Blind Pursuit

4

Her keys gave him access to her apartment. Strange to be here, in another person’s living space, and in a home so different from his.

No dull glaze of dust on the tables and fixtures. No soiled spots in the carpet, long ignored and now permanently set. No brittle carapaces of dead insects lining the baseboards, shiny in the lamplight.

His own apartment was a ground-floor unit, cramped and airless, the windows staring blankly at the stucco wall of the building next door. Erin Reilly’s place conveyed a sense of openness and freedom, with its views of the city and mountains, its promise of light and air, its immaculate floors and whitewashed walls, its silent testimony to the serenity of a well-ordered life.

He almost hated Erin for having all of this around her-and then he remembered that she would have it no longer.

In the bedroom closet he found a set of three valises, small, medium, and large. He chose the medium-size suitcase. Opened it, then began pulling random clothes off hangers and stuffing them inside.

No. Random was wrong. He forced himself to concentrate on selecting items that went together as outfits. It must look as if she had done the packing.

What else? Footwear. He tossed in a pair of fringed western boots.

Undergarments. They were neatly folded in a bureau drawer.

Toilet articles. In the bathroom he collected them. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Shampoo. Deodorant. Comb. Hairbrush. Other things, including some feminine products he’d never seen before and couldn’t identify.

Stationery. His gloved hands rifled the drawers of a mahogany desk in the den. He found a bundle of pale olive envelopes and matching sheets of writing paper that bore her letterhead.

The suitcase was bulging when he zipped it shut.

As he toted it to the front door, worry nagged him. He was certain he was forgetting something.

Of course.

Slung over a chair in the dining room was her purse. He rummaged through it, taking inventory of its contents.

Wallet, thick with credit cards and currency.

Compact. Lipstick. Eyeliner.

Appointment book.

Spiral-bound memo pad and pen.

Bottle of pills, nearly empty-birth-control, he assumed without reading the label.

Miscellaneous other items, none of significance.

He pocketed the cash, then shrugged the purse’s strap over his shoulder.

Leaving her apartment, he turned off the lights. It was something she would do.

He avoided the elevator, afraid of encountering one of the tenants, took the stairs instead. The suitcase felt heavier at each landing, heavier still as he lugged it outside.

The parking lot remained empty of people. He put the suitcase in the Ford’s backseat, then opened the trunk.

Erin was beginning to stir as the effects of the stun gun wore off. It was preferable to keep her unconscious as long as possible.

He took out the Ultron, pressed the switch. Lightning flickered between the two electrodes in a blue crackling arc, the noise too faint to be heard from the building.

He shoved the gun into her chest, held it there for a full five seconds.

She was twitching again as he withdrew the gun. Briefly he worried that with her mouth taped, she might choke on saliva.

Oh, nonsense. She would be fine.

He climbed behind the wheel, adjusted the driver’s seat to fit his longer frame, then started the car.

Out of the parking lot. Two blocks east on Broadway. Then onto a residential side street, an older subdivision of tract homes, ranch-style brick houses landscaped in cactus and yuccas.

The moon had set. Stars burned pinholes in the sky. A false dawn, the russet glow of the city’s ambient light, faintly brightened the horizon.

He slowed the Taurus and parked at the curb behind a gray Chevy van.

His van.

It was a 1988 Chevrolet Astro, a cargo model with bucket seats up front and no seating accommodations in back. He’d bought the vehicle used; the previous owner had logged nearly 100,000 miles on the odometer while putting dents in the fenders and side. The price had been reasonable.

The Astro had come equipped with an optional heavy-duty towing package that permitted it to haul up to six thousand pounds. That feature, which had made it possible for him to hitch a U-Haul trailer to the van not long ago, would now come in handy again.

Quickly he hooked the van’s towing bar to the Ford’s front end, stringing safety chains on either side. He keyed the Ford’s ignition to the “accessory” position, shifted the transmission into neutral, checked to confirm that the parking brake was released.

Somebody’s dog began to bark. The racket might draw attention to the street. Better hurry.

The Astro had both a sliding side panel and dual rear doors. He opened the latter and looked in on the windowless, uncarpeted cargo compartment, empty except for a small huddle of items draped by a tarpaulin. Under the tarp were two red canisters, a coil of rope, a mallet, and a pair of metal stakes.

The stakes were meant for putting up a badminton net, but he had found another use for them.

He opened the Ford’s trunk and transferred Erin to the rear of the van. Checked again to confirm that the rope and blindfold were knotted tight.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he muttered as he swung the doors shut, “Dr. Reilly.”

He slipped into the driver’s seat of the Astro, started the engine. A V-6, 150 horsepower. Noisy as hell.

The van rumbled like an unmuffled Harley as he steered it away into the night.

He drove for two and a half miles, heading east on Broadway, past the lighted islands of shopping plazas and the dark, rustling stretches of undeveloped land.

At Houghton Road he turned south. He was near the outer edges of town now. Rare horse ranches and isolated patches of tract housing were all he saw around him.

By the time he passed Escalante Road, more than two miles south of Broadway, even these proofs of habitation had largely vanished. His surroundings were a great starlit expanse of mesquite trees and cactus, rippling like some strange ocean, extending in every direction to the mountains outlined against the blue-black sky.

He was outside city limits now. A psychological barrier had been crossed, and irrationally he felt safer. Driving with one hand, he removed the baseball cap, red wig, and false beard.

Without the disguise he was a balding, moon-faced man of forty-six, his pale cheeks as smooth as a child’s.

In profile his chin was weak, and his nose, badly broken in a long-ago fight, was flat and shapeless. Tufting his scalp were scraps of hair, straw-colored once, now prematurely gray.

The lights of the dashboard played on his face, gifting him with the illusion of expressiveness and life; but the light did not touch his eyes. They lay in shadowed hollows under thin, feminine brows.

The job, he thought, had gone flawlessly so far. Better than expected. Surpassing all hopes.

He nodded, satisfied, but he did not smile.

Harold Gund never smiled.