Excerpt of Lullaby Town by Robert Crais

"I'm afraid I've come to you under false pretenses."
She made a small frown, wondering what I was talking about.
I said, "I'm not moving to the area, and I don't want
to finance a house. I'm a private investigator. From Los
Angeles."
Her left eye flickered and she didn't move for several
seconds. Then she made an effort at the professional smile
and sort of cocked her head to one side. Confused. "I'm
afraid I don't understand."
I took out the 8 x 10 of nineteen-year old Karen
Shipley made up like a waitress, unfolded it, and put it on
her desk. I said, "Karen Shipley."
She leaned forward and looked at the 8 x 10 without
touching it. "I'm sorry. My name is Karen Lloyd. I don't
know what you're talking about."
"Your ex-husband, Peter Alan Nelsen, hired me to find you.
She shook her head, smiled patiently, then used a
pencil to push the picture back toward me and stood up. "I
don't know anyone named Peter Alan Nelsen and I've never
been to Los Angeles."
I said, "Karen. Come on."
"I'm sorry. But if you're not here to discuss business
with the bank, I think you should leave." She came around
the desk and opened the door and stood there, right hand on
the knob.
I picked up the 8 x 10 and looked at it and looked at
the woman with her hand on the knob. They were one and the
same. "Ten years ago you and Peter Alan Nelsen were
divorced. Your theatrical agent was a guy named Oscar
Curtiss. You lived in an apartment house on Beechwood Drive
owned by a woman named Miriam Dichester for almost a year,
and then you skipped out on three months' back rent.
Twenty-two months after that, you mailed a U.S. postal money
order for four hundred fifty-two dollars and eighteen cents
to Ms. Dichester. It was postmarked Chelam. This is you in
the picture. Your maiden name was Shipley. Then you were
Karen Nelsen. And now you're Karen Lloyd."
She was gripping the door knob so hard that the tendons
in the back of her right hand were standing out like bow
strings, as if the force of the grip was not so much to hold
on to the knob as it was to hold together something that had
been carefully constructed over many years and was now in
danger of being pulled apart. Her eye gave the flicker
again. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't know."
She made the professional smile, but it didn't quite
work this time. "I'm sorry."
I held up the picture. "This isn't you?"
The little smile again. "No. We do look alike, though,
so I can understand your confusion."
I nodded. Outside, the woman with the blue hair put
money in a plain white envelope and put the envelope in her
blouse and walked away. Joyce Steuben talked on the phone.
The guard read Tom Clancy.
Nobody seemed ready to jump up and give me a hand, but
then they rarely do. I said, "Peter doesn't want anything
from you. He doesn't want to impose on you or to interfere
with either your life or the boy's. He just wants to meet
his son. He seems sincere in this. You're not going to gain
anything by acting this way."
She didn't move.
I spread my hands. "Karen, you're found."
She made a little shrug and shook her head. "I hope you
find whoever you're looking for. I really do. Now if you
don't mind, I have work to do."
She didn't move and I didn't move. Outside, a black man
in a New York Yankees baseball cap approached the teller and
Joyce Steuben hung up the phone and began to write on a
yellow legal pad. Somewhere in the back of the little
building the heating system clicked on and warm air came
through the vents. I said, "If there's nothing to anything
I've said, call the guard and have him throw me out."
She squinted to make the left eye stop moving. The
knuckles on the hand holding the knob turned white. Neither
of us said anything for quite a while. Then the tip of her
tongue appeared and wet her lips. She said, "1'm sorry that
you've wasted your time, but I know nothing about any of this."
I took a deep breath and let it out and then I nodded.
"Karen Lloyd."
Yes. That's my name.
"Never been to Los Angeles."
"Never."
"Don't know Peter Nelsen."
"I can understand your confusion. I do look very much
like the girl in the picture."
I nodded again. The black man finished his transaction
and left and the teller walked over to Joyce Steuben's desk
and sat down. Toby Nelsen appeared in the teller's window,
reached through, took a pencil, then disappeared again.
Karen Shipley stood very still, legs together, elbows tight
at her sides, right hand on the knob and left hanging down
at her side. The left was red as if blood had pooled there.
I folded the 8 x 10 and put it in my pocket and stood up.
"Sorry," I said. "You do look very much alike."
"Yes."
"I'll be seeing you."
"Have a nice day."
I walked past her and past Joyce Steuben and around the
end of the tellers' counter and out past the guard to the
front door. I stopped and looked back at her. She had not
moved. Her face was tight and contained and her right hand
was still gripping the knob of her door. She stared at me a
little longer and then she stepped back into the office and
shut the door. Toby was concentrating on the math workbook
and did not look up.
I went out to the parking lot and stood by my car
beneath a sky that had grown heavy and dense and the color
of shale. There was a cold wind coming from the northwest
and a formation of large black crows beating their wings a
hundred feet overhead. Because of the wind, the crows were
pointing in one direction but traveling in another. I
wondered if they knew it and, knowing it, understood it, or
if they were simply oblivious, carried along by a force that
was felt but not seen. The same thing happens to people, but
most of the time they don't know it, or when they know it
they think it an action of their own devising. They are
usually wrong.