Until You Are Dead (28 page)

As Alex neared the high gate he could feel Walther's eyes on him through high powered binoculars. Once before he had gotten this feeling and turned to see the glint of sunlight off the lenses behind a window, and the next time he'd visited the office Walther had purposely laid the binoculars with the personalized red name tape label out where he could see them.

Latching the gate after him, Alex caught a glimpse of the dogs up near the house, running toward him through the sparse trees. He walked toward his car, his shoes crunching evenly on the small white stones, and he didn't hear or bother to turn when the dogs hit the chain link fence behind him.

Alex was waiting the next evening when Joyce Chambers came home from work. From his small car across the street he watched her enter her apartment building and saw the light come on inside the third floor window. She'd taken off her thin, stylish coat, and her slim figure was silhouetted for a moment as she walked to the window and pulled the drapes closed. Alex waited patiently.

Two hours later she came out of the building, walking sprightly in a bright yellow dress through the near-arch formed by the large, untrimmed hedges on either side of the door. She got in her car and drove off quickly. As soon as she'd turned the corner, half a block up, Alex's car made a precision U-turn and followed.

She met the man again. This time at a tavern with outside tables gathered around a small colored fountain. Amber light played over her blonde hair as she sat with the man and they ordered their drinks. Alex didn't bother to watch them this time. Instead he went inside the tavern and sat in a booth near the window so he could keep an eye on her car. He knew that the man never drove to their appointments.

Joyce Chambers didn't leave with the man. Instead she walked across the street and got in her car alone. She walked slowly this time, thoughtfully.

Alex paid for his drink and left. He followed her for a while, until it became obvious to him by her aimless direction that she was driving with no destination. She didn't seem to be checking her rear-view mirror, Alex noted. Of course there was the possibility that she knew she was being followed, or perhaps she was simply driving idly while she thought.

Walther had said to do the job quickly, and it was getting late. There would be little chance to get her alone this way, Alex thought, so he turned his car abruptly and drove back toward her apartment. The entrance vestibule was fairly well concealed from outside by shrubbery and the light was dim. Even if she made some noise he could escape easily without anyone seeing his face. He decided to wait for her there.

She was waiting for him.

As he entered her pale hand touched his arm lightly. "Please, I want to talk to you -"

He read her lips with difficulty in the dim light.

He stared down at her. There was a softness about her features, a pitiable desperation in her large brown eyes;

Alex's mind raced. "I don't believe I know you, Miss," he said.

The desperation in her eyes shone. "But you do! You've been following me for days!" She looked at him carefully, realizing then, perhaps, that there was something different about him.

His faintly slurred, monotone voice spoke again. "Why would I follow you?"

She knew then. He could tell by the exaggerated enunciation when she spoke, angling her head slightly upward so he could see her lips. "Please don't play games. I only want to talk to you."

He stood thinking for a moment. "Where?"

Joyce Chambers looked around automatically. Even through her desperation there was a touch of self-consciousness. "Upstairs. In my apartment."

It might be better there, Alex thought. Easier, more private, and perhaps it would be a while before the body was found.

He nodded.

She led the way. He watched the liquid, rhythmic motion of her hips beneath the yellow dress as she took the stairs.

Her apartment was small, tastefully furnished, but with a worn, slightly threadbare atmosphere. Furniture that was just entering the last days of its usefulness. Joyce Chambers sat down on the sofa, but Alex remained standing.

Her frightened eyes, which fascinated Alex, grew larger. "I want to appeal to you — to them — for mercy."

Alex felt a twinge of pity. She wouldn't believe him if he told her that he was merely doing his job, that he neither knew nor cared who "they" were.

"I didn't mean to hurt anyone," she continued in a rush of words that Alex could hardly understand. "It started as a silly adventure, a harmless thrill, and then I got in deeper and deeper!"

Alex checked to make sure the drapes were still closed and sat down next to her.

"I'll promise to never talk, to go away -" she was saying, as Alex turned his body to face her on the sagging sofa. Tears glistened on her cheeks as she placed her small hands against his chest, her fingers clawing into the material of his jacket. "I'll do anything! Anything!"

Alex felt a fondness stirring in him, a fondness turning to desire, but a strangely protective desire. He told himself that he would not do this, would not snuff out the light in those beautiful eyes, but the silent voice in the back of his mind gripped his will like iron. Independent of him, his huge hands, his strong hands, rose like separate creatures to her throat and did their usual efficient job. The gouging tips of his thumbs felt no vibrations of a scream.

When it was over, Alex Goodnight bowed his head.

A week, an almost sleepless week after Joyce Chambers' death, Walther contacted Alex with a typewritten, coded letter, and at one the next morning, as a precaution against being seen at Walther's so soon after the murder, Alex was again driving his small car up into the hills beyond the city.

He went through the ritual of the dogs and found Walther behind his desk as usual, idly punching out letters on the tape gun by the shaded light of a desk lamp. Alex got his drink, took his chair in front of Walther's wide desk.

"You did a very good job," Walther said, concentrating on his tape.

Alex sat silently, and after punching out a few more letters Walther raised his eyes curiously.

"I didn't want to kill this one," Alex said slowly.

Walther's eyes narrowed with surprise and a certain
wariness, as if one of his dogs had unaccountably growled at him.

"Well," he said smiling, "a few weeks of fun will make you forget it."

"I want to quit."

"Quit?"
Walther's voice was amused and incredulous. "But you simply don't
quit."
He shrugged his shoulders as if Alex had suggested defying some irrefutable law of the universe. "You simply don't."

