All or Nothing (18 page)

Steve was clean–shaven but in bad need of a haircut. His face was so pale it was almost translucent and his eyes had dulled to a glazed stare. He looked, Giraud thought, like a man who hadn’t seen daylight in years. A cave dweller––which, come to think of it, was pretty much what this prison was like.

“How’re y’doin’, Steve.” Lister shook his hand, Giraud did not.

Steve nodded, slumping into the straight–backed wooden chair on the opposite side of the table. “Okay,” he said in a clipped tone. His lips were set in a tight line and he did not look either of them in the eye.

With attorney/client privilege, at least they were not required to sit at opposite sides of a thick, bulletproof glass panel and communicate through telephones. Giraud hated this whole jail thing. It got him nervous, thinking about his own past and his youthful misdemeanors.
There but for the grace of a good mother go I,
he misquoted to himself. He wished he had a cigarette. He wondered if the cuffs were really necessary.

“They treating you alright?” Lister asked, taking out a digital recording machine. He wanted Steve’s actual words on record for later assessment.

“Okay,” Steve said again, staring down at the gray plastic tabletop.

“You wanna tell us your story, Steve?” Giraud suggested.

“Why?” For the first time Steve lifted his head and looked at him. “You already know it. I’ve told Lister––and the police a hundred times already.”

“So why not do me a favor and tell us again.”

Steve’s mouth was set in a hard line now. His eyes had that blank look again.

“You’d better tell me, buddy,” Giraud said softly. “If you ever want to get out of this mess.”

“There is no way out. Don’t you think I realize that? I was caught kneeling over my wife. In her blood. The knife was right there. . . .”

“There were no prints on that knife.”

“No. But I’m sure you already know that the attacker wore gloves. And that the knife is one of a set we keep at the Arrowhead cabin.”

“I didn’t know that.” Giraud glanced at Lister, surprised.

“Sorry, Al. Must have forgotten to tell you,” he said.

Giraud raised an amazed eyebrow; apparently Lister was so sure of his client’s guilt he didn’t think the knife mattered that much.

Steve leaned his cuffed hands on the table, shoulders stooped, head bowed. “I was at the cabin in Lake Arrowhead. There was a telephone call. Someone––a man, I didn’t know his voice. He told me my wife was in danger, that I should get back home before it was too late. I didn’t think twice. I just got in the car and drove back home. I used my key to open the front door. It was dark––there was no light on in the hall. I heard a noise and I called out to Vickie that it was me––I didn’t want to alarm her. And then I walked into the kitchen. I saw Vickie covered in blood . . . I ran to her. My only thought was to help her, she was . . . oh, God, she was just covered in blood, it was jetting out of the artery in her neck . . . I realized she must still be alive because she was still bleeding . . . I jammed my finger into the hole in her neck to stop it spurting.” His head sank even lower and there was a lengthy silence.

“And then the cops had me facedown on the floor in all that blood with guns pointed at my head.” A sigh rattled his thin frame and Giraud suddenly became aware of how much weight the man had lost. He guessed homicide did not enhance the appetite.

“So what time would you say you got the anonymous telephone call?” Giraud was putting the questions this time around. Lister had already been there.

“Around ten–thirty, I guess.”

“You were over a hundred miles away, up in the mountains and someone said your wife, back in L.A., was in danger. So why didn’t you call the L.A. police?”

“You might remember I wasn’t exactly on good terms with the cops. They were after my head––and I was about to call and report anonymous threats to my wife? They would have had me behind bars before I could blink.” His bitterness was like a bad taste in the mouth.

“It might have been better to take that risk,” Giraud said quietly, thinking of the consequences.

Steve’s dark eyes flickered anger and Giraud thought, pleased, at least he had touched a nerve, gotten some kind of human reaction out of him.

“I thought it was just someone playing a bad joke. There are people who do things like that, crazies who’ve read about us, about what’s happened. . . .”

“A long shot,” Giraud commented icily, not letting him off the hook. “So what did you do next?”

“I got in the car and drove back to L.A.”

“The rented Ford Taurus, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. The company took back my car when they suspended me.”

