Double Take

by Catherine Coulter

  Pallack said, “Yes?”

  Pallack listened for some time, said finally, “I don’t care if she is staying at the Sherlock house, there’s no reason to go after her now. Dammit, you shouldn’t be calling me here. A public phone? Still—look, now that I have August’s journals, our business is at an end. You should leave San Francisco as soon as possible.

  “Dammit, Julia Ransom isn’t important. I don’t want to have to deal with any fallout from that. No, I don’t want to see you tonight.”

  Pallack’s fingers tapped impatiently on the desktop as he listened.

  “You’ve lost perspective, Xavier. Listen to me, go to Costa Rica, lie on the beach. Enjoy your money. It’s over, do you hear me?”

  Pallack jerked the phone away. Dix supposed he’d been hung up on. Pallack slowly put down the phone. Dix saw him stare at it, shaking his head.

  Through the slit in the drapes, Dix saw Charlotte walk back into the study, wearing a nightshirt that read across the front I Only Swing Left. The shirt ended at the top of her thighs. Those weren’t Christie’s legs, not the same shape at all. “Thomas, was that David?”

  Pallack said irritably, “No, it wasn’t David.”

  “I do wish he’d call. It’s been over two days now.”

  “Yes, I’m worried now as well. Maybe we should hire someone to look for him.” Pallack struck his fist on his desktop. “If only I could convince that psycho to simply leave San Francisco. But he’s fixated on Julia. Makepeace just called and wanted to meet to discuss it again, but I said no.”

  She started wringing her hands, pacing back and forth in front of his desk. “He won’t stop, you know he won’t. I don’t think he can.”

  “Look, as I told you, the police have only a whole lot of coincidences, bits and pieces, conjecture, but nothing to stick. If Makepeace kills Julia, he kills her. It won’t matter, not in the long run. They still won’t have anything on us.”

  She didn’t look like she believed him, but she stopped her pacing and crossed her arms over her breasts, hugging herself.

  “What about the alarm system?”

  “The guy at Berenger Security said they’d get the system up again, said they’d do a thorough investigation since it was most of the building this time. They got hold of three of our neighbors, two others weren’t home, but none of them had even noticed. They said they couldn’t understand how it happened.”

  “It’s going on midnight, Thomas. You’re tired, come to bed. There’s nothing more to be done tonight.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Dix heard the computer click off.

  The lights went out. Their footsteps receded. Dix waited, listening, for another ten minutes. He’d heard enough, seen enough.

  Dix heard no sound at all. The Pallacks were upstairs in the bedroom. And he was alone downstairs.

  Dix eased out from behind the curtain and felt his way slowly around chairs, lamps, and a sofa until he got to the door. He looked out at empty darkness. He took several more steps, paused, listened intently again. He saw the red blink of the alarm system on the hallway wall. The security company had gotten the system running again. Thank the good Lord they didn’t suspect a burglar yet. Maybe they would, once they investigated. All he had to do was disarm it and leave.

  He stepped down the hallway.

  “Stop right there or I’ll shoot you!”

  Dix froze. Thomas Pallack stood not more than three feet behind him. Dix knew he couldn’t see him clearly, didn’t know who he was. He pictured Pallack, about four inches shorter than he was, pictured him holding the gun in his right hand, about chest high, straight out. It was either run like mad and pray he didn’t get shot in the back, or—

  Dix whirled around, kicked out with his right foot, and clipped the gun in Pallack’s hand. He heard it land hard on the oak floor and slide, until it finally hit the baseboard with a hard thud.

  Dix was on him in the next instant, one clean shot to his jaw and Pallack was out. He leaped up, and stared down at the shadowy form of the old man who’d murdered his wife, and was fiercely glad he hadn’t run. He heard Charlotte yell from the upstairs landing, “Thomas, what’s wrong?”

  An upstairs light came on. There was no time to deal with the alarm—Dix was out the door in a couple of seconds, the alarm ringing wildly in his ears. He knew that with the alarm system blaring, the cops would be there fast. He bolted down the stairs and out the front door.

  He ran, hugging the trees and shadows. He heard a cop car. Not more than two minutes had passed. Yep, the cops were fast to a 911 from an upscale neighborhood.

