The duct seemed to amplify the sounds. He could hear the woman walking around, her footsteps sharp and heavy, as she listened to someone on the other end of the call. Then she said, “What he said was, ‘My name is Jack Till. I’m here to see Ann Delatorre. Is this the right house?’” She listened. “No, he didn’t say that right away. It was later, when he was about to leave. He asked me if I knew anyone else named Delatorre around here. He said it was your married name—that your maiden name was Harper.”
Jack Till lifted his wrist close to his face. The call had been placed at 8:07. It was July 20.
The woman said, “He’s sort of tall. Maybe six feet one or two. He’s in good shape. I don’t know. Yeah, he could be forty, I suppose. He said he helped you six years ago. Did he? I mean if he’s for real. Is he telling the truth?” Jack Till could hear frustration in the woman’s voice. As soon as she hung up, staying here was going to get very risky. He pulled the vent open and held it while he gently pulled up his microphone and pocketed it. He quietly climbed down from the garbage bin and rolled it back to the other side of the driveway, then hurried to his car and drove toward his hotel.
On the drive back into Las Vegas, Till had a few minutes to think. Watching the door of the house open and seeing the wrong woman inside had brought disappointment. Only a moment later had come the shock, the recognition that his disappointment was so painful because it was personal, not professional. He had been allowing himself to think about Wendy Harper again, to picture her and remember her voice, but he had not realized how much emotion he had invested in the prospect of seeing her again. In his mind, she had always been the woman he had met in the wrong way at the wrong time, the wasted chance.
Maybe the shock had been a corrective. He needed to see what was happening, not what he wished would happen. He went to his room and looked at the skip-tracer’s printout for Ann Delatorre and found the account number and company she used for telephone service. He called the company’s billing department and said, “I’m calling because I’d like to cancel our long-distance service. We’re going to be moving to another city. We don’t have a new address yet. We’ll be in hotels at first, so I don’t have a place to transfer the number to. But I’d like to get a final bill as soon as possible so I can take care of it before I leave. How soon do you suppose you could do that? Wow, that’s wonderful. Thanks.”
Till drove out to Henderson again the next morning. He spotted the letter carrier on her route, and then drove past her a couple of times to check her progress until he saw her delivering mail on the block where Ann Delatorre lived. He checked his watch: one-fifteen. He spent most of the day and evening watching the house to see if Wendy Harper had come, but there was no sign of a visitor. The next two mornings, Till drove by again, but there was still no unfamiliar car in the neighborhood.
On the third day at two-fifteen, he pulled his car into Ann Delatorre’s driveway, went to the door, and pretended to press the doorbell. With his other hand, he reached quickly into the mailbox, took out the telephone bill he had requested, and slipped it into the inner pocket of his sport coat. After a moment, he turned, walked to his car, and drove away.
He parked at the Crown Pointe Promenade, opened the telephone bill, and scanned the list of toll calls. On July 20 at 8:07 P.M., Ann Delatorre had made a call to a number in the 415 area code. That was San Francisco. He wrote the number in the notebook he carried, tore up the bill, and threw it into a trash receptacle in the mall. At eight-thirty, he returned to Ann Delatorre’s house.
He parked in the driveway again and knocked on the door. This time the door did not open a crack. It swung open abruptly, and Ann Delatorre stood in front of him, aiming a revolver at his chest. The barrel was short, and from his point of view, the muzzle looked cavernous. He said, “It’s only me again. Jack Till. If you pull the trigger on that thing, bits of my heart and lungs will be sprayed all over your entry.”
“I know that. I’m glad to hear that you know it, too.” She took three steps backward. “Come inside and close the door.”
Jack Till stared into the woman’s eyes. It was a risk to step inside with a woman aiming a gun at his chest. He wasn’t quite sure how the law worked in Nevada, but in California, if a stranger like him was shot inside a woman’s house, his murder was likely to be called self-defense.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But if I wanted to kill you, it wouldn’t matter if you were in or out. I’d leave town.”
He took a step forward, his eyes still on hers, and she took another step backward to maintain the distance between them. He looked down at the gun in her hand. He could see the dimpled gray noses of the bullets gleaming dully in the cylinder, waiting.
He closed the door and she moved the gun to the side so it was aimed at a spot to the left of his chest. “Thank you,” he said. “I hate to see you walking backward with that aimed at me.”
“I can still kill you.”
“But at least now you’ll have to want to.”
“That way, into the living room.” She pointed with her free hand. “Sit on the couch.”
He stepped in and sat down, leaned back with his arms stretched out and became still. He wanted to keep his hands in sight.
She sat in a chair ten feet from him and rested the gun on the arm so she could keep it ready without getting tired. “You said that you were a private detective. Who are you working for?”
“I’m working for myself. Finding her was something that needed to be done, so I’m doing it.”
“Are you after me?”
“No. I don’t know you. I’m searching for a woman whose name was Wendy Harper.”
“Why?”
“She came to me because somebody was after her. I helped her to get lost. Now a man who used to be her boyfriend is being charged with her murder.”
“What if she’s dead?”
“I don’t think you would let me in and talk to me like this if she were dead. I’m trying to let her know that Eric Fuller is in trouble because of what we did.”
“What do you want her to do about it?”
“I want her to come back to Los Angeles with me, just long enough to prove to the District Attorney’s office that she’s alive. They’ll drop the charges, and she can go back to wherever she is now.”
“If she’s alive. And if she’s still alive at the end of it.”
Jack Till reverted to the tactic he had used as a homicide detective, trying to become the friend who understood and forgave. “Look, I’m on her side. I’m sure if you know anything at all about what happened, you know that already. I kept her alive once. And I can see you’re on her side, too. I can tell you’re scared, but you’re trying to protect her and do what’s best for her. So am I, but protecting someone can be tough, and it can be dangerous. You’re not wrong to worry.” He shook his head slowly, as though he were thinking about specific threats that she didn’t know about yet.
“Go on.”
“That gun isn’t a bad idea. If anything, it’s not enough. If you and I could just cooperate on this, I think we’d all be safer. Now, I know you called somebody right after I left here the other night. Was it Wendy?”