Tough Customer

CHAPTER 2

FOR NEARLY HALF AN HOUR, BERRY AND CAROLINE HAD BEEN sitting on hard, unforgiving wood benches, like church pews, just inside the entrance of the Merritt County Court House. When Ski Nyland approached them, he looked like a man with a purpose for which he was running late.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting. I got a call."

Caroline asked, "Something positive?"

"I'm afraid not, Ms. King. Oren Starks is still at large, and I've only got a few minutes before I need to get back to the hunt." He touched the cell phone attached to his belt as though to guarantee that his line of communication hadn't been cut. His gray gaze slid to Berry, acknowledging her for the first time since he'd joined them. "Ready?"

"I've been ready."

After a beat, he said, "I guess marketing adheres to a stricter timetable than law enforcement does."

Touche, Deputy, she thought. Her remark had been bitchy, and bitchiness was something she was striving to fix. However, given the stressful circumstances, she felt entitled to backslide.

Taking the edge off her tone, Berry said, "It's just that I thought you got everything you needed from me last night. I didn't expect to be summoned here again this morning."

"Sheriff Drummond asked for the meeting. Your lawyer is already up there."

"Then we should join them without further delay," Caroline said with a graciousness that Berry envied. She'd never mastered that special trait that seemed to come naturally to her mother.

Deputy Nyland gestured for them to precede him.

As they crossed the lobby, Berry wondered why he wasn't in uniform. He hadn't been wearing one last night, either, but she had figured he'd been off duty when her 911 had interrupted his Friday evening.

Today, except for his sport coat, he was dressed for a rodeo. Jeans and boots, crisp, white, western-cut shirt. He was also as laconic as any western-movie cowboy. She wondered if he envisioned himself as such. All he needed was a large white hat, a big tin star on his chest, and a six-shooter strapped to his thigh.

She assumed he was carrying a weapon somewhere. He might remove it when he was in the courthouse, but more than likely he kept it on, concealed from view, as were the emergency lights behind the grille of his tricked-out SUV, in which he'd driven her here last night to get her statement about what he'd referred to as "the shooting incident."

Now, as they waited for an elevator, Berry noticed how dwarfed her mother was by his height. Even Berry, who'd been taller than every boy in her class since seventh grade and had graduated high school with only a few of them having outgrown her, felt diminutive next to him.

They decided in favor of the stairs over waiting any longer for an elevator. As they walked up the one flight, Berry felt his stare like a physical pressure on the center of her spine.

The courthouse structure dated back to 1898, but it had been well maintained. The sheriff's office had original paneling and hand-carved molding around the plaster ceiling. The window glass was wavy but lent the room character. The wide desk was flanked by matching flagpoles. Between Old Glory and the Texas state flag hung a painting depicting Santa Anna's surrender to Sam Houston.

When they entered the office, the two men in it stood up. One was the lawyer her mother had summoned to the house last night. The other was Sheriff Tom Drummond.

He stepped from behind his desk and met them halfway to embrace Caroline, taking her shoulders between his hands and kissing her cheek. "Always a pleasure to see you, but I hate the circumstances of this meeting."

"So do I, Tom." She turned to indicate Berry. "I believe you met my daughter last year at the country club's Labor Day picnic."

"Of course. Ms. Malone."

"Berry, please."

He took her hand and patted it warmly. "I assure you, this case has the full attention of this office. Your mother's company has become important to this community by turning a stagnant real estate market active. Anything concerning her concerns me, especially your safety. We're going to catch this character. I give you my word."

"Thank you. I have every confidence in you."

The lawyer--his name was Carlisle Harris, Harris Carlisle, Berry couldn't remember which--was roughly the sheriff's age. He was a nice-looking, pleasant gentleman, but she felt sure her mother had chosen him more for the evident shrewdness behind his bright black eyes than for his cordiality.

He had shown up at the lake house last night as though Caroline had waved a magic wand to produce him. As soon as her mother had learned the nature of the emergency and Ski Nyland had begun posing questions about Berry's pistol, Caroline had politely asked him to hold off until she called her attorney. The deputy hadn't liked it, but he had complied, and Berry hadn't uttered another word until the lawyer got there.

