Wendy knelt beside Jack with the blankets and pillow. Till gently lifted Linda Gordon’s head and slipped the pillow under, then covered her with the blankets. As Wendy bent over her, he noticed how closely Wendy’s long blond hair matched the color of Linda Gordon’s.
37
PAUL TURNER RAN down the hill with long strides that his momentum lengthened into jumps and landings, and then he was off the hill and into the car. “Got her,” he said. “High on the left side, maybe the heart.”
Sylvie looked into the rearview mirror and pulled the car away from the curb, then continued up Valley Vista. “You’re sure it was fatal?”
“I can’t give you a firm medical prognosis through a rifle scope,” he said. “All I can do is hit her with a .308 and clear my calendar in case there’s a funeral.”
“I suppose,” she said. The road skirted the low hills in winding curves toward the west. She couldn’t drive as fast as she wanted to because this was a suburban residential area, with stop signs and streets coming in on the right every two hundred feet or so. A few of the curves were blind, and this was not a time when they could afford to risk an accident. Paul opened his window. She said, “Can you close your window?”
“Why?”
“It’s creating a vacuum or something and it’s hurting my ears.”
“I’m listening for sirens.”
“We won’t have any trouble hearing them. If you drive with your window open, people think you’re drunk or smoking pot.”
He sighed, pressed the button, and watched the window slide up. “I can’t believe how great this feels.”
“I guess I’m still a little bit behind you,” she said. “Everything about this job has been hard until two minutes ago. I need to get used to the idea that Wendy Harper is finally dead, and we can take a vacation.”
Paul was grinning. “It’s great. I knew the thing to do was follow Eric Fuller. I knew damned well that wherever she was, he would turn up.”
“You get full credit.” At the time when they had been planning, Sylvie had been about to suggest the same thing, but she had wisely decided to let his idea be the one they chose. She had seen nothing objectionable in it, and she had known that if it turned out to be a mistake, she would rather blame him than be blamed. She had also decided that it was a good strategy to accept his idea without a murmur because her acquiescence would give him confidence. Killing was mostly psychology. Paul had followed Eric Fuller to the safe house easily and bagged Wendy Harper with a single shot from two hundred yards out, so obviously Sylvie had been right. She congratulated herself silently. “You’re the best,” she said.
He said, “I knew that no matter what else she did, as soon as she hit town, they would see each other. He could hardly have her come all the way down here after six years to save his ass and not even thank her. It just wouldn’t be natural. And from our point of view, I knew he was going to be perfect. The one you want to shadow isn’t some cop who follows people for a living, and is perfectly capable of noticing you and getting you arrested. It’s the sorry bastard who spends his time in a restaurant chopping onions.”
Sylvie kept herself from speaking. At times she felt amazement at how egocentric men were. It had not yet occurred to him that he owed her a share in the congratulations. Killing Wendy Harper had not been a matter of following a lovesick chef from La Cienega to Greenbelt Street and sitting behind a bush waiting for a chance to pop an unsuspecting woman. There had been plenty of effort and frustration for Sylvie, too.
Paul seemed to notice that she wasn’t seconding everything he said anymore. “But I can’t take all the credit. You did a great job on this, too, Sylvie. Really.”
She detected in herself a perverse urge to bait him, to say, “Oh? What did I do?” She knew by now that he would say something patronizing: “What? Oh, a lot. You were with me all the way.” She forced herself to forgo the opportunity to make herself irritated and miserable. That was another skill she had picked up during a long marriage. She could see quarrels coming from a great distance, could play them out in her mind to confirm that there was nothing for her to gain, and then decline them. “You’re sweet, Paul.”
She swerved into the turn at Beverly Glen, crossed the intersection at the Cadillac dealership onto Tyrone, and kept going north toward home. She moved up the back streets until she came to Vanowen, and then followed it west nearly to their house. She was thinking ahead. In less than a day, they could be on their way to Madrid.
She drove up to the house and pulled into the driveway. It was late afternoon now, and other people in the neighborhood would be getting home soon. That felt good. She loved living a secret life while appearing to be doing exactly what other people did. She pushed the button on the opener and watched the garage door roll up. She drove in, turned off the engine, and closed the door behind them. “We finally killed the bitch, and now we’re home free. I love it, and I love you.” She leaned over and kissed Paul’s cheek.
“I love you, too,” Paul said. “Just one more thing, and we’ll be on our vacation.”
They got out and Sylvie went to unlock the kitchen door. Paul brought the rifle and ammunition in. He said, “All we really have to do is go pick up our million bucks.”
“You don’t mean now, tonight?”
“Sure I do. We did the job, and he said he’d collect the money and have it waiting. That was the arrangement.”
“But we don’t need to have a million dollars in cash tonight. It’s silly. I wouldn’t even know where to put it all. We’ve already got so much cash for the trip that I’m worried about it.”
“It’s not important where we put it,” Paul said. “We’ll shove it under the bed, or in the oven or something until we can put it into safe-deposit boxes. That isn’t the point. We go to pick it up tonight because we don’t want to give Scott Schelling a few days to dream up a way to keep us from collecting. We don’t have to be rude about it, or anything—just cool and businesslike. We show up and say, ‘We did what you asked, and here we are. Time to pay. Bye-bye.’”
Sylvie nodded. “Okay. Give me a chance to change.”
“I’ve got to get this rifle ready to dump before we go see Schelling.”
“Okay.” Sylvie went off to take another shower and dress. She knew that they were going to be out late tonight, so she selected a pair of black pants and a black pullover and black shoes. Black was always right in these ambiguous evening situations, and she looked good in black.
When she came out of the shower, Paul was in the bedroom already dressed in a pair of nicely pressed gray pants, a dark blue shirt, and a black jacket.
“You don’t need to get dressed. You look incredible.” He plucked the towel off her, then put his arms around her and held her there.
“I’m cold. Cut it out. I want to get dressed. This isn’t the time.” She held herself rigid, her back hunched over.
He kept his arms around her for two more seconds, as though she might relent, then let her go. “I suppose it’s not.” He turned and walked out of the bedroom. She felt relieved for a few seconds because he intended to leave her in peace. She knew she had hurt his feelings, and knew that she shouldn’t have been quite so insensitive to his mood. He was still feeling manic about their difficult victory, their sudden freedom from that awful job.
She should have been flirtatious and teasing, and made him go away feeling good about her. Instead she had fended him off clumsily, so she had looked unattractive, and actually stood there like a statue, like a symbol of frigidity. As she dressed, she cursed herself for being so slow to think. It was just that she had been forcing herself to face her tension about Scott Schelling, and fear was not an aphrodisiac.
Sylvie finished dressing, then did her makeup and hair, unable to stop thinking about her foolish miscalculation. She went out looking for Paul. She found him in the kitchen wearing a pair of surgical rubber gloves, dismantling the rifle he had used on Wendy Harper this afternoon. The scope, the ammunition and the magazine had been removed and put away, probably in the gun safe. He had the barrel off, the bolt and the receiver out, and he had dismantled the action so the trigger, sear and spring were on the table.
She came up behind him and kissed the back of his neck. He didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m in love with you. I didn’t mean to be unfriendly.” She had her hands on his shoulders. She kept them there and leaned down to kiss his cheek. She could feel his jaw muscle working, and it frightened her. He was beyond feeling upset and
