Hero, p.23
Hero, page 23
She waited for her eyes to get adjusted to the darkness in the guesthouse. She wished for her grandmother. She had often remembered things after she’d grown up and wondered whether she had merely imagined they had come from her grandmother. Some had seemed to be things no grown-up would ever say to a child.
“We were cozy and warm and safe until one day our parents and our aunts and uncles started to whisper. If one of us wandered into a room where they were whispering, they would stop. Then one day, my mother was a different person. The other adults were still whispering. I had begun to sneak around and listen, so I already knew plenty.
“She told me more. There had been a battle miles and miles away. The best regiments, the ones who would never give up an inch of ground, were in it. Later I heard some of them really never did give up an inch. There were so many heroes that the enemy had needed to bring up earth-moving machines to bury them all.
“Afterward there were still men who taught us to fight. We had no weapons, so they taught us to make the world a weapon—dig ditches and put spikes upright in them, ruin roads, bury food, weaken the wood floors of houses so they’d fall through. Later, when people stole bullets from the bodies of enemies, we made what they call in English ‘zip guns’ from pipe and wood handles and rubber from tire inner tubes. One shot only, and then half of them blew up or fell apart. Some people learned to make bombs. They used them for traps, but some of the makers blew themselves up or burned to death. But we made the world a terrible place for invaders. It was all we had the power to do.”
Justine judged that she had remained still as long as she dared. She could see much better now. It occurred to her that she was also less frightened. She was used to night. Since the age of twenty-one she had spent more of her waking hours after dark than in sunlight. She had worked those hours to make some famous client or other safe to step into the electric glare that came with attention. She had been good at taking them out of the light with her afterward.
Justine had already thoroughly searched Joe’s bedroom, but now she went looking for other places where he might have hidden something. She was hoping to find a gun, longing for one, imagining one as though to prepare herself to detect its shape. She was choosing to search in places where a person might hide one—in a drawer under dish towels, in a covered pot or pan, under a couch, in the back of a file drawer. She opened the coat closet and ran a hand over the surface of the high shelf, and felt inside the three shoe boxes he had on the floor. She swept her hand among the jackets hanging on hangers to detect anything hard and heavy.
Justine knew that people tended to hide things as close to them as possible, with the bedroom the favorite place. She could barely accept the fact that she had been luckless in her search for weapons, but she had no more time. She would have to use what there was. She went to the butcher block on the kitchen counter and pulled a few knives out part way to learn what was beneath the identical handles. She rejected the bread knife, the chopper, and both the large and small butcher knives. She selected the boning knife, which had a narrow, rigid blade about eight inches long. It was very sharp, had a pointed tip, and a bit of a widening at the bottom of the handle to give her fingers some hope of a stable grip.
Now she was armed about as well as she could have been three thousand years ago. Maybe she could do better. The guesthouse was a reflection of Joe Alston. He was the kind of man who was able to throw a laptop and a change of clothes into a bag and go find out about something happening ten thousand miles away. He wasn’t very interested in possessions. When he could, he put them in drawers and closets so he didn’t have to look at them. What he had that she might be able to use was a friend who wasn’t like that.
He was living in the guesthouse of James Peter Turpin, who was a producer and director. Joe had told her nothing of the story, but she’d met Turpin once at some event. She’d noticed the two men were about the same age, were both physically fit but no longer athletes. They had the same Norhteastern inflection. She guessed they had been friends somewhere before they’d both reached LA—probably in college or some early job.
James Turpin was rich, and he was famous in the only way that mattered to serious men. People who made a difference in the entertainment business knew him, but to other people his name was just one of fifty or a hundred on a rolling list of credits. Looking at the house and grounds told her that Turpin was not Spartan like Joe. He bought cars and furniture, had people keep every plant trimmed and watered, the buildings in repair and painted.
He had made a few successful movies in which the characters were all bent on murdering each other, so it was possible that somebody might have given him something dangerous as a souvenir. Male movie people were always doing that kind of thing—giving a sword or dagger or something that had been used as a prop to the person who had made the luck that was enhancing the others’ lives. She didn’t dare waste her emotion hoping for a pistol, but she knew Turpin had made a movie set in the Amazon that had featured blowguns with poisoned darts. Even one of those would be an improvement over what she had. She had followed that train of thought as a way of calming herself, but it was so close to the truth that it made her admit to herself that with the passing of time she was beginning to feel afraid.
When Joe had driven her here the first time, she had seen that the far space in the garage had been occupied by an antique sports car that was half hidden by a dust cover, probably something Turpin had bought intending to have it rebuilt. It showed her that he had enough of that rich people whimsy that he might own something else she could use.
