by Thomas Perry
“So what did you do?”
“I gave her the help she wanted, the help she was willing to take.”
“Which was?”
“I drove her to a hotel in Solvang. I hid her there for a few days. We stayed in her room most of the time, and I told her how I would go about finding a person who didn’t want to be found.”
“Explain.”
“I told her the methods professionals might use to find her. And then I taught her ways to avoid those methods.”
“And then what?”
“Then she left.”
“Just like that. She left. You never saw her again, or heard from her.”
“No. That was one of the things I warned her about. If you have contact with people you used to know, you’ll get caught. She had not told anyone she was going to hire me, but if someone had already been watching her, then he might know. We were definitely not followed to Solvang. But later on, a potential killer might monitor my mail or my phone and wait for her to write or call.”
Linda Gordon was finding his clear, unemotional delivery maddening. “Let me ask you something. What evidence can you give me that any of this ever happened, or that you ever met her?”
“I tried to be sure there wasn’t any. Keeping evidence could have endangered her. I wouldn’t be telling you any of this now if you hadn’t charged someone with killing her.”
“Did Eric Fuller know she simply went away voluntarily?”
“No. She wanted him to believe she was dead, and go on with his life. She felt there was nothing to be gained by telling him anything. She believed that if he knew, he would try to find her and possibly get them both killed.”
“I thought she was in love with him. That’s the story we’ve been told. I’m sure that’s going to figure in his defense. You expect me to believe she would leave him like that?”
Jack Till looked at her, beginning to lose his optimism. She wasn’t really listening to what he said. She was formulating arguments against it. “They were a couple when they came to Los Angeles. They had gone to college together and had been close friends. At different times, that friendship took a lot of different forms. They were roommates, and they were engaged to be married, and they started a business together. When the romantic relationship went away, nothing else changed. They were still closer to each other than they were to anyone else, and they trusted each other. They stayed partners and the restaurant did well.”
“Well enough so he killed her to get her half of it?”
“What I came to tell you is that he didn’t kill her, and neither did anyone else. I sent her away.”
“Maybe you did. That was one day, one moment in time. You admit you have no way of knowing what happened to her after that day six years ago. Isn’t that right?”
“It’s right. I haven’t seen her. I haven’t tried to see her. I taught her how to keep from being seen, and then sent her off to do it.”
“And you think a week of lessons from you was that effective? That she just heard your advice, and then she could stay hidden forever?”
“It’s not as simple as that. Nobody was looking for her until she had been gone for at least a month. She told Fuller she was going on a trip to recuperate from the beating, and nobody else cared where she was. When she didn’t come back, he tried to find her by calling mutual friends, who hadn’t heard from her. By the time the cops were involved, there was no place for them to start looking.”
“And you planned that, too?”
“Yes. I did. I taught her what I knew, and that was enough to get her started. But now she’s been at it for six years, and probably knows more than I do. She’s a very bright woman.”
Linda Gordon pushed off from the wall and stepped closer to her desk. Till could see her eyes lower for a second, and he knew she was looking to check that enough tape was left in her recorder without reminding him that it was running. She leaned on the desk. “You know, you’ll be in serious trouble for telling me all this.”
“I know.”
“You’ve admitted that you’re a party to insurance fraud, that you helped a person get false identification, and I don’t know what else. You used to be a cop. You know there will be quite a list.”
“I had a choice. I could go to bed every night for the next thirty years knowing that Eric Fuller was going to spend another night in prison, or I could go to bed knowing I was the one who prevented that.”
“You could go to jail.”
“The choices aren’t always good.”
“Very stoical. Let me show you something.” She walked around her desk to the chair with the stack of files, moved a few to the desk, found the one she wanted, and opened it. There were ten-by-twelve-inch color photographs. She selected one and handed it to Jack Till.
There was a white cloth torn like a rag and covered with dark stains. It was stretched out on a lab table. He could see the ruler on the table in the corner of the shot to give it scale. “What is it?”
“It’s her blouse, with her blood on it.” She handed Till another photograph.
“And what’s this one?” he asked.
“It’s a bat like the one you were talking about, also with her blood on it.” She glared at him. “Interesting, don’t you think?”
“Where did you get this stuff?”
“It was found at Eric Fuller’s house.”
“Where—the front porch?”
“No,” she said. “Buried in the back yard in a rusty metal box. There was a gas pipe leaking, and the gas company dug it up while they were looking for the leak.”
“Just as good.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s planted. That rag may have been a blouse once, and it may even have been the blouse Wendy Harper was wearing when she was attacked. I assume you have a lab report that the blood is a match for hers.”
“She had herself genetically tested for a breast-cancer gene a couple of years before she was murdered. There isn’t any doubt that this sample belongs to her, and that means she’s dead. I’ve got a significant amount of her blood on a piece of her clothing, and murder weapons.”
“Weapons? Plural?”
“There was also a knife that once belonged to a set in Eric Fuller’s kitchen. We have proof that Eric Fuller bought the set eight years ago. I’m sure by the time we go to trial, we’ll get something similar on the bat.”
