Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (111 page)

Leon smiled cold. “I want access to your laptop. Don’t ask
why
ever again.”

Leon tossed a small notebook on top of a pile of sex photos
on the coffee table. Then a pen. Corbin, hand trembling, wrote the password
down.

Then Leon took the notebook and pen back, and he tapped the
top nude picture. “What’s with this girl?”

“Kora North. She’s on my string. Party girl. Top of the
line. She owes me some money. Wants some of her…pictures and stuff back.”

“That who you were yelling at on the phone?”

“Yes. She’s on her way over. And she can confirm what I’m
telling you about the big payday.”

Leon picked up the picture. “Nice. Very nice.”

“Top of the line. Prime. Kora North is hot as they come,”
Corbin said, sounding a little hopeful now. “She’s Thorp’s favorite party girl.
Gonna play Daisy at the big party next weekend. The Great Gatsby Gala. Half the
rich assholes on the West Coast will be there. Look, I’m tellin’ you there’s
gonna be a ton of money to be had, things are done right.”

Leon put the picture down, switched hands with his gun, and
picked up Corbin’s Glock. “Perfectly fine weapon. You aren’t too good with this.
You don’t practice, or were you drunk?”

Corbin started fumbling around for a good answer but Leon
cut him off, saying, “Tell me about the big party.”

Corbin started to tell him about the party, how everybody
dressed in Roaring Twenties outfits, about the outdoor band and the big poker
game down in the game room, but Leon was sick of him now.

“Sounds too good to be true,” Leon said. He brought Corbin’s
Glock up, leaned forward, and shot the man in the head, aiming for that mole.

No decent reflexes in the guy. He just stared in disbelief
that he was about to be killed. He never moved.

Got it!
Blew the damn third eye back into the man’s
brain. It vanished quick as an eel pulling back into its hole when a shark swims
by. Not the usual place a suicide would shoot himself, so, if the girl came, it
would be that she killed him before she committed suicide. It would be a
murder/suicide, and it would work nicely.

Corbin’s head had hardly moved at all when the bullet hit.
Man didn’t have enough brain matter even to slow it down. He just kind of slowly
tilted back, his head resting on the corner of the chair like he was taking a
nap, yet his eyes stayed wide open. The chair had a bullet-hole exit.

Leon said, “You thought you were cut out for the trade, did
you? You’re not even in the same world. You insult me.”

Then he texted the client’s lawyer as he was instructed to
do after each event. After sending the message, Leon then settled back to await
the arrival of this hottest of all hot chicks, Kora North.

31

That Tuesday morning, when the message reached them, Rouse
and Thorp were in the foothills, ninety miles down the mountain on the west
slope of the Sierras. They were about to head back to Tahoe after having
attended funeral services for a friend of the Thorp family.

The service was at the old, white church that stood stiff as
a constipated Puritan on a hill north of the ancient gold mining town of
Jackson. The graveyard, with headstones in jagged rows like rotting teeth, held
many bodies from battles a long time ago.

It was dry and hot under the relentless sun, the hills
burnished with the color of overcooked tortillas. After the funeral, they’d paid
a quick visit to the ancestral Thorp estate, where his mother still lived, just
off historic Gold Route 49—down from Thorp Lumber and Mining, a massive complex
of corrugated-roofed buildings, mountains of logs receiving a mist spray to keep
them moist in the summer heat.

“It’s our boy,” Rouse said, looking at the screen as he
drove his Mercedes SL500 into the foothills. “Damnit, I don’t like this. Jesus,
it’s like the wild west.”

“He’s cleaning up the mess,” Thorp said. “About time I got
rid of the family idiot.”

“I don’t like it,” Rouse said again.

That made Thorp smile. They were passing the origin of his
power and name, Thorp Lumber and Mining. In the big yards, the mist drew
rainbows in the sky. Giant hoses, like anacondas, lay across the piles
delivering the spray. The air trembled with the constant buzz of saws and
thundered from the endless procession of logging trucks coming and going past
the fifty-foot water tower that had a giant black T painted on it.

That’s me,
Thorp thought.
I own it. It’s mine, all
mine.
He liked that he was the big dog. And in his mind, he hadn’t even
gotten started yet.

