Silence

36

JACK TILL DROVE south on the Golden State Freeway in the bright afternoon sun, keeping his car to the left, away from the big tractor-trailer trucks on the right making their way down from northern California and Oregon to Los Angeles. On the long up-slopes, the heavy trucks all geared down and labored to climb, the weight of the trailers heating their engines and making transmissions whine. Now and then, one with a lighter load would pull out into the next lane to pass, and Till would have to swerve to avoid it. Poliakoff had not called to let him know that the two men in Morro Bay had been caught, and that meant that they might be on the road behind him, pushing the speed limit, too.

He kept turning his head to pretend to look in the right mirror, but really to look at Wendy in profile. He was going to have to keep her safe.

She turned to him. “Do you think that tomorrow at this time we’ll be alive?”

“That’s the plan.”

“There’s been a lot of death, a lot of loss in a short time. Do you wonder about things like that? Have you ever thought that maybe the best thing to do would have been nothing?”

“Sometimes. But when I was a homicide cop, most days I had the opposite problem. There was a body, usually a person who wasn’t very big or strong or rich or anything. Somebody had wanted something he had, or got into an argument with him and got so mad they killed him. And I would look around for the giant structure of law and sanity that I was brought up to believe takes care of these things, and realize that it’s a fraud. It doesn’t exist. There was only me. The body was a person, and I was his only advocate. So I’d try to do something.”

“That was the way I felt about Kit, but now Louanda has died because of me.”

“Not because of you. Because of this Scott, the boyfriend. You’re just the victim who survived.”

If Till could take the name “Scott,” the description of the car, and the new information about Kit Stoddard, and develop them into a full identification, then Wendy’s six-year ordeal would end. Till knew that with the danger gone, things would look very different to her. He’d had clients infatuated with him before. Most likely she would have a gentle, quiet talk with him about how important he would always be to her, and how glad she was that they had met. And then she would get on the flight that would take her back to San Rafael.

Till kept watching the road, pushing his speed. He had taken the Golden State Freeway with the notion that any chasers would make assumptions: Because he had taken Highway 101 all the way from San Rafael, he would simply turn back onto it, or maybe because it was closer, he might take the Pacific Coast Highway out of Morro Bay and meet the 101 again at San Luis Obispo or Arroyo Grande or Orcutt. Instead, he had gone inland to the Golden State. It was a gamble because there was no way to change his course now if he was pursued.

Whenever he looked in the rearview mirror and saw a car that appeared to be gaining on him, he sped up enough to give himself time to study it. Each time, he saw something that persuaded him that the car was just a speeder: the wrong kind of car, the wrong kind of face behind the windshield.

He kept on past the Bakersfield exits. As he drove, he thought as far ahead as he could. In his memory, he studied the rest of the highway, the city streets beyond, and picked a route that would bring Wendy safely to the end of the trip. He drove with his left hand, and then felt her slip her small hand into his right and hold it. The feeling made him think about Holly. She was at work now, and probably by the time Till reached Los Angeles, she would be on her afternoon break. Maybe he would call her then.

“I’m scared,” Wendy said.

“Don’t be ashamed of it. I’ll do my best to be sure nothing bad happens to you.”

“Maybe it’s better this way. Dying might be better than hiding someplace, living an imitation of a life with a false identity.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Not day to day. That was part of the problem. After a year, my biggest fear was not that I’d get caught. It was that I wouldn’t. I’d live to be sixty or so, and suddenly realize that I’d thrown away my chance for a real life. I would be perfectly safe. I would just have let my life go by, waiting for somebody to tell me I could come out.”

“Wendy…”

“I know. After this, I’ll have to go into hiding again. This is only one day, but it’s my day. I get to do something.”

He kept up his speed, and welcomed the approach of the Grapevine, the long climb up to Tejon Pass at over four thousand feet. His rental Cadillac had a big overpowered engine that could do it without slowing, and he hoped that any chasers would not be as fast.

Till kept rehearsing the route ahead, driving it once in his mind and then doing it again as he came to it. He left the Golden State Freeway for the Hollywood Freeway just past Osborne Street, got off at Victory, took Laurel Canyon Boulevard to Burbank Boulevard, turned right and came to Woodman Avenue, and took it down into Sherman Oaks. Till turned onto a quiet street lined by houses.

Wendy said, “What’s this? What are we doing here?”

