The Priest's Graveyard Page 16

  I hesitated, wanting to get past the war to more personal kinds of killings. “How did you kill the men who killed your family?” I asked. He glanced at me, and I wondered if I’d overstepped a boundary. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I shot them that same day. There were three of them.”

  His confession surprised me, not just because he’d made it, but by the way he said it. So matter-of-fact. It seemed so real, and yet so…I don’t know, maybe so surreal at the same time. It wasn’t as if he was gripping the wheel of the Chevy with both hands and sweating profusely as he broke down and confessed. He just sat there with the wheel between three fingers and said it as if he were shrugging. I tried to imagine his hands covered with blood.

  “It was crude,” he said. “I was young. I wouldn’t do that again.”

  “Would you ever kill outside of a war?”

  He hesitated. “If I thought it was my moral obligation.”

  I was leaning back in the passenger seat with one leg folded under the other, but in my mind I was on the edge of my chair.

  “When is it morally right to kill someone?” I asked. “I mean, outside of war?”

  “Now you want me to help you justify your desire to kill Bourque.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  Danny turned the corner and headed down Cherry Avenue toward the Staybridge. “Are you sure you want the answer to that?”

  “Yes. A simple one. I’m not that smart.”

  “You’re wrong about that. The problem with any philosophical consideration is that once you open a door in your mind, you can never close it. Once you learn something, you can never convince your mind that you didn’t learn it. If you learn the world is round, you can never fit in with a world that thinks it’s flat.”

  “My world’s like an amoeba,” I said. “It changes shape every day.”

  He laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “So,” I said, “when’s it right to kill?”

  Danny took a breath. “Said very simply so that even a child can understand? Not that I’m suggesting you have the mind of a child.”

  “Yes, said very simply,” I said. “I want to be able to kill Jonathan Bourque without the slightest confusion about why I’m doing it.”

  He grinned. He liked me, I thought.

  So he told me, using phrases like consequential moral reasoning and human rights to life and such. I found it all fascinating and, even more, I found Danny to be a perfect gentleman who was as patient as he was smart.

  Then I asked what I really wanted to know.

  “So have you? Ever killed someone outside of a war, I mean.”

  Danny remained silent, and I knew that he had. The priest beside me might have a whole graveyard full of skeletons for all I knew.

  “You don’t need to answer,” I said. “If you have, I’m sure it was the right thing to do. Just like I’m certain that killing the man who killed Lamont is the right thing to do, and nothing will ever change that.”

  “Renee—”

  “Please, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “I have to tell you—”

  “No, Danny, please. It was a stupid question and really, I don’t care. It’s none of my business. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  And that was it, at least for the time being. We drove in an awkward silence into the Staybridge parking lot.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Danny asked.

  “Reviewing my moral obligations,” I said.

  “We had an agreement. You assured me that you would forget the whole business of taking the law into your hands. What we’re going to do is strictly expose the world to the truth about Jonathan Bourque, nothing more.”

  “That was before you gave me the moral reasoning I needed to justify killing him.”

  He said nothing, but a soft grin formed on his face when he saw that I was smiling.

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  I winked. “So am I.”

  He pulled up to the lobby entrance and looked at me. “Tell me what you learned about where most people hide their secrets.”

  We’d talked about this yesterday. “In their homes,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where they spend most of their time in private, which is where most hidden things are done.”

  “And where in the home?”

  “Office, safe, computer. Or basement, if they have one.”

  He nodded. “So if you want to find Bourque’s secrets, where would you look?”

  “In his home office.”

  “Would you like to do that?”

  My heart jumped. “Are you serious?”

  “A window of opportunity has opened,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Bourque left for Atlanta this morning. His wife is speaking at a fund-raiser in Hollywood tonight. She’ll be staying at a hotel for the night to avoid the long drive home. If you don’t mind setting your moral deliberations aside for a few hours, I was thinking we might take a look.”

  This was it. This was the culmination of it all!

  “Yes!” I cried. “Yes, yes, of course, yes!”

  “Okay then.”

  “You’re serious?” I still wasn’t sure he meant it.

  “I am.”

  “When?”

  “You tell me. We covered this.”

  “Two in the morning. ”

  “Good. Then two in the morning it is.”

  As I said, those first three days were the happiest of my life. A brilliant light had shined into my dark world. But the sun was going down on the horizon; darkness was coming, and those three days were about to end.

  17

  SIMON REDDING SAT in his Suburban at midnight watching the Staybridge across the street. His task was simple, one he’d accomplished many times over the past five years. This time his employer had crossed a young woman, one with connections to Lamont Myers, Bourque had said.

  She was likely as innocent of wrongdoing as he was guilty. But that no longer concerned him. She was a problem; his task was to eliminate problems.

  Before a problem could be eliminated, it had to be identified. Then located. And then, when the time was right, dealt with.

