by Thomas Perry
“Because I believe that for now you’ll be safer here than running. And if I’m here, I can push some leads that I don’t think the cops can follow.”
“At the hospital?”
“To start.”
“You’re going to get in to see her by pretending you’re still a cop, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. I’m pretty good at it.”
“Jack, even if you fool everybody and get in, she’s not going to talk to you. She hates you. She hates me.”
“Right now I’ll bet she hates the man who shot her even more.”
Till drove from Ventura Boulevard up Vineland. When he turned right onto Riverside for the last few blocks toward the hospital, he could see the lights of several police cars and a couple of ambulances blinking on Riverside. There were other emergency vehicles parked on the left side of the street. “There’s something up ahead,” he said.
Till drove up to the area, and found that the police were waving cars on, keeping them moving. He pulled off Riverside at Ponca, parked, and got out. “Come on. I don’t want you alone in the car.”
They walked across the street, and made their way through the crowd of people who had gathered. There was more police tape, and there were police officers busy working the area as a crime scene. There were two bodies lying in different parts of the alley. Till asked the man beside him, “What happened?”
“Those guys got shot a while ago. See?” He pointed at the bodies.
“What was it, a robbery?”
“I don’t really know. I heard it was a carjacking.”
Till edged closer to the nearest body. The police forensic people were kneeling on the rough pavement beside it, trying to measure angles and examine the ground for evidence. Till took Wendy’s arm. “Look at this.”
“I don’t want to.”
He pulled her closer. “Look.”
She said, “My God! It’s that guy. The one in Morro Bay.”
Till pointed down the alley, where other officers were working beside a second body. “There’s the man from the locker room.” He took Wendy’s arm. “Start walking.” They began to walk toward the street. “I don’t know who did this to them, but he didn’t do it for us.”
40
PAUL AND SYLVIE TURNER were already over the six-foot fence and walking on Scott Schelling’s smooth, level green lawn. It was pleasant walking here because even at night it was easy to tell that nobody but the men who cut and rolled it had ever walked here, and because the fence was lined with taller hedges that made it safe for even Paul and Sylvie to stand erect as they made their way across the lawn. The two strolled toward the house, then stopped a distance from it and circled it slowly.
Their first stop was the garage. Paul took a small Maglite out of his pocket and shone it through the window at the side. He whispered, “There’s a sports car, and a Lincoln Town Car.”
“Good. He’s probably home.”
Paul nodded, and they resumed their walk. There were a number of procedures that they followed without discussion. They stayed ten or twelve feet away from the house while they studied it, so they were outside the range of motion detectors that could trigger floodlights. They checked the eaves and peaks of the house for surveillance cameras, although they didn’t matter so much at this hour because nobody would be awake to watch the monitors. They examined the shrubs and perennials for signs of electrical wiring, checked the window screens for conductive mesh and the glass for silver wire. The doors were sturdy, well-made, and equipped with heavy gleaming hardware.
When they went around the corner, there was a metallic jingling, and then the sound of quick footsteps as a dog bounded across the lawn toward them. He was big, a retriever of some kind, and in a moment he was on them, panting and jumping. Paul petted him, then patted his shoulder, hard, whispering, “Good boy. Good boy,” as he took out his gun. He held the silencer a few inches behind the dog’s head and fired, then watched the dog fall to the grass and held the gun closer to fire a second round. Paul grasped the dog’s hind foot and dragged it into a clump of bushes.
“The dog’s our way in,” Sylvie whispered. “I’ll bet there’s a doggy door.”
“Let’s take a look.”
They continued their circuit until they came to the kitchen door in the back of the house, where there was a pet entrance cut into the lower panel. Paul and Sylvie knelt on the back steps to examine it.
“This has got to work. The alarm system is all pretty well wired,” said Sylvie.
“And there are video cameras,” said Paul. “We’ll have to find the deck and erase the tapes or take the chips later.”
Sylvie reached out and tested the pet door. “I’m sure I can fit through.”
