The Shadow Hunter (27 page)

He knelt by her for a minute or two, then turned his attention to the bedroom windows. The screen had been ruined by his forced entry, but the glass pane was intact. He closed and locked the window, then sealed the living room window as well.

The apartment was now airtight. Crouching, he checked the furnace’s pilot light and saw its blue flame.

Now for the hard part. Muscles straining, he wrestled the oven away from the kitchen wall until he heard a metallic pop and a hiss of gas.

The coupling on the gas inlet pipe had ruptured. Gas was flooding in from the main supply line. It smelled like rotten eggs.

The gas was a bomb. The pilot light was the fuse.

When the gas reached critical concentration… “Blammo,” Hickle whispered.

Half the fourth floor would be obliterated. Abby’s apartment and his own place next door and, with luck, nosy Mrs. “Finley in apartment 422—all gone in a white-hot explosive flash. He had wanted to erase the tapes. This was one way to do it. As a bonus, he would erase all vestiges of his former life… and, oh yes, Abby too.

He added his shotgun to the duffel and headed into the hall, shutting Abby’s door behind him. Quickly to the elevator, then down to the lobby and across the parking lot, running hard.

One thought galvanized him as he ran. He was doing this, really doing it. After months of delay he’d found his nerve.

Hickle stashed the duffel on the passenger seat of his VW, slipped behind the wheel, keyed the ignition.

The dashboard clock glowed 10:59.

At this very moment the late news on Channel Eight was ending, and Kris Barwood would be signing off for the last time.

Ty ris saw Travis across the soundstage as she and Matt Dale wrapped up the ten o’clock news.

Travis had not come to KPTI in months. His presence rattled her, and she stumbled during her closing remarks. Matt saved her with a joke, allowing both of them to beam smiles at Camera One while the theme music came up and the set faded to black.

“You okay?” Matt asked, removing the Telex from his ear.

“Got distracted. It appears I have a visitor.”

Matt followed her gaze.

“That’s the TPS guy, isn’t it?” After the furor surrounding the Devin Corbal case, Travis was recognizable to any media person in LA.

“The very same.”

“He seems to be putting the’personal’ back in personal protection.”

“Maybe that should be his slogan.” Kris got up from behind the curvilinear shell of the desk.

“I’d better find out what he wants. See you Monday.”

“Have a nice weekend.”

She wished she could. Somehow she found it unlikely.

Quickly she made her way past the cameras, away from the small set with its video wall and its photographic backdrop of LA at night, complete with artificial city lights that glittered like stardust. Lit with klieg lights and photographed through a layer of diffusion, the set was a magical island, but up close it was cheap, almost tacky. The desk was a false front, the swivel chairs were uncomfortable, and the backdrop had been torn and hastily repaired, leaving a ragged seam like a fault line. At full power the lights were harsh and hot, though the studio itself was cold in deference to the balky equipment that cluttered the floor.

Travis smiled at her as she approached. That smile worried her. It seemed calculated to convey reassurance.

“What’s up?” she asked guardedly.

“I thought I’d ride along with you tonight in one of our staff cars.”

“What’s wrong with my car?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to use our vehicle right now. I chose a Town Car from our fleet—same model as yours.”

“If it’s the same, why can’t we take mine?”

“This car has added features.” Travis paused until a pair of stagehands had sauntered past.

“Bullet-resistant glass, armor plating, the works.”

“Why exactly do I need this extra level of protection?

Because Hickle varied his routine by not calling today?”

“That’s part of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

“Abby’s found out a few things. I can’t go into detail right now.”

Travis placed a hand on her arm, lowering his voice.

“There’s a chance he may be close to taking action.”

“There’s a nice euphemism. Trying to kill me is what you mean.”

“It could be a false alarm. Anyway, Steve Drury will be driving, and I’ll ride in the back with you. The detail posted at the house has been put on alert. The guards at the Reserve’s gatehouse have been notified, as well as the KPTI security staff. Every precaution is being taken. You’ll be fine, Kris. You’ll be fine.”

