Silence

25

JACK TILL TOOK one more sip of his coffee and scanned the customers in the restaurant. They all had the weary look of people who had spent the day driving. Some were probably staying at the hotel across the parking lot, but many would probably be back on the road as soon as they paid their checks. He selected the four or five who looked to his practiced eye like potential shooters. He studied their faces for signs that they were interested in Ann Donnelly, and their clothing for places where they might be hiding weapons.

“Have I changed a lot?”

The question startled him. He considered Ann Donnelly. “No. You haven’t aged at all that I can see. You haven’t done a whole lot to change your looks, either.”

“I did at first. I put away my contacts and got clear glasses for night, tinted for day. My hair was short and dark. I wore different clothes. In Las Vegas I used to lie out beside the pool to get a tan.”

“When did you stop worrying?”

“I always worried. I just handled it differently. I think I had been living at the Royal Palms Palace for months before I got careless with the hair dye and Louanda noticed the roots. By then I was pretty well established as Ann Delatorre. Not once had anyone shown up looking for Wendy Harper. There had been no scares. So after we moved to Henderson, I slowly started to let myself look like me again.”

He shrugged. “How would you know if there were close calls?”

“What do you mean?”

“You told me you couldn’t identify the waitress’s boyfriend, and the one with the bat was a hired hand. How would you know if they were getting close to you?”

She seemed irritated. “I suppose I didn’t. Maybe it was just hard for me to stay scared of everyone forever.”

Till looked at his watch. It was after eight. “I’m ready to get on the road again if you are.”

“Okay,” she said. “I guess I am, too.”

They rose and he said, “Don’t go outside alone. Wait for me while I pay.”

Ann Donnelly stood a couple of paces behind Till while he paid for their dinner at the cash register. Till used the time to look around the restaurant once more. He had scanned all of the faces when she and Till had entered, and now he was doing it again. None of them seemed ominous.

Till put away his wallet and walked with Ann to the doorway. He pushed the glass door open and went outside with it, so he could scan the area while he held it for her.

“Wait,” he said. “There are cop cars. I wonder what’s up.”

“It can’t be about us.”

As they walked toward their car, Till handed her the car keys. “Drive across the lot toward the hotel.”

“What for?”

“Just do it. Stop near the farthest car and let me out. Keep the motor running.”

She did as Till asked, then watched him unfold his long body and then stroll up to the cop who seemed to be in charge, a bald, forty-five-year-old man wearing a black nylon jacket and a pair of black lace-up boots. Ann pushed the button to lower her window so she could hear what Jack was saying, but the conversation was too low and ended too quickly. She heard him say, “Good luck,” and then his long strides brought him back to the car and he got in. “Let’s head for the highway.”

She aimed the car toward the exit from the parking lot and slowly accelerated. “Well?”

“This is a good time to get out. In a few minutes, it will get a lot more crowded around here. That blue car they were all looking at was the one used by some guy who killed a cop near the San Francisco airport a few hours ago.”

“So it has nothing to do with us?”

“It could. We were near the airport at about that time, and we’re here now. The sergeant said nobody seems to have seen the car arrive, but the hood is warm.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Keep driving.” As Ann Donnelly pulled onto the street and drove toward the freeway entrance Till leaned back in the passenger seat, crossed his arms on his chest, and appeared to relax.

She accelerated onto the freeway and took a spot in the second lane. “When this is over, I suppose I’ll have to go back to all that, won’t I?”

“Go back to what?”

“Cut and dye my hair, wear sunglasses and hats everywhere.”

“You’re looking at this whole situation backward,” he said. “If you can just give me something more to go on, then maybe these men will be the ones who have to worry about being caught, not you.”

“I told you. I didn’t see enough, I didn’t hear enough, I don’t know enough.”

“Keep trying to remember.”

“It isn’t a question of remembering. There’s nothing to remember.”

“Then until these guys get caught for something else, you and your husband will just have to be careful to stay invisible.”

“That’s over.” She said it quickly, but in a calm, unemotional way.

