Runner

by Thomas Perry

  Richard was listening carefully. When his father stopped talking, he realized that he had been sitting there with his mouth open. He looked at his mother and saw that her eyes were wet. She looked away from him. He said, "You said this is chess. You're offering to sacrifice a piece, aren't you?"

  "I never said that," said his father.

  "But that's what you're doing. You're putting me in the open, where this psychotic woman will concentrate on me and leave you alone."

  Andy Beale seemed to be weighing the idea, as though he hadn't thought of it before. Then he raised his head and met Richard's eyes. "Well, I suppose that's one way to look at it. An adult male usually takes whatever risks there are as a matter of course, and keeps his wife and babies and elderly parents safe. That's always been the way human societies have done things. But I suppose you probably have a new way."

  "Suddenly you're old and weak, to be protected. Ten seconds ago you were ordering me around like a general."

  "Right. And I will again. The other thing about this plan, Richard, is that it places responsibility for solving the problem on the person who caused the problem. That's you. All of this nonsense that we're trying to live through right now is because you were idiot enough to hire an underage girl and screw her until she got pregnant, but not man enough to keep her, even though she had no place to go and no money but what you were paying her. It seems to me that at the age of thirty-eight you can hardly expect your mother and father to get you out of this and risk the life of our grandson to protect you." He paused. "Now, is any of that unfair?"

  "You know it is!" Richard caught himself and tried to control the volume of his voice. "It leaves out the real reason why any of this happened. It's that you two wanted a grandchild. It had to be this one, and no other. I could have had a half dozen other children if you could just have waited a couple of years. But no, it had to be Christine's baby."

  This time Ruby spoke, her hand clutching Andy's arm to keep him quiet. "We did wait a year or two. Then we waited another year or two. We've been waiting for a grandchild since you were twenty-two years old. Sixteen years. Robert is the only chance we ever expect to have, and we're running out of time. It had to happen while we've got enough left in us to raise him, too."

  Richard's shock had been growing, and now he realized he had forgotten to blink his eyes. He blinked them five times, and it made them water. "You're not behaving like he's my son. It's him instead of me. You're making him my replacement, aren't you?"

  Andy said, "Isn't that what's supposed to happen? A man works in a business, has a child, and when the child grows up, the man steps aside and retires. It's natural, like the seasons or something. When you were old enough, I made you president of my company, and to the extent that I dared, I stepped aside. When Robert is ready, it's going to be his turn. Now we're going to bed. Be sure somebody with a gun keeps his eyes open so we live until morning."

  He stood, and Ruby got up from the couch, too. They walked to the elevator and Ruby pressed the button. The doors opened, the two stepped inside, and the doors closed. Neither of them said anything more to Richard.

  Richard walked to the couch and sat there for a few minutes, as though if he could see what they had been able to see, maybe he would understand. But he was too restless. He got up and walked to the stairs.

  Demming sat on the staircase that led up to the walkway between the two wings of the house. The architect had apparently decided that the walkway with its Plexiglas sides and its hidden supports and the glass wall created enough of an illusion of openness. The staircase where Demming sat was hemmed in by chest-high walls with railings on them.

  "What are you doing here?" Richard asked.

  "Somebody's got to be awake, and the girls were tired. If that woman is crazy enough to break in tonight, the place she'll want to go is upstairs where everybody's sleeping. There are only two ways in, and I can control them both from here." He waited. "How about you? Going to bed?"

  "Not yet. I wanted to talk to you."

  "Something new?"

  "Weren't you talking about a way to go out and get this woman, and not just sit here and hope you can shoot her in my parents' house?"

  "That's a last resort. It's better to know where someone is going to be than to know where she is."

  "You know she's going to come here?"

  "You bet. This is where she thinks we're keeping everything she wants."

  "She's winning, isn't she?"

  "What?" Demming laughed. "Hardly."

  "Come on," Richard said. "She's got us under siege. You're afraid to go outside. That's why you won't go look for her."

  Demming took a deep breath, then let it out. "When we started, there were six of us to do the looking. We're down to three—two of them women, at that. Just be patient."

  "Be patient so she can come and take her shot?"

  "Sometimes you have to win in a way you didn't choose. It feels just as good. Look, I know you're under pressure. I was sitting here while your parents were talking. I heard."

  "Be ready," Richard said. "I may have no other choice. If we can't solve this problem they really will cut me out of everything. I'll be out in the cold. I can't let that happen."

  "Andy, and then Ruby, right?"

  "Right. Him, then her, and then the baby."

  32

  Jane watched the trucks arrive at the Beale house in Rancho Santa Fe. There was no moving van, and there were no long trailers. These were four white, squared-off trucks with roll-down cargo doors and hydraulic lifts on the back, the kind used for delivering furniture or appliances.

  At six A.M. Jane had parked her SUV far up the road beyond the Beale house and walked back inside the property lines and away from the road, then climbed another oak tree near the back fence so she could see the house clearly. The trucks arrived much earlier than she had expected. They were small enough to pass through the front gate and park in a row in front of the big garage, then back up to the house for loading.