Till pointed at a house. “That’s where we’re going.” The house was a small pale yellow colonial with clapboards and shutters in a neighborhood full of neat, pleasant-looking houses with carefully tended yards. He drove past slowly to read the house number, then kept going around the block, and pulled to the curb in the shade of a purple-blooming jacaranda tree.

“Be patient. I just have to make a couple of quick calls.” He dialed his cell phone. “Hi. It’s me. Where we agreed. Yes. I’d appreciate it if you could get here right away. Thanks, Max.” He disconnected and called another number. “Jay? It’s me. I’m there. You ready? Good.” He put the telephone away.

“Now what?”

“Now we move again and come back in half an hour. If anything in this neighborhood looks different, we keep going. If it doesn’t, we get this business over with.”

“You mean we’re meeting here?”

“That’s right. After those two men attacked the car in front of the DA’s office, I managed to get them to agree to a different plan. That little yellow house with the shutters back there belongs to Linda Gordon.”

“Who’s that?”

“The Assistant DA who’s prosecuting Eric Fuller for killing you.”

“I can hardly wait to meet her.”

Till drove out of the tangle of shady residential streets to Ventura Boulevard and cruised to the east from stoplight to stoplight.

Wendy said, “Ventura Boulevard. In the old days, I always planned that we would open a second location of Banque in the Valley, along Ventura.”

“What stopped you?”

“At first, it was the obvious thing. We didn’t have the money. By the time it might have been feasible, we weren’t building anything anymore. We were breaking up, and taking money out of the business instead of plowing it back in. It’s sad when things end, isn’t it?”

“Not everything is pleasant.”

“No, but even when something is mostly bad, when it ends you think, ‘Well, that’s that. I’ll never be here again.’ That part of your life is over, and can’t be gotten back. There are no do-overs.”

“I guess not.” He saw a Starbucks in Studio City, turned off Ventura, and parked the car on a side street. They went inside, bought cups of coffee, and then walked back to the car. Till kept scanning though the whole process, but the tables outside the coffee shop were inhabited only by a group of young people slouching over their coffee and talking while their lazy dogs slept at their feet. The pedestrians on the street were mothers and nannies with strollers, joggers, shoppers.

Till drove back along Ventura, studying the mirrors to be sure there was nobody he had missed following him, and returned to Sherman Oaks. “Look around,” he said. “Anything that’s different is important.”

When they approached Linda Gordon’s house, Wendy said, “There’s a car in the driveway. And I see a car in front of the house that wasn’t there before. See? It looks like a cop car.”

“That’s Poliakoff. And across the street, that red Saab is Jay Chernoff’s. It looks as though everybody is already inside.” He drove around the block once, but saw no other signs of change. When he came around again, he parked, and they walked together to the front door. Till stayed close to shield Wendy with his body. Poliakoff opened the door for them, his eyes scanning the street. He closed the door as soon as they were inside, and went to the front window to check for any activity on the block.

Jack Till said, “If there was ever a time for introductions, I think it’s come. The lady with me is Wendy Harper.”

Poliakoff moved from the window, and shook Wendy’s hand. “I’m Sergeant Max Poliakoff. I’m pleased to meet you. Thanks for coming out for this.” Then he shook Till’s, much harder. “Hi, Jack.” He turned and pointed to a man in his early thirties with light hair. “This is Officer Tim Fallon, from Forensics.”

Fallon muttered something to Wendy about it being a pleasure as Jack saw Jay Chernoff standing in the entrance to the kitchen with Linda Gordon.

Till said, “This is Jay Chernoff, Eric’s lawyer, and the lady is our hostess, Assistant District Attorney Linda Gordon.”

Linda Gordon had been staring intently at Wendy since she came in the door. Now she nodded, but did not smile. “Good afternoon.”

“Good to see you, Jack.” Chernoff came forward to shake Wendy’s hand. “And Miss Harper. I’m honored to meet you.”

Linda Gordon’s eyes narrowed. She turned to Chernoff. “Shall we get on with this?”

Chernoff raised his voice. “Let’s get started, if we may. Miss Harper, what we need is to ask your cooperation so that we can establish positively and officially that you are who Jack says you are.”

“I’m willing,” she said. “What do I do?”

“Officer Fallon is here because he’s an expert in collecting and interpreting evidence. He’ll take over the next phase of this.”

Fallon stepped to the end of the living room, where he had a big briefcase and a metal toolbox. He opened the metal box and approached Wendy. “We’ll start by taking a couple of head shots, if you don’t mind, Miss Harper.”

“Okay.”