  It had taken Redding four days to identify and locate Renee Gilmore. The fact that her only mode of transportation was by cab had rendered the motor vehicle registration search useless, which had stalled him. But it had taken only two days using his contacts at the cab companies to flush out information on a bleached-blond girl who weighed a scant hundred pounds if she was wet.

  Cabbies talked. Put the word out that a five-hundred-dollar tip was in the works for anyone who could locate a particular fare, and they would, especially if they believed the subject in question was a runaway who needed help.

  Although he could have taken her in the Staybridge, he needed to know what she knew before silencing her. Hotels were not suited to the task of coercion.

  Better to wait for her to exit the building and climb into a Yellow Cab.

  Redding sighed and picked up a bag of sunflower seeds. He sometimes thought that the five years of medical training he’d put himself through were a complete waste, considering his present profession. But the money was good and the benefits were far too generous to ignore. Bourque did not believe in thugs, preferring trustworthy men with brains over brawn, and he was willing to pay for those brains, especially if they came with some brawn. In this way, Redding was uniquely suited for his occupation.

  Thirty minutes later, Renee Gilmore exited the Staybridge. But she did not climb into a Yellow Cab.

  She was picked up instead by a black BMW.

  For the first time since the war, Danny Hansen found himself on a mission with a partner, and the camaraderie brought some comfort. But only a little, because this time, the objective was different.

  By the time he was seventeen, he had two years of fieldwork under his belt and had gain
ed a broad reputation for being the kid who could get anywhere. “Injun,” they called him. He frequently took small bands of three or four on hit-and-run missions. They all had endured rigorous training, all knew how to kill, all faced death, and all were in excellent physical shape. They were warriors who knew they might not return alive.

  Renee Gilmore, on the other hand, had never killed, had endured no real training in the field, and would be lucky to do half a pull-up on the bar she’d installed in her bathroom door frame.

  She was without question a liability.

  But Danny hadn’t brought her along to help him break into Jonathan Bourque’s house. He needed no such help. Rather, he would help her break in. Renee needed to find justice, and he had decided to help her find it. For her sake.

  If he could help her do what she needed to do, and at the same time rid society of the worst kind of menace, he would do well.

  Bourque’s ten-thousand-square-foot Greek-styled mansion stood on the cliffs of Rancho Palos Verdes, off Palos Verdes Drive, overlooking a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean under moonlight.

  He’d rented a black BMW 7 Series, knowing from several previous trips to the neighborhood that there was no place to hide a car as conspicuously non-European as a Chevy Malibu. A BMW would fit in like a pea might fit its pod.

  The house loomed against the dark gray sky, a monstrosity presumably purchased with blood money. Other than Renee’s inexperience, Danny’s greatest concern had been how to interrupt the security system. To that end, he spent two hours earlier in the night meticulously tracing the circuits that led to a single dish on Bourque’s roof.

  The ADI system employed its own power source independent of the city’s grid. The dish attached to this private source communicated with the security service via a satellite signal that, if broken, would alert the company of a potential security breach.

  The satellite’s signal cable was mounted on the roof. Danny cut this line, and the security service was alerted. He had five minutes to complete the task and clear the property.

  Working quickly, he clipped a powered circuit loop to the wire he’d cut. The matchbox-size device would supply the dish with a duplicate signal to be broadcast, and the security service would see that the signal had been restored. They would nevertheless dispatch authorities to the house, find the system fully functional, and assume that a power burst had temporarily interrupted service.

  Safely in the trees to the east of the house, Danny waited for the police to arrive, check the house, and leave before returning to his car. The alarm system was still fully operational through the phone system, but when he cut the phone service to the house just before breaking in, the constant signal from his bypass device would keep the security service in the dark.

  “So what now?” Renee asked, crouched beside him in the dense shadows of some trees.

  They were both dressed in black—slacks, long-sleeved shirts, ski masks, and gloves, all provided by him. He’d mistakenly purchased Renee’s two sizes too large, but she didn’t mind. Fashion wasn’t at the top of her list.

  Bourque was.

  He glanced at his watch. Three AM. “Now I cut the phone line and we go in.”

  “How, through a window?”

  “Through the front door. Better not to leave a trace unless you want them to sweat. In this case, we don’t. Don’t move from this spot. Stay low. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay. I’ll stay low.”

  He had to smile. She was so…cute. She had the intelligence to pull this off. Her years on the street had prepared her emotions for violent encounters. Her loss had given her the motivation. And now her connection with him had given her the opportunity.

  Danny checked the street, saw no sign of the security car that made its rounds every hour, and made his way quickly toward the west side of the house where the phone service kept its box.

  There was more to Renee’s relationship with Lamont Myers than she’d shared, he thought. He’d done a quick search on Lamont Myers and found no mention of the man in the Bourque Foundation’s public records, which meant that Lamont was indeed well connected, a high-level man who could afford a house in Malibu—unlike Cain Kellerman, a lower-level employee who was still listed on the foundation’s Web site as one of their attorneys.