Till wasn’t sure at first that he had heard right. He was accustomed to hearing that kind of announcement delivered with emotion, or even false bravado, so he waited for them. Then he said, “Your marriage? You’re ending your marriage?”

“Yes, because I have to. I didn’t think this was going to happen, or I would never have married Dennis.” At last she had begun to sound unhappy. “I wasn’t planning on doing this to his kids.”

“So why are you?”

She ignored Till’s question, and went on as though she were talking to herself. “When I was a little girl and my mother left, I said ‘I’ll never do that to my daughter.’ This is the comeback, the big voice saying, ‘Oh, yeah?’ It isn’t going to be easy for them. I know. Even my inadequate mothering is better than none.”

“I don’t think you have to make any decision right now.”

“The decision is already made, Jack. It was made before Dennis and I ever got married.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Dennis had the kids before I met him. Their mother had died in a car accident a couple of years earlier. Dennis and I were dating for a time, and he asked me to marry him. I had been dreading it. Once he asked, everything was different. I had to say yes, or tell him to go away.”

“It must have been a hard decision to make.”

“I wasn’t ready. All I knew in advance was how I would decide. I invited him to go with me on a trip to Las Vegas, and took him to Henderson. He and I and Louanda sat down in the living room of the house I had bought. I introduced her as Ann Delatorre and explained to him how she had gotten that name. I told him everything. Then the three of us spent a couple of days talking about it. From time to time, I sent Dennis out to buy food and supplies, and Louanda and I would talk alone. Louanda would tell me things she thought about Dennis, and about the idea of marrying him.”

“What did she think?”

“She was protective of me. We were the ones who kept each other’s secrets. We were—no, I was going to say ‘like sisters,’ but it’s not like that because we weren’t alike. We were like two men who have been through a war together. Each of us was a part of the other’s life forever. She didn’t think I should marry Dennis. When I told her I was leaning toward doing it anyway, she forced me to talk about things I probably wouldn’t have.”

“Such as?”

“Such as what would happen if we were married and the killers came for me. What would I do to protect his kids? We tried out all of the possibilities, followed them all the way through to their logical conclusions.”

“So what did you decide would happen if today came—if you were married with kids and the killers came for you?”

She took her eyes off the road long enough to look at him for a second. “I couldn’t sit still in San Rafael and wait for them. My husband and kids couldn’t stay there because those people might kidnap them and make me trade my life for theirs, or simply kill them. And I couldn’t run away and bring them all with me, a family of four. I knew that then—or Louanda did, and made me think it through. So before anything happened, I made other arrangements. Or Dennis, Louanda, and I did.” Her face seemed to squint and compress itself in pain. He could see that the tears were coming now, without any way for her to stop them. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Oh, shit!”

He wanted her to cry. He needed to obliterate the false composure she had perfected over the years if he was going to get her to tell him anything, but he had to be patient, or she would resist. “Maybe it was the wrong decision, the wrong arrangement.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She drove on for a few minutes, slowly bringing the sobs under control while Till waited. He kept looking back at the headlights on the road behind them, wondering which set was the one following them.

“We made a plan. It’s just that long before we made it, I was sure we would never need it. Don’t you see?”

“Sure I do.”

“It was like making a plan for a nuclear war or something. You know the only responsible thing you can do is make a plan, but your little plan is only half-serious because you don’t feel it. The threat isn’t real. I would never have put us in this situation if I had felt that I would need a plan.”

Till watched her fighting back the next wave of tears. He saw her eyes, her face in the flash-glow of the headlights on the northbound cars across the margin. “You have a place—a safe house—picked out for them, don’t you?”

“Yes. How could Dennis be expected to take the kids and do everything by himself? He doesn’t know anything about new identities or hiding or anything. He would be found in a day, and the kids would be dead. So I set up everything I could in advance.”

“The two of you went somewhere and arranged for a place where they would live?”

“The two of us, yes. But not Dennis.”

“Of course not. It had to be you and Louanda.”

