Varney wanted to run, but he kept the fear under control. The house was big, a stone structure set back on about two acres of land, but there seemed to be nobody here except the man. The only open window was down the hall where he had come in. If the three shots had not been heard by the neighbors in their big houses, then the danger was over.
He put the gun into the back of his belt and began to empty the contents of the drawers while he listened for sirens and car engines. There were banded stacks of cash, a couple of fancy watches, two gold rings, and a sheaf of documents that looked to Varney like stock certificates. When he had what he could carry, he went down the hall, out the window, and down the trellis.
Two days after he sold the securities, he received a visit at his apartment from two of the traveling men who worked for the wholesaler. They had learned that the name on the securities—Robert Haverly—was a name the San Francisco newspapers had printed as the victim of a burglary and murder. Varney had shown the aptitude the wholesalers had been told to watch for.
All these years he had been stubbornly preparing himself for a life that was different, more intense and exciting than the drab busy-ness that occupied other people. Now he had shown that he was ready to find out precisely what that life was.
6
Varney made his reservations so that his flight to the West Coast left the next afternoon. He would land at night. There was no reason to wait even one extra day and give Prescott time to dream up some kind of trap. Varney could use the flying time to sleep and plan.
This, he had decided, must be a virtuoso performance. Its purpose was not practical but psychological. He had listened to Prescott’s laconic, skeptical tone, and it had given him a strong urge to wake Prescott up. Prescott had been overconfident, absolutely certain that he could assume Varney was no threat, although he knew nothing about him. It was time to teach Prescott something about Varney, to let him know that this time he had made a fatal miscalculation.
Varney rented a car at the airport, then drove north past the center of the city into the San Fernando Valley. He had to assume that Prescott would have called the L.A. police as soon as he had hung up, and that by now they were all on edge and preparing to be attacked. He was still in their jurisdiction but far from Prescott’s office, and he was willing to bet that the police here had taken the warning less seriously. All cops patrolling this late at night were tense, suspicious, on guard. They already seemed to have adrenaline trickling into their veins at a steady pace before anything happened, because they were never at ease. He had decided that the place to do his hunting was in the suburbs, where the people were richer and the cops weren’t treated like an occupying army. They would be calmer, and easier to approach.
He had decided that a good place to find what he wanted was a hospital, so he went to Valley Presbyterian because it was the biggest one he knew of in the area. He parked his car a few blocks away on a quiet residential street and walked back. He walked the circuit of the hospital to study the entrances, exits, and parking lots carefully. Then he extended his walk around once more to stop near the emergency room. He found a concrete bench in a little niche that people seemed to use as a smoking area, sat down, and watched.
He had sat for only a half hour in the dark before he saw what he had been waiting for. The police car came up the driveway toward the emergency-room entrance quickly, but without flashing lights. There were two cops in the front seat, the smaller one behind the wheel. The car coasted smoothly up to the curb in front of the emergency-room entrance and stopped. Both front doors swung open, and the cops got out.
The one on the far side of the car was a big man who immediately opened the back door on his side, leaned in, and pulled out a thin passenger who seemed to think there was still a roof over his head. Even after he had taken two unsteady steps away from the car he was still bent over, as though he didn’t want to bump his head. The cop said something to his partner and ushered his charge toward the double doors. The person was not handcuffed, but seemed not to be entirely free, either. He straightened and became recognizable as a teenaged boy in a T-shirt that had been stretched out of shape, and he had a trickle of blood running from his hairline down the side of his temple to his neck. He had to be a victim, Varney decided: a loser.
The shorter cop had come around the front of the car to help but had found nothing to do, and now returned and approached the open door on the driver’s side. Varney could see that this one was a woman. Her dark hair was tied back in a tight bun, and the body armor under her shirt made her look rectangular. The heavy, blunt-toed black shoes she wore seemed calculated to make her walk like a man. She got into the car quickly, restarted the engine, and drove it around the building to a reserved space by the wall at the edge of the driveway.
Varney was up and moving into the darkness along the wall as soon as she started the car. He reached the spot he wanted while the car was still moving, then crouched and froze. He was twenty feet from the driver’s door, behind a large electrical-circuit box in the shrubbery by the wall. He listened for her footsteps as she hurried along the driveway by the dark wall to join her partner in the emergency room. She came along quickly, almost trotting, and he knew from the sound that he had chosen the right place to hunt. She was busy, her brain was fully occupied, and she was not feeling any sense that she could be threatened. She hurried past his hiding place, but he didn’t move until she was two paces beyond him and her peripheral vision would not help her.
He sprang. His right hand delivered a blow to the side of her head to stun her, then moved smoothly to her wrist so she could not reach the big, blocky grip of the pistol in its holster. His left forearm was around her throat. He crushed the trachea and let his weight drag her down, then quickly broke her neck. He pulled her pistol out and stuck it into his belt at the back, then lifted her body and propped it in the driver’s seat of the car with the feet out on the ground and the steering wheel holding her up as though she were sitting there listening to the police radio. He searched the leather cases on her belt for useful tools. He found a set of handcuffs and a short, broad-bladed knife for cutting seat belts to remove accident victims from cars.
He went back to his hiding place and waited. It was a pleasant surprise to him that the male police officer was coming out of the hospital alone. Either the victim they had brought was being admitted or the cop was wondering what had become of his partner and had left him for a moment. The cop called, “Marianne!” but he didn’t seem alarmed when she didn’t answer him or move. Instead, he quickened his pace toward her, and gave Varney a chance to take him.
The cop did not hear Varney, but he seemed to have a sudden suspicion that made him spin to look around him. Varney was already in the air, and the knife was in his right hand. Varney knew better than to try to cut through the Kevlar vest, so he slashed at the throat above it. The cop looked surprised, then lowered his head and saw that his blood was spurting into his hands. Varney went low and kicked to sweep his legs out from under him, then plucked out his sidearm and tossed it out of reach. He stood beside the body and waited until the cop had lost consciousness.
When Varney was sure the cop was dead, he considered slipping off into the darkness to his rental car. But things were going so well that he decided to take a risk. He took the man’s wrists, dragged him to the side of the police car, opened the rear door, and backed in, then hauled the body in after him. He climbed out the other side and stepped to the front. He pushed the female to the passenger side, strapped her upright with the seat belt, took her place behind the wheel, and started the car. He knew he probably had little time to do what he wanted, but he judged it would be worth the effort.