Dark Paradise (67 page)

rattled as she tried to pull her arms down, the sound hitting her raw

brain like a bundle of steel fence posts.

Panic and nausea swirled inside her, rolling up the back of her throat,

choking her as it hit the gag that was stuffed in her mouth. She

swallowed convulsively, choking as tears blurred her vision. Memories of

the night hovered in the back of her pounding head. The darkness.

The stillness. The call of the owl.

It came back in a rush. Fear. Fighting for her life. The hood

suffocating her. A tall figure clad in black. A mask.

The club hitting her blow after blow after blow.

She had no idea what had happened in the time since she had lost

consciousness. She had no idea where she was. She had no idea who had

attacked her or why, or what their plans might be for her. Panic went

through her like a thousand volts of electricity, jerking her body

against its tethers, arching her back up off the bed. Pain went through

her in spasms and she sobbed, but she couldn't seem to stop fighting.

She kicked and thrashed until the adrenaline ran out, then she lay there

aching, crying softly, feeling the blood drip off her wrists.

Slowly, her surroundings began to penetrate the small sphere that had

been her world since coming to. Rough cabin walls. A small window filled

with gray light. She could hear the birds singing outside and the snort

of a horse. In the cabin there was no sound at all. As far as she could

tell, she was alone.

"Where the hell is she?" Bryce demanded, slamming the cordless phone

down on the glass-topped table. The juice glasses shuddered and sloshed.

No one had answered the phone at Samantha's house. She wasn't at the

hotel.

Most important, she wasn't in the bed in his guest room.

She was gone. That hadn't been a variable in his plan.

Sharon calmly rescued her croissant from a dousing and dabbed the puddle

on the table delicately with her napkin. "She probably caught a ride

into town with one of the hands. You said she would have second

thoughts."

"I didn't think she would leave!"

He paced beside the table like a tiger, his hands on his narrow hips. He

had prepared himself meticulously for breakfast, dressing down in jeans

and old boots and a hunter-green oxford shirt, an ancient tooled belt

around his waist with six inches of excess leather hanging limply down

alongside his fly. He had planned to take a breakfast tray up to

Samantha's rooms, make love to her again, then invite her to go

riding - just the two of them.

Time alone for them to bond. Time for him to impress upon her what a

fine life she could have with him.

Sharon sent him a look as she tore her croissant in two and baptized one

end in currant jam. "I knew she would leave," she muttered. "I just

didn't think it would be so soon. Apparently she has a low threshold for

sin."

Bryce wheeled on her, his eyes bright with fury. "I'm tired of your

little tiraids, Sharon," he snapped. "I tolerate too much from you, but I

have limits, and you've just about reached them."

She rose from her chair like a queen, an icy exterior draped in white

silk and a core of hurt that glowed in her eyes. Her hair was slicked

back into a knot, the look emphasizing the heavy bone structure of her

face. She stared hard at Bryce - down at Bryce, because she had chosen to

wear a pair of gold mules with heels, needing to feel superior to him in

some way, any way.

"Don't you threaten me," she warned, her voice trembling with emotion.

"Your little whores will come and go. I will always be here. I know you

too well. I know too much.
 
I can make your life hell - and don't think I

won't." She narrowed her eyes and smiled, cobralike. "Don't think for a

minute I won't, you ungrateful son of a bitch."

Reisa came out onto the terrace with a coffee urn and a vacant look in

her eyes. Sharon stalked past her and into the house, trailing a

fluttering train of white silk and a cloud of perfume.

"Coffee, Mr. Bryce?"

"Get out of my way," Bryce snapped. Stepping around the housekeeper, he

headed for the side gate and his Mercedes.

Marilee expected the tape to be pornographic, the result of a little

game of "Candid Camera" in Lucy's bedroom. A video chronicle of

Townsend's escapades in Lucy's bed or some other bed or with donkeys or

children. Since Lucy was involved, she expected sex to be involved. But

as she sat amid the ruins of her friend's study, her eyes trained on the

television that had somehow escaped destruction, sex was not what she

got.

The opening shot was taken from horseback. On the trail ahead of the

cameraman were Townsend and a small, thin man with a face like a carp

and dark hair that looked like thread that had been stitched into his

scalp.

The two were dressed in safari khaki and camouflage hunting gear. Ahead

of them was a rough-looking character with a drooping crumb-duster

mustache and a crunched old water-stained cowboy hat pulled low over his

eyes. There was talk of rifles and scopes and other hunts. Townsend

sounded excited. There was a flush on his cheekbones. Someone off-camera

said the name "Graf" and the little man swiveled around in his saddle.

Graf J. Grafton Sheffield. Marilee had heard Ben Lucas call him Graf. He

didn't look like the kind of man who could pick up a rifle and kill

anything, let alone a human being.

They rode up a trail, thick woods all around. A lot of thrashing sounds

and horses snorting. Somewhere in the distance, hounds bayed

relentlessly. Townsend talked about trophies, about shooting a grizzly

from a helicopter in Alaska. Then the party broke into a clearing and

Sheffield's horse spooked.