  There was a Lamont Myers, however, listed as the sole mortgage holder on a house by the sea in Malibu, which was in foreclosure for nonpayment.

  All of this was consistent with what Renee had told him and raised no alarms. It was the way she spoke of her late “husband” that made him wonder how anyone so perfect could exist.

  Her memory of the man had been whitewashed by tragedy. He knew how easy it was for the faults of the deceased to fade. Although Renee represented Lamont as a strict man suffering from a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, she didn’t seem to remember a single incident when he’d been anything but loving to her.

  Then again, Renee wasn’t exactly in a position to think clearly about the past. She’d been taking prescription medications until Lamont’s passing, and she didn’t know exactly what kind. She’d likely suffered a psychotic break the night Lamont had rescued her. It only followed that her memory of the man was gilded.

  Danny could never live up to such a memory.

  He had just severed the phone lines when that thought cut through his mind. He paused for a moment, surprised that he thought of himself as a potential replacement for Lamont.

  But he didn’t. He couldn’t. One day, with a girl like Renee, perhaps, but not now. Not while in such a dangerous relationship, one focused on the death of another man.

  He quickly corrected himself. The exposure of another man.

  Danny returned to the trees where he’d left Renee and dropped to one knee beside her.

  “Get it?” she asked.

  “Got it.”

  They sounded like two kids spying on their neighbor. What was he doing?

  “Now what?”

  “Now we go in.”

  She jumped to her feet, and he immediately grabbed her shirt and pulled her back down. “Stay low. Follow me.”

  He cut to his right, stooped, aware of her hand on his hip as they ran. There was little danger at this point—breaking and entering was easy when the premises were vacant and unsecured. But he had to keep his mind on the objective and off Renee, a task that was proving more difficult than he’d anticipated.

  They glided up to the front door and he started on the locks, ignoring her heavy breathing and darting eyes. On her own, she wouldn’t last a week out here.

  “In.” He pocketed his tools, pushed the door open, and stepped inside with Renee pressing in close behind. He motioned silence and listened.

  Nothing other than her breathing.

  It took them three minutes to locate Jonathan Bourque’s office and another two to unlock its door. The time was now three twenty-two in the morning.

  Danny removed his ski mask, grateful for the air. He pulled a thick plastic sheet and two chip clips from his bag. Standing on one of the chairs, he clipped the plastic over the window drapes—a simple safeguard that would ensure no stray flashlight beam would escape. Satisfied, he nodded and faced Renee, who stood in the middle of the room watching him, having followed his lead and removed her ski mask.

  “That’s smart,” she said.

  “That’s why I’m alive.”

  She was a little starstruck by him, he realized, and it wasn’t off-putting.

  “Now what?” she asked again.

  “Now we look. But I don’t want you to touch anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we can’t leave any trace that says we were here.”

  “But we have gloves on.”

  He was thinking more of knocking things over than of leaving fingerprints, but he didn’t want to suggest she was a klutz, so he nodded. “Okay, but put everything back exactly, and I mean exactly, where you find it. If there’s dust, don’t touch the dust.”
r />   “Okay.”

  The office walls and ceiling were lined with rich cherrywood paneling. Long bookcases were built into one wall. It was a typical office, really, with a bear rug, a sitting area with leather chairs, and a six-foot-wide desk crafted from a dark, exotic wood Danny didn’t recognize.

  Using his picks, he unlocked the desk drawers. “Go through the files,” he said. “Look for the kind of information we talked about. Payoffs, offshore banks, personal notes…anything.”

  She began to rifle through the first drawer, pulling out one manila file at a time, flashlight between her teeth as she’d seen him do while picking the lock. It was unlikely that Bourque would have any useful information in his paper files—computer files were much easier to safeguard. Unless, of course, he was old-school, mistrusting electronic data that could be snatched through thin air.

  He traced the bookcases with his light, scanning for decorative boxes and compartments favored for personal effects, particularly if the boxes had locks.

  He opened seven such small boxes, all empty. The eighth one was locked. He pulled it off the shelf, set it on a lamp table, and worked on its lock.

  What most could not know about searching offices, unless they had executed such searches themselves, was that the process took time. Like searching for a contact lens dropped on the bathroom floor, one had to assume it might be anywhere. If an initial search did prove unsuccessful, it was best to start at one end of the room and carefully search every square inch, because contact lenses could bounce surprising distances and come to rest in unlikely places.

  He sprang the lock and looked inside the box. A small USB flash drive lay at the bottom. He scooped it out and pocketed it. Gold. If Bourque—

  “I knew it!”

  Renee stood behind the desk, holding an open file in one hand and the penlight in her other, staring at the contents.

  “I knew it!” she cried again.

  “Shhh!”

  But he saw she wasn’t likely to hush. If anything, she looked like she might start screaming.

  “What is it?”

  “Lamont! He”—her eyes shot up—“he ordered a hit on Lamont!”