The Shadow Hunter (36 page)

But first Hickle had to take care of Abby. Well, she ought to be going home later today. She would face a one-man welcoming committee.

The police could be trusted to put it all together the right way. They would say that Hickle had killed Abby, then had shot himself in the woods. They would say that Howard Barwood, a real estate developer with ready access to property assessment records, had given Abby’s home address to Hickle sometime in the previous two or three days, just as he had supplied Hickle with other inside information. They would say that Howard had even gone so far as to arm Hickle with a handgun he himself had purchased.

Howard would deny everything, but no one would believe him. It was all very tidy, no loose ends. The only person who might have been able to see through the charade was Abby. She was intuitive about these things.

She was also a few hours away from being dead.

He only wished he could have contrived a way of killing her personally.

Sadly, the idea wasn’t practical.

He must content himself with arranging the hit, pulling the strings as Hickle’s puppetmaster. It was not all he wanted, but it was enough.

Abby had to die. She had failed him, after all.

And failure was the only sin he recognized.

Travis left the house, locking the front door. The sun was high and bright, and he blinked at its glare, keeping his head down as he walked to his car.

There had been a time when he loved southern California’s sun. Lately he preferred the dark. He wasn’t sure why.

In midafternoon Abby woke for good. She knew she had recovered from the concussion. Her headache was gone, and she felt no aftereffects of her head trauma. After lunch she informed the nurse of her diagnosis.

The nurse smiled and suggested that a second opinion might be required.

“Fine,” Abby said, but once the nurse had left, she dressed herself in yesterday’s outfit, preparing for her departure.

There was a rap of knuckles on the open door. She turned and saw Kris Barwood in the doorway. Abby almost said hello, then hesitated, struck by the wildness in Kris’s eyes.

“Kris,” she said uncertainly.

“Abby.” The word was less a greeting than a dulled acknowledgment.

Abby looked her over. Kris was fully dressed, evidently ready to leave. In the hallway a TPS officer in a sport jacket and open-collared shirt stood post.

“Going home?” Abby asked.

“In a minute or two. Mind if we talk first?”

“Of course not.”

Kris shut the door for privacy, leaving the TPS man outside.

“I guess you’ve heard,” she said.

“Heard?”

“It’s been all over the radio and TV—with my loyal friends at KPTI leading the charge.”

“I’ve been asleep,” Abby said gently.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

Kris looked at the visitor’s chair in the room and took a moment to study it, as if trying to decide what it was for. Then she sat. Abby assumed a lotus position on the unmade bed.

“It’s Howard,” Kris said, her voice hushed.

Abby nodded. From the look on Kris’s face she had already guessed that word of Howard Barwood’s probable involvement in the crime had been leaked to the media.

“What about him?”

“Well”—Kris lifted both hands, palms up—”he’s disappeared.”

This took Abby by surprise.

“Disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“When?”.

“An hour ago. He—he ran away. He ran away.” She needed to repeat the words in order to make them real.

“Kris, what happened exactly?”

“What happened…”

“Tell me the who, what, where. The bare essentials.

The time line.” Abby hoped an appeal to the woman’s journalistic training would prod her to organize her thoughts.

The tactic worked. Kris straightened, her gaze clarifying.

“All right, here it is. Howard was with me for most of the night. This morning he left for an interview at the sheriff’s office. It was supposed to be routine. I expected him to return, but he never did.

Finally I reached him at home. He was in a meeting with his lawyer, he said. He promised to call back.”

“But he didn’t?”

“No. Half an hour ago I called again. This time Martin Greenfeld answered. Howard’s attorney. He said-well, it’s just incredible what he said.”

“Take it easy. Go slow.” “He said detectives had arrived with a search warrant for the house.

Our house. They’d searched and found something. They seemed excited about it. Martin saw it in a clear plastic evidence bag. It looked like a phone, he said. A cell phone.”

Abby knew it had to be the phone registered to Western Regional Resources, the phone Howard had used to call Hickle’s apartment.

“Where did they find it?” she asked.

