man’s right arm came up, Mallon could see the pistol he had known was there. The man walked on toward the deserted house where Mallon was supposed to meet Diane. Mallon watched from his hiding place across the street and three lots away, while the man walked around the house. As soon as the man had stepped out of sight, Mallon used the opportunity to retreat to the deep shadows at the side of the house where he had been hiding. He pried up a heavy piece of flagstone from the walkway where he stood, and watched as the man reappeared on the other side of the house down the street, then
widened his search, the gun still in his hand as he prowled around the shrubbery in the garden. At last the man had satisfied himself that Mallon was not hiding there. He walked along the street a few feet, then crossed back to Mallon’s side and started to return the way he had come.

Mallon held his breath, waiting. His hands clutched the heavy flagstone he had found. As the man drew nearer, Mallon suspected that something had gone wrong. The man was still walking, but slightly slower. His head was still held straight, but eyes had shifted to the left, searching. Mallon raised the heavy stone over his head with both hands. Suddenly the man spun, the gun in his hand. He jumped over the hedge where Mallon had been hiding and aimed the gun at the spot on the ground where Mallon had been.

Mallon hurled the big stone. As soon as it left his hands, he dashed after it. The man’s head spun, but his eyes seemed to see only Mallon’s body, not the flying stone. He raised the pistol just as the broad flagstone hit his torso just below his chest. The pistol went off, spitting a flash of sparks. There was a heavy huff of air leaving his lungs, he buckled and staggered backward into the hedge, and then Mallon was on him. Mallon’s momentum propelled them both through the hedge into the street, with Mallon on top. He wrenched the pistol from the man’s grip and turned it toward the man, just as the man’s other arm jabbed hard at Mallon’s throat.

Mallon fired twice quickly, the two rounds pounding into the man’s chest like punches. His jab lost its power, and both of his arms went limp and fell lifeless to the pavement, spread wide from his body.

Part of Mallon’s mind was suddenly, oddly, detached from his body’s terror and agitation. He knew exactly what was about to happen, and knew what he must do to avoid it. He stood up. Then, without hesitation, he spun and ran across the road to the other side and hurdled a privet hedge, looking for the best place to take cover. He heard the sound of the car coming to life again. The headlights brightened
the house to his left. In a moment they would be sweeping around the corner and onto him. He threw himself down behind the hedge and pressed his face into the grass.

The car came up and stopped with a short skid beside the body of the man Mallon had shot. The man in the driver’s seat opened his door, and the dome light went on. He appeared to be in his late thirties, tall and lean like the first man. He popped out and shut the door to put out the light, produced a pistol, and bent his legs to lean on the hood of the car and take two-handed aim at the house above the fallen man. He made no attempt to kneel down and determine whether the man could be saved. He just gave a harsh, loud whisper: “Markham! You alive?” There was no response, no movement.

The man stared over his car at the houses on that side of the street, at the shrubbery and trees along that side, even up at the roofs, but never behind him. Mallon had a persistent ringing in his ears, and the sight of the man seemed distant and absurd. The man was devoting all of his attention to the dark hiding places on the side of the street where he had found his fallen companion. He had simply assumed that Mallon would have shot him and run up that lawn for the cover that was closest. The man would not even consider the chance that Mallon had run across the street, and was behind him. Mallon began to feel hope.

Mallon lay on the ground behind the hedge, carefully aiming the dead man’s pistol through the space between two woody stems just above the grass. After thirty or forty very long seconds, the man stuck his gun into his coat, bent low, and began to drag his companion’s body toward the door behind the driver’s seat. He stayed low, apparently confident that Mallon was hiding on the far side of the car. When he had pulled the body to a spot just behind the door, he went lower, and swung the door open. The dome lamp threw a sudden bath of light onto the deserted street, and the man’s face suddenly changed. Still bent low, he slammed the door and snatched the gun out of his jacket, and Mallon knew he’d been seen.