Free Dead Aim by Thomas Perry Page B

it to Mr. Robert Mallon or his attorney, Diane Fleming.
    The sum was very high for this kind of work, particularly when the client was no longer a murder suspect. But Bobby Mallon was an intelligent man, and Lydia had warned him that he might be wasting his money. It was even possible that she was wrong and he would get his money’s worth by the time this was over.
    The contract, Lydia suspected, had been the little blond lawyer’s idea. Lydia had not expected to have an old friend put everything in writing. She had often signed contracts with corporate clients who needed something to show auditors and, ultimately, had to answer to stockholders. The oral agreements that were customary in her business were not acceptable in theirs. They had to make sure they could prove what they had hired her to do, and protect themselves from liability for whatever else she might happen to do. Contracts with individual clients where rarer. She kept a standard agreement on a disk inher office for the clients who wanted one. It was full of complicated clauses that put the two parties at arm’s length from one another, declared that they held each other harmless for this or that. Some clients seemed to like that kind of thing, and Lydia didn’t mind.
    As she thought about it, she changed her mind and decided the contract must have been Mallon’s idea. It had something to do with old times—maybe to reassure himself that he wasn’t merely demanding a favor of an old friend, maybe to ensure that she would allow him to pay her at all—but she had not worked out the proportions yet.
    Bobby Mallon’s case had a great many aspects that she found depressing. She had always harbored a wish—not quite allowing it to grow into more than a pleasurable thought—that she and Bobby might someday meet again when they were both free. When she had first seen him in his doorway, it had come back more strongly than she had anticipated, a sudden shock to her chest, almost like air being forced into her lungs.
    It had been looking into his eyes after all this time. Mallon had the kindest eyes she had ever seen in a man. They were watchful eyes, a little sad. She had once allowed herself to think that when they looked at her, he too might be entertaining a wish that he couldn’t speak aloud: he had still been married to Andrea then.
    She had to admit that she had caused the feeling of emptiness she felt now. After he had called her, sometime while she was busy packing and making plane reservations and rushing down here, she had allowed that part of her brain to awaken. But now it was clear that she had been foolish. He had become a rich old bachelor—too rich for anybody to marry without seeming to be after the money—and the case was about a little chick half her age that he had taken to bed with him. She had learned to live comfortably with the idea of Bobby Mallon as a missed opportunity from long ago. This was worse.
    She forced herself to concentrate on her tasks. When she had finished sending her e-mails, she turned her attention to learning about Catherine Broward. Over twenty years ago, when she had started herown detective agency, she had also filed to give legal existence to a corporation called LJM Financial Systems, which she used as a front to request credit checks and other information on people. She set to work now and used the corporation to impersonate an insurance company sending an inquiry about Catherine Broward’s driving record, including any cars registered to her, to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. She ran credit checks with the three major services. Finally, she logged on to the site of a company that collected public records. She began with New York and California and searched for any criminal judgments, civil lawsuits, marriages, divorces. Then she extended her search to Illinois and Texas because of their sizes, and Nevada because it was a stop that had often produced interesting surprises for her in the