The Boyfriend (8 page)

Till got up, went to the safe in the closet, pressed the four digits, opened it, and took out twelve hundred dollars. Then he put the rest into his suitcase. He picked out the clothes he would wear, moved them to the right side of the closet, and shut the closet door. He collected the two Glock pistols and the rest of his belongings and put them in his suitcase.

In a few minutes, she emerged with light daytime makeup on and hair brushed straight. “Too chicken to run off without paying, huh?”

“That too. And partly the fact that I’ll sincerely remember this as one of the most amazing nights of my life.”

She patted him on the cheek. “I like you too, Jack. But now it’s day, and I’ve got to go.”

He handed her the little stack of hundred-dollar bills, and she shuffled through them like a bank teller. “A fifty percent tip. A night for the record books.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then she reached into her purse and produced a plain white business card that said “Kyra” and a telephone number. “Don’t lose my number.”

“I won’t,” he said.

She opened the door, blew him a kiss, slipped out, and let the door swing shut.

Till was already at the closet. As he threw on his clothes, he mentally gauged where she would be—walking down the hall toward the elevator, stepping in, descending. He grabbed the phone and dialed the garage. “This is Mr. Till in suite 311. Can you please get my car out right away?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Till ran to the bathroom, snatched up his toiletry kit, put it into his suitcase, latched it, and took with him the instant checkout folder and a pen. In the elevator he filled out the folder and put his key card into it. When the elevator door opened he put the folder in the little brass box beside it and went directly to the valet station beside the covered entrance to the building. He looked outside warily to be sure Kyra was still there.

When Kyra’s car arrived, it was a silver Jaguar. She handed the parking attendant a tip, got into the car, adjusted her sunglasses in the mirror, and then drove off.

As soon as Kyra was past the driveway, Till stepped out, saw his car already waiting on the circle, hurried to it, tipped the parking attendant, tossed his suitcase onto the backseat, and went after her.

Till pulled out onto Missouri Avenue just as Kyra turned south on 24th Street. In a moment she turned right on Camelback Road to go east. As a young man he had been trained at the academy to follow cars, and over the years he had gotten better at it. He kept two or three vehicles between his car and Kyra’s Jaguar. When he could find a truck or an SUV he stayed behind it for a time. He wasn’t looking at the Jaguar. As long as she kept going straight, he didn’t care how far ahead she was. He was watching the lanes on both sides of her, waiting for her to make a turn.

At last she turned right on Scottsdale Road, driving past a six-foot stucco wall and then into a quiet housing development full of twisting roads and abrupt curves. The houses were all recently built one-story homes without much room in front for lawns that would have been burned up by the sunshine. He gave her a little more space, watching the direction she took, and followed cautiously, avoiding the chance of being caught face-to-face on a cul-de-sac. When she turned into one and pulled into a driveway he went past. He turned around in the next one and drove out of sight, waited for a few minutes, then drove out onto the larger street and coasted slowly past the cul-de-sac where she had gone. The door of a two-car garage was open at the house where she had pulled in, and he could see the silver Jaguar.

As he drove on he considered how to watch her without being seen and how to pick out the man who had given her Catherine Hamilton’s necklace and bracelet. Kyra was clearly a girl who would have no trouble attracting customers. For all he knew, she might have ten a day.

From the way she had spoken, he was almost certain that the male friend had stayed in her house last night. She’d been up most of the night with Till. The friend, presumably, had gone to sleep. Till was tired, but he didn’t want to miss a chance of seeing the man. A day from now, he might have no way of distinguishing the boyfriend from one of Kyra’s customers. This morning, the only man who would be coming out of the house would be the boyfriend.

Till parked his car two blocks from Kyra’s cul-de-sac, and began to walk. When he’d hastily dressed in his hotel room he had thrown on a polo shirt, khaki pants, and rubber-soled loafers. Now he had added a baseball cap and sunglasses. As he walked toward Kyra’s street, he kept his mind unfocused and his eyes moving, scanning the area while he listened to the sounds. The birds here had different calls from the ones in Los Angeles, and they seemed to be much more active in the morning before it got hot. From here he could hear no sounds from the major road outside the gate, and inside the gate there seemed to be nobody driving yet.