"I don't even want the money for this job," Alex said, "or the vacation."

"I see." Walther looked at Alex for a long time, coolly, appraisingly, a bit sadly. "Would you like to think about it for a while? Let me know later?"

Alex shook his head. "I've already thought. I'm sorry." Walther sat stiffly, soberly.

"Well," he said at last, with smiling resignation, "perhaps I shouldn't try to talk you out of it."

There was something strange, Alex noted instinctively, about the way Walther was holding the tape gun, the way his finger had slid up the plastic punch trigger, the way he was —
aiming it!
In an instant Alex saw the perforated circle on the plastic front of the gun, exactly the size of a small caliber bullet. Something in his mind flashed an instantaneous message, and without sound or warning Alex sprang.

Alex felt two bullets slice into his body as he crossed the wide desk and his huge hand circled Walther's throat. He felt two more bullets enter as they sprawled struggling to the floor and he looked into Walther's panic-stricken eyes. One of Alex's hands left Walther's throat for a split second, slapped the gun away, and then darted back to its previous position. Alex dug in with his thumbs.

Walther's face became splotched with red, then the red merged with a mottled blue.

And that's when Alex's fingers began to lose their grip. He was bleeding terribly, weakening toward death, and the growing pain in his stomach and chest kept him from tensing and exerting all his power. He saw the glint of sudden hope, of animal cunning, in Walther's eyes as he realized what was happening. Slender fingers clamped Alex's wrists, waiting for the moment when they could push his hands away. Slowly the bluish color left Walther's complexion.

The fingers about Walther's neck were trembling now, losing control. Mustering his remaining strength Alex forced himself to rise to his knees.

Walther lay looking up at him; waiting, watching clinically, almost smiling.

Alex screamed something unintelligible, something scarcely human down at Walther. Then he lunged forward, downward, and with all the viciousness of his death agony sank his teeth deep into Walther's pink throat.

Outside, the dogs were patrolling the grounds.

W
allace Deerborne tucked his dark umbrella under his arm and stepped down off the curb. Twenty percent chance of shower, the weather report had said. That was more risk than Wallace cared to chance in anything — his business ventures, his social life, crossing the street or the weather. All in all he'd been seldom rained on.

But into each life . . . as they say. And it was the rain in Wallace's life that caused him to be walking down Twelfth Street this cloudy evening.

He saw what he was looking for and stopped, putting his hands in the pockets of the light topcoat he was wearing, feeling a sudden chill in the dusk air. High above him a street light flickered and came on, and he observed that a few of the cars that passed now had their headlights on.

He breathed deeply, steadying himself, and his cool eyes focused again on the worn, almost unnoticeable sign that protruded over the sidewalk: H. MUDD, BOOKDEALER. Wallace tapped the pointed tip of his umbrella on the pavement and walked forward.

It was a small bookshop, with one narrow unlit display window. The darkened forms of several open magazines, pressed against the glass like huge moths, completely obscured the view inside from the street.

At first Wallace thought the bookshop was closed. But as he turned the knob the door opened with almost alarming ease.

The inside of the bookshop was old but well kept. On Wallace's right a magazine rack ran halfway down the wall and gave way to shelves of paperback novels. On the rear wall were shelves of hard covers behind an old and narrow staircase that led up to a closed door. Behind the wooden counter on Wallace's left the wall from floor to ceiling was one huge bookcase of hard covers, and behind the counter sat the gray-headed man.

The man rose from his chair, which creaked with the sudden absence of weight. At first Wallace thought he was a very old man, but on closer inspection he saw that the man behind the counter was one of those individuals whose age it is impossible to perceive. He could have been fifty; he could have been seventy. The lean, stooped body, the slender, lined face, told nothing.

"Help you?" The gray-headed man asked.

"I'm — uh — looking for a book," Wallace said, feeling immediately that it was a stupid statement. "A particular book."

The lean man's interest seemed to heighten. "Just what sort of book, sir?"

"Mystery," Wallace said. "A murder perhaps."

Dark eyes seemed to draw back in the older man's lined face, then came a guarded smile. "You wouldn't be Mr. Wallace Deerborne, would you?"

Wallace nodded.

"What makes you think you'll find the particular book you want at this particular bookshop, Mr. Deerborne?"

"Telephone calls, Mr. — Mudd, is it?"

"Horace Mudd," the old man said.

Wallace unbuttoned his coat, beginning to feel more at ease.

"And you are my anonymous caller, I take it?" Mudd waved a withered hand to indicate the entire shop. "You may take anything you want," he said to Wallace,
"as long as you pay for it." He laughed a curious "Eh, eh, eh," that lapsed into a fit of violent coughing.
Mudd swallowed hard, then looked at Wallace just as hard. "You want to kill your wife, don't you, Mr. Deer-borne?"

A tremor ran through Wallace's body. He knew it would be useless to ask Mudd where he'd gotten that information. Besides, easily a dozen people knew of Wallace's unhappy married state.

"I want to see one of the books you described on the phone," Wallace said noncommittally. "That is, if you were serious."

"Serious?" Mudd took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his lips. "Let me explain the situation to you, Mr. Deerborne. It's important that my clients have complete faith." With a practiced, darting gesture he returned the handkerchief to his pocket. "Many years ago my father was a guard at a very famous prison, and my father had an idea. For certain favors bestowed on my father, prisoners would get certain favors in return. As my father moved up the chain of prison administration these favors came sometimes in the form of pardons.