by Thomas Perry
She said, “As a date, or as a candidate for governor?”
That did it, saying it that way. She had directed his attention away from Karen’s beauty and the extreme care she gave to dressing and grooming herself, and onto the sparse and oddly assorted furniture of her mind.
His mother looked into his eyes, and then shrugged. “If she loves you, the nicest, smartest girl in town will do everything the biggest whore will do. And she’ll mean it.”
Years later, when he married Rose, it was without the benefit of his mother’s advice. But she liked Rose and approved of her. Rose was cheerful and eager to have fun, the sort of pretty woman who had sun-induced freckles, an athletic, lithe body and a sort of buoyant energy. She didn’t mind that Jack was a police officer. In retrospect, he supposed that she thought of police work as a sport, like hunting. The way things turned out was as surprising to Jack’s mother as it was to Jack. He still believed that if the trials that had fallen to them had been different ones—maybe bankruptcy or a chronic illness instead of Holly’s problem—she might have held up, might even have been heroic. But she did not hold up. She ran away from Jack and from Holly. She left a note that said she needed to spend some time alone and think, and that she would be in touch as soon as she was ready. The way he learned her new address was by reading the divorce papers that arrived in the mail.
After Rose, there had been a series of relationships with women, but he had never been tempted to marry again. After a few misunderstandings and disappointments, he developed a talent for recognizing women—mostly widows and divorcees—who liked male company but had no more interest in marrying anybody than he did.
Holly was the center of his life. He had never kept the women he dated from meeting her, but he had never rushed the meetings, and he had never given Holly the impression that any of the women would be around for a long time. He had needed desperately to protect Holly from loss. He thought about Holly now, and wondered what she was doing tonight. It was late, so he pictured her asleep in her bed in the room she shared with her friend Nancy in Garden House. In a few hours she would be up again, bustling around in the kitchen and getting ready for another day at the shop.
Till felt uneasy. He looked out the plane’s window along the flight line, where he could see the rounded shapes of four other planes nosed up to the terminal. He could see the lights of the hotels, and beyond them the dark of the desert. Leaving Henderson felt wrong. There were too many things he did not know, too many questions he had not asked, too many possibilities that he had left untested. He was still bothered by the telephone call that Ann Delatorre had made to Wendy Harper after his first visit. He’d heard what Ann had said, but what had Wendy said? Had she told Ann Delatorre not to let Till know where she was? Had Wendy told her to find a way to get rid of him?
Maybe Wendy had heard what was going on in Los Angeles and was already making her way there on her own. That would make a great deal of sense. If Wendy had become adept at hide-and-seek over the past six years, then she might have decided that her best use of Jack Till was to leave him wandering around trying to develop leads to places where she wasn’t. Maybe her plan was to slip into Los Angeles alone and unnoticed. If that was her plan, then he was blowing it for her right now. He was on an airplane that was about to take him straight to her.
He couldn’t fly to San Francisco without knowing whether he was helping her or hurting her. The only way to find out was to talk to Ann Delatorre one more time. He stood up, opened the overhead compartment, and took out his small suitcase.
“What are you doing?”
Till turned his head and saw that it was the flight attendant. “I’m leaving. I’m not going to be on this flight. You can give my seat to somebody else.”
“Why? Is something wrong? Are you ill?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just forgot something I have to do.”
“Sir, I don’t know if you’ll be able to get a refund.”
“That’s okay,” he said, and manufactured a reassuring smile. “By the way, this is my only bag, so nobody has to take anything else off the plane.”
She decided to believe that he wasn’t a terrorist and he wasn’t insane. She moved up the aisle past him, weaving through the passengers who were still boarding. “Excuse us, please. Excuse us.” She stayed ahead of him to secure a few feet of aisle leading toward the front of the plane, so he could step into it after her. When they reached the end of the aisle, and he stepped out the hatchway, she said, “I hope everything works out for you.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. You’ve been very helpful. Thanks.”
He moved quickly out into the concourse and then to the moving walkway, found the baggage area, then made his way through crowds of people to the car rental counters. This time he chose a different rental company to throw off anyone who might be watching him.
Till drove out of McCarrran Airport and took the 215 south to Henderson. He was cutting back to cross his own trail, but he was sure it was the right thing to do. He knew he had missed something when he was talking to Ann Delatorre. She had said she was Wendy Harper’s closest friend. What would her closest friend do if Wendy was in danger? Maybe she would join her, or maybe she would summon Wendy back to Las Vegas from wherever she was living. Maybe she had been eager to invite him in and tell him her story to get rid of him before Wendy arrived.
Till drove up Ann Delatorre’s street looking for cars parked along the curb that he had not seen before. There were none, but he kept going past the house to see if there were any other changes. There was a light on in the back of the house. He had driven past several times on different nights, but he had never seen that light on.
