Dead Aim (25 page)

She muttered, “I’m not likely to get that mixed up.”

“I want you to remember that signs of contempt from a beautiful young woman might be particularly unproductive when I’m trying to teach these two clients.”

“Debbie’s right. You are manipulative.”

“I’m trying to be perfectly transparent right now. And I’m sincere
about teaching these two. They’re strong, athletic, and eager. They’re both developing a taste for killing—a need for it that we can fulfill—and they’ll get better and better at it if we keep training them. People like Markham and Coleman are everything to us. They pay us. They share secrets with us. So let’s be careful what we say.”

They had nearly reached the lodge. Emily could see that the two men’s cars were parked in the small lot across the gravel road in front of the building, a new two-seat Mercedes and a new BMW. The two men were flawlessly true to type. She stepped up onto the porch, but Parish held her arm. “Give me a couple of minutes alone with them first,” he whispered, and stepped inside.

Emily walked to the water fountain, took a drink, then moved past it and sat down on the edge of the wooden porch, watching a hawk circling in a warm updraft high above the arroyo.

Inside the building, Parish pulled three chairs into a triangle, sat down in one, and looked at Markham, then at Coleman. He lifted his right hand in a gesture to the two men to sit down facing him. He said, “Before we get started on the critique of the hunt, I want to say something about a side issue that I never brought up with either of you before. I almost hesitate to say anything about it, because I should already have taught you the etiquette of the hunt.”

“What is it?” asked Coleman. “We’re here to learn everything we can.”

“Let me say it as a story. Two amateurs go on a big-game hunt in Africa. They hire a professional hunter, who provides an expert tracker and an experienced scout. The hunt is set up competently. The tracker finds the game—say, a lion—and keeps close to it—maybe dangerously close—so it won’t disappear into the tall grass. The scout brings up the hunters, covers their backs, makes sure they’re safe. But the lion spots them too soon, and prepares to charge. The tracker jumps up and distracts him. The hunters shoot, and get their lion. Everything seems to be over. But suddenly, out of the grass nearby, come two more lions. The hunters aren’t prepared for that, so the
scout takes dead aim, and drops the two lions with two shots.” He paused, scrutinizing them. “Everybody gets to go home.” He waited.

“What?” asked Markham after a few seconds. “I don’t think I understand. That’s us, but what am I missing? That’s how it’s supposed to work, right?”

“The two hunters. What do you think they should do, as a matter of etiquette?”

“A tip?” gasped Coleman. Markham winced, but Coleman did not stop. “We paid you fifty thousand for this hunt. Are we supposed to tip you, too?”

Parish stared at him coldly and in silence until Coleman’s eyes found their way to his feet. “I wasn’t referring to myself. You don’t tip the owner of a hotel or the captain of a ship.”

“It’s for the girls,” Markham announced, as though he had discovered something nobody else had seen. “They took a risk, too. At least until we got there and killed the target.” He turned to Parish. “You’re right. We should give them something. What would be appropriate?” He grinned. “We don’t want to spoil them for you.”

If there was anything in Parish’s eyes that could be called amusement, neither of them saw it. He appeared to be considering. “Twenty percent should do it.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” Coleman said. His eyes looked thoughtful. “Do we split it so they each get five?”

“No,” said Parish. “So they each get ten.”

Coleman and Markham exchanged a quick glance. Markham said, “Well, thanks, Michael. Last night we were wondering if there was something we ought to do for them, weren’t we?” It was obviously a lie. “And then it kind of slipped.”

“Then I’m glad I brought it up,” said Parish. “Now, I’m going to bring Emily in to help with the critique. The scout sometimes sees things the professional hunter misses, because she’s in closer. This is for your benefit, so don’t be shy about asking questions.” He stood and carried a chair from the wall to a spot beside his own. “Emily!” he
called at the open doorway. He turned to the two men and said conspiratorially, “You might want to say something about your gift.”

Emily stepped into the doorway, and the sun glowed through her dark hair for a second.