“Martin wasn’t sure. It could have been in a closet downstairs, but why? Howard and I have three cell phones, but we don’t keep any of them in a closet.”

“And after this,” Abby prompted, “Howard disappeared?”

Nod.

“He said he had to use the bathroom. Must have slipped out of house via the rear deck. He went to Tern and Mark’s place down the road and asked if he could borrow one of their cars—they’ve got three.

Claimed he had to visit me here and his Lexus wouldn’t start. They gave him the keys. He got out of the Reserve without being spotted.

Now he’s gone, just gone.

And it’s on the news, every channel. They’re saying he’s a suspect in the case, and he fled. Martin won’t give me any details, and I’m afraid to call anybody in the news business—I can’t talk openly with them.

They’re my friends, but they won’t hesitate to screw me if they can get a jump on the competition. I’m about to go home now, and I still don’t know what’s going on.”

Her last statement was a plea. Abby knew she had to answer it.

“Travis told you I was here?” she asked, stalling a little.

“Yes, he mentioned it.”

“But he didn’t say anything else, anything about Howard?”

“Not a word.”

“Well… he should have.” Courage was a quality Abby prided herself on possessing, but she felt it desert her as she met Kris’s earnest, beseeching gaze.

She steeled herself for honesty.

“All right, here’s what I know. Hickle had an informant who ratted me out.

We don’t know exactly who it was, but…”

Kris shook her head in automatic denial.

“No. Oh, no, impossible.”

“There’s evidence.”

“What evidence?” Kris got up, paced the room.

“The phone? Is that it? The cell phone they found?”

“I think so.”

“What could a phone possibly mean?”

Abby answered with a question of her own.

“Has Howard ever mentioned a company called Western Regional Resources?”

“No.”

“On Thursday night Hickle got a call at his apartment, probably to arrange some kind of rendezvous. I traced the call. It was made from a cell phone registered to Western Regional Resources. Travis found evidence that the company is something Howard set up offshore—without your knowledge, apparently.”

“No, it can’t be true. Why would he want to help that man? What conceivable motive could he have?”

“Well, this is only speculation…”

“Say it,” Kris snapped, losing patience.

“Western Regional Resources isn’t the only such corporation Howard established. He owns several. He’s been moving his assets—your assets—into secret accounts offshore.”

A beat of silence in the room while Kris took in this statement and its implications.

“Hiding our assets,” she said finally.

“That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Hiding them from me?”

“It looks that way.”

“So he can leave me and… when we split the estate…”

“Exactly”

“Then it’s true.” Kris turned away, staring blankly at nothing.

“What’s true, Kris?”

“That he’s been unfaithful to me. I suspected it. But I couldn’t quite believe…” Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“I wonder who she is.”

Abby didn’t answer. This was one blow she could spare Kris.

“We might be wrong,” she said weakly.

“About the transference of assets, the corporations he’s set up?”

“Well, no. That part is pretty well nailed down, but it doesn’t prove he’s Hickle’s accomplice. Not absolutely.”

“Not absolutely,” Kris echoed, then added in the same faraway voice, “I wonder if he thought I was unfaithful too.”

“Why would he think that?”

“I’ve been offered the opportunity. I turned it down.

But Howard might not have known that. He might have thought I went through with it.” She looked away.

“It’s even possible he wanted us both dead.”

Abby couldn’t see what Kris was getting at, but she asked no questions. Sometimes it was better to just let a person talk.

“No.” Kris shook her head after a moment’s reflection.

“That doesn’t make sense. Howard couldn’t have anticipated that Paul would be with me in the car last night, could he? It was the first time he’d ever accompanied me home.”

Paul.

Abby sat very still, but under her the bed seemed to shift as if in a small earthquake, or perhaps it was her world that had shifted off its foundation.

In the same moment Kris came back to herself, realizing what she had revealed.

“Oh, God, I didn’t mean to say all that.”

Abby found a smile somewhere inside her and brought it to the surface.

“It’s okay, Kris.”

“Did you know? Did he tell you about his… his interest in me? I mean, you work so closely together.”