Till pulled over and parked a distance from the house, and then walked back, staying on the garage side, where the view from the house was limited. When he reached the house he could see that the light was coming from the hallway that led from the living room to the kitchen. He took in a deep breath and slowly blew it out through his teeth. She must have left already. She had gone to meet Wendy Harper. When he had watched the house before, she had never left lights on this late at night. Till supposed she had probably forgotten it, or plugged a light into a timer, then set it to go on and off at the wrong times because she was in a hurry to get on the road.
Till walked to the rear of the house where the light was on, and looked in through the window of the back door. He took out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1 as he walked along the house to look in the bigger window.
A woman’s voice came on after a few seconds. “What is the nature of your emergency?”
“I just found a woman’s body at 93117 Valerio Springs in Henderson. She’s wrapped in a blanket on the kitchen floor of her house. Her name is Ann Delatorre.”
“Your name, please?”
“Jack Till.”
“You know that she’s dead?”
“I can see she’s been shot in the head.”
17
IT WAS AFTER TEN in the morning. Ann Donnelly did not dare to dial the Henderson number again. Ann Delatorre had said that she would call again this morning, but she had not called. Ann Donnelly had suspected from the start that the man who had gone to the house in Henderson was not Jack Till. Six years ago, when Jack Till had taught her how to escape, he said that he did not want to know where she was going, or what name she was going to give herself.
He had said, “You know what a secret is?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s something that only one person knows. Giving it to someone else is like trying to pass a handful of water to a friend. The best part of it gets spilled.”
“That’s why you don’t want to know? You’re not going to spill it.”
“If the people who want you have found out about me, then they’ll be watching me. They’ll watch until one of us tries to communicate. It’s not you or I who will give up the secret. It’s the empty space between us.”
“You don’t sound like a cop anymore.”
She remembered saying, “There are certain people who will be hard for me. I’ll think about Eric every day. My friends from college in Wisconsin will be a loss, and the ones who built up the restaurant with us.”
“There’s still time to come back to L.A. and help the police find these guys. Even if you change your mind later, you can come home.”
“I don’t think I will.” How had she known that? Was it because she had decided nothing could depend on other people—their decisions, their assessments of what she was feeling and thinking and capable of doing? She had made a decision to act, to leave nothing up to anyone else.
After that conversation, she had looked up at Jack Till and experienced an odd temptation. She could remember the surprise of it even now, six years later. He was completely wrong for her, a mismatch. He was older, his eyes already acquiring that hooded look that at first glance seemed sleepy, but then was sad and very wise. He was tall and thin and hard, with narrow feet and hands. The hands were, oddly, part of the attraction, because they weren’t thick and clumsy like the hands of a cop. They were long and thin, and when they moved they seemed to have a grace and exactness, like the fingers of a pianist. Watching them when Jack Till did things—wrote or picked up a key or dialed a telephone—revealed the intelligence that animated them.
She had observed him on the beach with her, the two of them pretending to be a couple of tourists while they waited. Perhaps by pretending to be a couple they were asking for those feelings to develop. So much of what happened between people in ordinary life was induced by their roles, and roles were pretending. It was how doctors and ministers and bosses and—yes—policemen existed. It wasn’t a good idea to examine how much of love was induced by the two opposite roles that two human beings tried to play when they paired off. But she had already known by then that sometimes love was that way. People pretended until they believed.
She had stepped close to Jack, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek. Then she had lingered with her arms around him and her face turned up in case he wanted to turn his face to her, put his arms around her and kiss her, too. That was all it would have taken to have her—either then or anytime afterward. But Jack Till had chosen to misconstrue the kiss to preserve his conscience or her pride. She had been the right kind of woman for Jack to dismiss that way. She was demonstrative, and kissed everybody on the cheek—male, female, old or young—when they showed up at a party, let alone saved her life. At the restaurant Eric had once said she was a health hazard, kissing fifty customers a night, transferring germs from one to the next.
Jack had pretended not to get what she meant, but later on he had said things that made her know that he had understood. “You’re in the scary part right now,” he said. “You’ve jumped off the side of the chasm you were on, and your feet haven’t touched the other side yet. It can make you feel alone and desperate. Pretty soon you’ll be in a new place with new people, and you’ll begin to feel better.”
What he had not known—had not seen because she had not let him—was that she had already taken that into account. She had wanted to get involved with Jack to make the break with the old life final. It was something Wendy Harper would never have done, and Jack Till would have helped her stop being Wendy Harper.
She supposed he had learned his resistance by being a cop. Cops were used to seeing women at moments of their lives when they were most vulnerable and frightened. At those times, a big strong male who was sworn to protect them was what some primitive lobe of their brains craved. It was a bit too easy for someone like Jack.
She remembered the moment hours later when he stopped the car just outside the Santa Barbara airport and sat with her for a moment. She kissed him a second time, but his posture remained stiff and unyielding. She said, “Thanks for saving my life, Jack.” Did she actually add, “If you need a friend, or there’s anything I can ever do for you…” or was she imagining it? Yes, she said that. There could be no reality unless she told herself the truth. She threw herself at him.
