Ann Delatorre. She had said she was Wendy Harper’s closest friend. What would her closest friend do if Wendy was in danger? Maybe she would join her, or maybe she would summon Wendy back to Las Vegas from wherever she was living. Maybe she had been eager to invite him in and tell him her story to get rid of him before Wendy arrived.
Till drove up Ann Delatorre’s street looking for cars parked along the curb that he had not seen before. There were none, but he kept going past the house to see if there were any other changes. There was a light on in the back of the house. He had driven past several times on different nights, but he had never seen that light on.
Till pulled over and parked a distance from the house, and then walked back, staying on the garage side, where the view from the house was limited. When he reached the house he could see that the light was coming from the hallway that led from the living room to the kitchen. He took in a deep breath and slowly blew it out through his teeth. She must have left already. She had gone to meet Wendy Harper. When he had watched the house before, she had never left lights on this late at night. Till supposed she had probably forgotten it, or plugged a light into a timer, then set it to go on and off at the wrong times because she was in a hurry to get on the road.
Till walked to the rear of the house where the light was on, and looked in through the window of the back door. He took out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1 as he walked along the house to look in the bigger window.
A woman’s voice came on after a few seconds. “What is the nature of your emergency?”
“I just found a woman’s body at 93117 Valerio Springs in Henderson. She’s wrapped in a blanket on the kitchen floor of her house. Her name is Ann Delatorre.”
“Your name, please?”
“Jack Till.”
“You know that she’s dead?”
“I can see she’s been shot in the head.”
17
IT WAS AFTER TEN in the morning. Ann Donnelly did not dare to dial the Henderson number again. Ann Delatorre had said that she would call again this morning, but she had not called. Ann Donnelly had suspected from the start that the man who had gone to the house in Henderson was not Jack Till. Six years ago, when Jack Till had taught her how to escape, he said that he did not want to know where she was going, or what name she was going to give herself.
He had said, “You know what a secret is?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s something that only one person knows. Giving it to someone else is like trying to pass a handful of water to a friend. The best part of it gets spilled.”
“That’s why you don’t want to know?
“If the people who want you have found out about me, then they’ll be watching me. They’ll watch until one of us tries to communicate. It’s not you or I who will give up the secret. It’s the empty space between us.”
“You don’t sound like a cop anymore.”
“That’s how I learned it. I caught a few people by watching their friends and relatives. More than a few. It takes a very special kind of person to cut off all contact with everyone, because it goes against instinct. Most of the people who can do it easily aren’t people you’d like.”
She remembered saying, “There are certain people who will be hard for me. I’ll think about Eric every day. My friends from college in Wisconsin will be a loss, and the ones who built up the restaurant with us.”
“There’s still time to come back to L.A. and help the police find these guys. Even if you change your mind later, you can come home.”
“I don’t think I will.” How had she known that? Was it because she had decided nothing could depend on other people—their decisions, their assessments of what she was feeling and thinking and capable of doing? She had made a decision to act, to leave nothing up to anyone else.
After that conversation, she had looked up at Jack Till and experienced an odd temptation. She could remember the surprise of it even now, six years later. He was completely wrong for her, a mismatch. He was older, his eyes already acquiring that hooded look that at first glance seemed sleepy, but then was sad and very wise. He was tall and thin and hard, with narrow feet and hands. The hands were, oddly, part of the attraction, because they weren’t thick and clumsy like the hands of a cop. They were long and thin, and when they moved they seemed to have a grace and exactness, like the fingers of a pianist. Watching them when Jack Till did things—wrote or picked up a key or dialed a telephone—revealed the intelligence that animated them.
She had observed him on the beach with her, the two of them pretending to be a couple of tourists while they waited. Perhaps by pretending to be a couple they were asking for those feelings to develop. So much of what happened between people in ordinary life was induced by their roles, and roles were pretending. It was how doctors and ministers and bosses and—yes—policemen existed. It wasn’t a good idea to examine how much of love was induced by the two opposite roles that two human beings tried to play when they paired off. But she had already known by then that sometimes love was that way. People pretended until they believed.
She had stepped close to Jack, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek. Then she had lingered with her arms around him and her face turned up in case he wanted to turn his face to her, put his arms around her and kiss her, too. That was all it would have taken to have her—either then or anytime afterward. But Jack Till had chosen to misconstrue the kiss to preserve his conscience or her pride. She had been the right kind of woman for Jack to dismiss that way. She was demonstrative, and kissed everybody on the cheek—male, female, old or young —when they showed up at a party, let alone saved her life. At the restaurant Eric had once said she was a health hazard, kissing fifty customers a night, transferring germs from one to the next.
Jack had pretended not to get what she meant, but later on he had said things that made her know that he had understood. “You’re in the scary part right now,” he said. “You’ve jumped off the side of the chasm you were on, and your feet haven’t touched the other side yet. It can make you feel alone and desperate. Pretty soon you’ll be in a new place with new people, and you’ll begin to feel better.”
What he had not known—had not seen because she had not let him—was that she had already taken that into account. She had wanted to get involved with Jack to make the break with the old life final. It was something Wendy Harper would never have done, and Jack Till would have helped her stop being Wendy Harper.
She supposed he had learned his resistance by being a cop. Cops were used to seeing women at moments of their lives when they were most vulnerable and frightened. At those times, a big strong male who was sworn to protect them was what some primitive lobe of their brains craved. It was a bit too easy for someone like Jack.
She remembered the moment hours later when he stopped the car just outside the Santa Barbara airport and sat with her for a moment. She kissed him a second time, but his posture remained stiff and unyielding. She said, “Thanks for saving my life, Jack.” Did she actually add, “If you need a friend, or there’s anything I can ever do for you…” or was she imagining it? Yes, she said that. There could be no reality unless she told herself the truth. She threw herself at him.
In response, he said, “Just take care of yourself. If you need me, you know where I am. Later, if somebody calls or comes looking for you, remember that I don’t know where you are. It isn’t going to be me.”
She’d had no choice. “I’ll never forget you.” She got out of the car, took the small suitcase that contained her few carefully selected belongings and the shoulder bag that contained seventy thousand dollars in cash, and waved to him one last time. Then she walked into the terminal and caught her plane.
Now, as Ann Donnelly was packing to leave again, she was just as frightened as she had been then. Her movements felt unreal. She watched her hands doing things automatically. She reached up to the pole in her closet and selected outfits that she knew would be useful and passed over the rest. It occurred to her that what she was doing now was exactly what Jack Till taught her.
Ann Delatorre should have called her by now. She was afraid. The man Ann described sounded a bit like Jack Till, but Jack Till would never have come after her. Ann should have called. That was the arrangement. The only conclusion she could draw was that Ann Delatorre was dead. Not Ann Delatorre. That was a made-up name. She deserved to be thought of under her real name: She was Louanda Rowan.
Ann Donnelly found herself crying again as she finished packing. She had been crying about Louanda on and
