no unfamiliar car in the neighborhood.
On the third day at two-fifteen, he pulled his car into Ann Delatorre’s driveway, went to the door, and pretended to press the doorbell. With his other hand, he reached quickly into the mailbox, took out the telephone bill he had requested, and slipped it into the inner pocket of his sport coat. After a moment, he turned, walked to his car, and drove away.
He parked at the Crown Pointe Promenade, opened the telephone bill, and scanned the list of toll calls. On July 20 at 8:07 P.M., Ann Delatorre had made a call to a number in the 415 area code. That was San Francisco. He wrote the number in the notebook he carried, tore up the bill, and threw it into a trash receptacle in the mall. At eight-thirty, he returned to Ann Delatorre’s house.
He parked in the driveway again and knocked on the door. This time the door did not open a crack. It swung open abruptly, and Ann Delatorre stood in front of him, aiming a revolver at his chest. The barrel was short, and from his point of view, the muzzle looked cavernous. He said, “It’s only me again. Jack Till. If you pull the trigger on that thing, bits of my heart and lungs will be sprayed all over your entry.”
“I know that. I’m glad to hear that you know it, too.” She took three steps backward. “Come inside and close the door.”
Jack Till stared into the woman’s eyes. It was a risk to step inside with a woman aiming a gun at his chest. He wasn’t quite sure how the law worked in Nevada, but in California, if a stranger like him was shot inside a woman’s house, his murder was likely to be called self-defense.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But if I wanted to kill you, it wouldn’t matter if you were in or out. I’d leave town.”
He took a step forward, his eyes still on hers, and she took another step backward to maintain the distance between them. He looked down at the gun in her hand. He could see the dimpled gray noses of the bullets gleaming dully in the cylinder, waiting.
He closed the door and she moved the gun to the side so it was aimed at a spot to the left of his chest. “Thank you,” he said. “I hate to see you walking backward with that aimed at me.”
“I can still kill you.”
“But at least now you’ll have to want to.”
“That way, into the living room.” She pointed with her free hand. “Sit on the couch.”
He stepped in and sat down, leaned back with his arms stretched out and became still. He wanted to keep his hands in sight.
She sat in a chair ten feet from him and rested the gun on the arm so she could keep it ready without getting tired. “You said that you were a private detective. Who are you working for?”
“I’m working for myself. Finding her was something that needed to be done, so I’m doing it.”
“Are you after me?”
“No. I don’t know you. I’m searching for a woman whose name was Wendy Harper.”
“Why?”
“She came to me because somebody was after her. I helped her to get lost. Now a man who used to be her boyfriend is being charged with her murder.”
“What if she’s dead?”
“I don’t think you would let me in and talk to me like this if she were dead. I’m trying to let her know that Eric Fuller is in trouble because of what we did.”
“What do you want her to do about it?”
“I want her to come back to Los Angeles with me, just long enough to prove to the District Attorney’s office that she’s alive. They’ll drop the charges, and she can go back to wherever she is now.”
“
Jack Till reverted to the tactic he had used as a homicide detective, trying to become the friend who understood and forgave. “Look, I’m on her side. I’m sure if you know anything at all about what happened, you know that already. I kept her alive once. And I can see you’re on her side, too. I can tell you’re scared, but you’re trying to protect her and do what’s best for her. So am I, but protecting someone can be tough, and it can be dangerous. You’re not wrong to worry.” He shook his head slowly, as though he were thinking about specific threats that she didn’t know about yet.
“Go on.”
“That gun isn’t a bad idea. If anything, it’s not enough. If you and I could just cooperate on this, I think we’d all be safer. Now, I know you called somebody right after I left here the other night. Was it Wendy?”
“It was my mother.”
He let his disappointment in her show. After a moment he said, “I taught her how to hide. I thought that would be enough to keep her safe, but things have changed. The man she was running from before seems to have put out some serious money to get her. That means high-end killers. Why won’t you help me?”
“I owe her.”
“Then you should want what’s best for her.”
“I do. I’m not sure I know what that is, and I’m not sure you do, either.”
“How long have you known her?”
She stared at him in silence, thinking for a moment, then shrugged. “All right. There’s no reason not to tell you, so I will. I met her six years ago. It must have been about two weeks after you left her at the airport in Santa Barbara. I was walking along a hallway in my apartment building. I was crying, so I didn’t see clearly where I was going, and I came around a corner and bumped into her. We looked at each other, and I could see she was crying, too. It was so stupid that we stood there thinking about it for a second, and started to laugh.”
“Did she live there, too?”
“Yes. It was a terrible place, a whole building full of losers and people who were running away from something. It was a couple of miles north of town, and nobody talked to anybody, but after that, the two of us were friends.”
“What were you doing there?”
She narrowed her eyes for a moment, then seemed to change her mind. “Boyfriend troubles.”
“What kind?”
“He was looking for me. I left; he wanted me back.”
“Where was that?”
“Another city. It doesn’t matter to you which one unless you want to hurt me. You say you don’t, and anyway, I’m not going to tell you anything that will give you the power. I met him, and I went with him. My mother was religious. She put all my stuff on the front steps and locked the door and the gate. I stayed with Howard, and that was hard. He wanted a lot from me, and I did it. I cooked for him and his friends and did all the work around the place. He would sell crack to cars that pulled up to his corner. I held the money and the crack and his gun. See, if you got caught, they wouldn’t charge you as an adult until you were sixteen.”
“He told you that?”
“That’s right.”
“Did he tell you that you couldn’t get shot?”
“He didn’t talk about that. But you’ve got him right. That’s what he was. He was the one who got the money and I was the one who got the trouble.”
“What kind?”
“Howard got into a fight with the guy who sold him drugs. It wasn’t the kind of fight where you lay low for a while and then patch it up. It was the kind where you don’t even go back to your place to get your clothes. You leave town.”
“Is that when he turned you out?”
Her facial muscles seemed to slacken, so she had no real expression. “Yes.” She watched him for some particular reaction that she must have seen before, but she seemed not to detect it. She started again slowly. “He said it was just going to be once, and then we would be safe, and he would always be grateful. It was a town where we had never been, and nobody would know me or anything, so once it was done it would be over.”
“Was it?”
“What do you think?”
