Monkey on a Chain by Harlen Campbell

Corvin. And I don’t know how to do that.”
    “There is a third way,” he said.
    “I don’t want to go back there.”
    “Back where?” April asked.
    “Where Sissy was killed,” I said.
    We sat in silence for a while. Eventually Walker said, “There’s one thing we haven’t talked about. What to do if it is Roy behind all this.”
    “We’ll do what we have to do.”
    “And if it’s Corvin? Or someone else?”
    “Same-same,” I said.
    “I can’t go with you.”
    I just looked at him. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
    “Joyce is pregnant,” he said slowly, “and I’ve got another kid, a boy. He’s only ten.” He swallowed and looked across the room, away from me. “I’ll pay you, of course.”
    “I’ll bill you,” I told him, and stood to go.
    When we were back in the car and on our way to the motel, April asked, “What did you mean, you’ll do what you have to do?”
    I studied the traffic for a long time before answering her. Finally, I said, “This has to be stopped. Even if Roy is behind it. But I don’t think it is him.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because there’s no reason I can think of for the trouble to have started now. I mean, all this happened twenty years ago. That’s a long time. Why would Roy have started hunting us now?” I glanced at her. “Did anything happen recently? Anything that might have changed the status quo?”
    It was her turn to take a long pause. I assumed she was thinking, but when I looked at her I saw that she was weeping. “Just one thing,” she said softly. “I told Dad that I wanted to find my real father.”
    There wasn’t much to say to that. I just drove, trying to make sense of it and of what I’d learned about the girl. She was Phoung’s child. That changed the way I thought about her, somehow. And then the possibility that she was Roy’s changed it again. Some part of me didn’t want to think about that, preferred not to know who was her father. But it had to be thought of. It seemed tied to what had happened in Los Angeles.
    Suppose Roy were April’s father, as now seemed likely. Suppose Toker knew how to get in touch with Roy, which was pretty damned unlikely, and told him she was looking for him. So what? There was still no reason for Toker’s death. Roy could have denied being the girl’s father. There was no way she could prove it. And even if she could, so what again? She would have no legal claim on him. There was no way she could hurt him. She couldn’t even embarrass him.
    Suppose he had a wife who wouldn’t like a Eurasian daughter crawling out of the woodwork? No, that kind of wife was impossible to imagine, for Roy. Any kind of wife was impossible to imagine for Roy. A wife would imply a commitment to someone besides himself. More, it would imply a human need. Roy had no need for anything that couldn’t be bought.
    So just the fact that April was looking for her father was no threat to Roy. Suppose his paternity were connected with something else, something that made Toker, and possibly April, dangerous to him? Even that didn’t fly. The situation simply didn’t have Roy’s signature on it. He always used the minimum force necessary to achieve his ends. If there had been a threat, he would have disappeared, left it behind, or found a solution that required something less than a Claymore or a grenade.
    But I wondered how much of my thinking was accurate and how much was just a reluctance to believe that Roy could have suddenly begun killing his old friends.
    I don’t know why I parked in front of the motel instead of around the side, by the door to our room. I think it was because Walker and I both parked in the long-term lot at the airport. My decision to be unpredictable. Whatever the reason, I did park in front, and I led April through the lobby and out into the courtyard by the pool. There, I froze.
    The drapes covering our patio door were closed. I distinctly remembered leaving them open, with the radio and all the lights on