The hounds yapped without cease. The camera caught a glimpse of them and

their scruffy-looking handlers as it panned the clearing en route to a

battered four-by-four with a small flatbed trailer behind it. On the

trailer was a stainless steel cage perhaps three feet high and seven or

eight feet long. Inside the cage was a full-grown tiger. A magnificent,

beautiful creature.

The riding party dismounted and the horses were led away. The cowboy and

Townsend busied themselves preparing rifles. The camera slowly circled

the tiger's cage.

The animal was breathing heavily through its mouth, saliva dripping off

its chin. Its eyes looked glassy and unfocused. One of the dogs was set

loose and sprinted for the cage, snapping at the tiger's long tail that

protruded between the bars. The cat let out a startled roar and tried to

jump to its feet, but the cage wasn't tall enough for him to do anything

but crouch, his muscles quivering.

The dog barked furiously, lunging at the cage, then wheeling away,

inciting his cohorts to riot.

Townsend and the cowboy walked off across the clearing, rifles on their

shoulders. Yet another scruffy minion climbed atop the tiger cage and

pulled the door open. He drove the cat from the cage with a cattle prod.

It stumbled down off the trailer and stood swaying on its feet, looking

confused. Then the dogs were set loose.

They charged the tiger as a pack, howling madly, teeth bared. Terrified,

the cat bolted and tried to run under the four by four, but was headed

off by a pair of dogs. He got away and a third dog hit him broadside and

sank its teeth into the tiger's flank, drawing blood. Screaming, the

tiger twisted around and knocked the dog ten feet with a single swipe of

its paw, then it dashed across the open ground as best it could, heading

toward the woods with the rest of the pack in hot pursuit. Once he

stumbled drunkenly and went down, the dogs diving at him, tearing at

him. But he managed to regain his feet and run on.

Twenty yards from the edge of the woods Townsend took aim and fired

twice. The tiger went down in a boneless heap. The dogs were on him

instantly, then the flunkies ran out and knocked the dogs back with

clubs.

Marilee sat on the small couch with tears streaming down her cheeks, her

stomach turning over. She watched the cowboy and Sheffield congratulate

Townsend. Townsend posed, holding the head of the dead cat up by the

ears, a big grin on his face, as if he were genuinely proud of what he

had just done. The memory of Townsend's office played through the back

of her mind - the mounted heads, the skins on the wall, the bear rearing

and snarling ferociously in the corner. The son of a bitch had shot it

from a chopper. He hadn't confronted the beast face-to-face, as the pose

suggested. He had never seen the poor animal do anything but run for its

life. And the tiger skin was not the result of some death-defying battle

in India.

It was the result of slaughter, plain and simple. Not sport, not

challenge, no test of manhood.

The tape turned to static. She hit the stop button on the remote and

immediately a rerun of "Murphy Brown" filled the screen, the laugh track

sounding obscenely inappropriate. Killing the volume to a dull mumble,

she tossed the remote aside and stood up on wobbly legs.

Everything on that tape with the exception of the horseback riding was

illegal, to say nothing of unethical and immoral. One whiff of this in

the press and Townsend's career would have been over. Ample ammunition

for a blackmailer. And ample motive for the murder of a blackmailer.

Her first impulse was to take the tape to Quinn, but what did it really

show?
 
No one on the tape spoke of where they were. The face behind the

camera was never identified. Townsend was dead; what did it matter now

anyway he had shot an endangered animal in a canned hunt?

Quinn might recognize the dirtballs who ran the hunt.

He would recognize Sheffield, but there was nothing much to charge him

with. Christ, the man had walked on what should have been at the very

least a manslaughter charge. She would have to be the queen of naive to

think they would haul his bony ass back to Montana for simply being

present at Townsend's illegal hunt.

She was still clutching the volume of Martindale-Hubbell in her arms.

She had yet to open it because she knew without looking she wouldn't

like what was inside. But the ball was rolling now and there was no

stopping it.

She would see this through to the end because that was what she had to

do. Taking a deep breath, she turned back the front cover.

The first hundred pages of the book had been cut out to make room for a

stack of court reporter's notes.

Lengths of familiar green paper with reporter's phonograms in rows of

red ink. Marilee leaned back against the desk and paged through them,

frowning, her heart sinking lower and lower as she read Lucy's notes

about the people she was blackmailing.

Townsend, whom she disdained as an egotistical old fool. He doesn't have

the guts to run with the big dogs, but here he is anyway. He'll be eaten

alive. It serves him right. . . . Kyle Collins, an actor whose

boy-next-door qualities were crucial to his image. If his fans only knew

what he's capable of after a few lines of Bryce's cocaine . . . I've

told him I'll let him use the pictures I took for his next publicity

campaign. Won't his public be surprised to see him in those leather

undies?
 
A state senator from Texas who apparently had a blood lust

hunting mentality and had taken a number of trophy animals illegally

while visiting Bryce's chunk of paradise. Matthew's motto is: If it

moves, shoot it. Christ, the NRA must be so proud. Expensive hobby,

though, Senator. Let's see, that leopard cost you $8,000 out right. My

cooperation should be worth that much. . . .

She explained in detail how Bryce's little hunt club worked, how Bryce

arranged for the purchase of exotic animals through a black market

network. The cost to the hunter depended on the animal and on the