Silence

8

LATE THAT NIGHT, Jack Till sat in his car on Vignes Street, watching the lighted space outside the gate of the county jail. Even though it was after midnight, the slit windows of the big concrete building were brightly lighted and at least forty people sat in their cars or stood beside them at the curb outside, waiting They looked like people at the harbor waiting for a ship to dock. There were young women with children who were too tiny to be out at this hour, old ladies who were obviously waiting for sons or daughters. On the other side of the street there were three low-rider cars with candy-flake paint jobs and lots of chrome, all sitting nose-to-tail. The young men who had brought them were out walking back and forth, talking and waving their heavily tattooed arms for emphasis. Till couldn’t tell from here what gang colors were on the tattoos, but he knew that if he moved closer, he would recognize the symbols. He had seen all of them before on corpses and on suspects. The friend they were waiting for must have been popular to rate a convoy to take him home.

The door of the building opened and a group of inmates was released into the area just inside the gate. The jail was crowded and understaffed, so the guards always seemed to process the prisoners in batches. Till saw a few arms wave, a few of the people in cars get out and walk toward the fence. A guard went to the gate and unlocked it, then let the prisoners out one at a time.

Till got out of his car, stood beside it and spotted the prisoner he had been waiting for: Eric Fuller was in his early thirties, as tall as Jack Till, and he had hair so short and blond that the eye had trouble telling where it began or ended. His face was reddish and slightly lined for his age, as though he had spent time squinting. As he came out the gate, Till intercepted him. “Hello, Mr. Fuller. I’m Jack Till.”

“Jay Chernoff told me about you. Where is he, anyway? I thought he’d be here.”

“I asked him to stay on the other side of the building, in case there are reporters or something worse waiting for you. We agreed that I would take you home, because I wanted to talk to you. All right with you?”

Fuller looked up the dark street. The other prisoners had all gotten into cars and driven off. “I don’t have much choice.”

He followed Till to his car and got into the passenger seat. Till got in and drove. “I know you have a right to be mad at me.”

Fuller turned to look at him. “I’m happy to know that Wendy’s alive, and I guess I should thank you for that, and for coming forward now. That doesn’t mean I like you. You took Wendy away, and let me think she was dead for six years. Wendy was—is—the most important person in my life. I’ve thought about her every day since she disappeared. Sometimes I’ve wished I had died with her. And about twenty-four hours ago, I got arrested and hauled down here and thrown in a cell that smells like piss and vomit, and charged with murdering her. I can’t help thinking I owe you some of the thanks for that, too.”

“I was trying to save her life. I apologize to you for the parts of this that got you in trouble. As soon as I found out about it, I went to the DA.”

“I know you didn’t intend to do me any harm. But what made her do that? I loved her. What the hell was she thinking?”

“I was under the impression that you two had broken up.”

“Broken up? That term doesn’t apply to us. We had been together so long that getting married seemed like the obvious thing to do. When we realized it wouldn’t work, we admitted we’d been more attracted to other people from the beginning, but didn’t see how we could be apart. We weren’t mad at each other. It wasn’t like her not to tell me what she was doing. Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She thought it was the only way to protect you. She believed that her time here was over. Yours wasn’t. She had helped start your restaurant and turn it into a paying business, but you were the real force behind it. She said, ‘Nobody comes to a restaurant because there’s a good MBA in the back office.’”

“That isn’t a reason to let me think she was dead.”

“She also thought you would try to protect her, maybe go after the people who were trying to hurt her.”

“It was a stupid thing to do. I could have helped her. Instead I get accused of killing her.”

Till took a deep breath and let it out. There was no reason to hold anything back now, and he had no right. “She also felt that at some point you two had to separate. You would never find a woman who could tolerate having someone like her in your life. If she was around, you wouldn’t even look. The same was true for her. The reason she left was the danger, but the killer wasn’t the only thing she needed to escape.”

Eric Fuller was silent for a few seconds, his body leaning forward in the seat and his eyes on the dashboard. It looked to Till as though he might lunge toward him. His face was reddening, and looked almost swollen, and Till could see moisture welling in the blue eyes. “She didn’t even think it through and prepare. She left everything—her half of the restaurant, her half of the house, everything we had built together.”

“She thought you had more right to it than she did, and there was no way to hold on to things like that and disappear. I know you’re mad at her tonight, but I can tell you that she cared about you and wanted to be sure that her trouble didn’t destroy you.”

He leaned back in the seat with his eyes closed and rubbed his forehead. “God. I’m sorry. It’s just that everything is happening at once. To be honest with you, I’m afraid. I’m just out on bail. Nobody dropped any charges. I don’t want to go to jail for the rest of my life. Jay told me about the advertisements. I keep wondering what happens if Wendy doesn’t see them. What if she’s living in another country? I could be convicted of murder, and she would never even know it. I could get the death penalty.”

Till drove in silence for a few seconds. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I need to know anything you can tell me that might help me figure out how to reach her.”

“I don’t know. When she was missing at first, I called everyone we knew, searched our house and our restaurant for any clue about where she might have gone.”

“Was there any other city she ever talked about where she wanted to live someday?”

“Here. L.A. She was the one who chose it as the place to start the restaurant.”

“Is there anywhere that she said she wanted to go on a vacation, but you never did?”

“Oh, God. Everywhere. When we were really young we were too poor to go anywhere, and when we were older, we were too busy. At one time she wanted to go to France, but it was mainly so I could apprentice in a great restaurant. When we were in school in Wisconsin, we would talk about Tahiti in the winter and the Rocky Mountains in the summer. We were never serious about any of it. She could be anywhere.”

Till said, “I told her that if she wanted to stay hidden, she should never try to get in touch with anybody she knew again. But that’s not an easy rule to follow. If she weakened and decided to talk with someone, who would she choose?”

Fuller shrugged. “The person she would choose is me.”

“That’s what I thought. That’s the other reason why I wanted to talk to you right away, tonight. What you’ve got to understand is that six years ago people like me gave her lots of sensible advice and tried to talk her out of it, but she was the one who was right—there really were men determined to kill her. The only person who could have planted the evidence to frame you now is the one who attacked her. They’re trying to get her to show herself. When she does, they’ll try again. They’ll be watching you, and if it helps them get to her, they’ll kill you, too.”

He drove Eric Fuller to the house that he had once shared with Wendy Harper. When Fuller got out, Till handed him a business card. “If she calls or writes or tries to get in touch with you in any way at any time of the day or night, you’ve got to call me immediately. And if you notice any kind of surveillance on you, I’ll come and check it out. It may just be the cops, but if it’s somebody else, I’ll arrange a surprise for them.”

“Why would you risk your life to help me?”

“Maybe I’m not helping you. Maybe I’m helping her.”

After that night, Till waited a month for an answer to the advertisements he and Jay Chernoff had placed in magazines and newspapers. At the end of the month, he paid a visit to Garden House, even though it wasn’t the day of the week when he usually came. He drove past the house five times at ten-minute intervals, parked in the lot beside a supermarket, and walked a half mile to the house, searching the neighborhood harder than usual for any sign of change. Later that evening, he took Holly to a movie, then had a long, serious talk with her and left her at her door.

When he got home, he called Chernoff. “Jay, Wendy’s not coming in. It’s time for me to go after her.”