“Your brother?”
“Older than me. Short and stocky and looks maybe a little punchy.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” said the bartender.
The local the bartender had talked to come over to Parker. “He was hi here maybe half an hour ago.”
“Less than that,” said the bartender.
Parker drained the rest of the beer. “I thought I was ahead of him. Which way did you say it was?”
“Reardon Road?” The customer looked at the bartender. “How did we tell his brother to go?”
Another customer came down the line. “I was the one told him. Look, Mac, you go straight on through town on this street, see? And then you keep on going straight till you see the golf course.”
“The Crescent,” said the first customer.
“Right. The Huntington Crescent. And you make a left just the other side of the golf course.”
“First left,” said the bartender.
“Right,” said the second customer again; he didn’t like to be interrupted. “And then you make the second right and the first left.”
The other customer and the bartender nodded. That’s the way we told him.”
Parker repeated it back. “First left after the golf course, then second right and first left.”
They all told him that was right, and he thanked them. Then he went back out to the car and drove through town, staying within the speed limit all the way. This was no time to waste fifteen minutes arguing with a cop.
The golf course was farther from town than he’d expected, but maybe that was because he was in such a hurry. Stubbs was less than half an hour ahead of him. But because of the phone call, Wells was forewarned.
Distances are deceiving on narrow blacktop country roads. The second right was for ever after the first left, and the next left was across the rim of the world in Asia some place. Then at last he was on Reardon Road, and he had to crawl to be sure of reading the names on the mailboxes. He spotted Wells’s name at last, and pulled the Chewy off the road. He couldn’t see the black Lincoln parked anywhere, so Stubbs must have just blundered on in, driving the car.
Parker got out of the Chewy, locked it, and walked down the private road among the trees, He came around a turn and there was the Lincoln, parked, blocking the road. He took the Sauer out and moved up slowly, but the car was empty. He went beyond it, saw the house, and cut away to the right into the woods.
If Stubbs had any sense, he was working his way around through the woods to the back of the house. Or he’d done it already. There were lights on in the house and Parker caught occasional glimpses of them through the trees. He kept bearing right, until he knew he was beyond the house, and then he angled to the left around it.
All of a sudden there was blacktop in front of him, and he was looking at the three-car garage. He cursed under his breath and took a backward step, and then he heard the shot to his left. He rushed out to the blacktop and looked down to the left and saw Stubbs there, in the evening gloom, folding forward into himself. Beyond Stubbs was another man, distinguished-looking and white-haired, holding a gun. Wells looked past Stubbs and saw Parker, and his eyes widened as the gun came up, ready for another shot.
Don’t kill him yet, Parker told himself, and don’t ruin his right hand. He fired low, and the bullet shattered Wells’s ankle. Wells made a strange high-pitch “Aaahh”, and pitched forward on to the blacktop. The gun skittered away and stopped next to Stubbs’s ear.
Parker checked Stubbs first, and he was dead. Then he checked Wells, who was unconscious. He ripped the sleeve from Wells’s shirt and made a hasty tourniquet around Wells’s leg to keep all the blood from pumping out through the ankle. Then, holding the Sauer again, he trotted across the blacktop and into the house.
It was a fine old house; the original owners had probably been Tories.
Parker went from room to room, switching on the lights, leaving them on in his wake. The light gleamed on polished mahogany and brass, on rich flooring and rich woodwork, on muted oil paintings and shelves of books.
In the kitchen, the light was fluorescent, and shone on porcelain and stainless steel and formica. Parker went upstairs and prowled all the rooms, and then went down into the basement, where he found the servants’ quarters. But there was no one in the house.
Finally he went back outside, leaving the house ablaze with light. Outside it was fully night. Parker looked at the windows on the second storey of the garage, but they were uncurtained except for a film of dust. He went across the blacktop to where the two men were lying, and found Wells crawling towards Stubbs and the gun.
Parker kicked him on the bad ankle, and he fainted again. Then Parker picked him up and carried him into the house and dropped him on the leather sofa in the living-room. He’d never seen a leather sofa before; it must have cost around a thousand.
When Wells came to again, Parker was sitting in a chair near the sofa, the Sauer held easy in his lap. Wells blinked in the light, and whispered, “My leg. My leg.”
“I know you killed Stubbs. Did you kill Dr Adler, too?”
“My leg,” Wells whispered.
Parker grimaced. He’d have to start with an easier question. “Where are the servants?”
Wells closed his eyes. “I need a doctor.”
“Answers first.”
“I gave them the evening off.”
Parker nodded. “So there’d be no witnesses when you killed Stubbs? You killed Dr Adler, too?”