He stepped forward now to shake hands with her and Caroline in turn.

The sheriff must have sensed Ski Nyland's impatience because he curtailed the pleasantries and suggested they all take seats. Berry and her mother sat side by side on a well-worn leather sofa. The men sat in armchairs that formed a semicircle facing them.

The sheriff began. "Ski has given me a rundown of what happened out at the lake house last night, and I have a copy of your official statement, Berry. Harry, you got a copy?"

"I did," said Harris Carlisle. "Thank you."

"Is there anything you'd care to add to it, Berry?" the sheriff asked. "Anything you've remembered between last night and now that could help us track this guy?"

She shook her head. "I was as comprehensive as I could be. To capsulize it, Oren Starks has been stalking me for months. Last night he came to the lake house, shot Ben, and threatened to kill me."

"You met Starks at your place of employment, is that correct?"

"Delray Marketing in Houston."

"I understand that he was fired from the company."

"Some months ago."

"Do you know why?"

"He wasn't a good fit," she replied. "At least that was the water- cooler speculation for why he was let go."

"Did you think he was a good fit?"

She turned to Deputy Nyland, who'd posed the question, and answered coolly. "It isn't in my job description to evaluate co-workers."

"Candidly, did you think Oren Starks was a good fit?"

"No, I didn't."

"Why not? Wasn't he any good at what he did?"

Berry gave a half smile. "Oren wasn't good at his job, he was exceptional."

"I don't follow, Berry," the sheriff said. "Ski said you painted this guy as an oddball."

"His personality has no bearing on his skill," Berry said. "Marketing is about creativity, and strategy, and making dozens of components come together to form a harmonious whole. One wrong element throws the whole thing off. At Delray, Oren was our go-to guy when a campaign wasn't coming together the way it should. He had a knack for isolating the piece that didn't fit."

"Yet he was a misfit at the company," the sheriff said.

"Ironically, yes. He made people uncomfortable. Women in particular. I wasn't the first he focused his unwanted attention on."

"Were sexual harassment complaints filed against him?"

She shook her head. "None officially. Oren didn't do anything overt. No touching. No obscene e-mails or lewd texts. He's too intelligent, too sly to do something that could have trapped him.

"But he was very clever with innuendos implying an intimacy that didn't exist." As an afterthought, she added, "If you took issue with one of his remarks, he could make you feel as though you'd mistaken his meaning."

"Was this your experience?" the sheriff asked.

"Yes. At first. I began to think I was reading too much into the things he said and did. But after he was fired, he became more persistent and aggressive. To the point where I grew frightened of him. I thought that if I came here and stayed the summer in Mother's lake house--which she'd been trying to get me to do ever since she bought it--if I came here, essentially disappeared for a while, Oren would become discouraged or simply lose interest and leave me alone."

"When you say stalking..." The sheriff leaned forward, inviting her to elaborate.

"Calling several times a day. Constantly sending me text messages."

"Why didn't you change your phone number?" Deputy Nyland asked.

"Too many people have that number. Clients, co-workers, people who need to reach me for a quick solution to a time-sensitive problem. It would have been very inconvenient to change it."

"More inconvenient than being stalked?"

"You don't have to answer that, Berry," her lawyer said.

She didn't answer. Instead, she redirected her attention to the sheriff. "Oren would show up at my house uninvited. Sometimes he would be parked at the curb, or even sitting on the porch, waiting for me when I returned home. He would appear at restaurants where I was having dinner and would send flowers with enclosure cards that suggested a romantic relationship. I assure you there was none. He sent me small gifts that--"

"Like what?"

Flustered by the deputy's constant and skeptical interruptions, she had to think for a moment. "He once sent me a video game. A Dungeons & Dragons kind of game. Fantasy stuff with wizards, evil sorcerers, castles with mazes. You know the kind of thing."

"You're into that?"

"Not at all, Deputy Nyland. But Oren is. He loves puzzles of any kind, and he's good at them."

"Which made him good at working out solutions to marketing campaigns with problems," the deputy said.

