Death Benefits by Thomas Perry

Author:Thomas Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780375506772
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2001-03-13T10:00:00+00:00

21

“Walker. Get up.”

Walker opened his eyes and looked around him. The office was a momentary surprise, but his memory came back. It was daylight, and there were phones ringing. Standing near the open door was Stillman.

Walker sat up on the couch and rubbed his eyes. “How did you get here so fast?”

Stillman said, “I didn’t waste any time because I heard it was you that rubbed my lamp.”

Walker stood. “Yeah. That was me.” He said, “Here’s what happened. I was out looking for—”

“I know what happened.” Stillman looked at his watch. “It’s nearly four o’clock. Time to go.”

Walker put on his coat and pulled one end of his tie to bring it back up to his neck, then sat down on the couch to tie his shoes.

Stillman watched him impatiently for a moment. “That your suitcase?”

“Yeah,” said Walker.

“Bring it with you. If we can’t find a better place than this to sleep tonight, we deserve what happens to us.”

They went out to a dark blue rental car, a big sedan like the ones Stillman always rented. Stillman snatched Walker’s suitcase, tossed it into the trunk with his own, leaned farther into the trunk, plucked out a folder that had the home office logo on it, and handed it to Walker. “Here, take this.”

They got into the car and Stillman drove toward the area Walker had explored the night before. The traffic looked to Walker to be almost normal—or at least, what it had been before the storm. The streets were clear and dry, but there were many buildings with boarded windows, roofs with bare patches that showed torn tar paper and plywood. They passed two buildings where water was being pumped out through long hoses to the gutters. He looked at the street signs going by. “Hey, wait. You’re going the wrong way. The house is up this way.”

Stillman shook his head. “No point in going there. The owners are still dead, and I don’t want to waste time talking to cops.”

“They might have learned something by now.”

Stillman shook his head. “They’re busy convincing themselves those two were killed in a robbery. They think Fred Teller may have arrived at an inopportune moment.”

“Hard to argue with that.”

“It wasn’t just bad luck. This was all set up because they knew somebody like Teller would be along shortly,” said Stillman. “Teller was sent out with cash, claim forms all ready to go, presigned blank checks, and a bunch of ID with his signature on it. One of the killers probably said he was Mr. Cosgrove, let Teller in the house, and grabbed him.” He drove on for a minute. “The blank checks all got filled in and cashed yesterday.”

“How? The power was off.”

“Here it was. Not in Tampa, Tallahassee, or Mobile. There’s no bank in the world that won’t cash a check from McClaren Life and Casualty. These were like cashier’s checks. Evans had them issued before the hurricane against verified accounts.”

“Do you think they’re the same people—the ones who killed Ellen Snyder?”

“Yeah, and so do you,” said Stillman.

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