1 Phil Kramer walked down the sidewalk under the big trees toward his car. It was quiet on this street, and the lights in the houses were almost all off. There was a strong, sweet scent of flowering vines that opened their blooms late on hot summer nights like this one wisteria, he supposed, or some kind of jasmine. There was no way to limit it because there wasn't anything that wouldn't grow in Southern California. He supposed his senses were attuned to everything tonight. He had trained himself over the past twenty-five years to be intensely aware of his surroundings, particularly when he was alone at night. He knew there was a cat watching him from the safety of the porch railing to his right, and he knew there was a man walking along the sidewalk a half block behind him. He had seen him as he had turned the corner not quite as tall as he was, but well built, and wearing a jacket on a night that was too warm for one. He could hear the footsteps just above the level of the cars swishing past on the boulevard. He supposed the man could be the final attempt to make him feel uncomfortable not a foolish attempt to scare him, but a way to remind him that he could be watched and followed and studied as easily as anyone else could. He could be fully known, and therefore vulnerable. The man might also be out walking for some reason that was completely unrelated to Phil Kramer's business. Phil approached the spot where his car was parked too near now to be stopped and the man no longer mattered. He pressed the button on his key chain to unlock the locks, and the dome light came on. He swung the door open and sat in the drivers seat, then reached for the door to close it. In the calm, warm night air he caught a sliding sound, with a faint squeak, and turned his head to find it. In one glance, he knew his mistake in all of its intricacies: He took in the van parked across the street from his car, the half-open window with the gun resting on it, and the bright muzzle-flash. The bullet pounded into his skull, and the impact lit a thousand thoughts in an instant, burning and exploding them into nonbeing as synapses rapid-fired and went out. There was his brother Dan; a random instant in a baseball game, seeing the ground ball bounce up at his feet, feeling the sting in his palm as it smacked into his glove, even a flash of the white flannel of his uniform with tan dust; the pride and fear when he first saw his son; a composite, unbearably pleasant sensation of the women he had touched, amounting to a distilled impression of femaleness. Profound regret. Emily. Emily Kramer awoke at five thirty, as she had for twenty-two years of mornings. The sun barely tinted the room a feeble blue, but Emily's chest already held a sense of alarm, and she couldn't expand her lungs in a full breath. She rolled to her left side to see, aware before she did it that the space was empty. It was a space that belonged to something, the big body of her hu Excerpted from Fidelity by Thomas Perry All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
