Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (7 page)

“What are you doing here?” he accused Medraut. The stalker looked stunned. His stare flicked beyond Medraut to Diana. “What have you done?” There was a horrible, frozen moment. Medraut looked confused, Diana probably looked as stunned as the stalker had a moment ago, and the stalker’s stunned look turned ashen. Then he vaulted over the hood of her Honda and loped off down San Jose and turned the corner, heading toward Mission.

“Who was that?” Medraut said, his eyes narrowing. “He seemed to know me.”

“I don’t know,” she said, and put the Honda in drive. “And I don’t want to know.”

They got two thousand dollars for the coin, which turned out to be a commemorative piece issued by Tiberius for Augustus Caesar’s death. That meant the dealer thought he could get twice that from a buyer. It was in the best condition the dealer had ever seen. Two thousand would
allow Medraut to do a little clothes shopping and get settled. But she’d have to find an auction house to get him top dollar next time. His collection would bring more as a unit than if each coin was sold individually.

“We have to make another stop.” She’d been busy on Angie’s List. “We need a gun.”

“A gun?” Medraut’s eyes lit. “I would like to have such a weapon.”

“Cool down, buddy. It takes ten days to buy a gun in California, and
you
won’t be able to get one at all, because you don’t have any identification.”

His face fell. Then his eyes slid sideways to her. “But you can buy one.”

She checked her purse to make sure she had the ID she’d need and nodded absently. “Yeah. I hate guns. Never wanted one around. But that guy hanging around unnerves me. I guess I’d feel better with some protection.”

“But yes. You must buy a gun.”

The gun shop attached to a pistol range over in the warehouse district on the west side of the city was open until nine.

“I’d go with a shotgun for home defense.” The guy helping them didn’t have a brush cut. That was a relief. And he wasn’t a crotchety geezer. He’d been in the military, though. He had that clean-cut look and biceps that had been through boot camp. “Anyone can use them, and you don’t have to aim. Light gauge so you don’t take out the neighbor’s kids through the walls. A Benelli with a Surefire Responder sight would be my choice for someone like you. But if you want defense in your purse, a shotgun’s no use.”

“So . . . so what would you recommend if I wanted a gun for my purse?”

“I’d go with a Kahr M40. Tiny, goes anywhere, and packs a wallop.”

“Well . . . uh . . . that sounds good.” It actually sounded all very technical and much harder to shoot than it looked on television. Her uncertainty must have shown on her face.

“Why don’t you try one of each out on the shooting range? That way you can tell whether they’ll fit your needs. I’ll get you started. Then you can play on your own.” He winked at Medraut, automatically assuming that the man was silent because he was trying to let his girlfriend feel in control of a “scary, gun-buying situation.”

To her amazement, Medraut winked back. “I saw that, you two,” she grumped. “Okay. I’ll try them out.” She wondered how long after the clerk left them on their own it would be before Medraut wanted to try the guns.

Not long. He had been startled by the noise when the clerk first demonstrated, even though he’d been fitted with those earmuff-looking sound blockers. But when he realized that the holes in the target had been made by the gun, his excitement was palpable. The clerk showed her how to sight and how to hold the gun with two hands. That entailed his big body surrounding hers and steadying the gun. He must love his job. The kick was not bad—according to him. To her it felt bone jarring. But she got better at it. Her shots hit the target more often than not, and he reassured her that soon she’d be reliably within the outline of a human form.

He left her with ammunition and a word of praise. He knew how to sell guns.

She wasn’t loath, however, to cede the gun to Medraut’s excitement. He got better faster than she did. When he had placed five shots inside the outline, he raised the gun and smiled. It was a little, interior smile of pure ecstasy.

“Better than a sword?” she asked.

He nodded, pleasure and amazement darting alternately across his face. “One can kill from a distance.
How I would have liked to have this weapon in my own time.”

“Yeah, they’re great when you’re the only one who’s got one. When everybody has them, it gets pretty bloody.” Maybe not bloodier than hacking each other to death with swords, though.

“We must wait ten days to get these?” He frowned. “By then this man who follows you and who says he knows me may have attacked you.”