Closer than you know, Abby thought—but not quite close enough: “He didn’t have to tell me.” she answered, he? voice steady, her face an emotionless mask.

“I guessed.”

“Oh.” Kris was relieved.

“Of course. You’re intuitive about people, aren’t you?” “Nearly always,” Abby said lightly, putting the slightest ironic emphasis on the first word.

“So Travis suggested having an affair?”

“He didn’t put it quite that crudely, but, well, he made it clear he was available. He’s not seeing anyone now, apparently.”

“When did the idea first come up?”

“Oh, I guess around the time when I was threatening to leave TPS. He was very persuasive in getting me to stay. At first I thought the rest of what he said was just part of his sales pitch. Later, when he restated his intentions, I began to realize he was serious.”

“You must have seen him fairly often.”

“He would drop by the house every week or so. Almost always when Howard was out playing golf. He’s quite a golfer, my husband. Paul would update me on the situation. It was mostly business, but then there would be a more personal touch. He knew I was unhappy with Howard. He said we would be good together.

But he was a gentleman about it. No pressure at all.”

“Did anything happen?”

“No. I may be the last person in the greater LA area to still honor my marriage vows. I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. He can be a charming man. And who knows?

Maybe we would be good together, as he said. But we never did anything. It was all very civilized.”

“Do you think he’s still interested?” Abby asked, already knowing the answer.

“I know he is. I think, in some odd way, he’s a lonely man. He told me once that the women he’s been with have never meant much to him.

They’re merely—well, diversions, I guess. Novelties. Like with Howard and his toys.”

“Toys,” Abby echoed. There was a stillness within her that felt dangerous, like the hush before a storm.

“I doubt the women were to blame for that. Paul’s a fascinating man, but he keeps his feelings close to the vest. He doesn’t open up, and he’s not easy to open up to.”

“But you got him to open up.”

“Emotionally? Yes. We just connected, I think. Even though we never did more than talk, it seemed to mean a lot to him. To me too. I needed somebody to talk to, somebody who wouldn’t treat me like a paranoid fool because I worried about Hickle all the time.

Somebody who would show me some respect.

Howard never respected my feelings at all.”

“How do you think Paul felt about your time together?”

Kris smiled.

“He told me it was like coming alive at the age of forty-four. As if he’d been numb for years, withdrawn and tight, until…”

“Until you.”

“I know it sounds silly—”

“No, it doesn’t. What about Howard?”

“Howard?”

“You seemed to think he suspects you of actually having an affair.”

Kris pursed her lips.

“I think I was being hysterical.

The truth is, I doubt Howard has a clue that Paul has ever looked at me as anything other than a client. He’s too wrapped up in his toys and cars and… maybe this plot against me.”

“If he is Hickle’s accomplice…”

“Yes?”

“You’ll be free of him.”

“I suppose I will.”

“And Paul will still be there.”

“You’re asking if I might hook up with him?”

Abby nodded.

“It seems to be what he wants. And from what I can tell, it’s what you want too.”

Kris laughed sadly.

“Oh, hell, I don’t know what I want. You know, everybody’s life is such a mess, isn’t it? We’re so screwed up, all of us.” She fixed her blue gaze on Abby.

“Except maybe you.”

“Me?”

“You’re one of the few truly self-sufficient people I’ve run into. I’ll bet you wouldn’t get your love life tied up in knots like this, would you?”

“Don’t be so sure.”

Kris lifted an eyebrow.

“So you have your blind spots too?”

“Maybe just one. But it’s a big one.”

“Well, I’m glad we have something in common.”

Abby was silent. She didn’t know what to say.

“It’s good you told me all this,” Kris added.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to find out from the police or our lawyer.”

She took a step toward the door. Abby stopped her.

“You never answered my question.”

“About Paul? A future with him?” Kris canted her head to one side, an unconsciously glamorous pose, her blond hair falling across one shoulder like golden smoke.

“You know, it’s funny.”

“Is it?” Abby wasn’t finding anything funny right now.