Shadow Woman (52 page)

But they had also done an
atomic-absorption test on his clothes. That was bad. He knew they
must have found antimony, barium, and lead. The only defense he could
think of was that he had worn the same clothes for legal target
practice at home in Las Vegas and not gotten them cleaned. He could
hardly say he hadn’t fired a gun in them. He had, but it had
not been a rifle. It had been the pistol he had fired into the two
men in New York City. The shorter barrel, close range, and downward
angle probably accounted for why so much powder residue had stuck to
his clothes.

Seaver might be able to account
for most of the evidence in a trial if he got the right lawyer, but
the rifle was like a mathematical problem that he couldn’t
figure out how to approach. When the ballistics tests were completed,
he knew they would show a match between a test-fired bullet and the
bullet that had killed the man in Swan Lake. Otherwise there would
have been no reason for Earl to plant it in his room. As Seaver
reflected on it, the whole issue of the rifle was perhaps his biggest
problem. The lieutenant who had first interrogated him had mentioned,
almost casually, that it had come with a silencer. If it had a
factory-made suppressor on it, then it had to be a military or
police-only model. The prosecutor would drag out Seaver’s
record and reduce his years of honorable service as a policeman into
a set of connections that would make it possible for him to get his
hands on a rifle like that – something not a lot of people
could do.

He reviewed his own record from
die point of view of a prosecutor. They could drag out his expert
marksman ratings. Those would be far from enough to prove he could
put a round through some guy’s temple at five hundred yards,
but there wouldn’t be any other suspect around who could have
done it on the best day of his life. The prosecutors would be sure to
dig up his four shootings in the line of duty. The fact that four
boards of inquiry had cleared him would mean nothing. Juries looked
at internal investigations as what they were: routine, obligatory
checks just to be sure there was nothing so obviously wrong with a
shooting that the public was sure to recognize it instantly. The
shootings would establish that Seaver had dropped the hammer on other
men at least four times and not been turned into a shaking wreck by
the experience.

The longer Seaver thought about
his prospects, the worse they seemed. He had enlisted in the service,
done fifteen years as a police officer, then eleven years in a
responsible, respectable executive position in an American company
with a recognized name. But to the twelve Fundamentalist farmers, old
women in pearl necklaces, and fish-bait salesmen who would make up a
jury around here, being vice president for security at a Las Vegas
casino would sound like he was a gangster.

And what the hell was Seaver
doing up here in the first place? The only thing strangers did up
here was nothing – go on vacation. What was there to choose
from? Hunting, fishing, skiing, horses. Could he salvage the whole
rifle issue by saying he’d lied about it at first because he
had planned to use an illegal weapon on a hunting trip? No. If rounds
from the gun matched the bullet in a murdered man’s head, it
wouldn’t matter why he said he had brought it. He had to stick
to the story that the gun wasn’t his. He had no fishing tackle
or skis, no clothes he could wear to ride a horse even if he had
known which end of one to climb onto. He had to say he had been here
on business. But what sort of business didn’t involve meeting
with anyone?

He pondered what he knew about
the way Pleasure, Inc. was run, but his mind kept getting mired in
the depressing details of the one-of-a-kind project in upstate New
York that had gotten him into this mess. Then it occurred to him that
this wasn’t such a bad project to think about. He could be here
in Montana scouting for a place that Pleasure, Inc. could develop as
a resort. Companies like Pleasure, Inc. really did keep that kind of
scouting a secret. If word leaked out too early, the price of land
would triple overnight, competitors would start nosing around, and
the local lunatics who always turned up when anybody built anything
would begin to organize. A scouting trip accounted for all of his
aimless driving, and for his not being dressed or equipped to do any
goofing off. A scouting trip would account for his using a false
name: it kept competitors and speculators from suspecting anything.

