Runner (43 page)

Farther on, he could see lights glowing through the hedge. He hoped the cops didn't wonder why everyone at the Beale house was up at this hour, but he supposed whatever had happened to Pete had been noisy. He picked up the other remote control while he was still many yards away, and held his thumb on the button so that when he turned in he didn't have to wait for the gate to open.

He parked in the middle of the paved area, got out of his car, trotted to the front door of the house, and touched the knob, but the door was locked. He took out his keys again and opened it, then froze. Across the foyer, Steve Demming and Sybil Landreau were leaning into the entrance to the great room, each showing only an eye, an arm, and a gun. As soon as they saw Richard they lowered their weapons, and Demming hurried to Richard and locked the dead bolt.

"Sorry for that," he said. "It sounded like your Porsche, but we had to be sure who was driving it."

"It's okay," Richard said. "I just drove by a bunch of cops looking over Pete's motorcycle in the woods down by the corner. It looked like a body beside it. What happened?"

Sybil Landreau said, "We don't—"

At that moment Claudia Marshall stepped out of the great room. "Oh my God," she wailed. "Pete, too?" She dissolved into sobs. Sybil glared at Richard as though he were to blame, put her arm around Claudia, and ushered her up the stairway.

"What's going on? Where are my parents?"

Demming said, "A while ago your mother got up and saw that woman who hid Christine."

"Saw her? Here?"

"She was outside the glass doors along the side wall of the house." Demming pointed. "At first we figured your mother had been dreaming. She said she saw this woman all in black, who kind of dissolved into the darkness. Of course we went to check it out and see if anybody was out there. We couldn't find anything, but Pete figured it was possible that she had been here and gotten away on foot. He figured if he went out on his motorcycle, he might be able to catch her before she got to her car."

"I guess he did," Richard said. "She says she shot him."

"She says?"

"I just talked to her. I was throwing on some clothes to come here and the phone rang. She called to tell me she'd shot him."

"Why?"

"She said she asked him where Christine was and he didn't tell her."

"Shit."

"She asked me, too."

Demming looked at him closely, as though he were wondering
whether Richard understood what he had just said. "Did she say she was going to kill you, too?"

"Not in those words, but I guess so. And all of you."

"There! See?" Claudia Marshall was up on the first landing of the staircase. "We've got ourselves stuck in the brain of a psycho. You think she's going to try to find Christine for a while and then give up and go away?"

Demming shrugged. "You're probably right. Maybe we could arrange to make a trade."

"What?" Richard was confused.

"Claudia? What do you think? You're about the right height. We could get you the right wig, and we've already got Christine's clothes. This woman was probably with her when she bought them, and she'll recognize them as Christine's."

Richard said, "You think you can pass off Claudia as Christine?"

"Not forever. Just long enough to get Claudia close to her. Then Claudia puts her out of our misery."

"I'm in," said Claudia.

"We don't even have a plan," said Demming. "Don't sign on to be the bait until we at least have a plan."

"We'll think of something," Claudia said. "I really want to be the one who pops her. I'd like to be close enough when I do it to see the surprise on her face."

"Richard." The three all turned their heads to see Andy Beale standing beneath the arch into the great room. He was dressed now, wearing a pair of blue jeans that were stiff and dark-colored as though they had just come off the rack, a green flannel shirt, and walking shoes. To Richard, his father looked the way he used to look when they went to the mountain lakes for a week or two during the summers. It was a happy memory, because the lakes in the Sierras
had all been too small to be choppy, and his parents had paid attention to him intermittently.

"I'll be right there," Richard called. He turned to Demming. "What are you going to do now?"

"We can't do much until the cops get Pete's body out of the woods and finish looking for evidence. I don't think that woman will be back before then. That means tomorrow night, I think."

Andy Beale called, "Take your time, Richard."

Richard hurried into the great room after him. Andy Beale sat down beside his wife on a couch along the wall beside the massive stone fireplace. All that stone and mortar shielded the couch from any shot fired from outside. Richard had to take the only seat left, a large leather armchair that he hoped made him hard to see from a distance. He was alarmed at the way his mother looked. The usual healthy plumpness of her face seemed to have been deflated. She was pale and her eyes were red, as though she had been crying.

"You okay, Mom?"

Andy Beale said, "It's not our favorite way to spend a night, but we plan to live through it."

"You okay, Mom?" Richard repeated.

"I suppose so," she said. "It was a bit of a shock to look down and see her looking up at me in the middle of the night." She glanced at her husband. "Some people didn't think I really saw her. But your friend Mr. Tilton found her real enough."

"Yeah," Richard said. "I talked to her afterward. She called me up."

"She did?" Richard's mother seemed more interested in him than she had been in years.

"She wants Christine. She said that she asked Pete where she is, and he wouldn't tell her."

"Oh, my God," said Ruby Beale. "She keeps shooting people until somebody tells?"

"We don't know that," said Andy. "She wants Christine. She isn't after the baby. She doesn't even know we have him."

"Well," Richard said, "Steve says she won't be back tonight. She'll be scared of all the cops down the street. I guess I'll probably sleep here."

Andy said, "Tonight, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"I think this will be our last night here, your mother and me. Tomorrow morning I'll be in the office to take a look at the list of places the company has on the market and pick out a house."

"That makes sense," Richard conceded.

"Glad you think so. You'll be in charge of getting us packed up tomorrow and moved the next day. I'll want the trucks to arrive at eight in the morning the day after tomorrow. When it happens I'll need to have what's left of your little gang following the trucks from a distance to be sure that woman doesn't show up and go right along with us."

"Good idea," Richard said. "They might even get a chance to spot her and take care of her right then."

"Maybe," Andy Beale said. "But that's not why I'm doing it. This is chess. I'm moving your mother and little Robert out of any exposure to danger. That woman has found this house, so we'll castle. This square isn't any good to us anymore. I'd advise you to find a new place, too."

"I can move in with you until this is over."

"No, you can't."

"What do you mean?" Richard was shocked. "It'll make us all safer if we stick together and protect each other."

Andy Beale sighed. It was late, and he looked old and tired. "There are several reasons. One is that you've got to be out moving around accomplishing things, and that might attract her attention. I want this house emptied, cleaned, painted, and prepped for sale as soon as possible, and that means getting the crews lined up. I want the business running smoothly and I want it protected. Get some real security on the office and other key places, not just a few unarmed night watchmen. That's enough for now."

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."

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.