As they headed up through the back roads, Thorp said to
Rouse, “It’ll all be history. A new day. The future begins. The future Tahoe
deserves.”

“What
I
don’t like,” Thorp said, “is that crazy bitch
is still out there with this nephew of Cillo’s. I don’t like it. He finds out
his uncle is dead, he’s going to be angry. Our boy has to get to them quick, so
he has to do whatever it takes.”

“You can’t just have a rash of suicides. Who the hell is
going to believe that?” Rouse whined. He was in his grumpy, nervous mood.

A hawk sailed high in the desolate sky in front of them.

“Don’t worry about it. That’s my business. I don’t care how
many suicides there are. Nothing will track back to the killer or us because
nobody is interested. This guy’s the best in the business, so you said. When
he’s finished, it all works out, I’ll see if I can keep him on retainer. Or,
make him head of our security operations.”

Rouse scoffed. “You don’t hire guys like that on a permanent
basis. This could turn into a real disaster, bodies turn up all over the place.”

“You need to get some balls,” Thorp said. He thought of the
days they were kids, he and Rouse playing among the ruins of places with
colorful names like
Musicdale
,
Slabtown,
and
Blood Gulch
.
Most were nothing more than historic landmarks, remnants of a few stone
buildings where miners and “digger” Indians once resided before Thorp’s
ancestors kicked them out and turned the land over to people who knew how to use
it.

“Progress,” Thorp said, “does not come cheap, and it doesn’t
come without a little blood. It’s the way of the world. Always has been, always
will be.”

Having a killer on the payroll gave Ogden Thorp a sense of
power and strength that was different than anything he’d known before. He had an
instrument of death at his disposal. He could take care of anybody who got in
his way. That was a big ego trip. He loved it. Put a big smile on his face. Now
he understood the big boys in the big game. Didn’t matter if you were sending
out a lone killer or a whole army, it was the same. And it was beautiful.

This is a great day, Thorp thought. This is the beginning of
the greatest week of my life.

“We need to get back to the Cal-Neva,” he told Rouse. “I
have guests arriving soon for the tour. Step on it.”

But in the back of his mind, there was one serious nag.
Rouse was right about one thing—Cillo’s nephew. Once he found out his uncle was
dead, he’d be on the warpath, and Thorp didn’t know exactly what that might
mean.

So he chose not to think about him. That was his hired gun’s
problem.

32

After leaving the restaurant and going back through
Markleeville, Sydney and Marco passed the bikers’ motorcycles parked in front of
the Cutthroat Bar.
Appropriate,
she decided.

Twenty minutes later, when Marco turned off 89 onto the
Pioneer Trail, Sydney said, “I’d like to shoot the bastard a couple times, let
him know how it feels.”

Marco smiled. He followed her directions, heading through a
sparsely populated, heavily wooded area into a narrow ravine. Tight place. Hard
in the winter back here.

“That’s it,” Sydney said, pointing to a nondescript
wood-frame, brick-bottom house tucked into the hillside.

A familiar pickup was in the driveway. Marco said, “Looks
like we’re in luck. Our boy just might be home.”

He followed the narrow road around the bend and looked for a
place he could park in the trees, well out of sight of the house. She took a
pair of binoculars from the glove box, and they hiked around the neck of the
hill through the pines and a patch of aspens, the ground still soft from the
spring runoff.

Sydney said, “Of all the places to build a house, he picks
the spot the sun pretty much misses all day long.”

She couldn’t believe that with all that sun out there, these
people chose the shady gloom, their small, plain, clapboard house hidden in
trees along the gully like a poisonous mushroom. Below, behind the back of a
house, stood a dilapidated garage with two beat-up garbage cans leaning against
the side and a half-inflated, above-ground pool filled with stagnant water and
leaves and crap. A mess of a place. Nothing looked cared for.

Marco appeared to be studying the house looking for signs of
someone moving around.

“Nothing happening I can see,” he said.

“Maybe our boy’s sleeping. Been a tough night.”

The garage protected their approach as they slipped through
a copse of lodgepole pines, moving now at a quick-step, keeping the garage
between them and the house.

