The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (11 page)

It was the brilliant heart of the afternoon as she parked. She killed the engine, listened to it tick as she flipped down the visor to look in the mirror. The port wine stain shadowed her eye and cheek.

You’re no longer Belinda Nichols. You’re Barb Schroeder. You’ve got charm to spare and a laugh that makes other people happy. You grew up in the South, and though you lived most of your life in the Midwest—Wisconsin—you never completely lost the accent. Two years ago you said, “Okay, winter, you win,” and packed it in for Las Vegas, fastest growing city in the country. No better place to be in real estate, at least it was, until about the time you got here. But what the hell, it’s warm, the sky is blue, and tomorrow is a long way away.

She checked her outfit, jeans a couple of years out of date but snug and flattering, and a fitted white button-down she’d found at Target. Not bad. She undid the top button, then another, so that the lace edge of her bra was visible. Better.

The store was an airplane hangar, the grid of lights running into the horizon. Bored clerks rang up endless lines. Barb Schroeder took it in, then followed the signs to sporting goods.

It had always amused her that these stores had everything, everything, you could ever need. Groceries, clothes, toys, electronics, housewares . . . ammunition.

Barb turned, smiling, looking him in the face, and watched him take in her port wine stain, the dark red blotch that had defined her whole life. His eyes did the usual dance—the stain, the floor, her face, but not up to the mark.

“I hope so,” she said, and threw just the tiniest hint of twang into her voice. Kentucky, not Alabama. “I need to buy bullets.”
“Rounds,” he said. He was nice-looking in a cowboy sort of way, probably late forties. Perfect. “We call them rounds.”
“Sorry.” A little giggle and a cock of her hips. “My boyfriend got me this gun, a Sig Sauer something, said if I won’t move in with him, I need to have it. He’s a cop, says until they get rid of all the bad guys with guns, we all need them too.”
“You know which model?”
“A pretty one. Silver and black.”
“Well—”
“I’m kidding, hon. I need .45 ACP.”
He grinned, then took a key ring from his belt, opened a glass display case. “Got a preference as far as brand?”
“It matter?”
“Not really. Winchesters are good, Blazer is a little cheaper.”
“Winchester is fine.”
“They come a hundred to a box.”
“I’ll take . . . three, I guess? Need to practice some.”
The clerk nodded, took out three boxes. “Anything else?”
“Targets?”
He showed her a selection, paper targets with bull’s-eyes and silhouettes of deer and people. She picked the ones shaped like a man.
“I can ring you up over here.” He led her up the aisle to a small register, scanned the ammunition. The register beeped, and he gave her a sly look. “You over twenty-one?”
She laughed. “Hon, I weren’t already seeing a man with a gun, I might just marry you for that.”
He smiled, put her stuff in a bag. “Eighty-seven forty.”
“Easy come, huh?” She counted out the bills, made sure to touch his fingers when she passed them to him. “Thanks for the help.”
“No problem.”
Barb Schroeder picked up the bag, surprised at the weight, then started for the front.
Now it was almost four, and Belinda Nichols was on the 15 again, heading back through the desert, about ten miles outside of Barstow. A sign told her exit 194 was coming up; she took it, found herself on the kind of dusty two-lane you saw in modern westerns, a long straight run to the sky. A few minutes later a dirt road branched off, and she took that, followed it for fifteen minutes until she was in a low canyon, all brown earth and scrub weeds. Pulled the van over and sat at the side of the road. Nothing happened. No cars, no trucks, nothing.
Belinda picked up the bag of ammunition, the paper targets, and the Sig Sauer she had taken from Daniel Hayes’s house and walked into the hills.
She found a twisted tree and hung the target on it, poking a branch through the paper. Then she walked back ten feet. The sun beat down on her as she held the pistol, found the lever to unlock the magazine. She opened one of the boxes of ammunition and loaded it carefully. Belinda hated the feeling of it, the way it was so clean and smooth and appealing; the machined precision of the gun, the perfect cylinder of each round. Hated the slickness of the whole thing, the fact that for all the flawless appeal on one side, the end result was messy and evil.
Get over it. You don’t have a choice. Until you do this, Bennett owns you. When it’s done, you’ll be free.
She blew out a breath, held the gun up in both hands. It was heavy, and as she stared down the barrel, the thing wavered back and forth across the target. Her hands were sweaty.
When Belinda pulled the trigger, the crack was so loud the rest of the world seemed to buzz.
A neat hole had appeared in the target. It wasn’t in the bull’s-eye, but it was inside the rings. Not bad.
Not good enough. You can’t screw this up. It won’t be a target you’re shooting at. It will be a man, and you can’t miss.
She wiped her hands on her jeans, one then the other, and then raised the gun again.
And again.
And again.
5