Kyra’s house had surprised him. He had pictured her living in an anonymous apartment in a large complex, not a freestanding house in a middle-class neighborhood. It indicated to him that she was probably making lots of money, and that she had wanted an investment. Secondary thoughts floated in. She must have a good cover story. Banks didn’t like to approve mortgages for young women who didn’t have jobs and were vague about where the money for the down payment had come from. It occurred to him that she might not have applied for a mortgage. She might have paid in cash.

He finally came to the conclusion that he had misinterpreted the place. She didn’t do business here. The neighbors in this little village of quiet tangled streets would never put up with male visitors arriving at all hours, slamming car doors and rapping on Kyra’s front door. He had made a mistake. He turned and walked briskly back toward his car. He managed to get inside behind the tinted glass and put his key in the ignition before he saw the silver Jaguar again. He kept his head low and caught a glimpse of the driver in profile as the car slid past his. It wasn’t Kyra. It was a man.

Till couldn’t tell much about him. He appeared to be in his early twenties, with dark hair that was wavy rather than straight or curly. He wore the sort of wraparound sunglasses that major-league baseball players wore. It was frustrating to Till that he couldn’t tell whether the man was tall or short, thin or fat. And he hadn’t really seen the shape of the face from that flash of a side-view glance.

In his rearview mirror he watched the Jaguar glide a couple of blocks into the distance, then swing toward the gate. The car reached the gate at Scottsdale Road and turned left before Till pulled away from the curb, made a U-turn, and followed.

Till was even more wary as he followed the Jaguar a second time. Kyra had been exhausted and lulled into a calm, end-of-the-shift mood. This man had probably been awakened when Kyra came in. She would probably be going to sleep now in her house. He was up and alert and out in her car.

Tills mind was generating theories, but he was not able to eliminate anything he thought of. He knew only that he must learn the man’s identity. Till had spent quite a few hours with Kyra, and she had made a great deal of progress in getting to know and trust him. But he had not yet dared to ask who had given her the necklace and ankle bracelet that had belonged to Catherine Hamilton. He had nearly blown all the progress by asking personal questions, so he had held off on a couple of the crucial ones. He was betting on the hypothesis that the man was living with her, and the fact that she let him drive her car made this theory more likely.

No, he thought. Even that was a guess. The Jaguar wasn’t necessarily hers. It was a fairly expensive car. Maybe it was his, and she had driven it to the Biltmore to help ensure that she wouldn’t be suspected of being an escort and asked to leave. He was tempted to go back to her house, look at the second car in the garage, and have both plates traced.

At last the Jaguar pulled over. When he caught up, he saw that he was at a large plaza. There was a supermarket, a big garden store. Till passed behind the car, took a phone-camera shot of the plate number without coming to a stop, drove to the side of the lot near the stores, parked, and saw the man get out. He was young. He wore a gray T-shirt that revealed well-developed arms and shoulders and a thin waist. He was perhaps six feet even. Till got out of his car too and began to follow the man.

The man disappeared into the market. Till got his cell phone ready, pressed the camera icon on the screen, and stepped into the market. He went to the right, looking down the first aisle at the vegetables along the wall and the bright fruit in bins. There were several shoppers with carts in that aisle, but the man was not one of them. Till kept walking to the back of the store, but the man wasn’t visible along the line of meat and fish cases. Till looked up each aisle he passed—the dog and cat food, the paper products, the alcohol, the water and soft drinks, the canned goods, the freezer cases.

Till turned into the alcove leading to the restrooms. He put the phone in his pocket and shouldered the door open, prepared for an attack. The men’s room was empty. He stepped into the ladies’ room and stared under each stall for feet, then realized he was alone. He went out and looked for the swinging metal door that would lead to the loading docks in back. He found it and moved through, walking straight and quickly without appearing to look either way. There were three young men engaged in stacking produce that they must have just unloaded, but they didn’t challenge him, probably because he was moving purposefully and was dressed like their bosses. When he got to the loading dock he looked in every direction. He jumped down from the dock.