“You may or may not look exactly the same as you did six years ago, but the biometrics will be the same. Your eyes will be the same distance apart, have the same flecks in them, and so on.”

“I understand,” she said.

Fallon was uncomfortable working with so many people watching him, and he performed each task with exaggerated care. He asked Wendy to stand by a plain white wall, then took four digital photographs of her from the front and four from the side. He held a tape measure up beside her and muttered, “Same height,” apparently to himself. He used a counter in the kitchen to lay out his fingerprint equipment, then inked her fingers and pressed her prints onto a card. Then he had Wendy sit at the kitchen table while he drew three small vials of blood and scraped two cotton swabs on the inside of her mouth. When he had finished, he packed up all of his samples.

“Well?” Chernoff said. “When will we have the results so we can get an official concession from the DA’s office that what we can see with our own eyes is accurate?”

“It should be a faster identification than usual,” Fallon said. “Our own print people are backed up for months. But Miss Harper has been in the federal system for six years as a missing person, and the FBI Fingerprint Identification Records System can probably do an online match today. The DNA gets sent to two private labs, both of which have analyzed other samples of Miss Harper’s DNA during the earlier parts of this investigation. The National DNA Index System has it, too, and they may be faster. We’ll have a positive answer within a couple of weeks.”

“You took photographs,” said Chernoff. “When can you analyze those?”

“Right now, if you’d like.”

“Then please do it.”

Fallon took a laptop computer out of his briefcase and turned it on, then connected his digital camera to it and transferred the pictures he had taken.

Wendy stepped close to Linda Gordon and said, “I really am Wendy Harper.”

Linda Gordon only turned her head to look at her long enough to say, “We’ll see,” then turned away again. As Till watched the exchange, it occurred to him that the argument for Wendy’s identity might have seemed stronger to Linda Gordon if the two women had not looked so similar. They were both in their thirties, about the same shape, and blond.

Fallon’s screen was changing. “Okay. This photograph was taken at the DMV when she renewed her driver’s license the last time six years ago, and here’s the one four years before that, when she first moved to California.”

“For Christ’s sake, look at that!” Chernoff said triumphantly. He pointed at the screen, then at Wendy Harper.

Linda Gordon said nothing.

Fallon continued, as though he had not heard. “I’m putting the first picture I took today beside the most recent DMV photo. Now I’m superimposing the two. What we can see right away is that the general shapes are identical. We can see the measurement from chin to crown is the same, the eyes and nose are the same size and in the same positions. We’ll do much more scientific measurements and comparisons when we’re at the lab.”

“Come on,” Chernoff said. “You’d have to be blind not to see it’s the same person.” He turned to Linda Gordon. “Can’t you drop the charges on the strength of these pictures?”

Linda Gordon said, “Your client was granted bail the day after he was arrested. Waiting to be certain of the evidence imposes no hardship on him.”

“But it’s an obvious injustice. Eric Fuller is accused of killing a woman who is standing here in front of us. What could possibly be the point of prolonging this?”

“She looks like Wendy Harper. We all knew that from the minute she walked in the door. Do you imagine that if someone wanted to bring in an impostor, they would bring in someone who didn’t look like Wendy Harper?”

“I am Wendy Harper. Who would be crazy enough to impersonate me? People are trying as hard as they can to kill me.”

Linda Gordon turned to Wendy. “You think you can stroll in here, say you’re Wendy Harper, and the whole criminal-justice system will move instantly to do your bidding? Well, it’s not quite that easy. The system works on its own time, after all the evidence is in. When we hear what the FBI’s experts have to say about the fingerprints and the DNA, then we’ll know who you are.”

Till said, “This isn’t fair. Miss Harper came here voluntarily because you said her presence was the only proof you would accept to prove she hadn’t been murdered. There was an assurance that if she took that risk, the charges would be dropped.”

“Who assured her it would all happen in ten minutes?”

“The whole point of framing Eric Fuller was to get her to Los Angeles. Every minute that she’s here, the danger increases.” He turned to Fallon. “What more can we give you?”

“I think I’ve got everything I need,” he said.

Till looked at Linda Gordon. “Then I’ll take Miss Harper out of here, and someday we can all hear officially what we already know.”

“Don’t leave Los Angeles,” said Linda Gordon. “And make sure my office knows exactly where you are at every moment.”

“What?” said Wendy.