“It won’t be wired, but we have to be careful about noise.”
“Of course. And internal traps and electric eyes. You’re sweet to worry.”
“What are you going to do when you’re in?”
“Wake him up, make him turn off the alarm, and let you in.”
“Good. Warn him what happens if he pushes a call-the-cops code.” He leaned close and kissed her cheek. “I love you, baby.”
Paul put on his thin kidskin gloves while Sylvie did the same. Paul lifted the clear plastic flap away from the dog door, held it up and whispered, “Good luck, baby.”
“Thanks.” Sylvie slipped her arms through the opening, shrugged to get her head and shoulders in, turned to the side to get her hips in, then turned the rest of the way to sit and pull her legs and feet in.
The kitchen was dark and quiet. She listened to the sounds of the building while her eyes accustomed themselves to the dark. Then she got up, took out her gun, and began to explore.
She found a dining room with a crystal chandelier and a long formal table and antique sideboards that didn’t seem contemporary enough for a music executive. The living room was divided into two carpeted areas with two separate sets of white furniture, with a clear space of marble floor down the center, which told her that Scott Schelling passed through the room only on his way to and from the front door. She followed a corridor off the living room and found a large den, a media room with thick leather theater seats, a huge flat-screen television set, smaller monitors, and lots of speakers and control boxes for various interlocking sound systems. She made her way back down the long corridor past the living room and into a small gym. It had many of the machines and pieces of equipment that Sylvie’s first husband, Darren, had bought her, but the set of weights was bigger and heavier than hers.
She had reached the private areas of the house, so she knew she must be coming closer to the bedrooms. The gym had a door that led to a shower room, and on the far end of it was a door to a conventional bathroom, and then another door to a large walk-in closet and dressing room. She could see built-in dressers and cabinets and rows of men’s suits on hangers, rows of shoes on shelves.
Sylvie edged close to the next door, her gun ready, and stepped out suddenly, the gun aimed at the bed. But the bed was still made, the covers perfectly smooth. There was a desk to her right near the wall, so she came close. There was nothing on its surface—no papers, no wallet or keys, no sunglasses or coins he might have left there when he went to bed. She looked at her watch. It was very late—after two. He should be home, if he was coming.
Maybe he slept in another bedroom. She made her way out the door and down the hall, looking in each bedroom. When she had seen them all, she walked back toward the kitchen. On the far side of it was a separate corridor she had missed the first time; it led to a suite for a maid. She opened the door carefully and explored it. The closet had a woman’s clothes in it, and there were Spanish novellas on the bookshelves, but the bed had not been slept in. In the maid’s bathroom, Sylvie studied the louvered window above the shower for a moment, then returned to the kitchen and knelt by the dog door. “Paul.”
“What did you find?”
“Not him. He’s not here. There’s nobody in the house. The maid seems to
get the weekend off. I’ve been in every room. Time for you to come in.”
“How? I’ll never fit.”
“Come around to the end of the house by the garage. I’ll show you.”
Paul went around the house to the far end, and when he arrived, Sylvie was already taking the strips of glass out of the louvered window. He pushed the last three out, handed them in to Sylvie, and climbed through the empty window frame into the shower. They replaced the glass and stepped out of the shower.
“Where should we start?” he said.
“The kitchen’s right down here.” She led him down a short corridor into the kitchen.
He shone his flashlight on the long granite counters, the copper pots hanging on the walls, the giant sinks and stove. “Nice.”
“Let’s find the money,” she said.
The kitchen was rich in places for hiding things: the refrigerator, inside pots and pans, in the removable backs of electronic devices, in cabinets and drawers. They found nothing, and moved to the next room. Paul stood on the dining-room table to see if anything could be hidden in the chandelier. They looked underneath tables and sideboards. In the living room, they pulled back runners and moved paintings to search for secret compartments, took out drawers. They checked inside the piano, then moved on.
It was nearly dawn before they finished. They had found seven thousand dollars in cash, a few thousand dollars’ worth of watches and other jewelry, two loaded pistols, and a short-barreled pump shotgun. They had not found the million dollars that Scott Schelling had promised them.