Till walked around the side of the big building back toward the front. Maybe he had simply missed the man. Maybe he had not been aware that Till had been following him, and he had just gone to get some groceries for Kyra.

As Till went around the front, he saw what he had been looking for. The man was in the driver’s seat of the Jaguar, and he was just closing the door. Till stayed at the corner of the building and moved back out of sight. In a moment, Till looked out again to see the man turning right out of the parking lot. As soon as he was gone, Till ran to his car, got in, and followed.

He drove much faster this time, trying to catch a glimpse of the Jaguar. Another three minutes went by, and then two more, and he began to realize that he was not just
physically
behind. The man had been trying to lose him from the start. Till sped up to fifty. Seven or eight minutes had passed at forty and now fifty miles an hour in traffic.

There it was. The Jaguar had been pulled off the boulevard and was parked in front of a Mexican restaurant. He swung off the highway into the lot, got out, and walked up to the Jaguar. He touched the hood. It was hot in the center and cooler around the edges. He kept going.

He knew the man would not be in the restaurant but would have gone through it. Till walked in and went through the empty dining room to the hallway that led to the kitchen. He went past it out the rear door and saw the place where the second car must have been parked. There were seven spaces outlined by white paint stripes, and an empty one marked RESERVED.

Till went back inside. He endured the inquisitive stares of the cooks and waiters. He called out, “Did anyone see the unfamiliar car parked out back in the reserved space?”

There were a few thoughtful looks and a few people who ignored the question, but a young man said, “It was a Toyota Camry, about a year old. White.”

“Did you see the guy who came for it? He would have walked through the restaurant and out the back door.”

“No. People come through doing deliveries and stuff all day. He was in my space when I came to work at five in the morning. Overnight they tow your car if you park on the street here, or in the mall. Maybe now I’ll go move my car to my space.”

“Might as well,” Till said. “He’s sure gone now.”

Till went back through the front of the restaurant and looked at the Jaguar again. The guy had been pretty impressive. Though he’d had no reason to imagine Till was after him, he had stopped in the supermarket to find out. But the restaurant had been a different sort of maneuver. He had left his car in the back of the restaurant overnight so he could switch cars. He had prepared, but prepared for what? What had he been worried about?

Till got into his car and drove. He went back to Scottsdale Road, found the right housing development, and drove to Kyra’s house. There was no year-old white Camry parked nearby.

Till had a worried feeling as he approached the front door of Kyra’s small, neat, adobe-colored house. He knocked loudly. He heard no movement, so he rang the bell and knocked again. No response. He walked around the house to the back, which was a small gravel garden of desert plants and a Jacuzzi under a roof. The curtains were open, so he looked in the windows. The dining room had a big old-fashioned maple table and chairs but looked as though nobody had ever been invited into it. He suspected Kyra had put the furniture there as a replica of something she’d been brought up with. A home had a dining room.

He moved to the kitchen door and looked in. The cupboards were all open. Pots and pans had been taken out. In the sink were a couple of pint ice cream cartons that had been emptied. Till’s bad feeling intensified. He moved to the next window and looked into a bedroom. The closet was open; drawers had been pulled out of dressers; the mattress had been lifted and leaned against the wall. As Till walked toward the window of the corner bedroom, he prepared himself.

He couldn’t see in, because the plantation shutters were closed, and behind them was a dark curtain. Apparently this was where Kyra slept in the daytime. Till went back to the kitchen door, picked up a stone from the garden of succulents, and smashed one pane of glass in the kitchen door. He reached inside and turned the knob to open the door.

Once inside, he closed the door, then walked to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He found the corner room, pushed the door open, and looked. Kyra wore a pair of pajama pants and a tank top. She was lying in the bed under the covers with the air-conditioning cranked up to keep the room at around seventy degrees. The electric hum of the fan and the whisk of air must have been nice for her, like white noise. She looked peaceful lying there with her eyes closed, but when he took two more steps he could see that the boyfriend had shot her through the left temple. Most of the blood came from the exit wound on the right side of Kyra’s head onto the pillow.