Silence

to the detective in charge until he releases it.”

“What the hell would I even be looking for?”

“What I’d be looking for is something that proves she knows a man named Scott.”

“Scott? That’s a stretch. There’s no evidence that she’s anything but overeager and suspicious.”

“So look for some, and you might find it,” Till said.

Poliakoff looked at him for a moment. “Wendy is waiting for you. Do you want to drive her to the station, or do you want us to do it?”

“I will. Is she alone?”

“She’s out back talking to Eric Fuller.”

Till walked to the front door, stepped carefully past the dried pool of Linda Gordon’s blood, and then out onto the porch. He took a deep breath of the night air, then walked up the driveway to the corner of the house and stopped to compose himself. As he came around the corner, he saw Eric and Wendy sitting on a porch swing together. Were they holding hands? He couldn’t tell from here.

Till stopped walking and said, “Hello. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

Wendy turned toward Till and he advanced. He could see that she had been crying. She didn’t rise, nor did Eric. Instead, she turned away from Till toward Eric and said, “I don’t ever want to lose touch with you again.”

Eric stood up and shook Till’s hand. “I suppose you have to take her somewhere, right?”

Till nodded. “They want her at the station.”

Eric said, “All right, then. It’s the middle of dinner, and my sous-chefs and cooks have been making my new lobster risotto without me. I’d better show up and give them a hand.” Eric’s eyes were moving, staying away from anyone else’s eyes. He turned, walked around the house, and up the driveway.

Till saw that Wendy was still crying. He tried to think of something to say.

She caught him looking at her. “I told him what I had been doing since we last saw each other.”

“Oh,” Till said. “Sometimes I think honesty is overrated.”

“I think I knew that once, but forgot. Well, where are we going to go now? To the police station?”

“That’s the second stop. First, St. Joseph’s Hospital.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where the ambulance took Linda Gordon.”

They got into Till’s rental car. He drove up the street a few yards, turned around, and headed out toward Ventura Boulevard, then turned east toward Burbank. They were quiet for a time, and then Wendy said, “We saved Eric. We accomplished what we had to do. Has it occurred to you yet that maybe what we ought to do next is get the hell out of here?”

“This isn’t six years ago. Last time there didn’t seem to be much choice, but this time, you aren’t the only one who thinks that this Scott guy is a killer. If the cops keep at it, they’ll get him, and this will be over forever.”

“Then why don’t we leave town and let them have at it?”

“Because I believe that for now you’ll be safer here than running. And if I’m here, I can push some leads that I don’t think the cops can follow.”

“At the hospital?”

“To start.”

“You’re going to get in to see her by pretending you’re still a cop, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. I’m pretty good at it.”

“Jack, even if you fool everybody and get in, she’s not going to talk to you. She hates you. She hates me.”

“Right now I’ll bet she hates the man who shot her even more.”

Till drove from Ventura Boulevard up Vineland. When he turned right onto Riverside for the last few blocks toward the hospital, he could see the lights of several police cars and a couple of ambulances blinking on Riverside. There were other emergency vehicles parked on the left side of the street. “There’s something up ahead,” he said.

Till drove up to the area, and found that the police were waving cars on, keeping them moving. He pulled off Riverside at Ponca, parked, and got out. “Come on. I don’t want you alone in the car.”

They walked across the street, and made their way through the crowd of people who had gathered. There was more police tape, and there were police officers busy working the area as a crime scene. There were two bodies lying in different parts of the alley. Till asked the man beside him, “What happened?”

“Those guys got shot a while ago. See?” He pointed at the bodies.

“What was it, a robbery?”

“I don’t really know. I heard it was a carjacking.”

Till edged closer to the nearest body. The police forensic people were kneeling on the rough pavement beside it, trying to measure angles and examine the ground for evidence. Till took Wendy’s arm. “Look at this.”

“I don’t want to.”

He pulled her closer. “Look.”

She said, “My God! It’s that guy. The one in Morro Bay.”

Till pointed down the alley, where other officers were working beside a second body. “There’s the man from the locker room.” He took Wendy’s arm. “Start walking.” They began to walk toward the street. “I don’t know who did this to them, but he didn’t do it for us.”

40

PAUL AND SYLVIE TURNER were already over the six-foot fence and walking on Scott Schelling’s smooth, level green lawn. It was pleasant walking here because even at night it was easy to tell that nobody but the men who cut and rolled it had ever walked here, and because the fence was lined with taller hedges that made it safe for even Paul and Sylvie to stand erect as they made their way across the lawn. The two strolled toward the house, then stopped a distance from it and circled it slowly.

Their first stop was the garage. Paul took a small Maglite out of his pocket and shone it through the window at the side. He whispered, “There’s a sports car, and a Lincoln Town Car.”

“Good. He’s probably home.”

Paul nodded, and they resumed their walk. There were a number of procedures that they followed without discussion. They stayed ten or twelve feet away from the house while they studied it, so they were outside the range of motion detectors that could trigger floodlights. They checked the eaves and peaks of the house for surveillance cameras, although they didn’t matter so much at this hour because nobody would be awake to watch the monitors. They examined the shrubs and perennials for signs of electrical wiring, checked the window screens for conductive mesh and the glass for silver wire. The doors were sturdy, well-made, and equipped with heavy gleaming hardware.

When they went around the corner, there was a metallic jingling, and then the sound of quick footsteps as a dog bounded across the lawn toward them. He was big, a retriever of some kind, and in a moment he was on them, panting and jumping. Paul petted him, then patted his shoulder, hard, whispering, “Good boy. Good boy,” as he took out his gun. He held the silencer a few inches behind the dog’s head and fired, then watched the dog fall to the grass and held the gun closer to fire a second round. Paul grasped the dog’s hind foot and dragged it into a clump of bushes.

“The dog’s our way in,” Sylvie whispered. “I’ll bet there’s a doggy door.”

“Let’s take a look.”

They continued their circuit until they came to the kitchen door in the back of the house, where there was a pet entrance cut into the lower panel. Paul and Sylvie knelt on the back steps to examine it.

“This has got to work. The alarm system is all pretty well wired,” said Sylvie.

“And there are video cameras,” said Paul. “We’ll have to find the deck and erase the tapes or take the chips later.”

Sylvie reached out and tested the pet door. “I’m sure I can fit through.”

“It won’t be wired, but we have to be careful about noise.”

“Of course. And internal traps and electric eyes. You’re sweet to worry.”