In the periphery of his vision, he saw Sylvie give the cop too much of a smile, and heard her voice become false and musical. “Hello, officer.”
Paul stifled his irritation. She was trying to get control of the situation in the way that had always worked for her, and that was probably good. Even a cop would respond to a friendly smile from a pretty woman, even if she was fifteen years too old for him. Paul could see that the tension in the cop’s arms relaxed a bit as he leaned to speak to them.
“Are you having car trouble?”
“No,” Paul said. “Not exactly. I just rented this car and drove it out of the lot, but I needed to pull over, adjust the seats, and get to know the controls a little better before I get on the freeway with it.”
“That’s the kind of thing you should do in the lot before you drive out. What agency did you rent it from?”
“Miracle Rent-a-Car.” Paul looked ahead again. He could see Jack Till and Wendy Harper coming out of the rental office. Time was passing, the moment of opportunity getting wasted.
“May I see your rental papers, please?”
Paul had not yet put them away, so he was able to snatch them out of the well in the door. The name he had used to rent them was William Porter. He supposed the name was going to be worthless after this. “Sure.” He jabbed them out the window of the car, practically in Officer Rodeno’s face. “Here they are.”
Officer Rodeno had been startled by the abrupt movement. He accepted the papers and straightened. “The problem is, this isn’t a place where you can park and make adjustments. It’s a no-stopping zone. You should have gone around the loop and back into the Miracle lot, or off the loop onto a street where you could stop legally. Then you could make whatever adjustments were necessary to drive safely.”
Paul said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I couldn’t stop here. I guess I missed the sign.” He was intensely aware of everything going on around him. He felt the car move microscopically as Sylvie’s back muscles contracted to make a slight shift in position. He knew she was looking ahead at Till and Wendy Harper, and he moved his eyes to see what had affected her.
There was an airport-shuttle bus at the Cheapcars lot with its doors open. A couple of customers who must have turned in cars climbed aboard. Paul strained to see whether Jack Till and Wendy Harper were among them. This was agony. Were they going to the terminal?
“May I see your license, please?”
Paul turned toward Officer Rodeno. “Look, I haven’t blocked any traffic or done any harm. I was just getting ready to pull out when you arrived.”
“May I see your license, Mr. Porter?” Rodeno repeated.
Paul sighed and took out his wallet. He had needed to use the Porter license to rent the car, so it was still in the pocket under the clear plastic. He slipped it out and handed it to the cop.
The license was good. He had bought a doctored Arkansas license two years ago in the name of William Porter and used it as identification to apply for a California license. As he thought about the trouble he’d gone through, his irritation grew. Officer Rodeno studied the license and then Paul’s face. After a moment he turned away from Paul and stepped toward his car. The cop was going to run a check on William Porter.
Paul felt Sylvie move again, and then felt her put her gun in his hand. He could feel that the silencer had been screwed onto the barrel. He stuck it under his arm beneath his sport coat, got out of the car, and followed Officer Rodeno to his police car. Officer Rodeno sat behind the wheel with the door open, looking down at the license. He reached for the radio microphone. Paul moved to the open door of the police car, used his body to block any observer’s view, and in a single, efficient movement, pulled out the gun and fired. There was a spitting sound, Rodeno’s head jerked to the side an inch or two, then bowed, and his body followed it to rest on the wheel. Paul leaned in the open door and toppled Rodeno’s body onto the passenger seat, got in and closed the door, then used his legs to push the body the rest of the way to the passenger side. The engine was already idling, and he threw it into gear and drove.
Paul adjusted the rearview mirror, and he saw Sylvie pull out onto the road to follow him in the rental car. He looked around for witnesses, but to his relief, he could detect nobody looking in his direction. Nobody seemed to have seen how the traffic stop had ended, or at least interpreted it as a killing. Shooting the cop and driving off had been quiet and taken no more than three or four seconds.
Instead of taking the loop to go through the airport again, Paul took the entrance to the freeway, then pulled off at the first exit and parked the police car on the lot of a big Sears store. He took a moment to retrieve his William Porter license and rental papers from the floor, and wipe off the door handles and steering wheel. By then Sylvie was pulling to a stop beside him. He got into the passenger seat and sat in silence for a few seconds while Sylvie drove off.
“What’s the matter?” Sylvie asked.
“I still can’t believe that happened. Did you see if they went to the airport?”
“They didn’t get into the shuttle bus.”
“Where are they, then?”
“They rented another car, just like we did. It’s a Lincoln Town Car, like the other one, only charcoal gray. I have the license number, and they were just getting into it when we left. We can catch them in a few minutes.”
23
JACK TILL THREADED the gray Town Car in and out of the heavy traffic in the airport loop, then took the entrance to the 101 South, glancing in his mirrors with nervous alertness.
“What’s wrong?” Ann Donnelly asked. “Did you see something?”
“Nothing that stands out. This is just the time when we can get out clean. If there are no problems now, then there won’t be later.” He looked into the mirror again as he merged with the traffic on the freeway. “Back there near the car rental there was a cop who had pulled someone over to write a ticket. Maybe we were lucky and he scared off anybody who might have followed us.”
“I hope there was nobody to scare.”
“I’ve got to think that if these people were in San Rafael this afternoon, then they’ll be somewhere near here now.”
She frowned. “If we lose them, they’ll catch up in Los Angeles, won’t they—or fly there and wait? That’s the part that keeps scaring me. I’m coming back to them, and they know it.”
“I wish I could say you’re wrong. I don’t think you are. The trick is to get them to reveal themselves.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We make finding us as hard as we can, and see if we can spot someone searching. We pull off the road now and then and see who follows.”
“That’s all we can do?”
“Unless you can give me something to go on.”
She straightened. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“We talked years ago about who was trying to kill you. At the time, you said you didn’t know.”
“Are you saying you didn’t believe me?”
“I believed the bruises and the limp.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That was a long time ago. There might have been details that you didn’t notice at the time that have surfaced in your memory—coincidences or unusual events. Maybe people said things that you heard, but didn’t recall right away.”
“I made a conscious decision after I left not to spend my life thinking about that. I thought about the way I wanted things to be in the future and what steps I should take to make it happen.”
“Then make a conscious decision to remember now. Think.”
“About what?”
“Try to bring back what you saw and heard at the time, or impressions you had. Have you remembered anything about the attack in the years since then?”
