Chapter 2

Even with the window rolled down, it was hot in the car. Ellen had parked on the street a block up from Margold Video Distribution in central Los Angeles, not far from Western Avenue. The late-afternoon sun was burning through the side window. At five-thirty, when the men who worked in the ware­house got off, she would see the cars pull out of the parking lot. Franklin Walker had been employed at Margold for two years, ever since he had completed his parole in Texas and moved to California.

Ellen had been here before. Back in August, she had fol­lowed Walker's charcoal-gray Thunderbird from this spot. She was just watching him then, tracking him, getting a sense of his usual movements and habits. He had driven north on Western and then turned onto the Santa Monica Freeway, going west to La Brea Avenue, then headed north again, stopping at a bar near Santa Monica Boulevard not far from his apartment. Ellen had parked and followed him into the bar. Walker was sixty-three years old with a deeply receding hairline and a hard, weathered face. Ellen nursed a glass of wine as Walker had a few drinks with a thin, chain-smoking blonde in her fifties. They left and Ellen followed them outside, watching from the doorway as they drove away in his Thunderbird. She didn't hurry. Ellen knew they were going to his apartment and she knew where that was. Minutes later, when she drove past the front of his building, she saw the two of them walking up the sidewalk together. Ellen wondered if the woman knew her boyfriend had spent nearly thirty years in the state penitentiary at Huntsville.

Now Ellen was back. After arriving on Wednesday, she'd rented a car, checked into her hotel, then gone to a walk-in hair salon and had her hair cut. She purchased Revlon hair color at a drugstore, went back to the hotel and lightened her hair. Late in the day she drove to the Mail Boxes Etc. where she'd rented a box last August and picked up the package she'd mailed to herself from Dallas.

This morning she had driven to Walker's unattractive, pale blue apartment building. When Ellen didn't see the Thunderbird in its usual parking space, she parked her car around the block and went to check the building entrance. She was shocked to see that Walker's name on the marl slot had been replaced by Valdez. When she knocked on the apartment door, a young Latina woman told Ellen that she and her husband had been living there for over a month.

It was like being struck in the stomach. Ellen had a hard time breathing as she walked back to her car. She knew where he worked, but if he had changed jobs she would be in serious trou­ble. According to David Ellman, the private investigator who had finally located him, Walker had lived in the same apartment for the last two years, ever since he'd arrived Los Angeles.

Ellen hadn't bothered to learn where Walker's girlfriend lived when she was in L.A. last summer. That seemed like a costly error now. Her only hope was that he still worked at the warehouse. If she didn't see his car leave there this afternoon, she'd go to the bar she'd followed him to in August and wait, hoping he would show up there. Ellen worried all day that he might have left Los Angeles entirely, and if that were the case she didn't know what she would do. Years of work would be wasted, and she didn't know if she could go through it all again, especially alone.

She and her mother had always planned to be together when they confronted Franklin Walker. She remembered sitting in the hospital room with her mother when they both knew the end was near.

"Don't do it," her mother said. "I don't want you to do it alone."

"I want to. I know I can."

Her mother reached out with a spindly hand and patted Ellen's leg. It was awful the way she had deteriorated in the last month. Her face was nothing but pasty skin stretched tightly across her skull. "Sometimes I think I've been insane all these years, I'm afraid I made you insane, too. I want you to be happy and live a good life, have your own family. It's a terrible way to live, full of hate every day."

"I can't be happy until this is over, Mama. You know that. I was there."

"I know you were, darling. I know you were."

Ellen wiped her eyes with one hand. She missed her mother. She was the only person who understood. With her gone, Ellen had to keep everything to herself.

It was five-thirty. Ellen turned on the engine of the rented Toyota, letting it idle as she kept her eyes on the parking lot entrance. Things were going wrong. Unexpected things. But so far they were all minor. Today she would follow Walker to his new apartment or house. Then she would make sure he still lived alone. Once she determined that, the rest would go like clock-work. It would be a simple matter. But she mustn't lose her nerve. And she wouldn't. The pain of all those years, the fear, the raw, hot jolt she felt in her chest whenever she tried to remember her father, all of that had led her to this spot. She wasn't going to lose her fucking nerve. Not here, not now.