He was still touching her arm. Gently she pulled away. She didn’t want his reassurances. He found it easy to be calm. Dealing with threats was his job. He reduced the problem to a set of procedures, an action plan. He enjoyed it. To her it was only a nightmare without logic or clarity, offering no escape.

She looked back at the set. From a distance its magic was intact. At this moment she wanted only to return to her fake desk under the lights and continue reading off the Teleprompter and smiling into the cameras.

She felt safe there, enclosed in a protective circle, doing what she did best. But the show was over, and all she could do was go away into the dark and hope Travis and his people kept her safe.

“Okay.” She felt Travis deserved a smile for his kindness, but she couldn’t summon one.

“Let me scrub this makeup off. I’ll meet you in my office. You know where it is.”

“Kris—I’m sorry about this. We could be wrong in our assessment, but we can’t take the risk.” She said she understood. And she did. The rational part of her understood perfectly well, but there was another part of her, less sober and composed, that wanted to scream that it was unfair and she was tired and why couldn’t Hickle leave her alone and harass somebody else?

In the dressing room she bent over the sink, removing her makeup with a towel. When she was done, she studied herself in the mirror. The face she saw was beautiful and haughty and scared. It was not her face.

Her face never showed fear, and this one did.

Hickle had stolen everything from her now. Her peace of mind, her daily routine, her comfort, perhaps her marriage. Even the face in the mirror wasn’t her own anymore.

There was nothing left for him to take—except her life.

Howard parked in the garage of the beach house at 11:15, later than he’d expected, because before leaving the bungalow he had decided to smooth things over with Amanda, a process that had taken some time and further disarranged the bed sheets.

But things had worked out all right. He had beaten Kris home by at least a half hour.

He walked around to the guest cottage, where he was met by the two TPS staff officers on duty. Their names were Pfeiffer and Mahoney, though he never could recall which was which. The men seemed unusually alert tonight. Even as they greeted him, they were scanning the darkness on the far side of Malibu Reserve Drive.

“Anything wrong?” Howard asked.

They assured him the situation was normal. He didn’t find their protestations entirely convincing. Something was up. His suspicion was confirmed when one of them mentioned that Kris would be arriving in a TPS staff car tonight.

“A staff car? Why?”

“Routine precaution,” Pfeiffer or Mahoney said.

“If it’s routine, why haven’t you done it before now?”

“It’s just standard procedure,” his partner, who was either Mahoney or Pfeiffer, replied. Both men kept their gazes fixed on the shadowy foliage across the road.

His answer was no answer at all. It was, in fact, just another way of saying the same thing. Howard thought of pointing this out but decided against it.

Kris was Travis’s client. The TPS people would tell her whatever she demanded to know. They rarely extended the same courtesy to him.

He said good night to Pfeiffer and Mahoney, then proceeded down the garden path to the house. Courtney opened the door for him as he climbed the steps.

She must have heard the TPS agents buzz him in.

‘“Evening, Mr. Barwood.”

He acknowledged the housekeeper with a nod, noticing how she backed away when he stepped into the foyer. Courtney had been keeping her distance from him since the day, several months ago, when he’d reached out in the game room to stroke the dark sheet of her hair. It had been an impulse on his part, stupid and thoughtless. She had recoiled and started to cry, and he’d felt bad, but not so bad that he hadn’t resorted to threats to ensure that she kept quiet about the incident, particularly where Mrs. Barwood was concerned.

Now he wondered if she had kept quiet after all.

Maybe she had said something to Kris. Maybe that was why Kris now suspected his affair.

Courtney shut the door.

“How was your ride?” she asked.

“Terrific. I went all the way to Santa Barbara. That car hypnotizes me.” He said it as jauntily as he could, but she merely murmured, “Sounds like fun.”

She didn’t believe him. She knew he hadn’t been out cruising the coast road. She could guess what he’d been up to. And so could Kris.

It was obvious now.

Perhaps, to a more perceptive man, it would have been obvious all along.

“I think I’ll unwind out on the deck,” Howard said.

“It’s a beautiful night.”

“Sure is.” She seemed relieved to be rid of him.