"Exactly."

"What else? What other gifts?"

"A bestseller by an author he knows I like. He stood in line for hours--so he claimed--to have the book inscribed to me. He gave me a CD that he'd burned himself. The most personal gift was a silver charm bracelet. Thin chain. One charm. A heart."

"Did you return these gifts?" Nyland asked.

"At first I tried, but Oren refused to take them back. Eventually I just kept them."

"Why?"

"Because attempting to return them involved seeing him or talking to him, and that's what I was trying to avoid."

Harris Carlisle interceded. "I think we understand the concept of stalking, don't we, Tom? Ski? The man has pestered her beyond endurance, and last night his obsession turned violent."

The sheriff nodded. "Please, Berry, continue."

"I forgot where I was."

"You moved here for the summer."

"I hoped to be rid of Oren forever. I don't know how he discovered the location of Mother's lake house--the address isn't in the phone book. But he did," she said quietly. The reminder of what had taken place caused emotion to well up in her throat.

Quietly her mother asked if she'd like some water. She shook her head. Caroline took her hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze. The deputy shifted in his chair, making the old wood squeak, and looked toward the door as though anxious to adjourn.

Berry was tempted to ask if she was keeping him from something more important but then realized that of course she was. He was coordinating the search for Oren. The sooner he was done here, the sooner he could get back to it.

Without further delay, she picked up the story. "Last night Oren came to the house. He scared me out of my wits. I was in the shower. Suddenly the curtain was flung open and there he was,

Psycho style. Except instead of a knife, he was pointing a gun at me."

The sheriff turned to Caroline. "You were out, I understand."

"I'd been away all day. I'd intentionally made myself scarce because Berry had told me that she and Mr. Lofland would be working on a very important project. I didn't want to be a distraction.

"After work, I went straight from the office to attend a dinner party hosted by former clients. Sort of a housewarming. I had told Berry not to wait up because I wasn't sure how late I'd be. Apparently I arrived shortly after Deputy Nyland got there. A deputy sheriff was standing guard at my front door. He forbade me to go inside.

"Berry had tried to call and alert me to the emergency, but my cell phone was in my handbag, and I'd silenced it during the party. I hadn't thought to check it before I left for home."

The sheriff looked across at Nyland. "When she got there, you two, you and Berry, were still upstairs?"

"We heard the argument between Andy and Ms. King at the front door. Came down. Ms. King called Mr. Carlisle."

"Which was my right to do."

The deputy conceded the point with a nod. "Soon as he got there, I continued interviewing Ms. Malone. First off, I asked if Starks had broken in. He hadn't."

"That's correct, Sheriff," Berry said. "All the doors to the house were unlocked. Ben and I had been in the pool, we'd cooked steaks on the outdoor grill for dinner, so we'd been going in and out all evening. I hadn't yet locked up for the night.

"Oren simply came through the front door; at least I assume he used the front door since that's the way he went out. The time between him yanking open the shower curtain and my placing the 911 call couldn't have been more than a few minutes. It all happened in a blur."

"In your statement you said the man was maniacal."

"She said he was unhinged."

Berry looked quickly at Deputy Nyland again, surprised that he recalled the exact word she'd used to describe Oren's state of mind. "That's right. He was wild-eyed. He was sputtering. 'I must kill you. You realize that, don't you? I've got to kill you.'"

Beside her, Caroline shuddered and gripped her hand tighter.

"The instant I saw him and the pistol, I screamed. That seemed to rattle him even more. He was shushing me and repeating, 'I don't have a choice. I've got to do it. Don't you see? Don't you understand?' He spoke in a sort of chant. He was..."

The four of them looked at her expectantly. As she searched for the word, she looked at each of them in turn, ending on the deputy, whose gray gaze remained unwavering.

"Unhinged," she said with a helpless shrug. "That's the best word to describe him."

"Well, he went there to kill you," the lawyer remarked. "One wouldn't expect him to be rational."

"No."

"Had you ever seen this side of him before?" the sheriff asked.