Suddenly, the angle Seaver had
been sifting for appeared to him. The sleazy reputation that clung to
Las Vegas casinos could be used not to hang him but to make him a
victim. It was not Seaver but unscrupulous competitors who had used
the rifle to whack that guy in Swan Lake. They had done it so they
could plant the rifle in Seaver’s room and discredit Pleasure,
Inc. seriously enough so the company could never build in Montana.

Seaver knew he would have to
retrace all of his movements since he had arrived in Montana to find
anything that supported his story and lose anything that didn’t.
He had arrived in Montana when? Two days before they had arrested
him. He had gone right to his hotel in Billings. Could he verify
that? Yes. He had flown under a false name, but the police had found
identification in the name he had used. If necessary, his lawyers
could find somebody in the airline or even on the flight who
remembered his face, so that proved it wasn’t a lie. The hotel
would have his check-in time. Then what had he done? He had gone to
his room and watched the television… and seen the report of
the killing! It was already on TV. The guy had gotten himself killed
before Seaver got here! How could Seaver have forgotten the most
basic step in proving a murder charge? He had an alibi!

Seaver was free. He was as good
as out the door. He rehearsed his story again and again, adding tiny
bits to it that he could be sure came from his memory and could be
crosschecked by the police later. As he did, he discovered that the
rifle had been magically transformed from a damning piece of evidence
to a complete exoneration. If Seaver had not been here, he could not
have fired the rifle. But the ballistics would show that somebody had
fired it through that guy’s head in Swan Lake. If the person
who had fired it decided the best thing he could do with it was put
it under Seaver’s bed, then Seaver certainly was no friend of
his. Presto! No murder charge, no conspiracy to commit murder, no
accessory to murder, not even a felony charge for possessing a
silencer.

It wasn’t until many hours
later, after Seaver had told the police the whole story and walked
out of the police station, that his euphoria began to wane. He had
only gotten himself out of one small scrape. He had been sent out by
the three partners to handle a problem, and he had not handled it
yet. He had gotten himself arrested instead. While he had been in
jail, it was possible that things might even have gotten worse. There
had been photographers on the jailhouse lawn, and men with video
cameras that had the call letters of television stations on them.

If Earl Bliss had seen those
reports, he would also see the reports that Seaver was free. He might
decide that failing to frame Seaver meant he had to kill him. If Pete
Hatcher was alive, even he could figure out that the reason Seaver
was in Montana was to find him. It might be enough to drive him into
the arms of the F.B.I. And if the Italians in New York had seen the
reports, they might start asking questions too. He might have to
think of a whole new story just for them. He was going to have to
check with Foley, Buckley, and Salateri as soon as possible to find
out where he stood.

As soon as he was out of
Kalispell and down the road to Missoula, he checked into another
hotel and walked down the street to a convenience store where there
was a pay telephone. He called the private number of the partners’
offices in the Pleasure Island casino, but nobody answered. He tried
calling their houses but got nothing except the voices of servants
who told him politely they were writing down his name. Then he tried
the operator at the hotel.

“This is Calvin Seaver,”
he said. “I need to have you reach Mr. Foley, Mr. Salateri, or
Mr. Buckley for me. Any one of them.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The
resort owners can only be reached through their assistants during
normal business hours.”

“I know better than that.
They can be reached any time of any day of the year. If you don’t
know me, call up the emergency notification list. I’m at the
top.”

“Your name, sir?”

“I just told you. Calvin
Seaver.”

“I’m sorry, sir.
I’ve been instructed to inform any callers that there is no
Calvin Seaver connected with the hotel. All inquiries regarding a
Calvin Seaver are to be immediately referred to Mr. Bennis in hotel
security.”

“So refer me. Get him on
the line.”

There was a silence, and Seaver
could tell from the duration that the operator was talking to
Bennis’s office. No, damn it, that was Seaver’s office.
Bennis was a flunky, a man Seaver had picked out of the ranks because
of his canine loyalty and his ability to keep his mouth shut.

“Bennis,” said the
voice.

“This is Seaver. I’m
at a pay phone, so there’s no tap at this end. You might want
to check your bug detector.”