The building was a rent-a-room in Studio City, a two-story reclaimed from an old dance hall and divided into offices. Nice enough place, the façade intact, and the original floors, the boards battered and wide. Bennett had scoped it, walking into the lobby with a pizza box in one hand. Marking the security camera mounted in the ceiling. Nothing fancy, your standard closed-circuit, likely feeding to a digital recording system, a stack-burner for DVD-RWs. There was a wall board with the list of tenants, and he counted seconds while examining it. Mostly small production companies—who in this town
wasn’t
a producer?—as well as a number of writers, a lowrent agent or two, a dentist. He found the name he was looking for, suite 106, then scanned quick for the occupant of 105. He was up to twenty-two seconds before a dude in a blue monkey suit stepped out of an unmarked office door, asked if he could be of service.

“Yeah, I’ve got a delivery for,” he faked looking at the ticket, “the Council for Colombian Imports?” He smiled. “That’s just
got
to be a joke, right?”

The security guard had grinned, said, “Suite 105. Down the hall, take a right, just past the bathrooms.”
“Thanks, brother.”
“No prob.”
He’d sauntered down the hall, taken the right, walked past the bathrooms, whistling. There was another camera at the corner, but just one to cover the whole hall. The doors were out of an old-time private eye movie, wooden frames with frosted glass panels, the occupant names lettered in gold. Suite 105,
THE COUNCIL FOR COLOM
_{BIAN IMPORTS}
. Suite 106,
_{DANIEL HAYES}
. Bennett knocked on 105. A minute later, a cute little thing maybe five feet tall, all curls and dark eyes, opened the door. “Yes?”
“Afternoon, ma’am. I’m with Salami Jim’s; we’ve just opened, and to introduce ourselves, we’re sending free pizzas to our new neighbors.” He thrust the box at her, and she took it, as he knew she would. Predictable, people.
“I—thank you.”
“Hope you enjoy. Remember, Salami Jim has the sausage you love to swallow.” He started away.
“Wait.”
Bennett turned, and the cute little thing said, “Can I tip you?”
He smiled as he took the two crumpled bucks she pulled out. Why did women carry bills like they were notes passed in class, something they needed to stuff away quickly?
That was earlier. Now, after ten, he was parked in his truck across the street. The window for The Council for Colombian Imports had gone dark a couple of hours back. Daniel Hayes’s hadn’t ever been bright, but that was no surprise. Bennett pulled on a pair of driving gloves, slid the Colt in the back of his belt where his leather jacket would cover it, and got out of the truck.
The office building had a parking lot, and in the time he’d sat across the street, he’d seen a security guard—a different one this time, fat and sporting a mustache—stroll through it exactly once. Keeping his gait easy, Bennett crossed Ventura, walked into the lot. Despite the hour, there were half a dozen cars parked. A mixed bag, but the winner was a Mustang, an LED blinking red on the dashboard. He walked past the Dumpsters to a weed-covered ridge that ran along the side of the building. Counted windows,
uno
,
dos
,
tres
,
cuatro
, the Council for Colombian Imports’s, and then Daniel Hayes’s. It was double-paned and fixed, no sensors in the corner, aimed more at numbing street noise than security. Perfect.
In the dark, it took him five minutes to find a few decent-sized rocks. His first throw went long, overshot the Mustang by a couple of feet. Bennett wound up, lobbed another, this one denting the side of a Civic just shy of the Mustang. For Christ’s sake. He took a breath, shook out his arm, and tried again.
The rock smacked into the Mustang’s windshield. The alarm started, headlights flashing and horn honking, the sound and light seeming to carry the rock as it bounced away.

Wayne Reynolds had his feet up on the desk, sitting sideways to the computer, browser open to Apartments.com. It had a color-coded map of the city, overlays that tinted it gray and orange and purple.