“The evidence is faked.”
Linda Gordon said, “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth about what you did or not. If you’re telling the truth and you tried to help her save herself, I’m truly sorry for you. But it certainly looks to me as though sometime around the period when she disappeared, Eric Fuller caught up with her. She hasn’t been seen for six years. How can I look at that blouse and that bat with her blood on them, and do nothing?”
6
JACK TILL LEFT Linda Gordon’s office and walked to his car, thinking about all the reasons Linda Gordon had not to believe him. He had no way of explaining to a young, ambitious prosecutor why an old homicide cop would make the decisions he had made: why he would help Wendy Harper disappear, and why he would go to the DA’s office six years later and admit it. Linda Gordon just hadn’t lived long enough yet.
He sat in his car, took out his cell phone, and punched in the phone number of his old office in Parker Center. “I’d like to speak to Sergeant Poliakoff, please. This is Jack Till.”
In a moment, Poliakoff’s voice said, “Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s it going?”
“I can tell from your voice that you heard already. Did Linda Gordon just call you?”
“Yeah. She wanted to know if you were a good guy or a bad guy. Have you decided yet?” Till could picture him sitting behind the old dented steel desk he had inherited when Till had retired. He was three inches taller than Till, so he had to adjust his chair low and sit in a crouch to fit his knees under the desk.
“After you told her I was the best
of the best, did it sound as though she would consider dropping the charges?”
“I’m sorry, Jack. The way I read it, there’s zero chance unless Wendy Harper walks into her office. She doesn’t think you’re lying, so your record isn’t the issue. She just thinks you’re wrong about what happened after you weren’t around.”
“I had to ask.”
“I know. At the moment, I agree with her, but one of us is going to be surprised, and it could just as easily be me. Maybe we can share leads, like the old days.”
“Can you give me some help finding Wendy Harper?”
“That I can’t do. That suggestion just got covered. The defense will have to pay you to do it.”
“Who is Fuller’s attorney?”
“Jay Chernoff of Fiske, Chernoff, Fein, and Toole. I’ll give you his number.”
Till listened to the number, then said, “Thanks, Max. See you.”
Till made the call to the law office, then drove to Beverly Hills and parked at the end of Brighton, past where it met Little Santa Monica. He walked past the shops along the street until he found the small red-brick building where Fiske, Chernoff, Fein, and Toole had their offices. He entered the narrow lobby and glanced at the directory on the wall, then stepped between the polished brass doors of the elevator and pushed the button for the third floor.
The law office was decorated with framed papers and trimmed with maple, so it had the atmosphere of a courtroom. He stepped toward the desk of the woman who presided over the waiting room intending to introduce himself, but before he got there, a short, middle-aged man with curly red hair and a severely receding hairline came out of a door behind the woman, and said. “Mr. Till? I’m Jay Chernoff.” He held out his hand and Till shook it. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thanks for seeing me.” He let Chernoff lead him inside, then around a corner to an office. When they arrived, Chernoff pulled a chair away from the wall, set it in front of a couch, and motioned for Till to sit on the couch. Till sat, and waited until Chernoff had settled in the chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
Chernoff said, “You said you have information about the Wendy Harper murder?”
“Yes. It’s not a murder. The reason I’m here is that she’s not dead.”
“Not dead?”
“No.” Till held up the wallet with his private detective’s license and the card that showed he was a retired police officer. “About six years ago, she wanted to disappear. I helped her do it.”
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe it!” He looked elated. He actually leaned back in his chair and chuckled. “Have you told the police yet?”
“When I got to my office this morning, I looked at the paper and saw that Eric Fuller was being charged, so I went straight to the DA’s office and told Linda Gordon. I just came from there.”
“You saw Linda Gordon? What did she say?”
“She recorded my statement, then showed me police photographs of what she thinks are Wendy Harper’s bloody blouse and a couple of murder weapons belonging to your client. She hasn’t decided yet whether or not she believes I really did help Wendy leave town. She thinks that if I did, then Fuller found Wendy a short time later and killed her.”
Chernoff took a deep breath and let it out in disappointment. “I might have known. Why did you help Wendy Harper leave town?”
“Somebody beat her up. She thought it had to do with a man who had been dating one of her waitresses at the restaurant. The girl disappeared, and Wendy thought he might have killed her. She looked into it, and one night when she came home, there was a different man waiting for her with a baseball bat. When she got released from the hospital, she came to see me.”
“Of course Eric told me about the waitress and the beating, and that Wendy had been in the hospital. All this time he’s thought that man must have tried again and killed her. Why didn’t Eric know she was leaving voluntarily?”
“That’s the way she wanted it. She believed there was nothing he could do to protect her, but he would try, and it would get him killed.”
“There was a police report filed after the attack, but I didn’t see anything in it about a second man she believed was really behind it. Why not?” Chernoff’s frustration was beginning to show.