“I already did,”
said Bennis. “It’s clear.”

“I’m in Missoula,
Montana. The police got convinced they had the wrong man and let me
out. I wanted the big guys to know. I’m coming home.”

“Cal – ” There
was an unpleasant sound to Bennis’s voice that Seaver had not
noticed before, almost a whine.

“What?”

“You’ve been good to
me, so I’m paying off the favor. Don’t come here.”

Seaver felt as though he’d
had the wind knocked out of him. “What does that mean?”

“They hired some people.”

“They were going to kill
me in jail? Without even hearing what happened or giving me a chance
to fix it?”

“Look, I don’t know
any more.”

Seaver’s field of vision
had a red aura at the edges, and his heart beat so hard he could feel
it. “They didn’t hire them. They don’t know who to
hire, and they wouldn’t let themselves get within a mile of
anybody like that. You hired them. They called you into the office
and told you I was a problem, a serious liability. Did you even tell
them I wasn’t? That I would never talk?”

Bennis’s voice was calm.
He sounded as though he were on the other side of a huge chasm,
watching a disaster that had nothing to do with him. “You know
them, Cal. They make a decision, and that’s their decision. You
don’t talk them out of something like that.”

“You’re right,”
said Seaver. “I’m glad you told me. And you know what
else? I’m glad you’re the one they picked to replace me.
You deserve it.”

Seaver hung up and took two
steps back toward his hotel. He was tired, and had to sleep. No,
there was no way he could go back up there and sit around all night.
He had told Bennis he was in Missoula, He had to get on a plane.

He looked at his watch. It was
three in the morning. What was the date? September 16 – no, 17.
It was a date that he would always remember. As he walked toward the
hotel, he shook his head, and was surprised that the violent movement
traveled to his shoulders and spine. He probably looked like an old
dog shaking water off his back.

Seaver gave a quiet snort of a
laugh at the thought. That was about right. For eleven years, since
the day he had gone to work for Pleasure, Inc. he had been moving a
third of his salary into accounts in the Caribbean under the name
Luther Olmstead. How could men as smart as Buckley, Salateri, and
Foley not have guessed that? When they had met him, he had just
finished fifteen years as a cop, where there had been no opportunity
to put away a dime. Then he had landed a job that paid over two
hundred thousand a year with virtually no expenses. The taxes alone
would have been more than his old salary.

He would stop in Los Angeles
just long enough to pick up traveling money and his passport. That
was the main thing – getting out. After that, he would consider
what else he wanted to do. The three big guys probably thought that,
given his history, his impulse would be to call the police. They
would be busy in a few hours getting rid of evidence. But his
experience as a policeman had not given him an interest in calling
the police. And that was not his only option. He might not know the
names of the old men in New York that the three partners were afraid
of, but he did know the names of some similar men in Los Angeles, and
he just might decide to give them a call. They would appreciate the
opportunity to give their friends in New York a timely warning. He
had always heard that the Mafia worked on reciprocity and favors, and
this was a time of his life when it would not hurt to have them think
of him with gratitude.

Jane
found Earl Bliss’s address in the early afternoon. She drove
past it slowly, looking for signs of danger, then continued up the
road to study the next few houses. Out here on the northern rim of
the San Fernando Valley, the stretches of pavement could hardly be
called neighborhoods, because the houses were set at the ends of long
winding gravel driveways on weedy parcels that seemed to her to be
five acres or more. Some of the places consisted of old, rundown
frame houses surrounded by the bodies of half-assembled cars, while
others were like Earl Bliss’s, little fenced-in compounds with
sprawling suburban houses in the middle. Two miles down the road she
turned around and came past the house in the opposite direction. The
house remained as she had first seen it: no curtains had moved, no
cars had suddenly appeared in the driveway.

She had no evidence of how many
people had been engaged in the hunt for Pete Hatcher. Committing
murder for money was not a business that lent itself to large teams.
But she did know that at least one person was not accounted for: the
one who had trapped Hatcher in Denver had been a woman.