He and Sylvie got in. “Have you kept watching for Till’s beige rental car?”
“Of course. There’s only this one road for rental return. So far there have been fourteen cars since we got here. Two were beige or brown, but neither went to the Cheapcars lot, and neither had Till or the girl in them.”
“Good watching.” He reminded himself that he had thought of her as stupid, but Sylvie was absolutely not unintelligent. She could make all sorts of calculations and computations without engaging the major parts of her brain, and then announce them as though they were self-evident. It had been imprecise of him to let the word stupid float into his mind.
He felt his affection for her surge. He would never be able to separate what he saw from what he felt or what he thought. She was beautiful, therefore she was enticing, therefore he wanted her. The beauty itself was even more complicated because it was not perfection—Sylvie would never leave a flawless corpse—but depended upon an expression of the lips and a look about the eyes and a way of moving.
Paul understood his long attraction to her, but had never fully accounted for the moments when he reached the other extreme and felt rage. This gave his perceptions of her a tentative quality that made him uncomfortable. He watched the road, looking to the left and then the right, then pulled out of the lot.
“There it is,” she said. The beige Lincoln Town Car popped into Paul’s rearview mirror. He lifted his foot from the gas pedal and let the car slow down so it would stay on the straight section long enough for him to see the Lincoln turn into the Cheapcars lot. “Hurry up! You’ve got to make it all the way around the loop past the terminals and come by again in time to see.”
“I will,” he said. “Calm down.” He sped up again and went around the corner out of sight of the rental lots, and toward the airport. He went past the terminals, maneuvering patiently among the shuttle buses, cars, and taxi vans. He kept to the left so he could take the rental-car loop again. When he came to it he took it and went slowly along the road until he could see the Cheapcars lot, and then pulled the car over to wait. He watched as a maintenance man came out and took charge of the beige Town Car, reaching toward the steering wheel shaft to turn on the engine and check the gauges.
Suddenly there was a movement in Paul’s peripheral vision. The unexpectedness of it made him jump. He looked up and saw the front of a police car growing to fill the rearview mirror.
Paul noted that the cop had not turned on his blue-and-red flashers. The cop got out of the driver’s seat instantly, which meant that he was not calling in the stop yet. He appeared at the side of the car beside Paul’s window. He was less than thirty years old, with a chubby boyish face that didn’t seem to go with his trim body, and black hair that seemed to start too low on his forehead, like a knit cap. Paul noticed the squared-off surface of his torso that revealed the body armor under his uniform.
Paul looked ahead through the windshield. This was just the kind of thing that Paul could not permit to happen. He had done everything right, followed patiently when a less-clever person would have made some premature, impulsive attempt that would have alarmed Jack Till. Now, when Till had finally come together with Wendy Harper, this fat-faced cherub of a cop was here to ruin everything. Paul read the metal tag on his right pocket: Rodeno.
The cop leaned on the car so he could look in at them. “Afternoon, folks.”
“Afternoon,” Paul said.
In the periphery of his vision, he saw Sylvie give the cop too much of a smile, and heard her voice become false and musical. “Hello, officer.”
Paul stifled his irritation. She was trying to get control of the situation in the way that had always worked for her, and that was probably good. Even a cop would respond to a friendly smile from a pretty woman, even if she was fifteen years too old for him. Paul could see that the tension in the cop’s arms relaxed a bit as he leaned to speak to them.
“Are you having car trouble?”
“No,” Paul said. “Not exactly. I just rented this car and drove it out of the lot, but I needed to pull over, adjust the seats, and get to know the controls a little better before I get on the freeway with it.”
“That’s the kind of thing you should do in the lot before you drive out. What agency did you rent it from?”
“Miracle Rent-a-Car.” Paul looked ahead again. He could see Jack Till and Wendy Harper coming out of the rental office. Time was passing, the moment of opportunity getting wasted.
“May I see your rental papers, please?”
Paul had not yet put them away, so he was able to snatch them out of the well in the door. The name he had used to rent them was William Porter. He supposed the name was going to be worthless after this. “Sure.” He jabbed them out the window of the car, practically in Officer Rodeno’s face. “Here they are.”
Officer Rodeno had been startled by the abrupt movement. He accepted the papers and straightened. “The problem is, this isn’t a place where you can park and make adjustments. It’s a no-stopping zone. You should have gone around the loop and back into the Miracle lot, or off the loop onto a street where you could stop legally. Then you could make whatever adjustments were necessary to drive safely.”
Paul said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I couldn’t stop here. I guess I missed the sign.” He was intensely aware of everything going on around him. He felt the car move microscopically as Sylvie’s back muscles contracted to make a slight shift in position. He knew she was looking ahead at Till and Wendy Harper, and he moved his eyes to see what had affected her.
There was an airport-shuttle bus at the Cheapcars lot with its doors open. A couple of customers who must have turned in cars climbed aboard. Paul strained to see whether Jack Till and Wendy Harper were among them. This was agony. Were they going to the terminal?
“May I see your license, please?”
Paul turned toward Officer Rodeno. “Look, I haven’t blocked any traffic or done any harm. I was just getting ready to pull out when you arrived.”
“May I see your license, Mr. Porter?” Rodeno repeated.
Paul sighed and took out his wallet. He had needed to use the Porter license to rent the car, so it was still in the pocket under the clear plastic. He slipped it out and handed it to the cop.
The license was good. He had bought a doctored Arkansas license two years ago in the name of William Porter and used it as identification to apply for a California license. As he thought about the trouble he’d gone through, his irritation grew. Officer Rodeno studied the license and then Paul’s face. After a moment he turned away from Paul and stepped toward his car. The cop was going to run a check on William Porter.
Paul felt Sylvie move again, and then felt her put her gun in his hand. He could feel that the silencer had been screwed onto the barrel. He stuck it under his arm beneath his sport coat, got out of the car, and followed Officer Rodeno to his police car. Officer Rodeno sat behind the wheel with the door open, looking down at the license. He reached for the radio microphone. Paul moved to the open door of the police car, used his body to block any observer’s view, and in a single, efficient movement, pulled out the gun and fired. There was a spitting sound, Rodeno’s head jerked to the side an inch or two, then bowed, and his body followed it to rest on the wheel. Paul leaned in the open door and toppled Rodeno’s body onto the passenger seat, got in and closed the door, then used his legs to push the body the rest of the way to the passenger side. The engine was already idling, and he threw it into gear and drove.