“Did you do it? Did it happen?”
She ignored the question, but he could tell that she was only delaying the answer. “The week was partly so they could follow him, watch him, figure out how and where to kill him. But it also gave them time to give me a few special lessons. They call going out to kill somebody a hunt. There’s a tracker to find and stalk the target, a scout to choose and secure the place, and a professional hunter to be with you and kill the target if you lose your nerve or make a mistake. I had to learn to work with them. And they wanted me to get used to what it looks like when anything the size of a man dies. They took me deer hunting out in the fields above the camp. The idea was to get me to shoot something that was alive, and see all the blood and suffering, and then I wouldn’t get all nervous later. He tries to get you to like the killing, so you’ll be good at it-have a dead aim. That’s what he calls it. We didn’t find a deer. After a couple of days of searching, we still didn’t find one. It had been a wet spring, and I guess there was plenty of food for them farther into the backcountry, so that’s where they were. I was relieved.”
“Did you kill Billy?”
Her voice went soft, almost a whisper. “Yes. I did.” She took a breath, and said, “Parish and Mary drove me to L.A. I was surprised to see where they had found him. It was a bowling alley. He worked there late at night, waxing the lanes after closing time. The place had a lighted sign that said MOONLIGHT BOWLING, MIDNIGHT TO 2 A.M. After that, it closed, and Billy went to work. It was really pretty easy. Debbie had been at Moonlight Bowling with some other people who worked for Parish. She went into the ladies’ room at one-thirty or so, and hid in a stall. Everybody else left, but she stayed until the place was all locked up, then came out, went to the door, and propped it open a crack. It was a set of glass doors, so we saw Billy when we arrived. He was waxing an alley with a polishing machine. He was looking up toward the pins and walking backward, so he wouldn’t leave footprints. He didn’t even see or hear us come in. The scout was the first in the door, and that was Mary. She held it open for me. The last was the pro hunter, and this time that was Parish. The two of them waited in that sunken area around the scoring table, and I stood up on the foul line. I waited until he was only about eight feet away. I could have shot him in the back of the head, but Parish and Mary and Debbie were there, so I did it the way they had taught me. First and second shots go into the torso where the heart and lungs are, and the third, after he’s down and incapacitated, can go to the head. You never leave until he’s positively dead. When he was, we walked back out of the bowling alley and got into the car to drive home. I didn’t feel bad about it until a couple of months later, after I had gotten over the fear and thought about it objectively. I had done something horrible to him, and because I had, I felt I had to kill him.”
“But that’s why you’re here,” said Mallon. “To do the same thing to me.”
“I know,” she moaned. “It’s the same thing again. Only I couldn’t help it, don’t you see? Parish would kill me if I didn’t. This is my fault. You’re my fault. I didn’t imagine that the woman who committed suicide had anything to do with the self-defense school. How could I? They didn’t have her real name then. So I encouraged you to get through your obsession, even wrote up a contract so you could hire Lydia Marks to help you. I put everyone else in danger-Parish, Mary, Debbie, the other instructors, the special customers Parish teaches to kill people-so how could I refuse to help them solve the problem? They would kill me. How could they let me refuse and live?”
“Good question,” said Mallon. “I guess they couldn’t.” He stood. “I’m sorry for you, and sorry for me. I’ve got to go now.”
“You’re not going to leave me?” she asked. “I told you the truth. You’ve got to let me go. You promised.”
“I promised,” Mallon said. “But I can’t let you go until this is over.”
She was appalled, desperate. “But without me, you won’t get through this. You don’t know enough. You’re not good enough. They’ll kill you. Now that they’ve tried, there’s no way they can ever stop hunting you. They’ll keep trying until it’s done. I could tell you things, recognize people you would never suspect were after you. I can get you away from it. That’s the only way. If you leave me and go out there alone, I’ll just die here, waiting for you to get back.”
“Maybe.” He stepped out the door and locked it behind him. He could hear her shouting, but just barely. Out here, the sound of the ocean was much louder, and even tonight’s gentle breeze made it hard to hear anything.
CHAPTER 31
Mallon drove beside the ocean, heading back toward Santa Barbara. There was no question that the people Diane called the hunters and trackers and scouts would be trying to figure out where he and Diane had gotten to. Probably they had expected to hear from her by now. If they found the bodies he had left on that quiet road in Malibu, they would probably assume she was dead.
He was aware that he was going to have to do something quickly, or he was going to die. Diane had been right: there appeared to be a plentiful supply of people from that self-defense camp who had either been eager to join the hunt for him or been induced to join it to protect secrets. If their secrets were like Diane’s, they had little choice but to try to prevent him from drawing attention to the camp. He thought about the police.
Detective Berwell had been trying to trap him into saying something incriminating. The Santa Barbara police seemed to Mallon to have been more receptive to his theories, or anyway more sympathetic, than the Los Angeles police. At least Detective Fowler had seemed to be. Maybe with what Mallon knew now, Fowler would be able to do something. Mallon writhed in the seat to reach his wallet, found Fowler’s business card, picked up Diane’s telephone, and turned it on. Instantly the silence was shattered by the annoying musical ring. The little screen showed him which button to press to answer, but he did not press it. Instead, he turned off the phone for a few seconds, then turned it on again and quickly dialed Fowler’s number.
A male voice answered. “Police department.”
“Hello,” said Mallon. “My name is Robert Mallon. I need to reach Lieutenant Fowler right away. It’s an emergency.”
The cop’s voice was beginning to change from sleepy to irritated when he spoke. “I’m sorry, but Lieutenant Fowler works during the day. It’s now after one A.M. He’ll be here in about six hours, and I’m sure he’ll call you back. But if this really is an emergency, then somebody else can certainly help. Can you explain what the problem is?”
“You don’t know my name-Robert Mallon?” asked Mallon, incredulous. “I’m the man that somebody tried to kill on Cabrillo Beach.”
“Of course I know who you are,” said the cop. “It would be hard not to. If you’re in trouble again, tell me about it. Where are you?”
“I’m in a car, using a cell phone.”
“Are you in danger?”
“Yes, I am. They’ve tried twice more in Los Angeles.”
“Is someone after you now?”
“They’re searching for me,” he said. “They haven’t given up. But I can’t describe them yet, because I won’t know the next set until I see them come for me.”