Coleman said, “Hi, Emily. You know, Markham and I were talking, and there’s something we’d like you to have, to show you we appreciate the good job you did on our hunt. We didn’t know we’d be seeing you today, so you’ll have to give me a minute to write out the check.”

Markham said quietly, “If you’re doing that, I may as well write the one for Debbie. Maybe we can give it to her after we’re through here.”

Markham noticed that when Emily saw the number Coleman was putting on her check, she looked quickly at Parish, and her blue eyes were different. They were bright and intense, and her lips were turned up at the corners, but only a little, and they were tightly closed. Markham supposed that she was feeling gratitude, mixed with a bit of awkwardness, as people sometimes did in situations like this, but it didn’t exactly look like gratitude. It looked as though she thought something was funny and was having a difficult time keeping from laughing out loud.

She took the check. “Thank you,” she said, and she seemed more attractive to Markham than before. He could see that Coleman could barely keep his hands off her. It was typical that Coleman would jump in early to be sure he was the one who gave Emily her check, leaving Markham to track down Debbie and face the barely veiled hostility he and Coleman both remembered from their first meeting, before the hunt.

He decided it would serve Coleman right if he got Emily interested enough to have a relationship. He could end up married to a woman who was accustomed to killing people for money, who was comfortable with it. Coleman had more than enough money to make her consider dropping something heavy on his head as soon as the marriage certificate was filed in the county courthouse.

The thought pulled Markham into new territory. He found himself
considering what sort of target Coleman would make. It would be amazing, incredible, to hire Parish to set up a hunt with Coleman as the target. This time, Emily could be the bait, and take him to a quiet, private spot. Markham, the old friend, would arrive unexpectedly. For a moment, Coleman would wonder if it was a practical joke, a surprise party. Markham pushed the idea out of his mind. He signed the check to Debbie, tore it out of the book, and set it on the table where it could be seen. Then he went back to his chair.

“Let’s start with your reactions,” said Parish. “Did you feel that your hunt was worth the time, the money, and the risk?”

“It was the best,” said Coleman. “It’s the most intense activity that human beings do. It has anticipation, bravery, cunning, camaraderie …” He looked at Emily. “Even temptation.”

Markham detested Coleman for his eagerness always to jump in too quickly, leaving him nothing to say. “I agree.”

Parish did not seem to notice. “Fine. We wanted you to have a good experience. The rest of what we offer is training. We want you to improve each time out. That’s the spirit in which we make these critiques.”

“Fire away,” said Coleman.

“First, when you stepped in the door of the restaurant, you took the wrong approach to the target. What happens in this situation is, two men walk in the door. In a restaurant, bar, or small store, the target will always feel a blast of air from the door opening or hear it and look, or see it in his peripheral vision. He will make an evaluation. It’s primal stuff: Do I know these two men? No. Are these two going about business that has nothing to do with me, or are they a threat of some kind? Once you pass this examination and the target determines that you’re not interested in him, he won’t stare at you for a time, because it’s rude.”

“But this was a woman,” Coleman said.

“All of this works even better if the target is a woman. They’re not subject to instinctive rivalry if they see men, and they’re more likely to worry about being rude, so they stop staring sooner. But you didn’t
give this target a chance to reassure herself. Instead of going to safe positions off to the side, you faced her table directly, and began to reach for weapons when you were still too far away to use them. And most importantly, you forgot to wait until the tracker, Debbie, had moved out of the way.”

“We knew we wouldn’t hit her or anything,” said Coleman. “She stood up as soon as we came in.”

Parish appeared to be considering the argument, then spoke quietly and carefully. “It seems to me that you may have underestimated the target because she was a woman. You knew that she was an experienced professional detective. You knew that Debbie had lured her to that restaurant by posing as an informant. Now, the conclusion I wanted you to draw from that information was that this target knew she was in a situation that had great potential for danger. She might be armed—as, in fact, she was. If she realized that she had been set up, then she would know it was Debbie who had done it. If you’ll remember, the plan was for Debbie to get physically out of sight before anything happened that might make the target feel threatened. Debbie was to see you come in the front door, and excuse herself to go to the ladies’ room, remember? That would get her away from the table and behind the target, to control the back corridor and the rear exit. Her act of standing up and walking back there would also distract the target from whatever was going on at the front entrance, which was your taking positions. Done right, it makes all three of you safe: the target can’t figure out whom to watch, so she tries to swivel her head to see where Debbie’s going, and back up front to see what you’re doing. But it wasn’t done right.”

