Olivia’s fault. She had been with Wendy since the opening of the restaurant and been her friend through everything, but she had lost her nerve. She had kept reminding Wendy of what could happen, how easy it would be to do, and how hard it would be to prevent. She had left town two weeks ago.
As Wendy drove past the houses in her neighborhood, she studied each one separately, looking for tiny changes. This was an area where every house was different, some of them three stories high and dug into the hillside, and others almost invisible beyond tall hedges. When she turned the last curve, she could already see the house that she and Eric had bought less than a year ago. One of the things she had liked about the house was that it had seemed so substantial, but now it didn’t feel to her like a place of safety. Tonight the house would be big and empty, and most of it dark. But she had nowhere else to go.
She slowed and turned into the driveway. Recently she’d had automatic lights installed along the front and side of the house that went on when the night came, but they had not had the right effect. The bright beams under the floodlights left big spaces between them and beyond them that seemed much darker than before. She would have to remember to do something about that tomorrow. Maybe there should be more lights, or bulbs that were dimmer and more diffuse. She reminded herself that she was being foolish to keep changing things. She and Eric had once planned to stay in this house forever, but that was not going to happen.
She parked her car in the garage and walked toward the side door. She liked the Japanese-style natural wood timbers that jutted out from the eaves. She had patterned that look after the enclosed garden behind the restaurant. The garden was her little surprise for customers who had come in the front door between the Corinthian columns and walked across the marble floor of the bank lobby.
As she walked toward the door under the jasmine vine, she crossed the boundary of its perfume, and the air was thick with it. She looked down to separate the key from the others on her ring, and looked up to see the man.
She could see he was holding something as he took a step out from the dark pocket under the arbor, and then his swing began and the motion made her recognize that the something was a baseball bat. Wendy threw up her arms and jerked back in a reflex to protect her face, but the man had not been swinging at her face.
There was an explosion of pain in her left thigh above the knee, and the bat swept her legs out from under her. She hit the pavement on her left hip, but she tried to scramble, to crawl away from him. The second blow hit her forearm. When it collapsed, she knew the small bones had been broken.
She could see him now, the broad shoulders, the dark sport coat, the face like the face of a statue in the dim light. “What?” she asked. “What do you want?”
The bat swung again, and it hit her just below the hip. The pain splashed a red haze over her vision for an instant, then faded. The blow obliterated her disbelief, her sense that this could not be happening. She knew he was crippling her, and in another swing, she would be beyond hope. She would be immobile, and then he would kill her. He raised his bat again. She exerted a huge effort, pulled herself to her feet and tried to run, but all she could manage was a painful, limping hobble. In three steps, his strong hand grasped her arm and dragged her backward.
She tried to jerk her arm away, but his hand closed its grip on her blouse at the shoulder. He still had the bat in his other hand, but he swung her in a quick circle. The blouse tore, much of it came away in his hand, and her momentum flung her to the pavement of the driveway. This time she was in the center of a pool of light from a floodlight mounted under the eaves of the house.
The man knelt, held her down with the bat, and hit her with his free hand, delivering four quick punches to her face and shoulders. She was groggy. She tasted blood, and couldn’t seem to spit it all out, and there was more in her eyes. She was in hot, throbbing pain. Both her arms felt weak and useless.
With the glare above and behind him, she could only see him in silhouette, raising the bat again. When he brought it downward, she flinched and half-rolled away from it. The bat hit the concrete beside her head with a hollow sound, bounced up and skinned the back of her head. This time he stood with one foot on either side of her, raised the bat above his head. She could see this swing was going to crush her skull.
The world ignited and burned with new light. The man, the bat, the house behind him, the concrete beside her face were all lit as though it were daylight. The man’s face lifted to squint up the street, and he stepped out of her vision. She heard his footsteps, fast-running, going away from her. She heard the bang of a car door, and then another, and then voices.
2
JACK TILL STRAIGHTENED his necktie as he watched the paparazzi across the street. They had been calm and still for a time, glancing now and then at the hotel, but now they were up out of their cars and pacing, their eyes on the front entrance. He noticed that they devoted half of their attention to each other. They were competitors, and a photograph wasn’t worth much if the others got it, too. Till was lucky that Marina Fallows was in the hotel tonight for the charity banquet. She had stood out in small parts in a couple of big movies, and fresh faces were always the favorite prey of the tabloids. He wondered what this week’s issues would say she had been doing here.
The photographers stood still for an instant, as though they’d heard something. Then they all moved at once, a shift toward the front doors, where the doorman and parking attendants had suddenly been reinforced by a couple of dark-suited security men. In a moment a pair of dark limousines floated in from the parking lot around the corner, and veered close to the curb.
The show inside the reception room where Marina Fallows had been must be over, and now the show outside was beginning. The doors opened and the beautiful young woman appeared, dressed in a long strapless black evening gown and open-toed shoes that glinted in the light. She was accompanied by a man about her age in a dark suit who looked as though he had been chosen to look good by her side. The flashes began and Till was surprised once again by how small some actresses were in person, almost like children. The flashes became continuous like strobe lights, the photographers elbowing each other aside to get closer, shooting at the rate of three frames a second. Two of them stood in front of the lead limousine to block its path while their partners ran along beside the couple, pushing their flashing cameras into their faces until the two were inside and the door slammed.
Till kept his attention on the doorway. He saw two couples come out, then a third, all dressed in evening clothes. Till reached into his pocket, extracted a letter-sized printed sheet, studied the color picture on it for a moment, then began to walk as he put it away and then reached into the side pocket of his coat.
Till was six feet one inch tall, forty-two years old, with broad shoulders and an energetic stride. He was dressed in a dark suit that made him look as though he had attended one of the events in the hotel’s reception rooms. As he approached the front of the building, the paparazzi and the security people seemed to sense that it was in their best interest to assume that he had nothing to do with their struggles, and pretend not to see him.
Till reached the curb while the third couple waited for the parking attendant to bring their car to them. They were in their forties, the wife very thin and blond, with freckles that melted together like a tan on her bare shoulders and collarbones. The husband was tall and fit, with an open, boyish face and eyebrows that looked almost white in the reflected light of the street lamps. As the couple’s Mercedes pulled up to the curb, Till’s eyes returned to the wife’s neck.
Till took a small digital camera out of his coat pocket and snapped a picture.
The man laughed and held up his hand. “Hey! We’re not famous!”
Till said, “Sorry, my mistake,” and kept walking.
As he came abreast of the couple, he saw the woman turn away from him and whisper urgently to her husband, her hand clutching her throat. Till picked up his pace.
The husband ran after Till and tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, friend, but I’m going to have to ask you for that film.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Till said. “You can’t have it.”
“All right, I’ll pay you for it. My wife really doesn’t want to have her picture taken, and you can’t sell it, anyway. We’re not actors.” He produced a very small, soft wallet, and extracted a bill. “Will a hundred cover it?”
“No,” said Till. “You’re welcome to tell her I exposed the film or something, but I can’t take your money. I’ve
