Silence

right now.”

As Till went to the other side of the room to retrieve a straight-backed chair, she edged closer to his desk, and at first he thought she was sneaking a look at the files on the surface, but then he realized she was staring out the window that overlooked Ventura Boulevard. He could see her pupils moving in small jumps, focusing on one person, then another. She was terrified.

He realized there had been no accident. He put the chair down in front of the desk. “Who did this to you?”

She held her arms out from her sides as though she were showing him her dress, but he could see the gesture meant her battered face, her injured body. “A man. Two men, really. They want to kill me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know who they are.”

“What would you like me to do—protect you? Find them?”

“Help me run away.”

SIX YEARS LATER, Jack Till would still remember that moment in his office, when he had seen Wendy Harper for the first time. When he had listened to her story, he had reacted as though he were still a policeman. He had tried to get her to do all of the sensible things, to turn the problem over to the police and let them protect her. She had a rebuttal to every suggestion, a reason why the only hope she had of staying alive was to try to live elsewhere. She had already been to the police after she had been beaten, and they had suggested she see Jack Till. In the end, he had given in. He had taught her what she needed to know about the methods police departments used to track fugitives, on the theory that anyone searching for her would not be as good at it as the professionals. When he had finished teaching her and the injuries that were visible had healed, he left her in another city at the entrance to the airport.

For the first year he worried, scanning the newspapers for any news of her, waiting to read that her body had been found. Five more years passed, and he heard nothing more of Wendy Harper.

He hoped that the silence meant she had made it.

3

ARE YOU GOING to do it?” she asked.

“You are,” he said.

Paul and Sylvie Turner made their way along Broxton Avenue with the unhurried grace of long-legged wading birds. They were both tall and slim, and their straight posture elongated them. Sylvie was pretty, with smooth skin, big eyes, and shoulder-length dark brown hair that shone in the late afternoon sun. They both wore large sunglasses, khaki slacks and dark-colored tailored jackets. As Paul and Sylvie walked past the windows of a bookstore, only Paul glanced in that direction to check their reflection in the glass. He liked being in Westwood because most of the people on the streets were UCLA students who paid little attention to a middle-aged couple. Ahead of Paul and Sylvie, dominating the intersection was a big old movie theater called the Regent.

They spoke, as couples like them often did, without looking directly at one another. “Why do you want me to do it?” she asked.

“I just do. It’s your turn, and I think you would feel better if you did it. I’m just thinking about you.”

“No, you’re not,” she said. “You like to watch me.”

“Maybe I do.”

They crossed the street, and Paul bought them tickets to the movie that was scheduled to start in five minutes. A young usher took their tickets just inside the door, tore them, and returned the stubs to Paul. Without speaking, Sylvie and Paul separated in the lobby and went into the restrooms. Sylvie gathered her hair into a ponytail and slipped a band over it. When they returned to the lobby they both had removed their sunglasses and jackets. They occupied themselves by looking at posters for coming attractions.

After a few minutes, the door of one of the screening rooms opened and a crowd of about a hundred people, many of them couples around the same age and description as the Turners, straggled out and across the lobby toward the street. The Turners waited until the first few stepped out into the sunlight and stopped to push buttons on cell phones or search their pockets for parking receipts. Then Paul and Sylvie allowed themselves to be swept out with the main body of the group. They stayed in the group all the way across the street and into the parking structure, where they walked past the black BMW that Paul had driven into the lot. Instead, they got into their second car, the black BMW that Sylvie had parked here.

The receipt for the movie tickets carried the credit-card number and the time of purchase. For eighteen dollars they had just bought two hours. Paul and Sylvie had become expert at bending and molding time in small ways. Paul slipped the two ticket stubs into his wallet, and Sylvie retrieved the parking receipt for her car and handed it to him.

Paul stopped at the parking attendant’s cubicle while Sylvie looked the other way, but she knew it would not be necessary. There would be a different attendant later who had never seen her before. Paul drove out to Wilshire Boulevard and onto the San Diego Freeway. He followed it to the Santa Monica Freeway, took it to the Fifth Street exit, and parked in the structure there. Paul and Sylvie joined the pedestrians walking past the open promenade of Fifth Street toward the Santa Monica Pier, but when they reached the corner, they let the group go, turned, and walked along Ocean Avenue. Paul looked at his watch for the second time, but Sylvie touched his forearm. “That’s getting to be a nervous habit,” she said quietly.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Just watch the pretty sunset on the ocean. There’s plenty of time, and if you keep checking, then people will start watching you to see what the hurry is.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m just still not sure yet that this is the very best place and time.”

“It’s the best for him,” Sylvie said. “It’s the only time when we can be really sure he’s alone. He’ll do all the checking for us. She lives right up there. It’s the third building, fourth balcony from the end on the fourth floor. See it?”

“It’s open. Maybe he’s watching the same sunset through those white inner curtains,” Paul said. “Have you thought about that?”

She smiled patiently. “No, he’s not. That’s the bedroom. He’s there, he’s with her, and he’s not interested in the sunset.”

“He could have left already, too.”

“He never leaves until after it’s dark.”

“Just this once he might.”

“No, never,” she said. “You have to remember it’s not about him. It’s about her. She has a reputation. She has a husband.”

“I suppose you’re right. He’s a gentleman.”

“You’re a gentleman,” she said. She clutched his arm with both her hands, pulled it to her body, and looked up into his eyes. She was trying to gauge whether he had noticed that she had known he was feeling the impulse to look at his watch and she was holding his arm down.

“Thank you.” He squinted at the sun, just touching the ocean to the right of the south-facing bay. “We should probably start moving. He’ll come out the back.” The sun looked soft and distended, like the yolk of an egg on the flat horizon.

She looked at the sun, too. “You’re right. It’s getting to be time.”

“Do you have everything ready, so you could do it right now if you had to?”

“Yes.”

“Are you getting excited?”

“Yes. Always. No matter how many times.”

“Let’s go meet him.”

They strolled away from the ocean, then turned into the alley behind the row of apartment buildings west of