"Only once, when he became extremely angry at me for rejecting him. But last night he was more upset than even then." She wished for a moment to ponder that, but when Nyland shot another look toward the door, she plowed on. "Ben must have heard my screams and Oren's raving. He came running from the guest bedroom. When he reached the bathroom door, Oren heard him, spun around, and fired the gun."

She paused, reliving that horrifying moment: the jarring sound, the unbelievable sight of Ben falling backward, the wild expression on Oren's face when he turned back to her. Through it, she'd told herself that this couldn't be happening, that traumatic, violent events like this didn't happen to normal, nice people like her.

But it had happened. She'd lived it. However, now as she tried to describe the scene and her feelings about it, she knew her words would be inadequate to convey what she'd felt at the time.

"All I can say is that it was unreal, and yet it was reality taken to another dimension. Every sensation was overblown. After the gun blast, I remember experiencing a sense of timelessness, of suspended animation. But then Oren suddenly turned and ran. That galvanized me. I climbed out of the tub. I paused only long enough to bend down and tell Ben that I would get help, then I ran from the room to see what Oren was doing, where he'd gone."

"You weren't afraid that he would shoot you also?"

"She explained that to Ski last night."

"Calm down, Harry," the sheriff said, mildly rebuking the attorney. "I only ask because I'm curious."

Harris Carlisle signaled for her to continue.

"Honestly I didn't think about it, or I probably wouldn't have done it," she said. "I acted on instinct. I went after Oren, and by the time I reached the gallery, he was rushing down the stairs. At the landing he lost his footing and fell. He tumbled all the way to the ground floor and landed on his back.

"He saw me watching him from the gallery. He struggled to get up. He pointed the pistol at me, and that's when I thought for certain that I would soon be dead. I threw myself to the floor, trying to take cover behind the railing. He pulled the trigger until the pistol was empty."

Her mother placed her hand over her mouth to contain a small, distressed sound.

"Miraculously, his shots missed," Berry continued. "When he realized he had no more bullets, he struggled to stand up. He was yelling, 'I'll kill you. You must die.' Things like that over and over again. Then he turned and staggered through the front door."

After a short silence, Nyland asked, "He didn't reload?"

"No."

"He just ran away, vowing to kill you."

"That's right."

"Which is consistent with what she told you last night, Ski," the lawyer reminded him.

"Yeah, I know." He held Berry's gaze, and she could see wheels spinning behind the gray eyes. "Lofland was down. You were otherwise alone and defenseless."

"Yes."

"Starks had you in the bathtub, where he could have shot you at point-blank range. Instead, he made out like he was going to flee. Then you went after him, still defenseless, right?"

"Right."

"You didn't have your pistol yet?"

"No."

"Starks emptied his pistol from a dicey angle and at a distance of ... what? Thirty feet?"

"I suppose. I don't know."

The sheriff leaned forward. "What are you driving at, Ski?"

He looked at his boss. "If Starks was that intent on killing her, saying he must, saying she had to die and so on, why didn't he shoot her in the bathtub? Why sputter threats against her life, then turn and run, when he could have popped her right then? Doesn't make sense to me."

"People do crazy things," the sheriff said. "He chickened out. He saw God. Who knows? When push came to shove, the best he could do was threaten her life, not actually take it."

"I guess," the deputy said, sounding unconvinced.

"I can only recount what happened, Deputy Nyland," Berry said. "I can't explain Oren's behavior. I don't know why he didn't seize his opportunity and shoot me dead. But I'm glad he didn't."

"Goes without saying," he mumbled.

"Please go on, Berry," the sheriff urged. "What happened next?"

"Once Oren was out of sight, I ran back into the bedroom and called 911 on Mother's landline. I hadn't heard a car engine, so I wasn't absolutely certain that Oren had left the premises. Because I was afraid he would come back, I took a pistol from the drawer of the nightstand. I had put it there the day I moved into the lake house."

"Even after leaving Houston, she feared for her safety against this guy," the lawyer said. "She bought the pistol as a precaution, Tom. It's registered to her, and she has a license to carry."

"I believe you, Harry," the sheriff said around an impatient sigh. "My wife keeps a twenty-two in her nightstand drawer except when the grandkids are visiting." He turned back to Berry.