“Yeah, that reminds me, how would he know you?”

“He wouldn’t. He has mistaken me for someone else, or he is what you call ‘crazy.’ I suspect crazy.” Medraut was fondling the gun. Caressing the grip and the barrel. “So how can we buy guns before ten days have passed?”

She shrugged. “Short of buying something illegal from the gangs over in the Mission District, we can’t.” She saw the look in his eyes. “Don’t even
think
about it. They would kill you, or if they didn’t, the police would put you in jail for having a gun like that.”

“Ahhh.” He handed the gun to her ruefully. “I understand.”

Diana bought the two guns and plenty of ammunition and filled out all the paperwork. She paid with a credit card, and the clerk let her take the ammunition home with her. Boy, having a stalker was an expensive proposition. How long would it take her to pay off that card? On the other hand, she might not even get to pay the card down if her stalker got her. She pushed down the fear that had been making her stomach tight ever since they ran into her stalker. Maybe she should file a police report. Not that they’d do anything, but at least his description would be on record. If he killed her, they might be able to get him. After the fact.

She trudged out to the parking lot, Medraut in tow. Far from being alone as she had been since her father died,
she had both a stalker and an unwanted houseguest. How could things get worse? She couldn’t stomach sending Medraut back to his death. But how could he live in the twenty-first century? How would he get a driver’s license? A Social Security number? She was probably going to have to find someone to make him an identity before she could get rid of him. She had a feeling that service would not be on Angie’s List.

She’d parked right under a security light. Medraut went automatically to the passenger’s side door and opened it. “Give me the ammunition. . . .” He leaned over the hood.

The glass of the passenger’s side window shattered, followed by a cracking sound.

“Get down!” Diana yelled, and sank to her knees.

Medraut fell to the pavement. Something scraped the hood where he had just been leaning. The windshield collapsed. Another crack sounded. He crawled around the back of the car to where she crouched by the driver’s door. Several men burst from the gun store and strode out, keeping to the cover of the large cypress trees on either side, swinging their weapons, stiff-armed, just like on television.

“What’s going on here?” an older man barked.

“Someone shot at us!” Diana called, from her knees.

“Call the police,” the older man said. The guy who’d waited on them backed into the building.

Oh, shit,
Diana thought.
How will I explain Medraut?

The young officer had tattoos. Green snaking lines just peeked from under his short-sleeved blue uniform shirt. Diana was shivering, even in her jacket, but he seemed impervious to cold. Probably a point of police pride not to wear long sleeves or a jacket even in March in San Francisco. The parking lot of the gun store seemed filled with people.
The employees were strutting around offering theories, though an officer had them corralled near the front door. A female officer crawled around Diana’s car with a flashlight. Two other men in plainclothes hiked back from the far side of the parking lot.

The shooter had to be her stalker, and she had told the police that.

“So, no idea why this man is stalking you, Ms. Dearborn?” the tattooed officer asked.

“No, Officer. I mean, sometimes people think they know you when they’ve read your books. I get letters from prisons and people in skilled-nursing facilities and hospitals. They write really personal letters, as if I’m a friend. I know a couple other authors who’ve had stalkers.”

He made a few notes. “No ID, Mr. Medraut?” the officer asked in a stony voice.

“I . . . I was driving, so he left his wallet at home.”

The officer looked up under his brows from his notebook. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. They’d want her and Medraut down in the station house tomorrow with full ID, if he just left it at home. And they all knew that wasn’t going to happen. Medraut watched her warily, letting her take the lead. If only she could. How would she write this in one of her novels? She’d take three days to think up a story first of all. But if her heroine had no time to think . . .

She heaved a sigh. “All right, Officer Larrabee. He doesn’t have any ID. He’s here illegally. We didn’t want to tell you that, but you’ll find out anyway.”

“Not Hispanic. Didn’t come over the border. Accent sounds a little Germanic.”

Okay, okay. If he’d come on a plane, he’d have had to have a passport.
“Just because he’s not Hispanic doesn’t mean he can’t come over the border. He came through Canada.”