“You heard me. If you aren’t Wendy Harper, then what you’ve just done is an obstruction of justice, for starters. Mr. Till will be your codefendant. If you are Wendy Harper, then there are other things that you need to talk about with the police. We understand you have been withholding information about a possible homicide that occurred six years ago. You also may be charged with grand theft in connection with a fraudulent life-insurance claim. I’m being very casual about this because you came on your own. But don’t test me.”

“Excuse me,” Chernoff broke in. “Since this isn’t over, we might as well get a few more things on the record. Don’t anyone leave just yet.”

Till said, “All right, Jay. What is it?”

“Give me a few more minutes.” He took out his cell phone and dialed. “Okay. Pull up ahead of my car and come in. We’re expecting you.”

Linda Gordon turned to stare at Chernoff. “What are you doing? This isn’t the time for the kind of antics you pull in the courtroom. We all have other things to do.”

“Nothing as important as this,” Chernoff said.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “Your client isn’t sitting in a cell surrounded by psychopaths. He’s in his very expensive house or his famous restaurant.”

“His reputation is priceless, and his arrest has been all over the press. He deserves to be exonerated as quickly as possible. And when it’s appropriate, as visibly as possible.”

There was the sound of a car’s tires scraping the curb across the street, then a car door slamming, then another. Poliakoff pushed the curtain aside a few inches to look out the front window, then stepped to the door and opened it.

The first person in the door was a pretty woman about thirty years old with long brown hair and blue eyes. “Wendy!” She rushed to throw her arms around Wendy Harper. “Where have you been?”

Wendy said, “Olivia. Did you come back just for this?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been back for three years. I still work at Banque.”

A man in the doorway came forward. “Wendy, it’s really good to see you again.” He took his turn to hug Wendy, but there was a self-conscious, reserved quality to the embrace. “We were all afraid you were dead.”

Wendy said, “It’s nice to see you too, David. Are you still at the restaurant, too?”

“No,” he said. “Except once in a while if somebody is sick. I’ve been getting work as an actor. Olivia and I are married.”

Olivia held her left hand out to Wendy, and Wendy said, “Wow, look at that rock!”

Olivia said, “David got an airline commercial. He makes a cute pilot.”

Till watched Wendy as a third person came in the door, and her eyes began to fill with tears. “Eric!”

He stepped forward, looking tired and shaken, and said, “Do I get one of those hugs, too?”

“Try and stop me.” She threw her arms around his neck and they embraced hard. “I missed you so much.” After a few seconds, she pulled back to look at him. “You look good for a condemned man.”

“Thank God you came back,” he said. “I’ve heard what you’ve had to go through to get here. Why did you ever leave in the first place?”

“I was just so scared, and I had to get away. I never imagined you could be accused of killing me.” Her eyes drifted to Jack Till. “I came back because this whole nightmare has got to end.” She hugged Eric again and then, after a few seconds, they parted.

Linda Gordon turned to Chernoff. “Do you want to tell me the purpose of all this?”

“Depositions,” Chernoff said. “You and I and Sergeant Poliakoff and Officer Fallon can go into your kitchen and take some official statements.” He turned to the newcomers. “I assume you can all swear on pain of perjury that this woman is the same Wendy Harper you knew six years ago?”

“Of course,” Olivia said. “Let’s get it over with so we can catch up on things.”

“I don’t see any point in deposing anyone,” Linda Gordon said. “We’ll have irrefutable scientific evidence in a couple of weeks, and it will make witnesses irrelevant.”

Jack Till said, “You weren’t shy about taking an official statement from me when I went to see you the first time. It doesn’t matter if you won’t take a statement from them, though. Sergeant Poliakoff is the detective in charge of a murder investigation. He can interview anyone he pleases, tape-record their statements, or take his own notes.”

“You came to me and offered to give me your statement voluntarily, so I took it,” Linda Gordon said. “But this is no longer a matter for the opinions of witnesses. Either she is Wendy Harper, or she isn’t.”

Poliakoff had made a decision. “Tim, take a few pictures of everyone here.”

“What’s that for?” Linda Gordon asked.

“It will help me identify them later.”

She turned to stare at Chernoff, who seemed uncharacteristically silent. “You’re planning to call me in front of the judge, aren’t you? You’ll put me under oath and force me to say that all of these people recognized each other.”

“I don’t want to do anything theatrical.”

“Do you honestly not understand why I feel it’s best to wait until the positive scientific evidence is in?”

“I don’t.”

“All right, then. We’ll take depositions.”

Chernoff said, “Olivia? Would you like to go first?”