  He waited, listening to the doors of the cop car open and slam shut. He heard men’s voices, running feet. He waited another minute. Just as he was ready to run again to his car, he heard a deep voice say close to his ear, “I don’t think you want to move at all. I don’t know who you are, but I’ll find out soon enough, won’t I?”

  A cop, Dix thought, and relaxed a bit. This guy was good, moved as silent as the moon climbing up the sky. Without turning, he said, “Look, I can explain this. Call Captain Frank Paulette of the SFPD. He’ll vouch for me.” He started to turn, to face the cop, let him see he wasn’t a threat to him, but the man said, “Move again and you’ll get a bullet through your ear, you got me?”

  “Okay, I’m not about to move. I’m Dixon Noble, a sheriff from Virginia. I’m working with the local police. My wallet is in my jacket pocket. If you pull it out you can see my driver’s license.”

  “I have a feeling if I go hunting for your wallet you’re going to come at me. You figure you’re a big guy, strong, ready to go, ready to tune me up. With my luck lately, you just might manage it.”

  Dix felt the gun muzzle press harder against the back of his neck. “That surprises you, doesn’t it, that I can tell what you’d do by only looking at you? I don’t have a silencer on my gun and I really don’t want to risk the noise, not that you’d be around to hear it, of course.”

  There was something in his voice, something faintly British, and Dix knew in that instant who it was.

  The man behind him laughed. Dix felt the flutter of his breath in his ear.

  “Imagine a cop breaking into a private citizen’s house—and it’s not just any house, is it? It’s a penthouse owned by that distinguished gentleman Thomas Pallack. Now that doesn’t look too good, does it, Sheriff?”

  Dix said nothing.

  “Ah, you finally figured it out, huh?” The butt of a gun came down hard behind Dix’s right temple. Dix didn’t hit the ground; he wasn’t completely out. He felt the man lift him in a firefighter’s carry, and he wanted to puke with his head dangling down. “Now, I’ll take us back to Mr. Pallack’s little house in the clouds.”

  The cops, Dix thought, his brain nearly gone, surely the cops would see him.

  But they didn’t.

  He passed out cold when Makepeace started climbing up the stairs to the sixth floor.

  CHAPTER 59

  Dix heard distant voices, then a woman’s voice closer—it sounded a bit like Christie, but it was Charlotte Pallack’s voice. He felt bile rise in his throat and wanted to gag, but he didn’t. He swallowed and kept swallowing until it eased. No way was he going to vomit. He didn’t move.

  He heard Thomas Pallack’s angry voice, then Makepeace’s, but he couldn’t make out the words. Slowly, his mind cleared. But it wasn’t the time to raise his head and say hi to everyone. He didn’t move, he just listened.

  “Why the hell did you bring him here? Are you insane?”

  “The cops had already been in here, I saw them leave. They were out front, not in back anymore. So I got the sheriff in through the service entrance to the stairs. I thought it was a good way to make a point, don’t you think, Pallack? I thought you might want to pay me to take him away.”

  “Do you have any idea who this is?”

  “He said he was Dixon Noble, a sheriff from Virginia. Why did he break in here?”

  “It doesn’t con
cern you. Jesus, the damned man was carrying an arsenal,” Pallack said, and looked down at his desk, where Makepeace had piled the sheriff’s weapons.

  “He was ready for business. A cell phone, one big Beretta, one little derringer in an ankle holster, and a tough little five-inch Fällkniven, a fine knife.”

  “It’s a knife, so what?”

  Dix wondered if Makepeace was going to take the knife his father had given him when he’d turned sixteen.

  “One should enjoy fine tools, Pallack.”

  Dix could hear Pallack prowling, back and forth, in front of him. “This is all we need, this fool sheriff playing vigilante. At least he didn’t get into the safe.”

  Charlotte asked, “But why did he break in? What could he have hoped to find?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Charlotte. The sheriff wanted to find the bracelet. If you hadn’t worn the damned thing—”

  “Then why did you give me that bracelet for a wedding present? Of course I’d wear it, for God’s sake.”