“Then he’s got a Canadian driver’s license, and before
you tell me he doesn’t drive, then he’d have a government issue ID for health care . . .” The threat implied was clear. If he didn’t have any ID at all, then he might be an escaped prisoner or a terrorist or someone hiding out.

The guys in plainclothes arrived, interrupting this unpleasant conversation.

“What have you got?” the officer asked.

“Guy was behind a car on the far side of the parking lot, near the entrance from Richardson. He made the shots and then peeled out the back way onto Bay. Left some rubber and two casings from a 9 millimeter. Would have been quite a shot from over there.”

“I got bullets,” their female compatriot announced. She still held the knife she’d used to pry them out of the Honda, and she raised the plastic Baggie she’d put them in for evidence.

“So why did this guy want you dead, Ms. Dearborn? You said he’d been stalking you?”

“Oh, she wasn’t the intended victim, Officer,” the woman said, surprised. “She’s short. She was behind the car on the driver’s side, entirely protected. This gentleman was the target.” She nodded to Medraut. “Only leaning over at the last second saved you the first time. When you dropped to the ground you dodged the second bullet. Then you scrambled around the back and he didn’t have another clear shot. But those first two should have got you dead to rights. You’re a lucky man.”

“Two shots. From that distance. With a handgun. Guy knows his way around guns,” one of the other guys noted.

Medraut and Officer Larrabee looked as nonplussed as she felt. “Why . . . Why would he want to kill . . . uh . . . Jim?”

“You got a past that followed you here?” Larrabee asked.

“No, sir. I left my past behind.”

Way behind,
Diana thought. But would the police believe him?

“Well, if he’s fixated on you, Ms. Dearborn, maybe he isn’t exactly going to like you hanging out with another man.” Larrabee was proud of his psychological insight.

“I . . . we’re not . . .” Diana wondered if they could see her blush in the bright white security lights. The whole thought of her and Medraut being a couple made her queasy.

“He doesn’t know that. Which brings us back to what Mr. Medraut is doing here.”

“I came looking for work,” Medraut said, shrugging apologetically. “The recession isn’t limited to your country.”

How did he know about the recession?

“Not likely to get work without an ID,” one of the plainclothes guys said.

“Diana told the truth. It may be a Canadian driver’s license, but I do have one. I left it at her apartment. We met online, and she told me she’d help me after my company closed. I’ll bring it down to the station tomorrow. Canadians can stay six months without a green card. . . . Then if you send me home, well . . . you send me home. I don’t want trouble for her.”

Diana hoped her expression didn’t show her shock. How did he know to say all that?

“Now, is it possible for us to go? It’s very late.”

The cop would never let them go. Diana just knew he’d take Medraut in for being illegal. But he didn’t.

“Okay. Your car isn’t drivable with no windshield, Ms. Dearborn. I’ll have a squad car take you home. I’ll keep your driver’s license. You can pick it up tomorrow at the station when you two come in.”

“Thank you, Officer,” Medraught said, and smiled. He was very sure of himself.

“We should be done with the car tomorrow, too. If you
have roadside service, they’ll pick it up at the precinct and tow it to a repair shop of your choice to get the windshield replaced.”

“Thanks. . . . Thanks, Officer.” Diana wanted nothing more than to get out of there. It had been a long night.

“Go home, and lock the doors, and stay there, Ms. Dearborn. This guy isn’t done. Maybe Mr. Medraut should think about going home just to get this guy off your back.”

Diana shuddered. Medraut couldn’t go home because he wasn’t from Canada. And the stalker had been fixated on her before Medraut arrived.

“I’ll be in after work tomorrow,” she promised Officer Larrabee. “I get off at three.” Medraut still wouldn’t have an ID. There was no story that could cover that. She wasn’t quite sure how Medraut had talked the guy into letting them go at all.

“Call us if you see the stalker hanging around outside your apartment again.”

But she didn’t see her handsome stalker outside her apartment when they got back. She ordered delivery pizza because she was too tired to cook. They sat down in her little dining area with a bottle of Smoking Loon Merlot. “Where did you get that stuff you said about the recession, and meeting online? How did you know all that?” That had been bothering her all the way home.