“I’m sorry,” said Coleman. “I guess I was the one who got too eager.”

Markham didn’t contradict him, or chime in to share the blame. It was true. He even knew what Coleman had been trying to do. He had wanted first blood. Probably he had even hoped his first round would be fatal, so he would get the kill, and Markham would have paid twenty-five grand to fire shots into a corpse.

“I’m not looking for apologies,” said Parish. “There were errors, and if I fail to point them out, you won’t improve. This time we had the target five ways, so no matter what she did, she was going to be ours. But she could have gotten off a shot and hit somebody. We didn’t have to give her that chance. Fortunately, Debbie took it away from her.”

Coleman shifted uneasily in his seat. “Watch the timing, and make sure the tracker is clear. That’s it, right?” He put his hands on the arms of the chair as though he was ready to stand up.

“Not quite,” Parish said. “When the target falls, you’re not home yet. There were other customers in that place, the waitress, and the bartender.”

“Well, yeah,” said Markham. “But Emily took care of them, so we didn’t need to.”

Emily said, “What were you waiting for?” Her voice was strained, as though she was trying to keep it calm but couldn’t quite do it.

Parish warned her with his eyes, and turned to the men. “Emily is right, of course. Once a gun appears, anyone in the place is justified in killing you, and some of them get over any reluctance very quickly. Some bartenders hide a gun near the cash register. Emily perceived that this one was moving in that direction and needed to be dead before he got there. You didn’t.” He let them think about it for a moment, then stood. “That’s it.” He smiled. “Otherwise, it was a perfect evening.” He held out his hand so Coleman could shake it, then turned to Markham and let him shake it.

Markham muttered, “Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Emily.”

“You’re welcome,” said Parish. “If we can do anything more for you in the future, get in touch.”

He walked them out to the porch and watched them cross the road to get into their cars. As they backed into the driveway, Emily joined him. “Wave to them,” he said. “And smile. The man just gave you a ten-thousand-dollar tip.”

Emily waved her hand. She could see Coleman waving energetically
back to her as he drove out the gate. “No, he didn’t,” she said through her false smile. “You did.”

As soon as the two cars had gone around the first bend, Parish said, “Where to next?”

She grinned, and this time the expression was real. “I want to be the one to give Debbie her check. I’d like to see the look on her face. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” He watched her slip into the lodge and snatch up the check that Markham had left, then hurry toward the gym. He walked across the long drive toward the hill in the direction of the firing range. He had problems to consider, and he welcomed the solitude. He had managed, by force of will and self-discipline, to control several unsatisfactory situations at once, but he had not yet had the time to consider what they had to teach him.

Parish had designed last night’s hunt to provide a specific experience for two paying clients. He had assumed that when Lydia Marks was made to believe that an informant had come to her, she would do as she had done in the past: show up with her client, Mr. Mallon, and they would interview the informant together. Parish went over his reasoning again: they had come to the self-defense school together, and while they were talking to Parish, they had said they’d gone to Pittsburgh together to interview Catherine’s sister. They had also said they were fresh from interviewing some woman in Los Angeles together. Parish had been perfectly justified in drawing the conclusion that if he presented an informant as bait, two targets would appear, not one. He had chosen those two targets over all others precisely because he had wanted to provide each of his two clients with a kill of his own.

Parish strode up through the dry brown weeds that covered the hill, considering. When he had heard Debbie’s first radio transmission making it clear that there was only one target, he had dreaded the dissatisfaction of his two amateur hunters: they would feel cheated with only one kill between them. But he had overestimated them. They
were too arrogant to have noticed that their challenge had been insultingly easy. They had been so spoiled and flattered all of their lives that whatever meager achievement they accomplished was magnified to heroic proportions. There had been nothing for Parish to worry about. He had greatly overestimated them.