“It was really mostly her. We found a house. It’s in Pennsylvania, about thirty miles outside Philadelphia. We bought a small farm. It was really just a corner of a much bigger place, but the owner had died and his kids needed to pay off some debts to keep the rest of the place clear, so they sold us that little bit. It’s only about five acres and a house. Dennis will be on the way there right now, tonight.”

Till needed to force her to revisit every decision. “I’m sorry for him,” said Till. “It’s not going to be easy taking two little kids across the country and into a place that’s been unoccupied for years.”

“It hasn’t.”

“A woman. There’s a woman.”

She was crying harder. “Of course there is.”

“Who? A nanny?”

“Do we have to talk about every little detail?”

“Who is she?”

“She’s somebody Louanda knew.”

“How about you? Did you know her?”

“I got to know her. I spent time with her in Philadelphia, and she came to stay with us a few times in San Rafael, so if something really did happen, she wouldn’t be a stranger.” She glared at Jack Till with something that looked like hatred. “You’re the one who taught me. You’re the one who told me to make sure I had thought of everything, prepared for everything. ‘Never let yourself get more than two steps in the front door if you can’t already find the back door.’ That’s what you said. So I did it. I did it a hundred times in a hundred ways, and this was one of them. Of course there’s a woman. Without her the plan would have been a fake.”

“But who is she?”

“She and Louanda knew each other for years. She’s a couple of years younger than I am, and she even looks a little bit like me. Louanda used to kid me about that at first, before it wasn’t funny anymore. Dennis is capable of getting the kids to the farm without telling anybody his real name. Then Iris will step in and start taking care of things.”

“Taking care of things?”

“She’ll take care of the children. She’ll take care of the house. She’ll cook for them. She’ll be sure they’re enrolled in a local school, and get there every day with clean clothes and a lunch.”

“What are people supposed to think she is?”

“The identification papers are in the names Donald, Linda, and Timothy Welsh. There are also some papers in the house that say Kathy Welsh.”

Jack Till said nothing. He looked back at the highway behind the car, trying to discern a set of headlights that might have been there too long. His experience as an interrogator told him he needed to keep pressing her now, trying to learn more, trying to force her to remove the next layer of half-truths. He had found her first real vulnerability, and he needed to probe it. But it was also his vulnerability.

There were several minutes of silence while Ann Donnelly stared ahead at the highway, thinking. When she spoke again, it was as though her thoughts had simply become audible. “She’d had a rough life, even by Louanda’s standards. Louanda swore that Iris would be good to the children no matter what. After we had all spent time together, I was sure that part was true, and it was the only part that mattered. The kids know her and like her.”

“How did Dennis feel about this arrangement?”

“He’ll be just fine.”

“Is that what he said?”

“He promised he would go through with this. He knows that the kids’ lives might depend on his following the plan.”

“There’s a lot you’re not saying. What is it?”

“I don’t know. What is it? Do you want to know how it feels to walk off and give your life to another woman? Bad. Really bad. Now my family is headed for a place where I can never go. I’ve lost them.”

Till tried to keep his mind on forcing his way to the next revelation. But he kept thinking of what it would be like to have to leave Holly forever. He had a memory of her looking up at him and smiling, then turning away to go back into Garden House when he had last seen her. He could hardly bear it. “I told you before that you don’t have to make any big decisions tonight.”

“And I told you it’s over. It’s been the arrangement from the beginning, from the day when I told him the truth in Henderson the first time. If he wanted to get married, he had to agree to the plan. He’ll keep his word. She’ll do the rest.”

“She’s not just an employee, is she? And she’s not just for the kids.”

“No.”

“Does he know?”

“No. Yes. He’s just a guy—a good, kind, ordinary guy with a business that keeps him busy all day, and a few things like golf and watching sports that keep him occupied the rest of the time. And the kids. He adores the kids. He doesn’t require an oil well to come in before he considers it a good day.”

“So why did you hire this Iris?”