“She thought she was being practical. In a way, she had a point. If she didn’t know the man, then the police had nobody to look for, and waiting around was just giving him another chance to kill her. She felt the only way out was to get beyond his reach.”
“So the victim is alive and I have an innocent client.”
“Yes.”
“And the evidence in Eric’s yard. Do you have a theory on how it got there?”
“The guy who attacked her had the bat, and he must have torn the piece of cloth off her. I don’t know why he kept them. Maybe he was supposed to kill her and then use them to frame Eric Fuller at the time. Maybe he hid them and remembered them later. I would guess they were planted within the past few months—just long enough ago so the ground didn’t seem disturbed.”
“Do you have any way of proving what you did?”
“No. Six years ago I tried not to leave any evidence that I had ever seen Wendy Harper. We traveled by car, mostly late at night. I made cash transactions when I could. I burned receipts. I didn’t want somebody to search my office someday and find papers that would tell him where I took her. I taught her how to get a new name, but made sure I didn’t know what it was. When I left her, I wouldn’t let her tell me where she was going.”
Chernoff pursed his lips and stared past Till for a few seconds. “What do you think we should do?”
“Linda Gordon has physical evidence, and I have nothing to counter it. The only way Linda Gordon will drop the charges is if Wendy Harper walks into the police station.”
“Do you think she would come back?”
“I think if she learns what’s happening, she’ll try to save Eric Fuller. She cared a lot about him six years ago. But remember that the only one who could have planted evidence in Fuller’s yard is the person who had it. I think the man who wanted Wendy dead six years ago is trying to lure her back.”
Chernoff looked worried. “We can’t expect the DA’s office to help us. They’re trying to make a case against Eric Fuller.”
“Max Poliakoff, the detective in charge of the case, is an old friend of mine, but he can’t help with this. We’ve got to proceed without help,” Till said.
“Proceed to do what?”
“Get word to her that Eric Fuller needs her, and hope we can keep her alive when she comes.”
7
TILL LOOKED OVER the copy for the ads as he walked away from Jay Chernoff’s office. “Eric Fuller has been accused of the murder of Wendy Harper. Persons having information about this matter may contact Mr. Fuller’s attorney, Jay Chernoff, c/o Fiske, Chernoff, Fein, and Toole, 3900 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills, CA 90210.”
The second ad was an attempt to use Till’s name to reassure her this wasn’t a trap. “Wendy Harper, Eric needs your help after six years. Please get in touch with Jack at Till Investigations, 11999 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, CA 91604.”
The third ad purported to be from Eric. “To Wendy Harper: I’ve been accused of your murder. Please call me so we can prove you’re alive. Love, Eric.” She would still remember that address because the house had once been hers too. This ad was a bit of a fraud because Eric knew nothing about it yet.
The difficult question had been where to place the ads. Till had noticed six years ago that Wendy Harper was one of those people who read the New York Times whether she was in New York or Solvang, California. Till had noticed a hundred times over the years that fugitives seldom changed small habits that struck them as safe. The ads would run in the New York Times in rotation beginning in two days.
The Los Angeles Times seemed to him to be another obvious choice. Wendy Harper had once been a part of the food scene in Los Angeles, and the restaurant she and Eric had owned togeth
er was more popular than ever. Till guessed that she checked on the restaurant from time to time, or read about people she had known. Jay Chernoff had suggested the Chicago Tribune, just because it was the big regional paper for the center of the country. She and Eric had gone to college in Wisconsin, so the Midwest might be an area where she would have felt comfortable enough to settle.
In about two weeks the ads would also run in Gourmet and Saveur, on the theory that a person who had made her living in restaurants might still read about food. Till also remembered that Wendy had mentioned something she had read in the New Yorker, so he added the magazine to the list.
The advertisements were going to be spectacularly expensive, but Till had talked Chernoff into including them in the cost of Eric Fuller’s defense. And unless they could prove that Wendy Harper was alive, there was no defense.
Till had been in Chernoff’s office for much of the day, and now rush hour was beginning and his progress north and east was slow. He had one other stop to make this afternoon, and it was one he longed for and dreaded at the same time. As Till drove, he wished he were visiting Garden House for a different reason.
Till had always liked to think that Holly had thought of the name because that was the way her mind worked. She was not always cheerful, because her life had never been easy, but she took delight in things that were good or beautiful. She named them and she pointed them out to other people whenever she saw them.
Garden House was a two-story residence in South Pasadena, a vintage Craftsman bungalow with a big front porch and an old, established garden with bleeding heart and flowering shrimp plants that had gone out of style, and bright orange Joseph’s Coat roses on trellises. The lawn was always a bit overtrodden and dusty, because there was always something going on out there—a badminton net had been up all spring, and before that one of the kids had decided it was a good spot for a horseshoe pit. Till had to remind himself not to call them kids aloud, because that irritated Holly. They were adults. Holly was twenty-one already, and she could cook and drive a car, and she had been almost self-supporting for three years. Till smiled to himself. That was better than he had done during his first three years in the detective business.