A car emerged from the warehouse parking lot. Ellen released the emergency brake and put her car in gear. She checked her side mirror and saw there was a line of traffic com­ing up her side of the street. When there was a break, two more cars pulled out of the lot. The second was Walker's Thunderbird. A shock of excitement shot through Ellen's body, and she nearly cried out with relief. She turned the wheels of the car and looked back over her shoulder. She had to let one car pass before she could pull into the street and follow.

Ellen remained one car behind Walker all the way to the freeway on-ramp. The car separating them continued on Western, and Ellen found herself right behind the Thunder­bird waiting for the left turn signal. Once on the freeway she let him get several cars ahead of her. He moved into a middle lane, she stayed in the right. Ellen expected he might still get off at La Brea, and he did. He had moved but still lived in the same area. She followed cautiously, letting a couple of cars get between them once they were back on the surface streets. Not far from the freeway he turned left onto a residential street. She waited before turning onto the street, which she saw was Lexington. The Thunderbird was a block and a half ahead of her, and it turned right. Ellen sped up, turning down the same street.

The car had vanished.

Ellen accelerated to the next block, slowed as she reached the intersection and looked up and down the cross street. There was no sign of Walker's car. She raced through the next intersection and the next. Nothing.

Ellen circled back, fighting the panic rising in her chest. She cruised up a block, looking for his car. She went up and down all three streets he might have turned on, checking a couple of blocks in each direction without success. Heading back to Lexington, she noticed for the first time the narrow alley that ran between Lexington and the first street north of it. She stopped, peering up the alley. It was getting dark now. Ellen flipped on her headlights. She turned and drove slowly up the crumbling, uneven pavement. Each side of the alley was lined with small garages and open carports. If he'd put his car in one of the garages she'd be out of luck.

She spotted the Thunderbird in a carport in the middle of the block. Ellen stopped for a moment and looked back. It was the fourth building from the comer. She continued down the alley and parked on the street. A shiver of anticipation ran up her back as she turned off the engine and got out, grabbing her purse. She wasn't going to do it tonight, but it made sense to have the Smith & Wesson with her just in case something happened.

Ellen stepped briskly down the alley. She looked around the car, but there was nothing to indicate that the spot was reserved for a certain apartment. Ellen went to the side of the carport and saw two identical apartment buildings facing one another, a courtyard between them. The buildings were well maintained. In the gardens, yellow and white daisies bloomed along with two large birds of paradise. In the shady areas were pink and red impatiens. Franklin Walker had moved to a better building. There were lights on in about half of the units. Ellen didn't want to be seen loitering, so she kept moving, but then she saw a woman coming down the stairway from the second story of the building on her left.

It was the woman she'd seen with Walker in August. She car­ried a tall glass in one hand, a pack of cigarettes in the other. Ellen was startled, and she kept walking, not making eye contact with the woman as she passed the bottom of the stairs, the woman still a few steps up. Ellen went straight to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of her car. Dammit. He was living with the woman. That was why he had moved. Ellen hadn't planned for this, didn't know if she could manage with two people. Killing Walker would be no problem, but what would she do about the girlfriend? She was innocent.

As Ellen reached the car, she'd already made up her mind. She'd come back in the morning, see what time the woman left for work. If she was lucky, the woman would leave before Walker. Then Ellen could catch him in his apartment before he went to his job. The girlfriend wouldn't return for eight or nine hours. More than enough time.

When she called Pete that night from the pay phone, she was so preoccupied about Walker living with the blonde woman that she wasn't prepared when Pete angrily asked where she was. Ellen heard no concern in his voice, just that he was mad. Mad that she wasn't where she said she was and that she had deceived him. Well, he knew a thing or two about deception.

But Ellen knew she had to focus on the plan now, not on Pete and whatever the hell he was thinking. She'd deal with Pete when she went home. After this was all over.

Copyright © 1999 by Gregg Main

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