“Hire her? I suppose I did, in a way. But hardly any money ever changed hands. All I had to do was take the life that I had built for myself, show it to this woman whose life was crummy, and say, ‘If anything ever happens to me, will you please take over?’ Of course she would. A couple of times a year we would talk on the phone, and I would say, ‘Still available?’ and she would say, ‘You bet.’”

“And did Dennis seem satisfied with her?”

“I told you, he’ll be fine.”

“Did he say that?”

She glared at him. “During the month or so at a time when she came to stay with us, I arranged lots of times when I would take the kids somewhere for a day or two, and leave Dennis in the house with her to see if they would be able to get along and agree on things. Then I would come home and talk to each of them alone.”

“What happened when he cheated on you?”

She glared at him again. “If you’re smart enough to know that happened, then you can’t be so dumb as to think I didn’t expect it. Louanda and Iris and I sat down together beforehand and talked about that possibility on some of the trips to Philadelphia. Louanda thought I was foolish, letting go of my husband when there might never even be a reason.”

“What about Iris?”

“She wasn’t sure what she wanted, at that point. She had met Dennis by that time and she admitted she’d been attracted to him. She was afraid that maybe I would turn my faithful husband into an unfaithful one, and I would never feel the same about him.”

“But you persuaded her?”

“No. No. I didn’t. I just made sure everybody had every chance to get to know one another—Iris, the kids, Dennis—and left them alone as much as I could. Don’t you see why?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Everybody’s objection was that the killers would never come after me. Well, now they have, and it turns out that I’m the one who was right.”

“But what advantage was there?”

“For me? None. Not then, certainly. Not ever. It was for the kids.”

“With Iris, you get to maintain control over everything.”

“No. I don’t get to do that. I do get to be sure that when my family begins over again in a few days, there will be a nice place to live that’s far from here, and there will be four of them: two kids, a father, and a mother. Nobody’s missing, see? Nobody is going to run an easy search or publicize some easy lie and learn that a father and two kids the right ages showed up on this date and bought a new house. It’s a family of four who have owned the place for four years. No woman who meets the family is going to see a slot that’s open and decide she’s the one to fill it. I don’t have to worry that the Wicked Witch of the West is going to get the kids.”

“You’re not so worried about your husband, though. Why?”

“He’s a grown-up. He has to do that much for himself.”

“You’re hedging, evading. Don’t you care about him?”

“I’ll miss him. Sure. He’s a nice man.”

“You didn’t say you love him. Did you ever?”

“I was lonely. I missed having a relationship with a man. I like men. I like the feeling of security and someone to do the heavy lifting and reach the top shelf. Dennis asked me out, and we liked each other.”

“Not enough.”

“All right. The truth, then. Dennis was a father with two little kids. He wasn’t too good at it, and he’d had no time to learn, but he was trying. He had the guts to try as hard as he could every single day. It appealed to me. I could see that he and the kids needed me, and that appealed to me even more. When I was young, I was one of those girls who took all the babysitting jobs I could get. I loved little kids—probably because I was an only child—and I got really good at taking care of them. When I met Dennis, I had just spent over a year doing nothing but thinking about myself and hiding from everybody else. I needed somebody who needed me, so when I saw three of them, I was willing to do what was necessary. That meant getting married.”

Till said carefully, “If only you could think of something that would lead us to the man who’s trying to have you killed, you could go back.”

“If I could have done it, I would have long ago.”

Till noticed that a car was slowly, steadily moving up behind them. Just as the headlights in the rear window began to be noticeable, the car dropped back. It allowed another car to pass it and pull in ahead, and then another.

Till said, “That one came close enough to take a look at us.”

“What do I do?”

“Keep going at the same speed, but don’t pass anybody. What we’re going to do is take the next exit. Don’t let yourself slow down to prepare for it, and don’t signal. When we get there, just veer off and coast down the exit ramp. At the bottom, turn right. Pull into the first parking lot, whatever it is. If there’s a building, stop on the far side of it and turn off the lights. I want to see if anybody follows.”