  “The sheriff broke in here to find a bracelet?” Makepeace said in a bemused voice. “What bracelet? Why should he want this bracelet so much?”

  Charlotte ignored him. “Thomas, you didn’t even bother to tell me it belonged to another woman until after the sheriff saw it on my wrist and recognized it. Why didn’t you tell me that when you gave it to me?”

  “Like you would have appreciated wearing another woman’s jewelry. Look, it doesn’t matter, Charlotte. I wasn’t really the one who wanted you to have that bracelet, it was—never mind. What’s done is done.”

  But Charlotte wasn’t buying it. “It was your little joke on me, wasn’t it? Yours or that bitch mother of yours.”

  “Don’t call her that! She isn’t—wasn’t a bitch. Damnation, I should have known you’d never have my mother’s heart, or her intelligence. You were supposed to find out what the damned sheriff knew, pretend you were interested in him, but did you manage it? Of course you didn’t. And look what you’ve brought us now—the sheriff breaking into my home.”

  “Again, why is the sheriff so interested in this bracelet?” Makepeace asked.

  Charlotte said in a flat voice, “It belonged to the sheriff’s wife.”

  “Shut up, Charlotte.”

  “Why? It doesn’t matter if Makepeace knows.”

  “Did the sheriff find the bracelet?” Makepeace asked.

  “No, of course he didn’t find it,” Pallack said. “I threw it in the bay an hour after Charlotte told me he’d recognized it.”

  “So the reason this guy came to San Francisco was because of this bracelet? But how did he even know about the bracelet?”

  “It was a piece of bad luck,” Pallack said.

  “What’d you do, Pallack? Kill his bloody wife, decide you liked her bracelet, and take it off her?”

  Dix thought his heart would stop. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, sit there and pretend he was still unconscious. He wanted to yell at Pallack to answer Makepeace, but Pallack ignored him.

  “So this guy has nothing to do with Julia Ransom?” Makepeace asked.

  “No,” Charlotte said.

  Pallack said, his voice low and vicious, “If only the cops had arrested Julia Ransom for murdering her husband, but you didn’t leave enough evidence to point at her. If you’d done it right, found those journals in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to call you again.”

  “And if I weren’t here again, the real blackmailer, Soldan Meissen, would still be bleeding you dry.”

  “All right. Yes, you’re right,” Pallack said. “Now you’ve only got one more thing to do, and that’s get rid of the sheriff. Then you leave town. No more questions, do you understand? Just do what I tell you.”

  Dix could swear he felt the air change, and it was coming from Makepeace. Was Pallack nuts? Talking down to a psychopath who’d just as soon slit his throat as breathe?

  Makepeace gave a clipped laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. It made Dix’s skin crawl. His head was clear now. He could focus, at last. Makepeace had pulled his arms around the back of a chair and tied his wrists. He began to work the ropes.

  “So what if the sheriff did find them? Those journals?”

  “He couldn’t have gotten into the safe even if he’d found it. The journals are there, exactly where I put them.”

  “I don’t know why you still have them. First you believed Julia Ransom had the journals and I burned her house down to make sure they weren’t found. Then you told me it was Soldan Meissen who’d stolen them from Ransom’s house all along. Why not just destroy them? Are you planning to read them like bedtime stories?”

  Dix felt Pallack’s fury at that dig. One sharp-edged moment passed, then another. But he said only, “If you’d found the journals when you garroted Ransom like you were supposed to, none of this would have happened.”

  “The journals weren’t there. I told you that then. If they had been, I would have found them.”

  “Soldan found them, didn’t he?”

  Dix pictured Makepeace, a smile on his mouth that should be scaring the crap out of Pallack. Oddly, he sounded amused. “Yeah, Soldan was so good he didn’t even know I was in his ridiculous sheik’s room standing behind him, reading his stupid book over his shoulder. He didn’t look up until I had the wire around his skinny throat. Do you know he’d wrapped the journals in a red silk cloth and just shoved them under that low table? Lots of confidence. The fool.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s over now. Forget the rest of it, Makepeace. Take the sheriff out of here, and make sure he’s never found.”