“Yes.” And she walked into the kitchen ahead of the others. The two lawyers swore her in and explained perjury to her. Then each of them asked her questions. “How long did you know Wendy Harper?”

“Ten years.”

“Don’t count the six when she was missing.”

“Four years, then.”

“How often did you see her?”

“Every day.”

Her husband David said, “I knew her for four years at the restaurant. Olivia was the first person hired to work at Banque, and then she persuaded Wendy to hire me.”

“Wendy hired you, not Eric?”

“Wendy ran the dining room and the bar. I was a bartender.”

“How well did you know her?”

“Extremely well.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She and I, um, dated once.”

Jack Till was the last one in the kitchen. Linda Gordon began, “Do you swear that the woman you brought here today is the same Wendy Harper you helped to disappear six years ago?” Then: “Did you ever reveal to anyone what you had done?”

“Not until the day I read in the paper that Eric Fuller had been charged with her murder.”

“But otherwise you didn’t reveal it to anyone?”

“No.”

“You know that there was a large life insurance policy on Miss Harper that Eric Fuller collected on?”

“I’ve heard that. You’ll have to ask him.”

“You know you’re guilty of assisting him in a life-insurance fraud?”

“No, I’m not,” Till said.

Chernoff said, “Hold it, Miss Gordon. I need to interrupt this for a moment.” He turned off the tape recorder.

“Is there a problem?”

“Yes. I see you’re searching for a pretext to try to detain either Miss Harper or Mr. Till. The reason I stopped the tape was to save you from going on the record with something that would have terrible consequences for you. I assure you that any charges will be dropped, and you’ll spend the rest of your career fighting to keep from being fired and disbarred.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Of course it’s a threat. My God, are you listening at all?”

“This meeting is over,” she said. “You can all leave my house now.”

“I’m happy to do that,” Chernoff said. “I’ll be petitioning the judge to dismiss the charges against Eric Fuller before the end of the afternoon. If I were you, I’d try to get in first to drop the charges before then. But you suit yourself.”

Chernoff crossed the room in ten quick paces, opened the door and stopped only long enough to say, “Eric, I’ll call you later when the charges are dismissed.” Then he was out the door.

Eric nodded, then looked at Wendy. “Do you think we could talk?”

Wendy looked at Eric, then at Till. Jack Till hid his instinctive feeling of jealousy and his more reasoned dread of loss. He said, “I don’t think Miss Gordon wants us here, and I don’t want you standing around on a street in plain sight. Wendy, you can ride with Eric, and I can follow you to the police station. Eric, do you know how to get there?”

“Unfortunately, I do,” Eric said.

Linda Gordon came out of the kitchen, and she seemed to be propelled toward the door. She hurried past them, flung the front door open, and stepped out onto the porch. Jay Chernoff’s red Saab was just pulling away from the curb as she shouted, “Mr. Chernoff!” She waved her arm frantically. “Mr. Chernoff!”

Jack Till saw her do a quick half-turn and then fall sideways on the porch before he heard the distant report of the gun. He and Poliakoff dropped to their knees on opposite sides of Linda Gordon’s fallen body. Each of them grasped an arm to drag her inside. Till kicked the door shut, and then he and Poliakoff were up and at the windows, trying to locate the shooter.

“Rifle,” Till said.

“A sound delay,” said Poliakoff. “At least half a second.”

“Six or seven hundred feet.”

“The hill at the end of the street.”

“There’s an empty lot, and I think there’s a road up above, so it could have been one of the back yards. Call it in.”

Poliakoff took a hand radio out of his pocket. “This is Sergeant Poliakoff. I am under sniper fire at 5605 Greenbelt Street, Sherman Oaks. There’s a gunshot victim here, and I need an ambulance. I think the sniper is at the south end of Greenbelt on the hillside. It’s three blocks south of Ventura, four blocks west of Coldwater. I’ll stand by.”

Till was back on the floor with Linda Gordon. “Wendy,” he said. “Get a couple of blankets and a pillow off her bed.” To Linda Gordon, he said, “You’re going to be just fine. You got clipped in the shoulder, but it went right through. We’re going to make you comfortable, and the ambulance will be here in a minute.”

Wendy knelt beside Jack with the blankets and pillow. Till gently lifted Linda Gordon’s head and slipped the pillow under, then covered her with the blankets. As Wendy bent over her, he noticed how closely Wendy’s long blond hair matched the color of Linda Gordon’s.