"There's really nothing more," she said. "I stayed there in the bedroom with Ben until the paramedics arrived."

The sheriff expelled a long breath. "We're lucky you're with us today."

Caroline solemnly agreed.

"What's the latest on Ben Lofland's condition?" the sheriff asked.

"Fair," Nyland reported. "He's in surgical recovery. His wife's with him."

Berry knew he'd thrown in that last part just to embarrass her. She shot him a dirty look, but he was addressing the sheriff and didn't see it. "Houston PD and Harris County S.O. are assisting us in trying to run down Starks."

"You got the arrest warrant?"

"Right here," he said, patting his breast pocket. "I stopped at the DA's office on my way here." He glanced at Berry. "That's why I was late."

"Does Starks have any prior arrests?"

Nyland looked back at the sheriff and shook his head. "No criminal record. Clean as a whistle. Not even an outstanding parking ticket. He's not at his house, although the car registered to him is in his garage."

"He would have rented a car," Berry said.

"No record of that."

"Okay then, he'd've stolen one," she said, testily. "Or borrowed one. Or roller-skated. I don't know how he got here. I just know he's too smart to have used his own car if he came here with the intention of killing me."

Caroline intervened. "Deputy Nyland, we might feel better about the situation if you outlined for us the efforts being made to capture him."

His flinty eyes shifted to Caroline. "Yes, ma'am. While I was interviewing Ms. Malone last night, other deputies were notifying the sheriffs of surrounding counties. They dispatched their deputies immediately.

"But Merritt County alone has more than nine hundred square miles, and a lot of it is virgin territory. There are only twelve of us in this department, and that includes the court bailiff, a jailer, and a retired schoolteacher who comes in three days a week to help out with paperwork."

"He's right," the sheriff said. "And neighboring counties are of similar size and makeup and have even fewer personnel in their departments than we do."

Nyland said, "What we're saying is, there are a lot of good hiding places in this part of the state, and peace officers are spread thin."

Berry was certain her mother's intention hadn't been to question Deputy Nyland's competency, even by implication, but apparently Nyland was sensitive to criticism.

No one said anything for a moment, then Berry said, "I'm almost positive that Oren's leg was injured in his fall down the stairs. He was practically hopping on one foot when he left."

"I'm sure you've canvassed medical facilities in the area." Sheriff Drummond looked to his deputy for confirmation.

"Last night, sir, and it continues farther afield as we speak."

"DPS?"

"Last night I sent out a blanket e-mail. DPS, Texas Rangers, municipal police departments. I provided a description of Starks, but, unfortunately, we don't know what he's driving."

"I'm sorry," Berry said. "Maybe I should have followed Oren when he left the house. But at that point I didn't know if Ben was dead or alive. My first priority was to get medical attention for him."

"Understandably," the sheriff said.

Nyland turned to Berry. "Do you have any photos of him?"

"Of Oren? No."

"None were found at his house when it was searched."

"Not a single photograph? That's odd, don't you think?" Caroline asked them collectively.

"This whole thing is odd," the deputy said, almost under his breath. Then, "I'll ask Houston PD to go to that marketing outfit, see if they have a photo of Starks in their employee files. It would help to circulate one." He came to his feet. "Sorry, but I need to excuse myself and get back out there. Sir, you know how to reach me."

"I want to be kept up to speed, Ski. Don't go through the office lines. Call my cell."

"Yes, sir." He nodded in the attorney's direction. "Mr. Carlisle." To Berry and her mother, he doffed an imaginary hat. "Ladies."

Then he walked out. As soon as the door closed behind him, Sheriff Drummond said, "Ski's manner could use some polish, but you couldn't ask for a better man to be conducting this manhunt. His background is--"

He was interrupted by a soft beep. "Excuse me, Tom." Caroline took her cell phone from her handbag. As soon as she looked at the small screen, she shot to her feet. "I was expecting this call. I really should answer."

Without another word, she left the office. Berry stared after her, puzzled by her mother's uncharacteristic rudeness.

"Must be important," the sheriff observed out loud.

Berry echoed, "Must be."