In response, he said, “Just take care of yourself. If you need me, you know where I am. Later, if somebody calls or comes looking for you, remember that I don’t know where you are. It isn’t going to be me.”
She’d had no choice. “I’ll never forget you.” She got out of the car, took the small suitcase that contained her few carefully selected belongings and the shoulder bag that contained seventy thousand dollars in cash, and waved to him one last time. Then she walked into the terminal and caught her plane.
Now, as Ann Donnelly was packing to leave again, she was just as frightened as she had been then. Her movements felt unreal. She watched her hands doing things automatically. She reached up to the pole in her closet and selected outfits that she knew would be useful and passed over the rest. It occurred to her that what she was doing now was exactly what Jack Till taught her.
Ann Delatorre should have called her by now. She was afraid. The man Ann described sounded a bit like Jack Till, but Jack Till would never have come after her. Ann should have called. That was the arrangement. The only conclusion she could draw was that Ann Delatorre was dead. Not Ann Delatorre. That was a made-up name. She deserved to be thought of under her real name: She was Louanda Rowan.
Ann Donnelly found herself crying again as she finished packing. She had been crying about Louanda on and off for hours, but now she had to control herself. She closed her suitcase and latched it, then looked around. The bedroom seemed comfortable and reassuring. The big king bed with its high walnut headboard and antique quilt looked so safe and secure. It was terribly hard to leave this room.
When she had run away from Los Angeles, she had looked for a chance to invent a new and better self. She worked on being Ann Delatorre for a time, and then realized that she needed another layer of distance from the past. She conceived the idea of giving Louanda Rowan the identity she had invented, and the business she had built and the house she had bought. It was a chance to repay Louanda for her friendship and help. It was also a way of keeping tough, fearless little Louanda between her and her troubles. She had to acknowledge that now and accept it. She had befriended a woman who was poor and desperate, used her as a surrogate—a double—and put her in terrible danger. She had never intended the danger to be real, but that was how it had worked out. Now, as the minutes went by, it was becoming surer and surer that Louanda was dead, and that she had died trying to protect Ann Donnelly.
Trying. That was a word that raised other problems. If Louanda had been hurt or running, she could have called this house and told Ann Donnelly what to do to help her. But if she had been caught in Henderson and had not been able to keep Ann Donnelly’s name and address from her captors, then waiting for her call was wasting the only time left to escape.
Ann walked slowly through the house again. As she walked, she absentmindedly corrected things that had been left out of place. She straightened the oriental rug in the living room, then used her foot to push the strands of fringe at the ends into place. She gathered a pile of magazines into a stack on the coffee table, picked up a plastic dump truck with a Barbie doll in it, carried it into the playroom, and set it on a shelf. She looked at her watch. It was after eleven. She had given Louanda all the time she could spare. She went back into the hallway, picked up her suitcase, and walked toward the back door.
It was as though she had awakened suddenly. Once she had begun to move, the insanity of waiting here for her executioner to arrive began to seem obvious. She stepped outside, looked up and down the street for signs of unusual activity, then locked the door behind her, went into the garage by the side door, and put the small suitcase into the trunk of her beige Nissan Maxima. She started the car, backed
out of the driveway, and noticed again the flat of strawberries that she had bought three days ago, before the call from Louanda, but never planted. She pressed the remote control to close the garage door.
She drove up the street, made a few turns randomly in case somebody had arrived in time to follow her, and then turned onto a pretty street with big trees shading her car. She parked, then dialed her cell telephone and waited.
Dennis’s voice came on, but she recognized the recording instantly. “This is Dennis Donnelly. I’m not available at the moment, but please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Den, this is Ann. I’m sorry, but the thing I told you might happen someday has happened. I left the kids—you know where I left them, so I won’t say it on the phone. I told them I had to go away for a long time on business, so that’s our story. Don’t try to add details. We’ll just contradict each other. Don’t even think about bringing them back to the house. That goes for you, too. Tell your partners as soon as you get this message that something has come up and you’ve got to take a trip. Pick the kids up and go from there. I’m sure you remember that the kit I put together for this is in the trunk of your car. I love you.” She turned off the telephone and put it back into her purse. She was crying so hard that it took her a minute before she could wipe away enough tears to look behind her and be sure she hadn’t been followed.
18
JACK TILL got off the plane in San Francisco and made his way to the car-rental counters. While he waited for the keys to a car, he kept turning his head and scanning the changing, moving crowds of people behind him, looking for some constant, some person who stayed in sight.
His search for Wendy Harper was different now that Ann Delatorre was dead. Till had not been able to stay in Henderson to wait for the crime lab and the autopsy, but he had seen enough bodies to know that she’d been beaten before she had died. Probably her assailant had been trying to get information. It had ended with a shot to the side of the head near the back from less than a foot away—close enough to singe her hair a little. He hoped it had been a shot taken out of anger and frustration at a failure to make her talk.