“What do you think?” Sylvie asked. “Do we give up and go?”
“He’s not going to get Wendy Harper for free. He made an arrangement, and he’s going to pay us.”
41
WHILE THEY HAD a drink in Scott Schelling’s suite, Jill Klein introduced Scott to a whole set of grievances against her husband. Fifteen years ago, Jill had been a young, extremely pretty woman who worked for a subsidiary called Carbondale Industries in Chicago. Ray Klein told her he had come to the moment in his life when he wanted only to step back from running the conglomerate and enjoy life with a woman like her. He told her he would always cherish her and be faithful to her. Every one of his statements had been a deliberate lie.
“Now he’s got another new girl—about the hundredth one—but this one is much worse. He’s promoted her to vice president and travels with her, like a corporate wife. It’s the most public humiliation yet. I hate him.” Then it was as though she remembered something she had forgotten to do. She put down her drink, stood up, and began to take off her clothes.
When they were in bed, he saw that what she was doing was avenging her humiliation. Anger made her passionate and eager. She wanted to be more excited, more enthralled by Scott than she had ever been with Ray Klein because that was part of her revenge: to show some impartial, invisible universal arbiter that Ray was not as good at making love as the first man she picked out at a party. And there was another comparison at work in her mind, too. Her sex had to be wilder, more erotic than the illicit sex that Ray had with Martha Rodall. And Scott could tell there were other feelings, too, ones that Scott did not have enough experience or enough empathy to interpret.
Scott had been afraid of Ray Klein, terrified of the power that Ray Klein had over him. But tonight Scott was in a hotel room having sex with Ray Klein’s beautiful wife. It was the antidote to the cowardice and the shame and resentment, and it was intoxicating. He and Jill had become complicit in deceiving Ray Klein—not just in fooling him, but in dishonoring him, mocking Ray Klein’s brute power over them. What could Ray Klein ever do to Scott that compared with this? While they were in bed, Scott already knew that the next time he was forced to defer to Ray Klein, to tolerate his dominance, Scott would be thinking, I fucked your wife. And he knew that Jill was looking forward to having thoughts on the same topic.
While Jill dressed, he said, “Am I going to see you again?”
“You must know I’ll see you again.” Her tone was peculiar. It was not affectionate, not even warm. There was an edge to it, and his ear caught the tone.
“When?”
“When I can.”
“I want it to be soon.” He could hardly believe he had said that, but he meant it. He wanted not just to have one night with Jill Klein. He wanted to be able to repeat this night as often as possible. He wanted her to belong to him.
She touched his face, leaned close and looked at him, but did not kiss him. “If I have a chance to do this again, believe me, I will.”
“Let me give you a phone number.” He took a piece of hotel stationery and wrote while he talked. “This is the cell I carry. It’s a number almost nobody has because I use it only for emergencies. Call when you think you might be able to see me.”
She took it, folded it and put it in her purse. “Fine. Now I’ve got to get out of here.”
At nearly three A.M., Scott Schelling escorted Jill Klein out of his room and down the hotel hallway to the elevators. When he pressed the button, the nearest elevator opened immediately, they stepped inside and the doors closed with a quiet, rolling sound. Jill Klein gave one of her semaphore smiles, embraced Scott and kissed him. Scott knew that hotel elevators usually had cameras in the ceilings, but he decided it was best to acquiesce. The mouth-breathers who looked at the tapes certainly wouldn’t know who Scott Schelling was.
Scott didn’t want to seem timid to Jill Klein. Everything she did was flagrant. While she kissed him, her hands moved below his belt, and he had to break off the kiss. “If you do that, I can’t very well walk back through the lobby with you.”
She laughed. “I’ll be good.”
“I just mean right now, not in the future.”
“No? Then next time I see you, I think I’ll be as bad as I can possibly be.”
“When will that be?”
“I’ll try to call you tomorrow. If I don’t, then find an excuse to skip the European conference in a couple of weeks. I’ll fly to L.A.”
