Parish felt a dull jab in his right palm and realized his fingernails had been digging into the skin. He rubbed the open hand against his thigh. He had been wrong about Catherine Broward, wrong about Markham and Coleman, wrong about Tim Hillis and Kira Tolliver. They had all been weak. Parish had also misjudged Diane Fleming. Diane was another disappointment. Since Mallon was here and she was not, she too must have done something stupid.
Parish’s course intersected with the dry arroyo he had converted to a combat firing range. He moved down the bank into the channel, where he would be difficult to see, and cautiously made his way toward the blockhouse. As he approached the building, he could see that the door was open, and there was a man’s body lying on the ground outside it. Parish smiled: they had gotten him in two shots.
He stepped closer to the body and bent down to look. It was Dolan. He straightened instantly, raising his eyes to scan the hillside and the woods beyond as he stepped backward to get into the deep shadows under the eaves, and place his back against the cinder blocks.
“Who’s there?” It was a scared voice, the voice of a woman who was in pain. It was Debbie’s voice.
“It’s Michael,” he called softly. He took another look around him, then slipped inside. He reached into his pocket and took out the small Mag-lite he carried. When he turned the crown to switch it on, he kept the beam wide and dim, but what he saw was confusing. He moved the beam around the room, saw a big opening in the roof, and then saw a jumble of things on the floor: tools, wood, rifles. He kept moving it, and then found Debbie. She was sitting on the floor with her legs extended and her back leaning against the wall, her left hand clutching her belly. She seemed to have no gun, but there was one lying only a dozen feet away on the open floor.
“Michael?” she said weakly. “Thank God you came out here. I’m hurt.”
“Where is he?”
“After he got Dolan I disarmed him, but he had another gun.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Parish crooned softly. “Where is he now? Which way did he go?”
“I… I don’t know,” said Debbie. “Out there somewhere.”
Parish blew out a breath to keep the anger out of his voice, then said in gentle reproof, “You should have paid attention.”
Her voice was plaintive, almost a little girl’s in this darkness. “I’m hurt bad, Michael. He shot me in the belly. I’m bleeding a lot. I’ve got to get to a doctor.”
“The sooner I find him, the sooner I can get you out of here. Think. What did you see that will help me? What guns did he have? Just a pistol?”
“Yes.”
“When he stepped out the door, did he turn right or left?”
Her voice became quieter, calmer. “He’s gone. He ran away. You could bring the Land Rover up here. I could be in a hospital in a half hour.”
“I can’t risk him shooting you again,” said Parish. “You know a car door is no protection against a rifle bullet. Just relax your muscles, keep your heart rate low, and rest. I’ll be back for you as soon as I’ve cleared the way.” He patted her cheek gently, then stood.
“You’ve got to take me now,” she sobbed. “I can’t hold out.”
He said in an urgent whisper, “Keep your voice down, Debbie. He’ll hear you and know I’m here with you. Just sit tight.” He stepped toward the doorway.
“Michael!” This time it was a wail, a high-pitched shout that made him bob his head from one side of the doorway to the other to see if it had attracted Mallon. He could detect no sign of movement.
He stepped backward into the darkness again, leaned his heavy rifle against the wall beside the doorway, and instead took out his pistol. He twisted the crown of his flashlight to turn it on again, this time into a thin, bright beam that illuminated Debbie’s feet. In the dimmer glow around the small bright circle he could see that her pretty face was squeezed into a rubbery parody of its flawless structure, the big eyes narrowed to slits, the upper lip puckered, and the lower one protruding. He raised the flashlight’s bright beam up to shine on her face. As he had expected, she turned her head to the side to avoid the glare, and he fired the shot into her temple.
Parish had known in advance what he was going to do next, and now he executed the plan quickly. He turned off the flashlight as he moved toward the door, snatched up his rifle, and sprinted straight for the top of the hill. He wanted to get there and take a firing position in time to see Mallon break cover to move toward the origin of the shot. He reached the top, just inside the edge of the woods, knelt, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and waited for something in the landscape to move.
He heard the sound of a footstep behind him, and that told him he had guessed wrong. He turned to bring the rifle around to fire at his opponent. But too soon there came the familiar, loud pop of gunpowder that Parish had learned to love, and he died on his belly and looking up at the dark shadow-shape of a man.
CHAPTER 36
It was bright. There was an instant when Diane believed it was only another variation on the dream. It always had a stern, angry figure who had found out what she had done. Sometimes it was her mother, who had always been so sweet, with a voice like velvet and hands as soft and soothing as warm water, but who in the dream came back knowing of Diane’s guilt and ready to punish her. Most often it was a male figure, a nightmare version of a judge. This time it was Robert Mallon.
The impression lasted only a fraction of a second, until she tried to roll over and cover her eyes to go back to sleep, and felt the cramped, sore feeling that made her eyes open. Her face had been pressed against the floor, her left shoulder, hip, and knee all hurt, and her neck was stiff. She considered trying to roll to her stomach, but the feeling was returning to her arms in needle stings, and it reminded her that they were taped behind her. She was afraid that if she were on her stomach, she would have a difficult time getting up again. Slowly, painfully, she extended her taped ankles and pushed her heels on the floor, raised her head, and rocked to sit up. She could not do it.
She was in the living room, and she saw that the sun was already bright and hot outside, but the front of the house faced roughly northeast, and the sun would not reach the tall windows that looked out on the ocean until afternoon.
When she saw Mallon, she gasped. He seemed not to have heard her. He kept staring out at the ocean, motionless. He still had the same clothes on, but now they were rumpled and dirty, and his face looked bruised and swollen on the right side.
She said, “It would have been kinder to shoot me while I was asleep.” She shook her head in despair. “It serves no purpose to make me feel sadness and fear like this.”
He turned toward her. His eyes were tired, not angry. He contemplated her for a moment. “I’m not going to kill you. If that’s what you want, you’ll have to do it yourself.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“I’m going to do what I said, which was to let you go.”
She began to cry. At first it was great silent sobs that kept her from catching her breath to talk.
He knelt on the floor. He took out his pocketknife, cut the tape on her wrists so her hands were free, then the tape on her ankles. She got to her knees, very slowly and tentatively, then reached to the wall and steadied herself to stand. She said apologetically, “I have to go to the bathroom.” He nodded, and she walked there unsteadily.
She came back a few minutes later. She stood in the center of the empty living room tugging at her hair and muttering to nobody, “I look so awful.” She heard her own voice and said, “Who cares, right?”
He walked toward the front door, and she followed. She turned her head to look around at the empty house. She was surprised to see that it was pretty in daylight, completely different from the place where she had been locked at night. Then the door closed on it.