Should just tint it shades of green.
The east side, or in the valley, there were places he could afford. But Marta wanted to leave their cookie-cutter two-bedroom in Crenshaw and head for the beach. Maybe Santa Monica, she’d said, like there was a chance of that. Like all you needed to live there was a taste for ocean breezes.
He clicked to the search, filled the maximum rent field with what they paid now. The results were . . . uninspiring.
“Garden apartment.” Code for “subterranean.”
“Efficiency” really meant “you like shitting and cooking in the same room?”
And “loft” in this case should have read “windowless bunker.”
Wayne sighed, reached for his sandwich—tuna with fat-free mayo and sprouts, Marta trying to help him on the diet—and took a joyless bite. Here was something, a one bedroom in Tarzana that didn’t look bad—
A horn started honking, once, twice, three times, steady. He glanced at the security monitor, saw that it was one of his. Jerry Logue’s Mustang. Damn. Wayne couldn’t see anyone in the lot. Probably just set off by the vibrations of a passing truck.

That’s the problem, Wayne, honey, you never take any
initiative.
If you want to get ahead . . .
Marta’s voice from their fight last week.

He sighed, shrugged, stood up. Checked the Taser on his belt, grabbed the flashlight, walked out of the office. The lobby was quiet, the track lighting low, casting dramatic highlights and shadows. Wayne shouldered open the door, the ring of keys on his belt jingling. The night was cool, the sky above a wash of purple clouds.

The Mustang was blaring away, lights flashing. He put one hand in his pocket against the chill and swept the big Maglite around with the other. No one took off running. He reached the car, stood there for a second.
Now what? Dust for prints?

No one in the lot that he could see. Traffic on Ventura was light. In the drugstore next door, a guy standing next to an Explorer was looking over, apparently drawn by the alarm. When he saw Wayne, the guy nodded, turned back to his truck.

Wayne bent down, shined the light underneath the Mustang. No one leapt out. He shrugged, kicked at the tire. The moment his foot touched it, the alarm shut off.

I am Magical! Wonder Wayne to the rescue.
He turned off the flashlight and headed back inside, wondering about that place in Tarzana. Not exactly Santa Monica, but it would be a change at least, and that was probably what she really wanted. And with the economy the way it was, he might be able to bargain the price down.

It felt good to step back into the warmth of the lobby. He glanced at his watch. The next scheduled rounds weren’t for another twenty minutes. Still, may as well do them now; he was up, and dinner wasn’t much enticement.

Wayne looked down the hall, decided to hit the second floor first. He started for the elevator, heard Marta’s voice reminding him he could use the exercise, and took the stairs instead.
5

From the parking lot of the CVS next door, Bennett watched the fat guard approach the Mustang. The man saw him looking, and Bennett nodded, then turned, started digging in his pocket like he was looking for keys. After a moment, the alarm stopped, and the guard strolled back inside. High security.

Bennett smiled, waited a few more seconds, then left the parking lot and headed back to Hayes’s window. He’d thrown the rock through as soon as the Mustang’s alarm had started, and even standing right next to it, the crash had been largely drowned out. Careful not to cut himself, he pulled out some of the larger chunks of glass at the bottom, dropped them in the weeds, and let himself in.

The office was simple but appealing. A desk with a couch opposite. A small conference table. A mini-fridge, and on top of it, three bottles of whiskey. He poured himself a couple of inches of the best, sipped at it. Nice.

Okay. Time to work.
He pulled the blinds to cover the glow from his penlight and started with the desk, taking it one drawer at a time. It didn’t take long; there wasn’t much in it. He’d wondered why Daniel kept this office, what with the lovely room Bennett had discovered in the guy’s Malibu home. Apparently, the reason didn’t have much to do with writing. Meetings, maybe. Bennett had never been big on meetings, but this looked like a nice place to have one.
He checked behind the framed
Memento
poster for a safe; no joy. Same with the posters for
Solaris
and
The Fountain
. He took down and opened the books on the shelf, titles like
Save the Cat
and
The Writer’s Journey
, but again, nada.
Bennett stood in the center of the room, looked around. He traced a ridged scar on his bicep, a deep cut from a knife in Detroit. Where next?
He didn’t really expect to find anything here; it was a little obvious, even for Daniel. Still, the guy had hidden Bennett’s payment somewhere. And until Hayes reappeared, it was worth the effort to look. A half-million dollars was worth a whole lot of effort.
Methodically, then. He took another sip of whiskey, set down the glass, and, using the desk as the starting point, began to work his way around the room. If there was something to be found, he’d find it.