A cat shot from under a rusty piece of tin roofing behind
the garage and vanished around the side. Marco nearly shot it.

Christ, he’s jumpier than I am!

Behind Corbin’s, there was a banged-up camper shell next to
the dilapidated garage.

“Look at that, it’s a crime,” Marco whispered, pointing at a
gutted-out car.

“Sixty-eight GT 390 Fastback,” Marco said. “Steve McQueen’s
green machine. Same as the one in
Bullitt
. McQueen has to be turning over
in his grave.” Marco shook his head at the lack of respect this guy had, letting
that car rust and rot. He moved forward.

She noticed how he avoided everything on the ground that
might trigger noise. Moved light for such a big man. She followed in his
footsteps.

Farther on, Marco paused, stared at the kitchen window. No
action. They waited there for a minute before moving forward, but Marco found
the back door locked. He took out his pocketknife and removed the nearly rotted
wooden frames of the closest windowpane, removed the glass, reached in, and
opened the door slowly to minimize any hinge squeak. He was good at this.

The hall and steps to the kitchen had crap everywhere.
Weight bench with dumbbells. On the floor, empty dumbbell bars and all kinds of
stacked boxes. A Coleman outdoor barbecue. Coats on a rack. Boots below. Shovels
and a rake. Barely a path to walk.

He stepped in, paused, and listened.

***

Leon was impressed with the perfection of the bullet hole,
how it had taken out the entire mole.
That’s real art,
he thought.
It
should hang in a major gallery.

He picked up Kora North’s nude. The murder/suicide would
work, of course, but he’d never killed a beautiful woman before. Not that it
would really matter. Still, if she looked anything like the photos of her, well,
it would be a challenge of sorts. He’d do it, of course. It was the profession.
Still…

But first he’d interrogate the woman. Make her feel she had
a chance if she gave him some information he could use to find Jesup. Plus some
understanding of the whole show here in paradise.

In the midst of these thoughts, something caught his
attention. He’d gotten acclimated to the sounds of the PI’s world. Now there was
something out of place.

Maybe just a bird on the roof.

Maybe wind.

Squirrel on the roof?

Or his imagination. He figured jet lag was still bothering
him and maybe affecting his awareness. He listened. Then he got up and took his
weapon and stood quiet, waiting for some indication he’d actually heard
something not quite right.

He decided to make a house check. Back door first. He moved
back into the kitchen, standing with one hip against the refrigerator, stared
out the kitchen window toward the garage, and listened. A man in his line of
work trusted nothing. Not even his senses.

Instincts are what keeps a man alive when he can’t trust
anything he hears or sees.

33

Sydney followed Marco into a tight, junk-filled hall.

Moving in carefully through the boxes, weight rack, and
garbage bags, Marco reached the second step and was almost at the floor into the
kitchen when a man appeared. He came so fast and quiet around the corner, the
two men bumped into each other with startled mutual grunts. One shot went off
and Sydney ducked as the men locked up and twisted violently into the corner.

Sydney tried to stay free of them, but in the small hallway,
that was impossible. They forced her back. She tripped, hit something round and
hard, and, trying to stop her fall, her hand struck iron and her gun went down.

No, damnit!

Marco spun, his gun hand passing by her face as he tried to
get it around, but the guy hit him hard and they locked up, knocking her into a
weight bench. The two men crashed against some boxes, and then the three of them
got locked in a violent wrestling match, stumbling over boxes, the weight bench,
junk. They slammed from wall to wall, falling into junk, headbutting, elbows
flying like sledgehammers. They were like a couple of pit bulls in a small cage,
jaws locked on each other’s throats.

The men blocking what little light there was in the battle
against the door, Sydney scrambled on the dark floor looking for the gun.
Instead, she came up with something that felt like an empty dumbbell bar. She
grabbed it in both hands, got up against the wall, and looked for a chance to
use it.

Their opponent leveraged Marco into Sydney and one of their
guns fired again, the shot so close to her ear she could feel the heat of the
bullet. The ferocious battle between the men once again knocked Sydney back and
into boxes and a bench, but she didn’t lose her grip on the metal bar.