“What are you going to do if it’s the people who killed Louanda?”

“Try to get a good look at them. I’d love to catch them, but our main concern right now is to get you to Los Angeles safely.”

“There’s an exit coming up. Half a mile,” she said.

“Good.” He watched the speedometer for a few seconds. “That’s right. Same speed. Nothing to give away what you’re going to do.”

“A quarter mile.”

He looked back along the line of headlights to pick out the ones he wanted to watch. “Keep it steady.”

“Here we are.” The exit ramp carried them off down a slight incline. They were moving too fast, and Ann Donnelly had to brake hard at the bottom of the ramp to make the right turn. Till kept his eyes on the road behind them as the car made its second right and bumped up a drive into a parking lot.

Ann Donnelly could see the lot belonged to a 1950s-style fast-food restaurant that seemed to be called Good Food Good Times, and she swung around the building and into a space behind it.

Till said, “Wait here,” and then was out of the car and trotting along the side of the building toward the front. He stopped there and looked. There were lots of cars going past, and any of them could have come off the freeway while he was behind the building. None of the drivers seemed to be scanning the parking lots looking for a particular car. Two cars pulled into the strip mall just past the restaurant, and they both parked by the Laundromat. But a woman got out of the first car with a basket of clothes. Another car went by and stopped at the gas station farther down the road.

Ann sat in the car with the motor running. She lowered the window beside her so she could hear, but there was only the steady, dull sound of cars passing unseen on the street in front of the restaurant, and beyond that the occasional whine of a truck flashing past up on the elevated freeway.

After a long time, Jack Till came back and leaned on the roof of the car beside her. “If they followed us off the ramp, I didn’t see them.”

He got into the car, took out his cell phone and dialed a number. The phone rang several times before someone answered. “Jay?” he said. “Yeah. I know it is. I thought I should call now, before you go to sleep. I’ve got her with me.” There was a pause. “Soledad. It’s a couple of hours south of San Francisco. We’re driving in.” He listened for several seconds, then said, “We should be there tonight. I want to take her to your office in the morning. From there it’s an easy drive to the DA’s. Can you be there to let us in about seven A.M.?” He listened. “Thanks. And Jay? Don’t tell anybody we’re coming, even if it’s your favorite cop or your lifelong friend in the DA’s office.” He listened. “I know you’re not stupid, but I had to say it. Thanks.” He put away the phone.

“Who was that?”

“Eric’s lawyer. He’s been with me on this. He wanted me to tell you that he’s grateful that you’re coming with me.”

“How about Eric? Have you talked to him?”

“I was there when he got out on bail. He was happy to hear that you were alive, but he doesn’t know that I’ve found you. Jay will try to keep it quiet until you’re there.”

“Will I see him?”

“I don’t know. If you want to, we can try to arrange something.”

“Maybe it’s not such a good idea. I’ll think about it.”

“Ready to let me drive for a while?”

“Okay.” As she got out and began to walk around to the passenger side of the car, there was the loud growl of an engine near the front of the building. Ann instinctively ducked low and crouched in front of the grille. Till had been getting out of the passenger seat, and he kept going and left the door open for Ann. He stepped to the next parked car and stood sideways with his hand inside his coat.

The car’s tires squealed as it came into the lot and past them, came to a quick stop and rocked forward on its shock absorbers. The doors swung open and four young girls got out, laughing loudly at something that had been said inside the car. A moment later a second car’s tires squealed as it made the turn into the lot and then stopped beside the first car. This one’s doors opened and three boys got out.

Jack Till stood close to Ann Donnelly, guided her into the car and slammed the door shut. As he did, he heard another car’s engine come to life on the far side of the building and accelerate onto the street.

Till got into the driver’s side and pulled the car to the edge of the lot. He noticed a sign on the street, placed so that drivers would see it after they took the exit from Highway 101. It said G15. Under it was King City, 12. He pulled out to the right.

“Why are you going that way?”

“If somebody is following us, it’s time to make them show themselves.”