night air had come in to stimulate the air conditioning system, so the fans were humming, blowing a frigid breeze onto the empty dance floor.
A HALF MILE AWAY, Paul sat in the car with the engine running, watching the mirrors and windshield while Sylvie stood outside at the pay telephone beside the gas station. He didn’t need to look directly at her, because he felt her position automatically. In a moment he felt her beside him again. She slammed the door.
He looked at her and saw the puzzled, thoughtful expression. “Well?”
“Jack Till is on the move. Densmore thinks he’s going somewhere to pick her up.”
Paul smiled as he put the car into gear and drove. “Finally,” he said.
10
JACK TILL DROVE HARD in the summer night, still driving the way he had when he had been a cop, pushing the speed limit just enough to move him past the trucks that were pushing it, too, but letting the future organ donors flash past him. To his left was the endless dark ocean, with only the ruler-straight row of lighted oil platforms in the channel to relieve the blackness. On his right were the high sand hills that in daylight seemed to be held there by goldenrod and wildflowers, but at night were only looming shadows. He had the air conditioning on high, so the interior of the car was cold and kept him alert. Twenty minutes later, he began to pass the Santa Barbara exits. He waited until he had reached the Storke Road exit, took it, and then the second ramp onto Sandspit Road. He went past the airport entrance to the row of car rentals, pulled into the first lot and stopped.
He got out of the car, stepped around to the trunk and removed his suitcase. As he stood there pretending he was searching the trunk for something else, he kept his eyes on the road he had just driven, watching for headlights. When he had satisfied himself that he had not been followed, he closed the trunk and walked into the long, low car rental building.
He had made the only deadline that mattered. The car rentals here would close ten minutes after the last incoming flight of the evening at eleven. He went to the desk and he knew the young man behind it was probably as pleased to see him as he looked. He was alone and undoubtedly had been for most of his shift.
Till showed his rental club card and a set of keys. “I rented a car in L.A., and I’d like to trade it for another model.”
The young man said, “What kind of car would you like, sir? Compact, full size, luxury?”
Till said, “What have you got that’s luxury? Cadillacs and Town Cars?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have any out there and ready to go?”
“Yes, I believe we do.”
“I’ll take a Cadillac.”
The young man tapped his computer keyboard and looked at the screen, quickly produced a rental form from a shelf under the counter and checked the lines Till was to sign, then went to a cabinet to get a set of keys. “Here you are, sir. A Cadillac DeVille. The third space from the right in the second row.”
“Thanks.” Till stepped outside. He went to the car quickly, tossed his suitcase into the trunk, and drove the Cadillac onto the road.
Till had been a private detective for seven years now, and a police officer for twenty before that, and he knew that this was the kind of job that required him to submerge, to go beneath the surface and emerge looking slightly different. He needed to be part of the background, undifferentiated and maybe a bit out of focus. But first, he had to give himself time to be sure nobody was watching.
On the way to Santa Barbara there had been lots of traffic, but no single vehicle had seemed to stay with him for long. Since he had left the freeway, there had been only empty highway behind him. It was disconcerting, because he had expected that there would be people watching him. Whoever had gotten Eric Fuller charged with Wendy Harper’s murder had forced Jack Till to the surface. From the moment when Till had put his name on the advertisements for Wendy, they should have been watching him.
He had made only a halfhearted attempt to hide his departure from Los Angeles, because he wanted to see who was following. Tonight he had given them opportunities to reveal themselves, but there still was no sign of them. He had stopped once for coffee and once to change cars, but no other car had stopped, too.
He turned the car onto Hollister Avenue and doubled back into Santa Barbara. He took a couple of turns onto small streets, parked for a few minutes and waited, but there were no cars that showed any inclination to follow. He returned to Hollister and kept driving. Hollister turned into State Street, and brought him into the center of town to Figueroa. He parked near the police station.
Till stepped into the front entrance and up to the counter and said to the female officer behind it, “I’m Jack Till. Sergeant Kohler was going to leave something for me to pick up.”
She said, “May I see your identification, please?”
He removed his LAPD identification card from his wallet and held it with his index finger over the word “retired.”
She looked at the picture on it, then at his face, and said, “Come with me.” She came around the counter, opened a swinging door, and called over her shoulder to a male officer at a desk, “I’ll be right back.”
Till followed her to an open office with five desks, where several plainclothes police officers were at work. She stopped at one of the desks, picked a manila envelope off the blotter and handed it to Till. “He said you were welcome to look at it here, if you’d like. You can use his desk.”
“Thank you,” said Till. He sat down, opened the envelope, and extracted a packet of papers. The heading on the first page was “Southwest Airlines Flight 92, Departure Santa Barbara 7:05 A.M., arrival San Francisco 8:35 A.M.” Each sheet recorded a different flight. Kohler had requested the passenger lists for all of the flights that had left Santa Barbara on August 30 six years ago.
Till had known Kohler slightly in the old days. He had been one of the young detectives coming up in the department, and Till had spoken to him only a few times, but he had left a good impression. Till remembered he had been big, with an open expression and a reputation for hard work. When Till had called Max Poliakoff to ask about the passenger lists, Max had mentioned that Kohler was in Santa Barbara, and that a request for lists from flights out of Santa Barbara would raise fewer questions if it came from a Santa Barbara cop. Till had decided to presume on the acquaintance.
As Till went through the airline-passenger lists he remembered something Wendy Harper had said on the day when she had come to his office.
She had said, “Why did you quit the police department?”
He had said, “Because of the money.”
What had really happened was that Till had simply looked up from the body of a fourteen-year-old boy lying on the street as the morning light was almost imperceptibly altering the deep darkness of night, thought about how many bodies he had seen like this, and realized that it was time. He had not told Wendy Harper about that, but remembering it had helped him understand the decision she was making. She not only believed that leaving Los Angeles was necessary, but as soon as she had begun contemplating it, she had realized it was time. That part of her life was over.
He finished sorting the passenger lists. He had set aside all of the flights that had taken off before noon on August 30 because he had left her at the airport right at noon that day. He studied each of the later flights: three to San Francisco, three to Las Vegas, five to Los Angeles. Those were all possibilities because in any of those airports she could have switched to a plane to anywhere in the world. If she had changed planes, she would have stayed up on the second level past the security checkpoints and not gone down to the ticket counters and baggage areas, where it was dangerous. He had taught her that if she had to wait in an airport, she should stay in a ladies’ room because the people she had to fear would almost certainly be men.
His problem now was that he had also taught her a few ways to get false identification papers that weren’t
