“No. I told the police everything, twice, and then I told you. A man I didn’t know was waiting for me when I came home from the restaurant and hit me with a bat. When other cars came, he ran.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I don’t know. I think I would have right after it happened. When the cars came their headlights lit him up for a second. But I was half-conscious with a concussion, and six years is a long time. He could have changed a lot.” She made a fist, and pounded it on her knee. “Why ask me about all this now? Can’t you see how scared I am?”
“Of course you’re scared.” He searched the mirrors behind him again. “What I find helps most is to try to do something about it.”
“What? Try to remember things that happened in the dark years ago?”
“Not this minute.” He had planted the idea, so it was time to back off and let her think about it. “For now, try to see if you can detect anybody following us. In an hour or two it will begin to get dark. If anyone is following us, I’d like to spot them before the headlights start coming on. It’s a good idea to take roll so you can keep track: white pickup, green Bug, gray Volvo, blue Ford, red Cherokee.”
She looked out the rear window. “I see them.”
“Sometimes when people follow you, they’ll do it in teams. For a while there will be a black SUV behind you. Then it disappears, so you don’t think about it again. But then up comes a green car. You’ve never seen him before. He’s been back too far, not even keeping in sight of you. He hasn’t had to because the guy in the black car has been keeping in touch with him on the phone. Now it’s
“You’re just trying to distract me, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. You’re still trying not to get caught, aren’t you? If we stay alert, we’ll have an advantage.”
“All right. At least I’ll be doing something.” She half-turned in her seat and leaned on the door while she watched.
Till glanced at her and then away, his mind rapidly filling with unrelated observations. In six years, she had become more attractive. Her eyes had acquired a stronger, wiser look, and her features looked finer and more defined. He supposed maybe when he had left her at the Santa Barbara airport, her face had still retained some of the swelling from the beating.
Something else had changed since he had seen her last, but maybe the change was in him. Years ago she had been a pretty young woman who had been hurt and terrified and needed his help. He had been able to tell himself that she was dazed and disoriented, and that she probably hadn’t seen anything anyway.
This time, Till could see that she was lying to him. She knew something that she had not been willing to tell anyone six years ago, and was not willing to tell him now.
24
IT WAS GETTING DARK, and the cars all had their headlights on.
Sylvie leaned close to Paul and touched his cheek as he drove, then rested her hand on his thigh. “Are you okay?”
“Huh? Sure. Why?”
“When you kill somebody like that, there always seems to be a big rush of adrenaline—heart pounding, sweating, really happy you’re alive—but then afterward there’s always a kind of bad feeling, a letdown. I always get tired.”
“I’m not tired,” he said. “I’m just trying to do five things at once. We need to hear the radio, so we know if the police start looking for this car. I need to keep Till’s car in sight, but stay back far enough so he doesn’t notice us. I need to pay attention to the road ahead so we don’t hit somebody, and the road behind in case the police
She moved her hand up his thigh only an inch or two. “That’s only four. Want something else to think about, so you’re not short?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She withdrew to her side of the car.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not annoyed. I’m trying to—” He stopped. “Look. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I
She shrugged. “I was just trying to cheer you up. Let me find a better radio station.”
“Thanks. It’s almost the half-hour, and I want to be sure we pick it up if they’ve identified this car.”
Sylvie held the button down and let the radio find the next strong signal, then listened to a commercial about somebody’s “giant shopping mall of cars,” and then found a news report. There was no mention of their rental car, not even any mention that a cop had been killed. Here it was, hours later, and nobody seemed to have looked inside the parked cop car yet.
Sylvie was impressed with Paul’s timing. Killing the cop a minute earlier would have been foolish: There was still a chance he would go away. Killing him ten seconds later would have been too late.
She started to smile, but something stopped her lips, choked off the affection. Paul wasn’t behaving right with her. Earlier in the day she had provoked him a bit to explore the question, but she had not yet satisfied herself. She had accepted his explanation of his coldness and distance, but her acceptance had been only tentative. It was only talk, but here was that feeling again. Were his conciliatory words more real than her feeling? She loved him, had given herself to him all these years, and he was rejecting her, shutting her out.
She felt pained. She was over forty now. The first time she had noticed a change in the way she looked—a decline—had been when she was only twenty-five. Until then every change had been an improvement. But at twenty-five, there had been a slight change in the texture of her skin. There had not been any wrinkles yet, just a loss in the elasticity of the skin beside her eyes and on her forehead.
That had been a mild, tiny warning that things were happening. She had been married to Darren then, and she had not mentioned it to him. She had needed to think about it and see whether creams and lotions would restore her skin. She’d thought maybe it was because she was working out in the gym so much and taking hot showers afterward. The air in Los Angeles was so dry, and maybe her soap was too harsh.
Then she had blamed Cherie Will. Just before Sylvie had quit, there had been a series of movies that Cherie had decided to shoot outdoors. One, Sylvie remembered, had been about a picnic, and the other had been a thing about cowboys and cowgirls. Sylvie had gotten terribly sunburned, and sunburn was the worst thing for skin. Cherie had told everybody she was shooting so many movies way out on a ranch because the actors looked so much better in natural sunlight. The truth was that she had bought the ranch and was charging her own production company location-rental fees to help pay for it. All she had needed to dress the set was a checkered tablecloth for the picnic and two bales of hay for the cowboy stuff. Cherie had told her that her makeup would protect her face from sunburn.
That had been when Sylvie was twenty or twenty-one, and now she was over forty. How could she have gotten so old? She had always looked younger and prettier than her age, but now time was catching up to her. The dancing and the exercise had fought off the years for a long time, but now she was beginning to see a bit of extra fat on her bottom in spite of the work. Maybe even her tummy was beginning to soften.
She watched Paul without moving her head. He was resenting her. The resentment always was officially for being annoying or making a mistake or something, but it was really for letting herself go. Being a less-desirable woman was to be less respected, less wanted. For at least the past couple of weeks, he had been making the situation increasingly clear to her.
Sylvie could feel a suspicion slowly revealing itself to her. As she had been getting older and less desirable, Paul was becoming older and more desirable. He was still trim and hard. The extra years had given his skin a tan, sculpted look. The bulging muscles of his arms and legs had been giving way to a sinewy leanness. His thick dark hair had grayed a bit at the temples. He looked distinguished and seasoned. On her a gray hair was a blemish, a revelation that her youthful look was an imposture.