  There was a pause, then Makepeace said, “I’ll remove him for you, bury him deep, maybe in one of the forests up in western Marin. Then I’ll kill that Ransom bitch and I’ll be through here, Pallack.”

  Pallack’s fist hit his desktop. “Dammit, Julia doesn’t matter now. She doesn’t need to be dead—I don’t care if she lives to be a hundred.”

  Dix heard Makepeace say very quietly, “I do. How are you going to speak to your parents now that Meissen’s dead?”

  “Only August spoke to them, never Meissen. He was repeating conversations with my parents from August’s journal notes.” His voice filled with grief. “My poor mother has to think I’ve forgotten about her. Six months now without a word from me. She must be distraught.”

  “I didn’t think anything could surprise me anymore, but you do,” Makepeace said. “I didn’t imagine a rich guy like you could believe in that crap.”

  Dix heard a sneer in Pallack’s voice. “You think I’m a credulous fool, do you? How many times have you tried to kill Julia Ransom, Makepeace? What makes you think you’re smart enough to kill her?”

  Dix wanted to yell at Pallack to shut up. Didn’t he realize he was putting the spurs in so deep Makepeace wouldn’t stop until Julia and Cheney were dead? And him too?

  “Since you’re paying me handsomely, Pallack, I’m smart enough not to kill you. For one hundred thousand dollars, I’ll take care of the sheriff. Then I’m heading over to Judge Sherlock’s house to take care of Julia Ransom.”

  Dix heard the surprise in Pallack’s voice. “How’d you find out where she is?”

  “I followed those FBI agents. I saw her through the window with that other agent, Stone.”

  Charlotte said, “So what are you going to do? Set off another bomb? Blow up Judge Sherlock’s house with everyone in it?”

  Dix lifted his head a fraction to take in the three of them. He saw Makepeace’s dead eyes glitter. “Hey, not a bad idea, wiping out all the losers at once.”

  “You go murdering a bunch of FBI agents,” Pallack said, “kill a federal judge, his wife, and whoever else is staying in that house, the cops will hunt you forever.”

  “Let them hunt, they’ve done it for years. No cop in the world will ever get close to me. They won’t get you either, Pallack, if you’re as smart as you think you are.”

  Charlotte said, "They’re too close now. Kill Julia if you m
ust, but leave the rest of them alone.”

  “Look, Makepeace, I’ll pay you the hundred thousand to get rid of the sheriff but you must promise to leave Julia Ransom alone.”

  There was thick hot silence.

  Makepeace was looking over Thomas Pallack’s left shoulder. He said at last, “We have a deal. Wire the money to the same bank account you wired the other million.”

  Dix sensed Makepeace was looking at him now, deciding how to get him out of here, where to kill him.

  Dix was wrong. Makepeace wasn’t finished enjoying himself. “Do you know, after I took Ransom’s journals, I found I had a little down time? So I did a bit of reading. In this one section, Charlotte, I read that you look just like Thomas’s mother—like the other woman did—and I found myself wondering what it was all about. Now that I’ve met the sheriff, I’m thinking his wife had the misfortune of looking like Pallack’s mother too. Was she the woman Ransom wrote about in his journals?”

  There was stone silence until Charlotte said, “Yeah, can you believe it? Two of us who looked like that old witch. Only the sheriff’s wife, Christie, wouldn’t go away with him, so he killed her.”

  “Shut up, Charlotte!”

  “I really don’t care if you whacked the First Lady, Pallack. But I do have to tell you—the whole thing with your dead mother— it’s sick, crazy, you know?”

  “You call me crazy? You’re a hired assassin, a psychopath. And I didn’t kill Christie, it was an accident, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  Makepeace actually laughed. “Maybe she thought you were a little old for her, Pallack. You think?”

  Dix’s wrists were raw. He felt the stickiness of his own blood, smelled it. He realized that more than anything he wanted his bloody hands around Pallack’s fat neck. He wanted to kill him the same way he’d killed Christie. He heard Pallack say in a sad, dreamy voice, “I promised her the earth, but she wouldn’t be reasonable. She tried to get away from me. I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident. My mother wanted to know about her, through August, and he knew. I didn’t want him dead either, I needed him, but I had no choice. None of it was my fault.”