  Jane watched the doors and windows, until she was sure that none of the people she had seen at the house on her first trip were here. Then she turned her attention to the things that were being carried from the house.

  Jane could tell from the start that this was not like any other moving day she had seen. It was more like the striking of the set of a play.

  Each truck held six men. They jumped down and went to work with the kind of relentless efficiency that meant there were no watchful customers around to see them. There was little wrapping or concern for breakage. They quickly hauled a lot of furniture out to the first truck, loaded it tightly, and closed its rear door. Then two men drove it away. The other four stayed, joining their comrades in packing cardboard cartons inside the house and moving them out to the next truck, where two men stood on the truck bed to stack them from floor to ceiling from the cab to the rear door. The two rolled down the door and locked it, then drove the truck off while the second group of four stayed to keep packing and loading. The men worked with the fevered concentration of thieves. They loaded one truck at a time, then sent it off and backed the next one to the door.

  Finally she saw one of the items she had been waiting for, a large white wooden crib. The men didn't dismantle it or even remove the mattress. Two of them simply carried it out and set it on the truck bed, then went back for more. Jane saw a changing table, a stroller, a big toy box, another box that seemed to hold brightly colored decorations, possibly a mobile.

  Jane climbed down from the limb where she had been sitting and walked to the SUV, then drove toward the freeway. She passed the Beale house and saw the next truck was filling up rapidly because of the excess of laborers, so she drove ahead and waited in a mall parking lot near the freeway entrance.

  About ten minutes later one of the white trucks passed her parking lot and rolled up the ramp onto the freeway. Jane waited for thirty seconds, then went after it. She drove hard until she could see the truck, then dropped far back and merely watched fo
r it to take an exit.

  She followed the truck until it entered the front gate of a real estate development called Florentine Ranch. She could see from outside the tall fence that it was full of large new homes, all of them vaguely Mediterranean with tile roofs and white stucco sides. Each of them was placed on a lot so small that the sides of the houses shaded each other in the morning sun. She parked her car down the road a distance where there was a second gate that had no gatehouse. She waited until a resident of the community coasted to the exit, opened the gate with a remote control, and drove out. As soon as the car passed she stepped inside.

  It took her only a few minutes to find the right house. The first truck to arrive was leaving now, and the second was pulling up to the front to unload. As she walked along she studied the place. Its primary function as protection consisted of being different from the house in Rancho Santa Fe. It was the sort of place that only someone who had never broken into a house would think was safe.

  She walked back to the gate where she had entered, found the button mounted on the wall for pedestrians to open the gate, pressed it, and walked out. As she drove back to Sharon's house she thought about the ways into the Beales' new home. There were two skylights on the roof that she could probably open, at least three windows on the sides of the house that she could unlock with a length of wire looped at the end, a set of French doors with very small panes of glass. She could tape one, break it without making much noise, reach in and turn the knob. There were certainly other ways she would discover if she came closer.

  Jane went to a pay phone on a large plaza a few miles away from the development, and called Richard Beale's cell phone.

  When he answered, she said, "Hello, Richard. It's me again. I've been to see your parents' new house."

  "New house? What new house?"

  "2952 Mona Lisa Terrace. It's a little cramped and kind of boxy. Not like the last one. I liked all that glass."

  "I'll bet," he said. "This one will be a little harder for you, won't it?"

  "Everything is good for me. The big one was better for looking, but this one is better for visiting. Nobody will see me until I'm inside."

  "What do you want?"

  "You know," said Jane. "I want Christine."

  "You said that before. Why are you calling now?"

  "I sensed that I wasn't really giving you your chance before. I called before you had time to find out that Derrick J. Smith really was dead. Did you know that was Pete Tilton's real name all along—Derrick J. Smith? It was in the paper."

  "I don't know who you're talking about."

  "Enough," said Jane. "I'm going to say it this time as clearly as I can. You and your employees kidnapped Christine. Until I have her, I'll keep doing whatever it takes to get her and her baby. I want to make sure you understand what I just said—whatever it takes. There are no limits, and I will never give up. When I leave, either she'll be with me, or every one of you will be dead."

  Richard Beale's throat was so dry he couldn't swallow. His chest felt empty, as though it had been opened and everything had been scooped out of it. He didn't want to speak because he knew she would detect fear in his voice.

  "Do you have anything to tell me, Richard? Last chance."

  "Wait!" He held his breath. It took him a few seconds to get over the shock of what he had just done. He hadn't intended to say it, but he couldn't bear to let her hang up. He couldn't tell from her voice whether she really could kill him, but after listening to her he knew absolutely that she intended to try.

  "I'm waiting, but not much longer."

  "We can do this," he said. "We can solve it, make a deal."

  She said, "There is nothing in the world that you can offer me except Christine and her baby. In exchange, I'll give you absolutely nothing. Does that sound like a deal?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I'm listening," she said.