She moved across the dark living room to the side facing the main house, unlocked the door leading to the pool, and stood motionless for a minute to be sure that her killer hadn’t arrived yet. Then she opened the door and stepped out. She made her way in the silent, dark night to the side door of the garage. She had seen Joe open this door without a key, so she entered and closed the door. There was a light switch on the wall, so she turned it on. There was a long workbench along the back wall, and on it were battery-operated power tools, all charging from a row of outlets on the wall. They were not the sort of mismatched tools that workmen bought, one at a time over a period of years as they were needed. These were a set, all bought at once. There was also a lot of irrelevant stuff in this area—a couple of cigars and a pack of matches, baseball caps on hooks, some receipts, a putty knife, a bottle opener in the shape of a hula dancer.
She walked to the old car parked in the far space. She pulled back the tarp. The finish made her pause. It was dark blue. The car must be about ninety years old, but it gleamed. She knew it was the kind of paint that had been sprayed on and dried, then rubbed by hand with extremely mild abrasives, painted again and rubbed again, maybe a dozen layers so it had depth, like a gemstone. But pulling back the dust cover allowed her to see something else. Under the chassis was a large sheet metal pan, about an inch and a half deep. It was obviously placed there to catch oil drips. The pan was large, probably manufactured for professional shops, not for a sportscar that wasn’t much bigger than her own compact sedan. She noticed that there were some other things in the big garage. There was a low rectangular device about the size of a steamer trunk that she judged to be an emergency generator. It wasn’t hooked up to anything, so it must be here for the aftermath of the giant earthquake everybody had been waiting for since she was a child. A few feet away were two large metal gas cans, and she supposed they were for the generator.
Her killer was coming. She had made sure that he knew where to find her, and he was almost certain to be here before daylight. She had to use what she could find here. She looked at the wall above. There were two black heavy-duty extension cords about eighty to one hundred feet long hanging there on hooks. They probably had something to do with the generator too. She unhooked one and took it to the workbench. She used a pair of wire cutters to snip the socket off the end, and then split the two copper wires that were exposed, and stripped about four inches of the insulation off them.
She went back to the old car. The front was facing out, so she knelt in front of it and dragged the sheet metal pan out from under the car and stood the pan on its side against the garage door. She found a two-wheel dolly, brought it back, got it under the pan, and wheeled it out the side door to the yard.
She knew exactly where she wanted it. There was a space where the path from the garage to the main house narrowed and ran between the pool and the tropical garden. She placed the pan there. Then she stuck the bare wires in the pan and held them in position with small clamps from the workbench. She used a trowel to dig a shallow trench through the tropical garden and lay the long extension cord in it, then covered the cord with a little of the dirt. She took it all the way to the guesthouse, and left the plug directly under the outdoor socket. She used the hose to fill the pan with water, and then covered the pan with the dust cover from the sportscar so the water wouldn’t show. Then she went to the green trash can to see if there were any grass clippings. There were. She rolled the can to the pan, scooped out the grass clippings she could reach, and sprinkled them over the dust cover, then rolled the can back to its space behind the garage.
She looked at what she had done. All of the things she had found—the drip pan, the dust cover, the extension cords, and everything else, were pieces of luck. They weren’t major ones, but they gave her more of a chance than she’d had. The last preparation, the one that made her most nervous, was the electricity. She walked to the side of the guesthouse, picked up the plug of the extension cord between her thumb and forefinger, placed her feet on the single flagstone that kept her from making contact with the ground, and pushed the plug into the socket. Nothing happened that she could see, but she knew everything had happened.
Her killer was smart. He was well-practiced and calm. When he hadn’t succeeded right away, he’d immediately thought of other ways to get to her. In persistence, at least, he was a bit like Justine. She stepped back into the garage and looked at her watch. It was after three A.M. She had worked quickly and efficiently, but she and her killer had used up the night. In the next hour or so, her killer would be coming for her. This time he would find her.
She took one more look around the garage for things that might help her. She had seen the killer a few times and tried to develop strategies for evading him or outthinking him. She had thought about him for days—the way he looked, the way he killed and kept from being caught. There was no more time for Justine—or for Anna. She saw a carpenter’s hammer among the tools hanging on the wall. She took it down and tested its balance and weight. It was good. Almost any average-sized man could kill a woman with his hands. A woman swinging a hammer like this one would be a very different story.
Justine turned off the light, stepped outside, went along the pool deck to the end of the guesthouse, turned to walk under the umbrella shapes of the big trees where the shadows were deepest, and then between the tall green shrubs that had been planted for privacy. When she reached the front of the big house she turned again and found a sheltered spot beside a hedge, set down her hammer and boning knife, lay behind them on the grass, and stayed there, watching the street for the arrival of her killer.
31
Sealy drove up the quiet street toward the corner with only his fog lights on. He switched off even those and let the car’s momentum carry it into the turn onto the street where Joseph Alston lived. He accelerated out of the turn and took his foot off the pedal to coast the last block in silence. As soon as he spotted the right house he pulled over to the curb and parked.
He looked at the clock set into the dashboard. It was already after three A.M. The delay he had run into had been maddening. By the time he had walked back to the lot a couple of blocks from the hotel to get his rental car, things had changed. While he’d been chasing Justine Poole, the police had received so many reinforcements that they had greatly widened their security perimeter and made it impervious to vehicle traffic. Hours earlier, when he had called in the bomb threat, he had been certain that his car had been parked far enough away to be outside any perimeter they might set up.
