“Not quite.”

“Close enough.” She was getting her composure back, he noticed, and more quickly than he would have expected. “And you had your bare hands.”

“It’s too warm for gloves.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It was sort of a joke,” Keller said. “You said I had bare hands, and I said it was too warm to be wearing gloves.”

“Oh.”

“It wasn’t all that great a joke,” he admitted, “and explaining it doesn’t do a lot to improve it.”

“No, please, I’m sorry, I’m just a little slow at the moment. What I meant, of course, is that you didn’t have anything in your hands.”

“I had a shopping bag,” he said, and found it and picked it up. “But that’s not what you meant.”

“I meant like, you know, a gun or a knife, something like that.”

“No.”

“And he’s dead? You actually killed him?”

She was hard to read. Was she impressed? Horrified? He couldn’t tell.

“And you just turned up from out of nowhere. If I were some kind of religious crank I’d probably figure you were an angel. Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, are you an angel?”

“Not even close.”

“I didn’t just offend you, did I? Using the term ‘religious crank’?”

“No.”

“So I guess that means you’re not a religious crank yourself, or you’d be offended. Well, thank God for that. That was a joke.”

“I thought it might be.”

“It’s not very funny,” she said, “but it’s the best I can do right now, with just my bare hands. Ha! That got a smile out of you, didn’t it?”

“It did.”

She took a breath. “You know,” she said, “even if he’s dead, we’re still supposed to call the police, aren’t we? We can’t just leave him here for the Sanitation Department to pick up. I’ve got my phone in my purse, I’ll just call 911.”

“Please don’t.”

“Why? Isn’t that what they’re for? They may not prevent crime or catch criminals, but afterwards you call them and they come in and take care of stuff. Why don’t you want me to—”

She broke off the words on her own, and she looked at him, and he saw her take in the visual information, saw it all register. She put her hand to her mouth and stared at him.

Hell.

23

“You’re safe,” he told her.

“I am?”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“Look,” he said, “I didn’t save your life so that I could kill you myself. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

She looked at him, thought it over, nodded. She was older than he’d thought at first, well up in her thirties. A pretty woman, with dark hair that fell to her shoulders.

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “But you’re—”

“Yes.”

“And you’re here in New Orleans.”

“Just for today.”

“And then—”

“Then I’ll go somewhere else.” In the distance he heard the wail of a siren, but where it was headed and whether it was an ambulance or a police car was impossible to say. “We can’t just hang around here,” he said.

“No, of course not.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said, “and then I’ll get out of your life, and out of your city. I can’t tell you what to do, but if you could just forget you ever saw me—”

“That might be difficult. But I won’t say anything, if that’s what you mean.”

That was what he meant.

They left the park, walked along Camp Street. The siren — ambulance, police, whatever it was — had faded out somewhere in the distance. At length she broke the silence to ask where he would go next, and before he could think how to respond she said, “No, don’t tell me. I don’t even know why I asked.”

“I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.”

“Why not? Oh, because you don’t know. I guess you have to wait until they tell you where to go next. You’re smiling, did I say something ridiculous?”

He shook his head. “I’m out here all by myself,” he said. “There’s nobody to tell me what to do next.”

“I thought you were part of a conspiracy.”

“The way a pawn’s part of a chess tournament.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, how could you? I’m not sure there’s anything to follow. Where’s your car parked?”

“In my garage,” she said. “I got restless, I went out for a walk. I live a few blocks over that way.”

“Oh.”

“And you don’t have to walk me home, really. I’ll be all right.” She laughed sharply, broke it off. “I was just about to say this is a safe neighborhood, and it is, really. You’re probably in a hurry to get… well, wherever it is you’re going.”

“I ought to be.”

“But you’re not?”

“No,” he said. It was true, he wasn’t in a hurry, and he wondered why. They fell silent, walked past another large two-story frame house with porches on both floors. A rocking chair, he thought, and a glass of iced tea, and someone to talk with.

Without planning to, he said, “Not that you’d have any reason to believe me, and not that it matters, but I didn’t kill that man in Iowa.”

She let his words hang there, and he wondered why he’d felt the need to say them. Then, softly, she said, “I believe you.”

“Why would you believe me?”

“I don’t know. Why did you just now fight that man and kill him and save my life? The police are looking for you everywhere. Why would you run such a risk?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself. From the standpoint of self-preservation, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. And I knew that, too, but that didn’t help. I just… reacted.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“So am I.”

“Are you?”

What he said, instead of answering her question, was, “Ever since the assassination in Des Moines, ever since I saw a picture of myself on CNN, I’ve been running. Driving around, sleeping in my car, sleeping in cheap motels, sleeping in movie theaters. The only person I ever really cared about is dead and the only possession I treasured is gone. All my life I’ve always figured things would work out and I’d get by, and for years they did, and I did, and it feels as though the string’s pretty much played out. Sooner or later I’ll slip up, or sooner or later they’ll get lucky, and they’ll catch up with me. And the only good thing about that is I’ll get to stop running.”

He drew a breath. “I didn’t mean to say all that,” he said. “I don’t know where it came from.”

“What difference does it make?” She stopped walking, turned to face him. “I said I believed you. That you didn’t do it.”

“And I think I said it didn’t matter. Not that you believe me, that does matter, though I don’t know why it should. But whether I did it or not, that doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does! If they framed an innocent man—”

“They framed me, all right. But it’s a hell of a stretch to call me innocent.”

“That man in the park just now. He wasn’t the first man you ever killed, was he?”

“No.”

She nodded. “You were awfully proficient at it,” she said. “It looked like something you might have done before.”

“I left New Orleans years ago. That’s unusual, most people who start out here never leave. The city gets a hold on a person.”

“I can understand that.”

“But I had to get out,” she said, “and I left. And then after Katrina, when half the city left, that’s when I came back. Trust me to get everything backwards.”

“What brought you back?”

“My father. He’s dying.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So’s he. He didn’t want to go to a hospice. This is a man who wouldn’t let them evacuate him during the hurricane, and he said he’d be damned if he’d leave his house now. ‘I was born in this house, chère, and I shall damn well die in it.’ As a matter of fact he was born in a hospital, like most people, but I guess you’re allowed to exaggerate when you’re being eaten alive by cancer. And I tried to think what I had to do in my life that was more important than nursing him and letting him die at home, and I couldn’t think of a thing.”