“You make good time in a car like that? On those mountain roads?”

“I’m a good driver. I managed. I got there at twelve fifty–eight.” Giraud raised his eyebrows and Steve added, “I noted the time on my watch. It was late, all the lights were out in the houses down the street. I didn’t want to disturb the neighbors by slamming the car door. . . .”

“Notice any other cars parked on the street?”

“I didn’t even look. Besides, I told you it was pretty dark.”

“No streetlights?”

“A couple, it’s a cul–de–sac . . . our house is kind of in between the lights.”

“And you didn’t see anyone when you opened the front door?”

“No one. But again, it was dark––”

“And the back door was also found open,” Lister interrupted.

Giraud nodded. “Okay, so you’re in the house, you see your wife . . . what did you do next?”

“I told you, I ran to her, I knelt beside her, stuck my fingers in the wound to try to stop the bleeding. . . .”

“In fact you saved her life, according to the paramedics. The artery was punctured and only that kind of pressure could have stopped it. Tell me, Steve, did you save Vickie before––or
after
the cops arrived. Did you do it to invent an instant alibi? The dedicated husband scenario?”

“God damn it.” Steve slammed his cuffed fists angrily on the plastic table.

“And while you were doing it, did you by any chance hear anything? Footsteps, for instance. Or sense another presence in the house? Y’know what I mean, the kind of sixth sense that grips like icy fingers at the back of your neck?”

“I wasn’t even thinking about that.”

“You didn’t even think about the fact that a killer might still be in the house? That you were in danger?”

“I did not.” Steve’s reply was stiff, his face a mask again, all traces of anger and human emotion gone.

“So tell me, what
did
you hear? There had to be something, some kind of sound. The killer must have left the house by the back door when you came in the front . . . he would need a getaway vehicle. . . .”

Steve was frowning, thinking now. “Somewhere,” he said hesitantly, “somewhere . . . in the background . . . I might have heard a car starting up . . . but I was too concerned about Vickie, all I wanted to do was save my wife.”

There was, Al figured, not much more to be said. Lister packed up his recording machine and they said their good–byes, waiting while Steve was escorted out of the room and back to his cell by a uniformed prison guard.

“So how about that?” Lister asked as they walked back down the bleak hallway and out into the free world. “You think he’s lying? Or is he the only killer who ever tried to save his victim in the hope of saving his own neck?”

Al grinned. “Hey, you’re his defense attorney. You’re supposed to believe in his innocence.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Lister retorted. Then he added, “Buddy,” and a broad wink as he got into his car and drove away.

Leaving Al pretty much up in the air. Had Steve tried to kill Vickie and Marla? He thought it possible. He guessed Vickie must have found out the truth about Laurie and been going to turn him in.

Except, he wondered as he slid the Corvette silkily out of the parking lot and into the traffic, what the hell
was
the truth about Laurie Martin?

That afternoon when Giraud got to the hospital, Marla was sitting in a chair by the window, sipping orange juice through a straw and looking a hundred percent better than she had the day before. That didn’t mean she was a hundred percent yet, he thought, examining her critically from the doorway. Black eyes, bruised throat, a lump on her head with fifteen stitches in it, more stitches along her arm . . . but she was alive and she was smiling at him and that was all that counted.

She was wearing a long white cotton T–shirt and a red silk robe and with her blond hair scraped back and no makeup she looked like a little girl playing dress–up in her mother’s clothes.

Her bottom lip was ragged where her teeth had bitten into it when Steve had slammed his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming, so instead he kissed her left cheek, the one without the stitches. “This is getting tricky.” He smiled at her. “There’s almost no place left to kiss.”

“Wanna bet?” She smiled sexily back at him––or as sexily as a woman with a split lip and two black eyes could manage. “Like some orange juice?”

“No, thanks. I’d like you out of here though, back home where you belong.”

“Safe and sound,” she teased.

“I’ll bet that’s what your father said.”

She took a slurp of the juice. “You just missed him––and my mother. You’re not exactly their favorite boy right now.”

“Or ever,” he bet gloomily, making her laugh.

“So what’s with Steve Mallard?”

