been too exhausted to cry were behind them. She drove to the freeway and kept going beyond Pasadena into bare and unfamiliar hills. After half an hour Timmy stopped crying, and Jane drove until he spoke again. 'What's going to happen? They're all gone.'
'You don't have to worry about that, because some very smart people are spending all their time taking care of it. Judge Kramer said the court would study your story, learn all they can about you, and appoint somebody to take care of you.'
'Will it be you?'
'No,' she said. 'It will be a family. Somebody like the people you're staying with now. Are they nice?'
'Yes,' he said.
Jane let out a breath before she realized she had been holding it. 'Well, I've got to get you back there so you can get some sleep.'
'Will I see you?'
'Probably not for a long time.'
She drove back to Pasadena and parked behind the street where the policeman and his family lived. She climbed to the top of the fence, lifted Timmy and lowered him to the lawn. She could see that the other two children were still watching television downstairs. She led him to the tree, hoisted him to her back, and climbed. When they walked to the open window, Timmy was seized with a panic. 'I don't want you to leave.'
'I have to, Timmy,' she said.
'But what am I going to do? I mean after you're gone.'
Jane hesitated, then accepted the fact that she had to try. 'Go to school. Make friends. Play games. Try to grow up strong and decent and healthy. That's plenty to do for now.' She helped him in the window and sat on his bed while he put on his pajamas.
'But what happens after that? What will I be then?'
'I think that's why it takes so much time to grow up. You don't really make a decision; you just find out when the time comes.'
'What would you do?'
Jane shook her head and smiled sadly. 'I'm not a good one to ask.'
'Who is?'
Jane had an urge to tell him everything she knew, because this would be the last time. No words came into her mind that were of any use, but she had to push him in the right direction. 'Well, when I was in college I knew a boy who was in a position sort of like yours. He didn't know what to do, but he knew that if he wasn't careful, he would be lazy and wasteful and selfish.'
'What did he decide?'
'He decided to become a doctor. It was the hardest thing he could think of to be, so he knew that would force him to study. And when he had done enough studying, he would know how to do something worthwhile. At the time I thought he was being very sensible. I still can't find anything wrong with the idea.'
'Is he a doctor now?'
'As it happens, he is, but that isn't the point. The real reward was that he got to be the kind of person he wanted to be. It doesn't matter whether he ended up a doctor or something else. He had decided to try. That made him special.'
There were noises. She heard the first complaints from little voices downstairs. The children were being sent to bed.
'I've got to go now or I'll get caught,' she said. She leaned down and kissed his cheek. 'Sleep well, Timmy. Remember that people have loved you before and others will love you again, because you're worth it.'
As she slipped out the window she heard a whisper. 'Jane?'
'Yes?' She stopped and leaned on the sill.
'Thanks for the bear. I knew it was from you.'
'I thought you would.'
'Are you one of the people? The ones who love me?'
'Of course I am.'
'Will you marry me?'
'Sure.'
She drifted across the garage roof like a shadow, and seemed to Timmy to fly down the tree without moving a leaf. He watched the back fence, but even in the light of the moon he didn't see her go over it. After listening for a few minutes, he fell asleep.
3
Jane returned the car to the airport rental lot and caught the shuttle bus to the terminal. As she stepped off, she smiled perfunctorily at the efficient skycap offering to check her luggage through to her destination and shook her head. She didn't have luggage and she didn't have a destination. She had made a stop at a Salvation Army office on the way to the airport and disposed of the clothes that had remained in her suitcase that weren't torn or bloodstained, and then had donated the suitcase too. She had known that she would never wear any of the clothes again because they would have reminded her of all that had happened.
She had spent her three days in the county jail ruminating on failure, and her nights remembering the faces of dead people. She should have been quick-witted enough to save Mona and Dennis. There had to be some better way to stop a court case. If nothing else had come to mind, she should have called in a bomb threat to make the police evacuate the courthouse, then arrived during the confusion and attached Timmy and Mona to a squad of policemen. She had not thought clearly because she was so busy trying to get Timmy to the building on time; she had not seen the ambush because she was too busy dragging her clients into it.
In the nighttime, after a day of reliving her failure in her mind, gripped by the shock over and over again as each of her mistakes was repeated, old ghosts crept into her cell. The one she knew best was Harry the gambler. She had hidden him, then made the mistake of believing that the man who had been his friend would not also be his killer. Harry had visited her so often over the years that he had almost become part of her.
One of the ghosts was a man she had never met. She kept remembering the newspaper picture of John Doe. The police artists had needed to touch it up so much that it was more a reconstruction than a photograph. A cop had found him three years ago sprawled among the rocks below River Road. He had five thousand dollars in cash sewn into his suit, a pair of eyeglasses with clear glass lenses, a brand-new hairpiece that didn't match his own hair, and three bullet holes in his head. Jane had watched the newspapers for months, but the police had never learned who he had been or why he was running. Maybe he had not been trying to reach her; perhaps he was just heading for the Canadian border. But his death within a few miles of her house still haunted her.
On the third day in jail, one of the ghosts came to life. The guards had let Jane out into the exercise yard with the other prisoners and she had seen Ellery Robinson. Years ago Jane had taken Ellery Robinson's sister Clarice out of the world to escape a boyfriend who was working his way up to killing her. Jane could remember Ellery's eyes when she had tried to talk her into disappearing with her sister. Ellery had said, 'No, thank you. He's got nothing to do with me.' For the next few years Jane had often thought about those clear, innocent eyes. Ellery had waited a couple of days while Jane got Clarice far away, then killed the boyfriend. Later Jane had made quiet inquiries for Clarice and learned that Ellery's life sentence meant she would serve four to six years.
After the six years, Jane had kept the memory quiet by imagining Ellery Robinson out of the state prison and living a tolerable life. But here she was, back in county jail. In that moment ten or twelve years ago when Jane had not thought of the right argument, not said the right words, not read the look in those eyes, Ellery Robinson's life had slipped away. Jane looked at her once across the vast, hot blacktop yard, but if Ellery Robinson recognized her, no hint of it reached her face. After that, Jane had not gone out to the yard again. Instead she had sat on her bunk and thought about Timothy Phillips.
As she stepped into the airport terminal she had a sudden, hollow feeling in her stomach. She still had not freed herself of the urge to take Timmy with her. She had recognized the madness of the idea as soon as she had formulated it. The whole purpose of this trip had been to bring Timmy under the protection of the authorities. They weren't going to let him disappear again easily. Even if she succeeded in getting him away, it might be exactly the wrong thing to do. It might make her feel as though she had not abandoned him, but Timmy would lose all that money, and with it, the protection. Maybe in ten years he would hate her for it - if he lived ten years. Jane had not even been good enough to keep Mona and Dennis alive. No, Timmy was better off where he was, with the cops and
