He waited all day for the police to come. The next day he went to work, and when he came home he read in the Times that Winslow’s fiancée, Nicole Kelleher, twenty-one, had been interviewed. She said she could not imagine why such a tragedy had occurred, because Winslow was one of those people who had never had any enemies: “Everyone just loved Steve.” She and Winslow had been planning to be married in about a year, but had not yet set a date. They had dated exclusively for nearly three years, but had been engaged for only four weeks.
Even while Till was consumed with guilt and regret for what he had done, part of his mind was mulling over the evening with Nicole and remembering the sensation that something was wrong. When he looked at the photograph of the girl in the newspaper and read her statements to the reporters, he realized what it was.
She must have known that Steven was spying on her. Till wasn’t sure what had been going through her mind at the time, but he knew she had been aware he was watching and she had staged their liaison. Now that he thought about it, she had behaved as though she was trying to make sure Steven kept watching and following.
All kinds of small observations that had puzzled Till now made sense, beginning with her choice of him at the Cobra Club. Till had not been the sort of man this girl would pick. She was bait for the ex-prom-kings and the boys home from Princeton for the summer. At twenty-two, Till was tall and lean, with a face that had already taken a few punches. He made no sense as her partner in a summer one-night stand. But he was a perfect choice as an adversary for somebody like Steven.
She had definitely wanted to be seen. She had approached Till in the middle of the dance floor of the club, and stood right there under the lights talking to him for a long time, even though she kept attracting other men and turning them down. When Till and Nicole had left together, she had made a point of getting into his car with him right in front of the club, and having him drive her the short distance to where her car was parked instead of walking her there. She had kissed him before she got out of the car, and he remembered that she had opened the door so the dome light went on while she was still kissing him.
She had asked him to follow her car to her apartment. She had driven slowly and waited at traffic signals to make it easy for him to follow and, he knew now, for Steven to follow. She had parked in her space and then come back out, standing in the center of the street with him as though she wanted to be seen. He remembered her looking down the street, almost furtively. She had probably been verifying that Steven’s car had arrived, and was parked there with its lights off.
Nicole Kelleher and Steven Winslow had changed his life. What had made Till feel that he had to perform some kind of public service was killing Steven Winslow. What had made him know he should be a detective was Nicole Kelleher.
Years later, after he had made Homicide, he took a look at the murder book that the detectives of the time had made for the death of Steven Winslow. He opened the single looseleaf notebook and found that there was nothing much in it—no interviews with eyewitnesses, no motive, no suspects, not even a reliable time of death. The cause of death had been blunt trauma to the back of the head. Jack Till was surprised to learn that the blood found at the scene had all belonged to Steven Winslow, because he remembered his own bleeding hands. It was clear that the technicians had taken samples at a number of places at the scene, and had simply missed whatever drops had belonged to Till. Since those days, the search for DNA evidence at crime scenes had grown feverish, but at the time the blood had merely been sampled and typed.
He read with intense interest the police interviews with Nicole Kelleher. She had shown the detectives only the grieving young wife-to-be. She had been planning to see Steve at noon that day. He had told her they were going to look for a present for her, and she thought he was planning to take her to pick out her engagement ring. They were that kind of couple. Steve would never have bought her a ring in advance and slipped it on her finger when she had said yes to his proposal. In families like theirs, the ring would be a lifetime investment and cost a lot of money, so the shopping was a serious task.
Winslow’s father, Steve Senior, was the owner of a company that sold protective clothing for people who handled toxic substances, and he had done well. His son Steve would have taken over when he retired. Nobody in the family had anything helpful to say about Steve’s associates, his activities, or his habits. The detectives had left notes to indicate that Steve had been charged with assaulting a woman at the age of seventeen, but the charges had been dropped when the victim changed her mind about testifying. It was clear to Till that the father had paid off the victim. There had also been a record of speeding tickets, two disorderly conducts, and a DUI. The father said those were all just the result of high spirits, that Steve was a great source of pride, and that Nicole would always be considered a member of the Winslow family.
By then Till had learned a few more lessons about human behavior, and the assault charge and the disorderly conducts had made him consider the possibility that the reason Nicole had wanted Steven to meet Jack Till was that Steven had taken up hitting her when he was displeased. At that point, Till closed the murder book, returned it to the cold-case archives, and never looked at it again.
Jack Till and Ann Donnelly hiked across the derelict field toward the road. His legs were long, and he had moved a pace ahead of her, ostensibly so they could walk single file in the tire tracks instead of fighting through the tall weeds.
“Have you ever been married?” she asked.
“Not lately.”
“What does that mean?”
“I wasn’t very good at it.”
“I don’t think it’s about skills. I think it’s about attraction and connection. There’s no skill to those things.”
She walked on for a few steps, and Jack Till began to think she was satisfied for the moment. He was relieved. He had kept the story of Rose’s leaving him a secret for so long because he felt he needed to protect Holly. The story seemed to belong to her, not to him.
“So why did you really decide to come and bring me back?”
“Because Eric Fuller was arrested for your murder. Maybe I felt some responsibility.”
“And maybe you feel a connection with me.”
“Maybe. Maybe I think that you and I share the responsibility.” Lights were visible ahead, and Jack Till waved his arms over his head and trotted toward the highway. After a moment the police car stopped, and a bright spotlight swept the field and found him. He held his arms out from his sides, then half-turned to call to her. “Show him you have nothing in your hands. I don’t want any doubts about who the good guys are.”
HOURS LATER, Till stood by a tree on the edge of the dry creek bed and watched the oversized tow truck drag his rental car up the incline toward level ground. The winch tightened and he saw the hook slip and scrape the bottom of the car, but that hardly mattered. Somebody’s insurance company was going to be paying the cost of a new car. There wasn’t much glass left, the front end seemed to be cocked to the right, and there were bullet holes in the trunk and in some of the sheet metal at the rear of the car.
He turned away from the car when the older cop walked back to talk to him. Till could see that his partner was still sitting in the police car beside Ann Donnelly. The older cop said, “Well, she verified your crazy story in all its particulars. I guess that surprised me more than it surprises you.”
“Maybe a little,” Till agreed. “This has been pretty stressful for her.”