He walked to the rear of the house, thinking he’d been insane to think he could fool either his housekeeper or his wife. Women had a sixth sense about these things. They could tell when a man was fooling around, the way dogs could sense an earthquake before it hit. It was uncanny, the way women’s minds worked. They should all be detectives and fortunetellers and shrinks.

Still, Kris hadn’t guessed all his secrets, had she?

Hickle had sped from freeway to freeway, taking the 101 to the 110 to the 10, in a desperate rush for the coastline. Now he was traveling through West LA on the Santa Monica Freeway, the gas pedal on the floor, the needle of the Rabbit’s speedometer pinned at eighty-five.

Time was his enemy. He had to be in position outside the beach house by 11:50 at the latest.

He checked the dashboard clock. The readout glowed 11:21. He was still four miles from Pacific Coast Highway. It was going to be tight.

He pulled around a slower car, passing illegally in the right-hand lane, not giving a damn, and then in his rearview mirror he saw the blue-red sparkle of a light bar CHP unit. After him.

Disaster.

He could not afford a speeding ticket. Simply being pulled over would take five or ten minutes, costing him any chance of reaching Malibu in time. Worse, the cops might want to know what was inside the duffel bag. Possession of the guns was legal, but he was sure the authorities would find an excuse to hold him for questioning—and while they did, a report would come in about an explosion at his address.

No.

He had failed at everything he’d ever tried. But tonight he would not accept defeat. Tonight nothing would stop him. Tonight, just this once, he would win.

Hickle accelerated, veering from lane to lane, whipping around slower traffic. The CHP car accelerated in pursuit, and an amplified voice came over a loudspeaker, giving orders that he didn’t even hear.

“Fuck you,” he breathed. He had taken orders all his life. He had submitted meekly to the demands of carwash proprietors and supermarket managers and Mr. Zachareas of Zack’s Donut Shack. He had been quiet and punctual and reliable, and he had never talked back. Well,”he was talking back now, talking back to the whole goddamned world.

The cops were trying to keep up as he skidded from lane to lane, but they had to worry about the safety of other drivers, and he had no worries at all. The dome light shrank in his rearview mirror, and directly ahead he saw an off-ramp.

Swerving into the exit lane, cutting off traffic with a blare of horns, Hickle veered onto the surface streets.

The cops would want to follow, but when he’d last seen them, they’d been in the fast lane, and he doubted they could cut over to the exit in time.

Even if they did, they wouldn’t find him. He was too smart to travel in a straight line. He detoured down side streets, swung through residential neighborhoods, drove along alleys, until he was sure the patrol car had been left behind.

Her first awareness was of pain.

Blinking, Abby raised her head, then shut her eyes against new agony.

It throbbed from the back of her skull to the bridge of her nose. It pulsed behind her eyes.

“Man,” she muttered, “this is one bad hangover.”

The words came out raspy and blurred. Her tongue was an immense cotton wad blocking her throat.

She was sprawled on the floor alongside her bedroom bureau, and there was a bad smell in the air, a smell like two dozen kinds of garbage blended together on a hot day, a smell like a swamp. She’d been knocked out—couldn’t remember how. Her last memory was of Hickle.

Looming over her, the shotgun in his hand.

Had he shot her? She didn’t think so. She wasn’t aware of any holes in her body, but somehow he’d rendered her unconscious and left her here. And that sour, brackish smell… Gas. The apartment was filling with gas.

Natural gas had no smell of its own, but the gas company added an odor ant as a warning agent in the event of a gas leak. Gas leaks could be dangerous, could be fatal. Any spark or open flame could ignite an explosion.

Open flame. The furnace pilot light.

She saw it then—exactly what Hickle had planned for her.

What she had to do was obvious. Open the windows, shut off the gas.

Simple, except she couldn’t move. Every muscle in her body had gone slack. Her pulse was rapid and faint. Swooning ripples of dizziness ballooned through her head.

She tried to prop herself up, but her arms would not support her, and she collapsed, gasping. There was no air to breathe, only the swamp stench. Natural gas was an enemy of respiration. It inhibited the blood’s ability to carry oxygen. The more she inhaled, the more labored and irregular her breathing would become. Her muscles, starved of oxygen, would lose all remaining strength. Her awareness would flicker and fade out.