by Thomas Perry
“In front of you?”
“No. The old guy never talked to me at all. He didn’t like me from the minute he laid eyes on me. The kid came to me later and asked me if the old man was crazy—just jerking him around, or what.”
“How did he tell the kid to get in touch with this woman?”
“That was one of the things that made me think it was bullshit. He wouldn’t tell the kid the address, because the kid was too green to make it that far. The kid had to wait until he was out and write her a letter, then let her say where to meet her.”
“Do you remember where the letter was supposed to go?”
“A post office box in L.A. The next time I heard it, there was a house somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who mentioned the house?”
“Some counterfeiter. Just what they do is so stupid that you can’t believe what they say. They all get caught, then go out and do it again.”
Seaver sighed and looked at Stillman. He had seen Stillman’s record. The man had been in jails for twelve of his thirty-one years, and there was something he’d done before the adult record had begun that had put him in youth camp. If he ever got out again, he’d be a three-time loser before he even did anything.
Stillman went on. “He wouldn’t tell me where the house was. He said the only reason he had the address was because his girlfriend gave it to him just before he got arrested. She didn’t get arrested, though. She got away, and never got caught.”
“Is that true?”
“I once saw a thing on TV where they said nobody ever saw a U.F.O. until somebody said he saw one in 1947. Once he said it, everybody and his brother started seeing them. Maybe that’s the year when the U.F.O.’s got here. Maybe it’s just that once somebody makes something up, then it’s everybody’s. It gets to be another way to seem important, to have something to tell, because nothing that’s true about you is worth listening to. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, God, all that.”
“Do you think I could get to any of these guys—the old man, for instance?”
“The old man was here for a while, but he’s been dead a couple of years. The counterfeiter, name is Bill Ortega, I heard he was in federal prison back east someplace. I don’t know his girlfriend’s name. If you’ve got a lot of connections in the correctional system, maybe you can track him down.”
“What about the kid?” Seaver’s hands moved unseen from his lap to grip the support under the table.
Stillman squinted up into the air and smiled. “Now, him I don’t know about. I just don’t know. For years I’ve been wondering. Once in a while, I ask around with the guys who have been in a lot of joints all over. His name was Phil O’Meara. Nobody’s seen him, or seen his name on the count, or knows anybody who’s met him.” He smirked mysteriously. “Maybe he figured out to get the knot behind his ear and hung himself right.”
Seaver’s feet kicked out under the table and pushed Still-man’s chair over backward onto the floor. Seaver sprang up, used one arm to vault over the table, and came down with his knee on Stillman’s chest.
He spoke quietly, through clenched teeth. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? You think maybe, just maybe, they’ll forget who you are one day and let you unload the grocery truck so you can strangle the driver. Let me tell you something. It isn’t going to happen. And even if it did, and you got to her, she’d take one look at you and shut the door. You’re an evolutionary dead end, a throwback. She can smell it on you as well as I can. She can’t predict what you’re going to do next, because even you can’t. You’re a bad risk. Don’t hold out on me, because it’s nothing you’re ever going to use.”
Stillman seemed to be immune to surprise. His face seemed to slacken, to go blank in the prisoner’s stare. He looked past Seaver at the ceiling and said, “Two packs of cigarettes a week. A job in the library.”
“Done.”
“The box wasn’t in Los Angeles, it was in New York City. It’s Box 345, 7902 Elizabeth Street, in New York. There’s some fake name attached to it—a man’s name.”
Hours later, Seaver sat staring out through the scratched plastic pane of the window at the baggage carts and fuel trucks slipping past him backward as his airplane was pushed away from the terminal by a tractor with a tow bar. He thought about Earl and Linda again. When he had hired them, he had known a lot about Hatcher, but nothing about the woman. It was just as well, because this way he didn’t have to worry about bumping into them on this trip. With nothing to go on, they wouldn’t have seen her as the way to find Hatcher.
Now he had a few bits of information, and soon he would have enough. He stared at his watch for a moment, then carefully pulled the stem and set it three hours ahead. When he got to New York, he would still have time for some sleep. The hotel reservation was guaranteed, so the room would be waiting for him. The overnight package from Nevada would probably be there when he awoke. He could assemble the pieces of the gun after breakfast.
17
The telephone directory said that the 996 exchange meant that the telephone answering machine was in Deganawida. The road atlas said that the population of Deganawida was only 22,000 souls.