  "I want my life. That's all I'm asking for. You take Christine and the baby, and you leave me alone. Let me go on like it never happened."

  "Tell me where she is, and when I have her I'm gone."

  "Tonight. I'll bring her to the house my parents just moved out of, in Rancho Santa Fe. Let's say midnight. You call this number, and I'll release her."

  "Why midnight? Why not right now, in daylight?"

  "She's not here. She's in a resort hotel in Mexico, and it'll take hours to have somebody go down, pick her up, and bring her back."

  "What about her baby?"

  "The baby will be with her," he said.

  "All right," she said. "If I see anyone there besides you, Christine, and the baby, it's off. If I see a weapon I open fire."

  "How do I know I can trust you?"

  "You wanted a deal. This is the deal. Still want it?"

  "Yes."

  Jane hung up. He was lying, of course. She drove back to Florentine Ranch, the gated community where she had seen the trucks unloading. After about an hour, she saw the first of the trucks returning to the new house where they had just brought the furniture. Richard must be moving his parents again, to a third house. That confirmed what she had suspected from the start. Richard was not assuming that Jane, Christine, and the baby would be leaving San Diego tonight. He was preparing for the possibility that Jane would still be nearby, alive and angry.

  Jane waited for the rest of the trucks to arrive and begin loading up again, then followed the first truck as it left the gated enclave. It drove north all the way to San Juan Capistrano and up a long road to a new street that led to the summit of a hill. Jane waited for a few minutes, then drove up after them. She found the white truck being unloaded into a two-story stucco house. She memorized the address, then turned her SUV around and drove the way she had come. All the way back to the freeway she studied the route, because she knew that the next time she came here, it would be in the dark.

  33

  As Richard Beale spoke to his father on the telephone he paced from one end of his living room to the other. "You don't have to stay in San Juan Capistrano for long. I just need to have you and Mom and Robert out of here and safe until I'm sure this is over. You don't want that crazy woman climbing in your window some night, do you?"

  Andy Beale said, "We're going to do what you ask this time, Richard. One more time we'll do things your way. But this had better solve the problem for good."

  "You sound as though this is a big deal. I've already had them move your belongings out there. I don't know what difference it makes whether you're in Capistrano or San Diego."

  He could hear his father's breaths coming out of his nose in snorts. "I worked a lifetime so nobody in this family would ever have to worry about money. Now I get to have some peace and do what I want for a few years before I die. I spent a lot of money on my boat, and I like taking it out on the ocean. It isn't saving the damn world or curing the clap, but I like it. If I'm in Capistrano, getting to the harbor and back takes two extra hours."

  "Just put up with it for a few days, and then this will be over. Do something besides going out in the boat."

  "How can you even be sure she found the other house?"

  "She told me the address, and what she said made it clear she had been there to look it over."

  "I thought your little gang was going to watch the move to be sure that couldn't happen."

  "It's just one of those things. Steve was up all night, and the girls were up until at least four, and the movers got started early. By the time Steve and the girls were there, the first three trucks had already loaded and left. This time it will be safe."

  "How the fuck do you know?"

  "She was on the phone with me, and the second I hung up I called the moving people to go back out and move everything up to the Capistrano house. That way she won't know where you're staying."

  Andy Beale sounded suspicious. "And you immediately thought of San Juan Capistrano, did you? It was the first place that came into your mind. You're not just moving me way up there so I can't keep an eye on what you'
re doing in the office, are you?"

  "Jesus, Dad. Of course not." It was one of several reasons why Richard had chosen the Capistrano house, and directed the moving trucks there without clearing it with his parents first. He had been busy for much of the past month moving money to his own accounts and changing the ownership of certain pieces of property to Richard Beale Enterprises. He had covered the transfers in the books by making them trades of land he held—most of it in the desert—for land the Beale Company held along the ocean. He had done nothing illicit with the Capistrano property, so his father wouldn't get any mail from the county addressed to Richard Beale. But he genuinely didn't want his father to be able to come into the office on a whim and start noticing things.

  His father said, "Just make sure there's nothing going on there that I'm not going to like."

  "There isn't. You act as though I just drive by there once in a while to pick up a paycheck. I'm in there all day every day, Saturdays included, and a lot of Sundays. Everything that happens there is on my desk in five minutes. Now look, I'm sorry, but I've got to go. There's a lot to do by tonight." He pressed the button on his cell phone to disconnect.

  Steve Demming looked at him with suppressed irritation. "Are you ready to pay attention to this now?"

  "I'm sorry," said Richard. "I've got to be sure I have the two of them where they're supposed to be, doing what they're supposed to do."

  "I suppose you do. But you launched this operation before we even got a chance to set anything up, let alone practice. And this has to be perfect, or it isn't going to work. You've got to be prepared for the possibility that it won't."

  "How the hell do I prepare for that?"

  "We've got a couple of things. You can't have a weapon on you, so weapons will already be on the premises for you. I've put two in the house and two outside. They're loaded and the safeties are off. If you need one, you pick it up and pull the trigger. You can do that, right?"