Silence

21

JACK TILL SWIVELED in his seat to see what the honking was about, but all he could determine was that it had come from one of the cars in the line behind him. A car had stopped in the aisle to let him out so it could take his parking space. The boy with a black baseball cap who was driving made Till uneasy because he was talking to his girlfriend instead of watching, but Till backed out and moved off.

Till turned out of the parking lot and drove west, away from the harbor. He wanted to be on a freeway heading south before the afternoon rush hour. He knew the importance of momentum to a witness like Wendy Harper. If things seemed to be stalled and faltering, she would begin to rethink her choices. He watched her closely whenever he was forced to stop at a traffic signal or wait for an obstruction to clear, and he could detect the nervous mannerisms he feared: looking out the side window at familiar buildings, her thumb running back and forth along the door handle. San Francisco was still home. He hadn’t gotten her out of town yet. She could open the door at any stop, slip out, and know her way around.

“Don’t be nervous,” he reassured her. “You made the right decision.”

“It was made for me.”

“So much the better. You don’t have to second-guess yourself.”

“What I wonder is why you couldn’t have brought a video camera and taken a shot of me talking and holding a newspaper or something. Maybe draw some blood for DNA tests.”

“I thought of that,” he said. “We know the crime lab has samples of your blood. The Assistant DA would have objected, but I think Jay Chernoff—he’s Eric’s lawyer—could have made it work in court.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“Because by the time I got to talk to you, Ann Delatorre was already dead and her killers had found their way to your house. There was no secret left to protect. The only option left was to get you out of town.”

Her impatient expression let Till know that she had thought of that herself, and hearing him repeat what her own mind had told her was not soothing. “See that building down Geary toward Market?”

“The big gray one?”

“No. The brown antique-looking one. My husband works there. His office is right up there on the fourth floor, this side. I can see his window.”

“What company?”

“Pan-World Technical Commerce. It started as a trading company to bring hard drives and things from Asia, but now the finance arm is what makes most of the money.”

“It sounds like a good job.”

“He’s one of the owners. The partners. It took him about ten years to build it into anything. They started out working from a house in Oakland. I feel terrible that he’ll lose it all because of me.”

Till could see the building’s magnetic pull on her as they waited for the light to change. She was feeling a strong urge to jump out of the idling car and run inside the building. He knew that distracting her was impossible, so he tried to keep her talking. “Maybe we can get his partners to buy him out.”

“Probably not. I suspect that when they know he has to liquidate, he’ll get his next lesson in business. They’ll keep him hanging until he has to walk away and leave his share to them.”

“They’d do that?”

“That’s the way I read them, but I might be more cynical and pessimistic than most people.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll try to get some serious legal talent involved, and I’ll serve as the go-between. We can sell his share of the business, your house, and your cars. I can collect your money and make a transfer to your next identity through intermediaries. If necessary, I can deliver it to you in cash.”

She smiled. “I’d forgotten. You have a talent for that.”

“For what?”

“For making people think that everything will be all right. You would have been a good general, sending soldiers on suicide missions and things. It’s a con game.”

“I won’t ask you to do anything I don’t.”

She shook her head. “You’re the one who jumps across the chasm and then turns to the rest of us and calls, ‘Come on. You can do it!’ Only we can’t. Or most of us can’t.”

The light changed and only one taxicab was caught in the intersection to block the traffic. Jack Till accelerated and then swerved into the left lane to avoid it at the last moment. He kept going on Pine Street and turned south onto Van Ness to head for the 101.

“Are we going to the airport?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t seen anyone following us. If nobody is, then what they’re probably doing is betting that we’ll try to fly out.”

“And?”

“And then they’ll be waiting for us at the airport, so we don’t want to go there.”

“But you once told me airports are the safest place. How could they hurt us with all that security?”

“The system is designed to detect objects that blow up or people who might shoot into a crowd. There are a lot of other ways to kill a hundred-and-ten-pound woman and walk away.”

