Death Benefits by Thomas Perry Page A

your generation. You look the same as people used to, except for the hair, but you’re not.”
    Walker said, “What’s the complaint?”
    “It would seem to me,” Stillman said, “that the natural thing would be to make friends, have foolish sexual relationships, blow your paycheck, feel remorse. But you don’t. All of you are so serious, so interested in making the leap from third assistant manager to second assistant manager. What is it? Are you all crazy for money?”
    Walker stared out the window, pretending not to listen.
    “Tell me this. Are men and women still attracted to each other?”
    “I was attracted, she wasn’t.”
    “That reassures me about you, anyway. A twenty-four-year-old who can’t wait to be sixty and move into the corner office has got a problem.”
    Stillman stopped the car in front of a convenience store, but he didn’t go in. Instead, he walked down the sidewalk and turned the corner onto a residential street. Walker got out and caught up, but Stillman still seemed to be marveling over the degeneration of civilization.
    “Mind if I ask where we’re going?” asked Walker.
    Stillman seemed pleased. “Not at all. In that house up there to the right is Ellen Snyder’s apartment. Bottom floor, rear entry.”
    “Wouldn’t she be at work? It’s barely three o’clock.”
    “She would be, if she were doing that sort of thing these days, but she isn’t.”
    “They fired her for paying off a policy?”
    Stillman shook his head. “They didn’t fire her, and she didn’t quit, either. She just seems to have gotten scarce.” Stillman was up the driveway now, and he approached the door.
    An uneasiness came over Walker. “Then why are we here?”
    Stillman reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of thin leather gloves.
    “You aren’t . . . .” said Walker.
    Stillman knocked on the door, then put his ear to the door and listened. He knocked again. He shrugged at Walker. “See? What can I do?” He took out a pocketknife, wiggled the blade around between the door and the jamb for a couple of seconds, held it there, and pushed the door open. Walker backed a few paces away, but Stillman muttered, “Sitting in the car doesn’t make you less guilty than I am, it just makes you easier to find.”
    Walker stopped backing away. He was almost relieved that Stillman had misinterpreted his reluctance. He was horrified at this man making this kind of intrusion on Ellen, but the mention of guilt made him realize that it was better this way. If Stillman was honest, he would see that there was nothing but evidence of Ellen’s innocence, and leave her alone. If he was trying to frame her, then he had just made a mistake.
    Stillman stepped in and held the door. “Come on in.”
    Walker had just crossed the threshold into a small, dark kitchen when Stillman edged past him and held his arm. “Don’t touch anything.”
    Walker followed Stillman’s eyes. He was looking at a window on the far side of the kitchen above the sink. The curtain swayed a little, then blew inward slightly as Stillman stepped toward it. He pulled the curtain aside to reveal electrical tape in an X shape from corner to corner of the upper pane, and a network of cracks. A couple of large triangles were missing.
    “I guess she isn’t very good at fixing broken windows,” said Walker. “If I’d known, I might have tried telling her I was handy around the house.”
    “It’s gotten lesser men where they wanted to go,” said Stillman. “But that’s not a repair job, it’s a B and E. If you whack a window it goes crash, tinkle. If you tape it, it just goes thump. You reach in and unlock it.”
    Walker quickly moved through the doorway to the living room, his eyes scanning.
    Stillman was instantly at his side. “What are you doing?”
    “What if she was here when they broke in? She could be lying somewhere bleeding to death.”
    Stillman held his arm again. “Not for four days. If she’s here, believe me,