“He claims he didn’t do it, that he got an anonymous phone call warning him his wife was in danger. When he got there she was lying on the floor bleeding to death. He put pressure on the artery––the medics say he saved her life.”

She frowned, puzzled. “You mean he tried to kill her––then when he heard the cops coming pretended he was attempting to save her life?”

“That’s the way it looks.”

She shook her head. “It was him, Al. I
saw
him. . . .”

“You saw him with the knife in his hand?”

“Damn it, Giraud, where do you think I got these cuts? I looked right into his eyes.”

He sighed. “You’re right, of course.”

“Vickie is still in intensive care,” Marla said. “Still in a coma.”

“I know.” He had telephoned that morning to find out how Vickie was, as well as Marla.

“So? How was Falcon City, Texas?”

Al filled her in on the interview with Miss Gwyneth Arden, then he told her about meeting the real Laurie Martin. And about his talk with Boss Harmon’s son.

“So, honey,” he said finally. “Ms. Bonnie Hoyt/Victor/Harmon took her no doubt ill–gotten inheritance. I believe she killed Jimmy Victor and got the car, then she killed old Boss Harmon and got his money. Plus she stole the real Laurie Martin’s social security number from the handbag left in the rest room that afternoon. Then with Boss dead and a couple of hundred thou in her pocket, she turned up in L.A. with a new car, a new wardrobe and a new blond hairdo, as well as a new identity . . . Laurie Martin.”

“And presumably a new ambition by the name of John MacIver,” Marla said thoughtfully. “Quite a girl, our Laurie. Do you think someone caught on to her game, realized what she was up to?”

“You mean like Steve?” Giraud shook his head, frowning. “It just doesn’t fit.”

“You know what I think?” Marla said. “I think we need to find out more about the first Bonnie––Bonnie Hoyt. Who she is, where she came from, what her past was––before she got into killing men for their assets.”

“You’re right, honey. And that’s where I’m off to next. Gainesville, Florida. I have a flight at four
P.M.
”

“You mean you’re not going to wait until I can get out of here?” Marla’s eyes flashed outrage.

“You mean, “after all you’ve done for me’? Sorry, hon, but I’m taking the opportunity to go while the going is good and while I know exactly where you are.”

“Safe and sound,” she added bitterly.

“Got it in one,” he said, kissing her wherever there was no bruise.

Gainesville was a college town, not quite as big as San Antonio, but close. Giraud read the population count as he drove into town from the airport––almost eighty–five thousand, which he guessed must swell some each September when school started. Situated between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, it was another hot spot––and humid with it.

There were no Hoyts listed in the Gainesville phone book but state records gave their address. As Al drove there in a rented Lincoln Town Car––he had been upgraded by Hertz as a frequent customer––he looked around, getting a fix on where Bonnie/Laurie had come from.

This was no trashy trailer park; it was respectable, a modest, low–income area of plain stucco homes with single–car garages and a lot of oldish vehicles parked on the street. Tidy lawns sloped to the sidewalk and a few overgrown pines that were obviously not indigenous to the area threw patches of welcome shade as well as scattering needles and a few withered cones.

Number 977 Windward Road was a house just like the others, dusty white stucco, paper blinds on the picture window shutting out the heat, wire hurricane fencing separating it from its neighbors on each side. Except this was the only house with a baby stroller parked outside the door and a playpen under the overhang in the side yard.

Al checked the address in his notebook, wondering if he’d gotten it right. The Hoyts were too old for babies––unless of course Bonnie had provided a few and stuck the grandparents with raising them.

The door was opened quickly to his ring and a young woman, not more than her early twenties he guessed, smiled inquiringly at him. Even from here the house smelled of babies. He thought at least that was better than cats.

“Excuse me,” he said politely, “but I’m looking for Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt. Bernard and Barbara Hoyt, that is. I understood they lived here.”

“Yeah, they used to, I guess.” The young woman shifted the two–year–old from one hip to the other and pushed back her limp dark hair. “We’ve lived here five years or so now, though.” She grinned a shining white grin. “My five–year–old was born right here, so she’s a native of Alachua County, alright, and so are the rest of my kids. All four of em,” she added, laughing.