“Jesus!” she said. “I can’t believe that after six years I’m back to this again—running, just like the first day.”

“If you’ve got anything new to tell me, I’d love to hear it.”

“I had six years to think about this, but you know what? I didn’t. I mean, not in any useful way. I went about my life, and I thought about what I had to do each day. I met Louanda after a few weeks, and—”

“Louanda? Is that Ann Delatorre?”

“Yes. Her name was Louanda Rowan. Without her, I don’t think I would have made it this far.”

“I’m sorry about her. If only I had been able to convince her to let me help, she would be alive. Somebody found her after I did.”

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know she existed. If I had been there to open the door as you expected, it never would have happened. I was the one who got her killed. I put her there.” Tears began to well in her eyes and drip down her cheeks. She took a tissue out of her purse and tried to dry them.

“I can tell you that kicking your own ass doesn’t leave much time for anything else.”

“Have you done a lot of that?”

“Enough for the moment.” Till drove aggressively like a cop on duty, moving along in a lane for a time, gaining steadily on the cars ahead and then switching lanes. He kept staring into the mirrors, trying to catch another car changing lanes to keep him in sight. After a few minutes, he said, “How are you doing?”

“Not so great. I’m so terrified, I can hardly breathe.”

“We’ve got to be scared, but only enough to stay alert and do the little things we can do. Use your fear. Look out the rear window every couple of minutes and see if the same car is in the same spot three times in a row. And talk to me to keep me alert. Tell me what you think now about what happened six years ago.”

“I suppose I have figured out some of it in the last six years. Not the important parts—about the man who is killing people or anything. Only the personal parts, the things about me, me, me. So it’s not worth saying aloud.”

“Yes it is. I’d like to hear it.”

“Why?”

“Because your life—and mine—might depend on it. We can drive fast and try to be inconspicuous, but that won’t stop the people who killed Louanda from trying to kill you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

He said nothing. After a few seconds, she said, “Why aren’t you answering me?”

“Does that SUV back there look familiar? The dark one. It kept coming up a while ago, then kind of fell back, and now here it is again.”

She stared at it through the back window. “I don’t know. They all look alike.”

“I’m trying not to be an alarmist, but I’ve got a feeling about it. Have you ever fired a gun?”

Her eyes widened. “Not really. Not the way you mean. When I was at camp, they taught us riflery. And I fired a friend’s pistol once.”

“Here’s the problem. If the people in that SUV are the killers, they’ll pull up on your side of the car and slightly behind us. The first few shots will get you. Then they’ll pull forward to try for me.”

“What can we do?”

He reached to his belt and took out his gun. “Here is the safety. If I tell you to, flip it off with your thumb, keeping your finger outside the trigger guard. You hold the grips tight, aim out the window with both hands. You fire four shots into their windshield—two rounds at the shooter, then two rounds at the driver.”

“What?” She was shocked. “Shoot them?”

“If you hit anybody, it’s over. If you just scare them, I can probably build up some distance and lose them.”

He allowed the dark vehicle to gain on them, glanced at the freeway signs and took the next exit. He coasted to the end of the exit ramp, turned right, and pulled into the first parking lot he saw on the new street. It was the big lot for a Home Depot store, and the aisles were full. He pulled to the end of the first aisle, stopped, and looked back to watch the street in the direction of the exit ramp. He waited for a few minutes, but he saw no sign that the SUV had come down the ramp.

“What now?” she asked.

“You can give my gun back, I guess.” He accepted it, put it back in the holster and covered it with his jacket again. He looked out at the street. “This is the way to the airport, isn’t it?”

“It’s one of the ways. The airport is just a few miles down the road that way. You stay parallel with the 101.”

“Then it might be another opportunity to throw some more confusion in our trail. I rented this car at the airport. I’d like to turn it in and get a different one.”

“Are you still against flying?”

“When you get on an airplane, people know exactly where you’re going and exactly what time you’ll arrive. If we go by car, we make them work to stay with us, and we get a chance to see who they are.”