Death Benefits

22

The lawyer’s name was Diernholtz. He arrived an hour after Walker and Stillman had been brought into the police station, then said to Walker, “It’s getting so you can’t discharge a firearm into a living human being anymore without having people ask a lot of prying questions. I hope you didn’t answer any of them yet.”

Walker shook his head.

“Good for you,” said Diernholtz. “The call I got from your company said you would know that much. Now, before you make your statement, I assume you did shoot that man?”

“Yes.”

“Self-defense, then. I’ll be with you when they interrogate you.”

The interrogation took hours, but then it simply ended. Walker was left in a room by himself that had no bars. For a time he paced, and for a time he sat. Finally, after the sun was high, he laid his head on the table and slept, then awoke and paced again. It was late afternoon before the police captain came in.

“Sit down, Mr. Walker,” he said. “Let me explain the situation to you. We’ve verified that Mr. Stillman was the one who called the police after the incident. The hands of the man you shot have the same powder residue on them that we found on yours, so we know he fired his weapon—presumably before you did, since the one who fires last is generally the one who’s still with us. The second man’s hands have also tested positive to show he had fired a pistol at some point. An assistant district attorney was listening while you gave your statement. Another was with the forensics people at the scene. They just confirmed that they’re not going to file any charges.”

Walker said, “Does that mean I can go?”

The captain paused. “Not just yet. They have recorded it as an instance of self-defense. I’ve been a cop for twenty-two years, and I never saw an armed assailant who died that way.”

“What way?” asked Walker.

“He got thrown through a plate-glass window, managed to accidentally get a piece of glass across his throat, and bled to death. Isn’t that what you saw?”

Walker hesitated. “Yes.” He remembered Stillman raising the big shard of glass and hurling it into the window, so it would break into a shower of pieces mixed with the others. He had been destroying the weapon.

The captain seemed to sense what Walker was thinking. “You don’t know Stillman very well, do you?”

“The company hired him to investigate a fraud case, and assigned me to help,” said Walker. “That was only about a month ago. I don’t know anything bad about him, if that’s what you mean.”

The captain stared into Walker’s eyes for a moment, then seemed to soften. “You’re a young guy. You have an education, a clean record, so I’ll give you something for free.” He leaned forward. “Cops talk to each other. We go to conventions, just like insurance salesmen, take training courses together. Other people probably wonder what we talk about. A couple of times what I’ve heard cops talk about is Stillman.”

“Why Stillman?”

“Did you know he was a police officer?”

Walker returned his stare, and shook his head.

“About twenty years ago,” said the captain. “In Los Angeles. There weren’t any charges against him that were made public, so it’s hard to know the reason he left. I have a few guesses. Since then he’s been in business for himself.”

“The security business,” said Walker defensively.

The captain looked unimpressed with the term. “He’s ready to do a little of everything. Does surveillance, executive protection for companies, handles some stalking cases, quite a bit of insurance work. There have even been a couple of times when somebody was kidnapped and he’s the one who delivers the money and handles the exchange.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Walker. “Is that stuff illegal?”

“No,” said the captain. “He’s got all the licenses a man can have, and nothing he’s done has stuck to him . . . so far. I can vouch for that, because I just checked.” His eyes seemed to grow more intense. “A surprising number of these cases end up with somebody getting hurt bad. Or killed.”

“Clients?”

“Not clients,” said the captain. “Stillman is the guy you hire if you’ve got a problem you want solved, and you don’t care what it costs and especially don’t want to know how it’s done. What you want is a big . . . vicious . . . dog. That’s Stillman. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Walker sat in silence for a moment. “I guess I do. I’m not sure why you’re saying it to me.”

“You just got into a mess, and had to kill somebody to get through it. And you’re in the clear this time: self-defense. I would like to give you some expert advice on self-defense. If whatever it is you’re doing for McClaren Life and Casualty puts you in a position where you have to spend time doing what Stillman does, you might want to look for another line of work.” He stood up. “Pick up your personal belongings at the front desk.”

“Miami police are still unable to identify two slain combatants in a late-night shootout at a Palm Beach residence. At around midnight last night, police responded to a nine-one-one call. When officers arrived just minutes later, they found that two damage appraisers for the McClaren insurance company had apparently foiled a robbery attempt by disarming one of a pair of gunmen. One suspect was shot in the chest, and the second suspect was fatally injured in the struggle for a second weapon. Both men were pronounced dead on arrival at West Palm Beach Hospital.” The woman on the television set gave a practiced look of disapproval, moved the sheet of paper to the bottom of her pile, and said, “Next, a cable snaps on an amusement-park ride, with grisly consequences.”

Walker stared at the woman on the television set as she faded and was replaced by a commercial for stomach medicine. There was an odd diction to television news, a special jargon. Nobody in a face-to-face conversation said “slain,” or referred to anybody as a “gunman.” There was a pitch to the descriptions that was edgy and tense, with no variation, like an unchanging song with the volume always turned up, but the news readers smiled through it, as though they were repeating words in a foreign language.

There was a knock on the door of his room, and Walker let Stillman in. Stillman said, “I just checked in with the cops. Still unidentified. They don’t seem to be in this the way they need to be.”

“You want to see if that lawyer—what’s his name—Diernholtz can get anything? He seems to have a relationship with them, and he’s already on the payroll.”

“Good idea, wrong time. It’s not that they won’t give. They don’t have. They’ve already run their fingerprints, and it seems they’re not in the FBI’s NCIC system. This is not normal.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It means they’ve never been arrested anywhere. People in businesses that involve shooting you tend to get printed at some point. The fact that they’re not isn’t good.”

“I guess not.”

“It means the cops have to use the hard ways—sending pictures around, and so on. They’re a bit busy for that right now. They also seem to think somebody will be in any minute to claim the bodies and tell them who they were.”

“Do you want to take turns hanging around the station to see who shows up?”

“It won’t happen this time. If it did, it wouldn’t happen fast. You can’t just pull up to the back door with a station wagon and drive off with a body. There will be autopsies and so on. Then they have to get the bodies picked up by somebody who has a license to do it, like an undertaker. Waiting isn’t going to do anything but waste more time.”

“What choice do we have?”

Stillman reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the eyeglass case that Walker had found on one of the men.

“You didn’t give that to the police?” Walker was amazed.

“I wanted to take a closer look than I could in the dark, and the police erroneously assumed the glasses were mine,” said Stillman. “I’d like to know what’s printed on the case.”

“So would I,” said Walker.

“Then let’s do it.” Stillman went into the bathroom and snatched three tissues from the box on the counter. He pulled a tiny bottle with a black label out of his pocket. “I picked up some Wite-Out.” He turned on the desk lamp, set the bottle on the desk, then took out the eyeglass case.

Stillman opened the bottle, then used the little brush in the cap to paint over the three lines of print that had been pressed into the side of the case. He used a tissue to wipe the white liquid off the case, then handed it to Walker.

Walker stared down at the case, where the letters were now in clear white. He read them aloud. “Foley Optical, 1219 Main Street, Keene, New Hampshire 03470.”