18
Walker and Stillman emerged from the baggage claim at the San Francisco airport as the sun was going down. Walker could feel a steady breeze, and somewhere beneath the mixture of half-combusted fuel and grit that was the smell of big cities, he could pick up a cold fresh smell from the ocean. He had been far inland for several days, and he realized that what he was smelling now had become the smell of home.
He turned and found that Stillman was already on his way to the white curb. Stillman said, “You probably didn’t have much cash on you when we left. Have you got enough for a cab?”
Walker nodded. “I guess so. I hardly spent anything.”
“Fine,” said Stillman. He raised his hand and a cab pulled out of the line and glided to the curb. “You take the first one.”
Walker was suddenly flustered. He hadn’t expected that the trip would end at the airport. He hadn’t expected anything. “Max, I . . . ”
“Yeah, I know. We did what we could, but now it’s time to do something else. If I find anything out, I’ll tell you. So get in.”
Walker got into the cab with his single suitcase, and Stillman slammed the door. As the cab pulled away, Walker looked out the back window. Stillman was already on the curb, raising his hand to summon the next cab, betraying no inclination to watch Walker go.
When Walker climbed the steps, went into his apartment, and closed the door, he found himself back in the morning four days ago. The air from that morning had been locked in the four small rooms all this time, and it still had a stale aroma of cooking, dust, and maybe old laundry. The dishes from his breakfast were soaking in a three- inch bath of cold water. The coffeemaker had a parchment-brittle coffee-stained paper filter with dry grounds in it. He looked into the refrigerator, and noted with relief that there was very little food that had to be thrown away.
As he stood in the middle of his small, sparsely furnished living room, he tried not to think about Ellen Snyder. Right now, her family would be together, immersed in misery of a sort that he had never felt. Where had she said she had come from? Oregon. Salem, Oregon. He went to the telephone and dialed long-distance information.
There were five Snyders, but he determined not to let that be his excuse for giving up. He picked the wrong number the first time, then chose wrong again, but the third time the man who answered said, “I’m her uncle.”
Walker said, “I’m sorry to bother you. I was . . . ” then realized that he was claiming more than he had a right to: that had been over a long time ago. “I knew Ellen. I was in her training class at McClaren’s in San Francisco. I was just calling to say how sorry I am.”
The man’s voice was soft and tired. “Well, we all are. It’s been a shock to everyone who knew her. You’re the third one in the last hour. McClaren himself called, and a fellow named Spillman, or something like that. Nice of you to call.” The uncle seemed to be restraining himself, trying to respond to Walker’s gesture, but not feeling much like it. He wanted this to end.
“I’m sorry to ask,” said Walker, “but would you happen to have her parents’ number handy? I—”
“Parents?” Mr. Snyder repeated. “Her father’s in Illinois. He went as soon as she was found. Her mother . . . we haven’t heard from her in fifteen years. Don’t even know how to get in touch to tell her, or if she’s heard already.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Walker. “Of course. I . . . Well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I won’t keep you on the phone.”
“You didn’t tell me your name.”
“Oh. John Walker,” he said. “Please give Ellen’s father my regrets.”
“I’ll do that.”
Walker stood by the phone for a moment, trying to get over the discomfort so he could remember. For now, the image of the dinner at Scarlitti’s was before his eyes in absolute clarity—the red leather upholstery in the booth, the velvety texture of the dress Ellen had worn, the exact look in her eyes. He had listened to every word she had said, hearing more than the words because he had been trying to interpret the tone of her voice, weigh the emphases, and even search the pauses for messages. He remembered the heady feeling that they were revealing things as they spoke. It was not the dangerous revelations that had impressed him, the ones that had to do with ambition or tiptoed too near to sex. He remembered the others, that were dangerous in another way, because they were confessions that there was nothing remarkable or exotic about either of them.
Ellen had not exactly lied to him, but she had deftly kept his attention away from that particular door. She had covered the topic of mothers by saying that she looked like hers. Her mother had been gone at least since she was eight or nine. That must have been one of the central facts of her life, but she had never alluded to it. The uncle’s tone had given Walker the impression that there was something shameful about the circumstances, and that knowledge would have been worse for Ellen. After that night, the topic had never come up—or been allowed to come up—again.
Walker had no doubt that he had discovered something that was of enormous importance to understanding Ellen Snyder, a fact that might reveal who she was and why she chose to do certain things and not others—maybe why she worked so hard, maybe why she had become so independent so early, maybe why she had developed a manner that was calculated to draw people to her, but not too close to her. He also knew that none of it mattered. His using it to analyze her character and behavior would be wasted effort. It wasn’t part of reality anymore. It was as though she had never been born.
Somebody had studied the Pasadena office, learned which two people could approve a check, and decided that the one who would be easier to overpower and drag around the country would not be the six-foot-seven, overweight Dale Winters but the small, approachable assistant manager, Ellen Snyder.
Walker looked around the small apartment, searching for something to keep his mind occupied until he was tired enough to sleep. First he unpacked, hanging the beautiful suits and jackets in the closet at the end of the pole, separated from the rest of his clothes, and putting the folded shirts, as they were, in a drawer of their own. He drifted into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink. He found rags and sponges and cleanser, and began to clean. When he next looked up at the clock on the wall, his laundry was washed and dried, his kitchen and bathroom scrubbed, his living room and bedroom dusted and vacuumed. He had stripped the bed to wash the sheets, but now as he looked at the freshly folded ones he felt no inclination to put them on. He flopped down on the bare mattress and fell asleep.
In the morning, he chose a sport coat, shirt, and shoes that he had owned before he had met Stillman. He rode a cab to work, had it leave him down the street from the McClaren building, and walked to the garage entrance to verify that his car was still there. He started it, drove around the block listening to the engine, then parked it again and walked to the lobby to take the elevator to the seventh floor.
He went to his cubicle as usual, turned on his computer terminal, and called up the report about quarterly sea loss in the maritime insurance division, then looked up from his screen to see Joyce Hazelton in the doorway, gazing down at him. She stepped inside and glanced at his screen.
“I already printed that out and sent it on,” she said. “It was solid.” That was Joyce’s highest compliment, which meant that the data were complete and the conclusions perceptive and defensible.
“Oh,” he said. “I had intended to hand it in that day, but then I was gone.”
“I’m very sorry about Ellen Snyder,” she said quietly.
“Thanks.” Walker felt discomfort at her sympathy, and it remained an irritant until he had told the truth. “But I don’t rate any condolences. We were close once, but we’d lost touch a long time ago.”
Joyce accepted it, and said, “They want you upstairs at seven forty-five. Go up in the elevator. When you come out, turn right. There’s a receptionist to let you in.”
“McClaren’s office?”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot you know the way.” There was nothing in her eyes that Walker could interpret. She looked at her watch. “Better get going.” She waited while he put on his coat, then watched him step into the open bay as though to be sure he was actually heading in the right direction.
The elevator rose to the twelfth floor without stopping. The morning rush into the building was still ahead, and the usual traffic from office to office would not begin until after that. The doors opened and he stepped out to
