Page 19 of Hero

She knew the ride to the airport’s loop of terminals only took about five minutes. She sat back in her seat so the bigger bodies of the male travelers would block her from view. She took a few pictures of the road behind the bus by aiming her phone over her shoulder at the back window. Then she looked down at the screen to see if the black BMW had followed. She had learned the habit of using her phone to take pictures of what was behind her when she was guiding a client through public places, and had occasionally detected unexpected threats.

There were nine terminals at LAX, but the one she wanted was Terminal 1, because just north of it was LAXit, the pick-up spot for the rideshare services and the loading zone for taxi cabs. The shuttle took an elevated lane to the departure level to begin its long horseshoe-shaped counterclockwise route. When the shuttle stopped and the doors huffed open, Justine joined the file of passengers shuffling up the aisle and stepped down onto the sidewalk. She went inside the terminalimmediately and rode down the escalator to the arrival level, walked across the baggage claim between the carousels, and went out the automatic door to the street. She joined the straggling stream of people pulling their wheeled suitcases along the pavement toward the LAXit.

When Justine got there, she found the crowd was large. She could see that the line for Uber and Lyft rides was long and looked disorganized. It wasn’t a surprise, because the rideshare services were cheaper than taxis. But she saw people going to the wrong cars and being turned away, families or travel companions who were too numerous or had too much luggage to fit in one car, people frowning at their phones, seeing their drivers had canceled, and starting the process over.

She went to join the taxi cab line. Most of the rideshare line was English-speaking Americans, but the taxi line held lots of tourists from the rest of the world, some of whom spoke no English. The confusion was the right kind for Justine, because foreign tourists knew enough to stand in line, and taxi drivers knew enough to wait for the cab ahead to load and leave, pull up to the loading zone, load and leave. There was no matching of passenger to car.

After Justine was in line, she could see one problem. There were too many people with too much luggage and too many children, and not enough cabs.

She stayed in the line, but looked around to see whether it would be practical to walk back to the Uber and Lyft area. As soon as she turned, she saw the black BMW again. It was in the LAXit, moving a few feet whenever the cars ahead did, and then stopping, another few feet and then stopping. How could he have followed her so closely? Had he seen her drive out of the hotel lot? Speculating about it was just a distraction. Whatever she had done wrong was already done.

She knelt on the pavement, pretending to tie her shoe so she could crouch beside a big suitcase belonging to the family ahead. The suitcase stood upright on its wheels with its handle extended. She didn’t dare look straight in the direction of the BMW, only peering out from behind the suitcase with one eye and then looking down again. She was sure the driver was the same man, but now he had two signs on his dashboard saying Uber and Lyft. The car seemed out of place to her. Who would use a high-end BMW to drive for a rideshare company? Nobody else seemed to even see him. The car was moving so slowly that the killer could look at all the people standing in the ride lines. His slow advance would bring him within fifty feet of her. She slipped her phone out of her pocket and held it down near her foot to take several more pictures in the direction of the BMW, then put it away and pretended to finish tying her shoe.

She kept her face turned away from him, but that brought on the excruciating feeling that he would be approaching with a pistol on his lap, and at any moment he could be right behind her pressing the button to roll down his window and shoot her in the back. How close was he now? How close now?

Then the man who owned the upright suitcase grasped the handle and moved it ahead in the taxi line. He came back to the rest of his family’s suitcases, grasped the handles and moved them ahead two at a time until they were all collected ten feet closer to the cab loading zone. Justine moved to catch up more slowly than she could have because she wanted the murderer to get past her and drive on. He must be almost beside her now, and she couldn’t kneel here any longer, because the people ahead of her had moved forward and taken her hiding place with them.

As she stood, she saw a young blond woman about twenty feet ahead of her who had a hoodie on that said “Sorbonne.” It seemed likesomething only an American tourist would wear. She stepped to the left of the line away from the curb and advanced to where the young woman stood. She said, “Hi. Do you speak English?”

The young woman said, “Yep. In Encino most of us do.”

Justine said, “If you’ll let me share your cab, I’ll pay for both of us.”

The woman smiled. “You know it’s at least a hundred bucks, right?”

“I’ll pay for the trip, the tip, and give you an extra fifty for your trouble.”

“Why would you be in such a big hurry?”

Justine snatched a lie out of the air and began to tell it. “I’m divorced, and in an hour my child custody days start. If my ex comes to drop them off and I’m not there to take them, he gets to make a big thing out of it. I’m the unreliable parent and all that.”

The young woman craned her neck to look down the long line behind them. “Some of those people are not going to be happy, but okay.”

Justine stood with her in line, agreeing that the people behind her were probably resenting her, but hoping they’d think she was just joining a traveling companion after getting separated in the terminal and then searching for her. Justine’s need to stay alive was more likely to be urgent than other people’s need to get to their hotels, but she still felt guilty.

Justine took the dangerous move of glancing toward the rideshare lane where she had seen the killer. She didn’t see the black BMW, but couldn’t risk looking harder and longer. Losing sight of him didn’t make her feel safer. It didn’t mean he was gone. He could have pulled out, left his car at the white curb in front of Terminal 1, and be making his way back to her on foot.

She needed to stop staring in all directions and looking tense and uncomfortable or she was going to spook this girl and lose her ride. Sheforced herself to look into her eyes. She said to her, “Are you just getting back from France?”

“The Maldives,” the girl said.

Starting a conversation with this person was an effort, like trying to get a fire started in the wilderness. Justine had just struck a spark, but it had not gotten the tinder to burn. She had to keep the conversation alive, and she sensed that the young woman distrusted strangers who asked questions, so she stopped asking. She tried another lie. “Before I got married I always wanted to go there, but it never worked out. I had a boyfriend who actually thought of it himself and asked me to go with him. We set everything up months in advance, but by the time the date came we had reached that awful stage where you know the relationship is not getting any better, and being stuck for a month in a foreign country together will not help. Other times I was set on going alone, but that didn’t work either.”

The young woman said, “Why not?”

“Whenever I had that much extra money it was because I had a good job and didn’t have enough time off. When I had the time, it was because I was laid off and it didn’t seem smart to spend my savings having fun until I had another job. And then I got one and the cycle began again. Then I got married, and since then all my travel is about meetings.”

The couple ahead of them stepped into a cab and a moment later it pulled away toward the exit lanes. Then they were first in line. Even the wait while the next cab nosed up to them and stopped seemed an eternity, and she spent most of it trying to spot the man who had been driving the BMW. The next cab driver popped the trunk and came around to take the young woman’s bag and put it inside, then looked at Justine, shrugged, and got back in. The young woman got into theback seat and Justine quickly slid in beside her so she wouldn’t be visible for an extra second.

The driver said, “Where to?”

The young woman said, “Encino. 46001 Blossom Court.”

The driver entered the address on his phone, then looked at Justine, so she said, “You should take her first. After that, I’ll tell you where to let me off.” She had not chosen a destination, and this would give her time to select one.

“You don’t need to do that, Miss. I just put it in the phone and the GPS will take us to it.”

“Studio City. The cross streets are Laurel Canyon and Ventura.” She had chosen it because it was in the Valley at least a couple of miles from Encino, but was several miles and over the hills from her condominium and the Spengler-Nash building. It also formed a picture in her memory that was pleasant and included pedestrians. The driver typed it in and pulled ahead.

---