“Then he kills me. He hangs around outside my house until I get home, then he shoots me and runs, gets away with it. You pay him off, and he’s happy, you’re happy.”
“But you’re not happy.”
“No, I’m not happy, I’m dead. Then some time passes—a year or two or five—and your hit man gets arrested on a completely unrelated charge.”
“Unrelated to what?”
“Unrelated to making me dead. Let’s say he gets caught trying to rob a liquor store, or maybe he makes a deal to kill somebody else, but the dealmaker is a cop.”
“Okay, let’s say.”
“So they’ve got him down at the police station, and they convince him that they’ve got him dead to rights, that they have all the evidence necessary to send him to prison for many years. But suddenly he says, ‘What if I could solve a bigger crime for you? A murder, maybe? Remember a guy named Barrington who was shot outside his house a few years back? I could give you the murderer, if you’ll give me immunity from prosecution.’”
“Prosecution for what?”
“For any crime he has committed.”
“The police will do that?”
“They do it all the time. They’ll say, okay, you’ve got immunity; who killed Barrington? ‘I did,’ he’ll say, ‘but Swenson hired me to do 13 4
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it; I was only a tool.’ And they can’t prosecute him. They can prosecute you, though.”
“They would do that?”
“Of course. All over the world, in every society, the greatest taboo of all is murder. We place a very high value on human life—that’s why we devote so much of our police resources to solving murders. That’s why there’s no statute of limitations. Once you’ve murdered someone—or paid to have someone murdered—you’re never safe again. They can always come and get you when the evidence turns up.”
“Well, that is very sobering,” Annika said. “Perhaps I won’t have you killed after all. What if I fuck you to death? Can they get me for that?”
Stone laughed. “Only if they could prove you intended to kill me, that maybe I had a heart condition and you knew I couldn’t stand the strain.”
“But not if I were just fucking you for several hours and you finally, ah, turned up your toes, I believe the expression is?”
“Annika, I think you’ve found a way to commit the perfect murder.”
“Well,” she said, taking off her wraparound apron and revealing herself to be naked from the waist down, “let’s get started now, and I can finish killing you after dinner, for dessert.”
AND S H E NE AR LY D I D. Much later Stone was lying in the fetal position, trying not to whimper, when his cell phone vibrated on the bedside table. “Humpf,” he managed to say.
“It’s Dino.”
“Who else?” Stone responded weakly.
“Take a couple of breaths and see if you can generate some adrenaline,” Dino said. 135
S t u a r t W o o d s
Stone did not take this advice. “I’m listening,” he said.
“Tommy called. Evan Keating is in the hospital; he’s been shot.”
Stone sat up on the side of the bed. “How bad?”
“I don’t know. Pick me up at the hotel in ten minutes; we’ll go together.”
“Right.” Stone closed the phone and looked at the sleeping Annika. It was just as well he got out before she woke up. 13 6