“Good. You have my cell-phone number, right?”
“How could I lose it this soon?”
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. The lobby was nearly deserted at this hour. A uniformed man with an electric machine buffed the floor, but he paid no attention to them. A night clerk looked up as they passed the main desk at a distance of seventy feet, and then returned his eyes to the magazine he was reading.
Schelling and Jill Klein went out the main entrance, and Schelling’s eyes were already sweeping the parking lot and the street beyond to spot anyone who might be watching them. As far as Schelling could tell, tonight he was in luck: There were no visible watchers. The valet-parking attendant and the doorman were sitting on a bench a few paces away beside the cabinet full of keys. The parking attendant jumped up eagerly and took the chit from Jill, then ran down the ramp under the building and came back up with her car. Scott had asked him to park the car below, even though there had been spaces in the open lot when she had arrived. He handed the attendant a ten-dollar bill.
He opened Jill’s door so she could slip behind the steering wheel, then leaned in to kiss her.
She turned away. “Don’t be stupid. I’ll see you soon enough.” She drove out of the lot and turned toward the central square in front of the old Palace of the Governors. After two blocks he saw the lights of her car turning north toward the road to the Klein house.
Back in his room, Scott caught a faint scent of Jill’s perfume. The twisted upper sheet thrown back from the bed and the scattered pillows brought back the surprise Jill Klein had been. He had expected the night to be only a couple of hours of diplomacy to pacify an aging beauty, but this had been a night of new emotions. Now he was alone again. As he took off his sport coat and hung it in the closet, he took his cell phone out of the pocket and pressed the menu for Tiffany’s line at the office. He got her voice mail. “Hello, Tiffany. I’m going to stay longer in Santa Fe. I’ll cancel my own flight and make another res
ervation. Coordinate with Kimberly.”
He disconnected, put the phone on his nightstand, brushed his teeth and lay on the bed. He had another reason for not going home in a few hours. Carl had not yet called to tell him that he had solved the problem of the Turners. Maybe Carl had found he needed to kill them. If so, then it was a good idea for Scott to stay away until it was over. Occupying a hotel room in another state wasn’t the best alibi, but it wasn’t the worst, either. He reached for the house telephone. When the clerk answered, he said, “This is Mr. Schelling in 362. I’d like to stay an extra day. Can you arrange that for me?”
“One moment, please, while I check.” After a moment she said, “Yes, sir. I’ve extended your reservation an extra day. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, thank you.” He hung up. It struck Scott Schelling that a subtle shift had taken place in the universe yesterday afternoon, and now the purpose of the whole world was to say “Yes, sir” to Scott Schelling.
42
ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, Carl drove up to the gate of Scott Schelling’s house. He pressed the remote-control unit he carried in his car and watched the electric motor slide the gate along its track and out of his path. He pulled up to his usual spot at the end of the row of six visitors’ spaces near the right side of the house. Carl was pleased to see that his was the only car.
Scott Schelling was a demanding employer. He worked long hours, and he wanted everybody available until he quit for the day around eight. Carl sometimes worked long after that. On the occasions when Scott went out of town, the office girls tried to give the staff a break. Kimberly wasn’t in, even though it was Saturday afternoon. Sonya the maid was gone, too, so Carl had volunteered to feed the dog.
Carl was eager to get inside. He had guessed that if he came over here he would be alone, but he had been mentally prepared for the possibility that one of the others might show up after all.
Carl had not slept well last night, thinking about today. Scott had never really been fair to him, but in the past few days, things had gotten worse. At the start of the relationship, he had liked the job. He and Scott had been two young guys, and on many nights they would be out looking for women together. The only real difference between them had been their bank accounts. They each had assets. Scott Schelling may have had more money and status, but Carl had a handsome face, good hair and teeth, a muscular body, and a sense of humor. In the early years, Carl had practically invented Scott Schelling’s personal life. He had taken him to clubs, found his women for him, and talked them into being interested in Scott.