The phone conversation had been a tricky one. He had needed to tell them enough to persuade the bomb squad that he could do real damage. He had needed to distinguish himself from the lunatics and from the amateurs who used black powder or dynamite. He had mentioned a few ingredients of military-grade high explosives. That had brought out many more backup units and convinced the commanders that they needed a much wider margin of safety. He had needed to wait over two hours for the police to finish their full search of the hotel and roll up the yellow “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape before they opened the block where his car was parked.
The bomb threat call was an instance of Sealy getting in his own way, but it had happened long before the shift in the current of the universe. Things had begun to improve while he was at the hotel.
Since then, it seemed to him that the universe had begun to correct the imbalance that had allowed the girl bodyguard to survive this long. Sealy had failed at everything tonight and risked making Mr. Conger cut his contract short, but here he was.
Justine Poole was undoubtedly in that house over there, and after all the running she’d done tonight she was almost certainly asleep. The man who had picked her up on the street had been tall and slim and appeared to be in his thirties. He had to be Joseph Alston. He was probably her boyfriend or somebody who wanted to be, so Sealy had to be prepared to find him in the same bedroom and needed to be prepared to kill him too. Mr. Conger would certainly not consider him a bystander but an unavoidable obstacle. It would take two shots instead of one; not a big deal.
Sealy made one change. He had been planning to take the .357 Magnum revolver for this visit and use it on the girl so he wouldn’t have to deal with brass being ejected all over the place by the Glock. Now he decided it would be best to take only the Glock. It was lighter and slimmer than the .357 Magnum, and even the two spare loaded magazines wouldn’t hamper his movement because he could separate them in two pockets. He reached into the console between the front seats, took out the Glock, and put it in his right jacket pocket.
It seemed a bitter irony that after an eight-year career of extreme care and professionalism, he found himself suspected by a repeat client of having become overconfident and careless. He gave his head a small involuntary shake and reached back into the console to adjust the position of the revolver. He wanted the muzzle pointed downward and the grips upward just under the lid of the console. He wanted the pistol there for insurance. There was a possibility, however remote, that he might be driving away in a few minutes with an empty weapon or feeling the need to make someone think he was, when he actually had a loaded revolver ready to go and in easy reach.
He also had a knife in his pants pocket and a strangling cord with two wooden handles in case he had the chance to work silently. Working in a big city meant there was always somebody close enough to hear. He looked at his car’s clock. He had been parked here for almost five minutes. The average emergency call to the police brought a car in about that many minutes. They always said it was three, but it was more like six. He gave it another two minutes before he was sure nobody had seen him and called. This was just another item on the checklist in his head.
He opened the car door. The dome light didn’t go on because he had turned it off before he’d headed to the hotel. This time was going to be it—the final visit. He got out and closed the door without slamming it, locked it with his key fob, and walked toward the house.
Justine lay on the grass and watched her killer walking toward the house. What the hell could he have been doing sitting in his car all that time? He had looked as though he was busy moving things here and there.
And then she knew. He was a pro. He had not been doing something stupid like using his cell phone to talk to somebody. He had been preparing his equipment. He’d been doing what she would have done—putting each item he needed in the right place on his body so his hand would go right to it when he needed it.
It was at that moment that she understood something else about him. Yes, he had been loading his pockets with the things he would need. But he had been fiddling around in the car so long because he had equipment that he wasn’t bringing. What would that be? She didn’t dare to let her mind jump at what she wished it would be. Instead, she left it open for her observations and instincts to work their way to it. She kept her eyes on him as he walked the last stretch of sidewalk, crossed the street to James Peter Turpin’s driveway, and turned into it.
He was wearing a lightweight black windbreaker, dark pants, a dark-colored baseball cap, and a black surgical mask. She knew he’d worn it to keep his white skin from reflecting light and making him visible. She regretted that she didn’t have a mask too.
Justine slowly and quietly emerged from her position among the shrubbery and stood up, listening. She heard no sound of her killer backtracking to see if he was being followed or hurrying forward to come around the house to appear behind her. She went away from the house to the front gate, out to the sidewalk and across the street. She made the rest of her trip by maintaining the maximum distance from the house, ready to hide or run or freeze. If he saw her now, the hammer and boning knife she’d brought were nothing. If he shot her from the driveway, they would just be two things to drop when she fell.
When she reached his car, she took out her phone. The license plate was undoubtedly stolen, and she knew she was taking a risk, but she had a faint hope that she could leave one more lead for the cops if she died. She set her phone’s camera, moved her body so the faint light from the street lamp would not be blocked, and took a picture, then ducked below the car’s side, crept forward, waited, and listened, holding the hammer and knife. She sent the photograph to Detective Kunkel’s phone. She was protected, for the moment, by the car’s engine block and right wheel.