Linda Thompson sat at the desk in the little suite she had rented on the south side of Buffalo, her face illuminated by the computer screen. When Earl had initiated her ten years ago, tracking a person still meant going to counters in below-ground floors of old county office buildings and turning the pages of bound books of records while some sour-faced old clerk watched her out of the corner of her eye. Then she would fill out some form with a ballpoint pen with a chain on it, pay a fee in some strange number like three dollars, or six, but never five, and wait weeks for the copy to come in the mail.
Now all she had to do was put herself into a screen-trance, tap in the secret numbers and symbols, and then conjure what she wanted out of the air. She watched the lighted screen as she put in the mixture of upper- and lowercase letters, periods, slashes, pound signs in their correct order. The screen exploded into life with the company’s greeting, “Welcome to Probar Commercial Information Systems, Santa Ana, California.” There was a graphic of the front of a building with a big closed door like the vault of a bank. “User number?” said the screen.
Linda typed in the Northridge Detectives account number, the door appeared to swing open, and the doorway expanded beyond the borders of the screen as though she were stepping inside. The door was replaced by the menu. It was longer than it had been a month ago. PCIS had been collecting for seven or eight years now, and it had thousands of public records databases. She scrolled down the list quickly.
She moved her cursor to select “Tax Assessor’s Rolls.” She selected New York State. She selected Erie County. She selected City of Deganawida. The menu disappeared and the screen said, “Access charge five dollars. Do you wish to proceed? (Y/N).”
Linda tapped Y. She was guessing that this Jane woman did not live in an apartment building. The business of making people disappear did not lend itself to renting. It was almost inevitable that from time to time a client might show up in person, and renters on the same floor would wonder about it. Any clandestine business was best conducted from a free-standing building without a landlord who might drop in, and the address had to remain the same.
This Jane had apparently operated in Las Vegas as though she were good at it, and the people who needed to disappear badly enough to hire help doing it probably didn’t care what they paid. She could afford a house, especially in a backwater like Deganawida. Linda looked at the list that appeared on the screen. Now that she was in, she could manipulate the list. She asked it how many entries were on the list, and it said 5,864. Linda felt power begin to flow into her. The number was tiny. She ordered her computer to search for the word “Jane.”
The computer found sixteen Janes, a Janeway, and fifty-two houses on a Jane Street. She made a copy of each of the Janes. She was feeling more and more excitement as she
went along. She had been in western New York for only a day, and already she had the list down to sixteen.
Linda relinquished her hold on the tax assessor’s rolls and returned to the main menu. She contemplated Jane. She was twenty-five to thirty-five years old, probably about thirty if Linda could trust Seaver’s description. She was tall, thin, dark-haired. She operated a very strange little business from one of these sixteen free-standing buildings in Deganawida. Would she have the office disguised as some kind of business? Linda could not decide. Was Jane one of the seven married women, someone like Ronald and Jane Schwartzkopf, Tenants in Common? Or was she one of the nine sole owners listed—Jane Hanlon, Jane Whitefield, Jane Carmen Rossi? Most of the women listed alone were probably widows or divorcees. Some would be too old.
Jane the woman who made people disappear would have a driver’s license. The driver’s license carried date of birth, height, weight, hair and eye color. Linda selected the Department of Motor Vehicles records: “Access fee ten dollars. Do you wish to proceed? (Y/N).” She began with the first of the sixteen names and scanned the information that had been printed on the license: Jane Anne Hanlon, DOB 08-09-29. Jane Pildrasky was HT 5-02, WT 160, HAIR BLD, EYES BLU. Jane Rossi’s license was RSTR: CORR LENS, DAYLIGHT ONLY. The Jane who had helped Pete Hatcher would never have picked a darkened room and a night escape if she could see only in bright light.
Before she relinquished the Department of Motor Vehicles records, Linda had eliminated all but four of the Janes who owned houses in Deganawida. All were HT 5-06 or better, HAIR BRN, DOB after 1960. She returned to the telephone directory and looked up the four names. She eliminated first Jane Sheridan and then Jane Whitefield because neither had the right telephone number. But then she discovered that none of the other Janes had it either. Of course. The Jane she wanted had to live a visible life in a small town. She would have a listed number in the book. It was the business phone that would be unlisted. Linda put Sheridan and Whitefield back in contention.
Linda stared at the main menu and let her reverie deepen. She picked up Jane and turned her around and around, looking at her closely, trying to feel her surfaces. Jane was a tall, lean, dark-haired, youngish woman who owned a house in Deganawida but was gone from it for periods of time. She probably operated much the way Linda and Earl did. She would get a telephone call, drop everything, and go to meet a client. Then she would come home and lie around for weeks, getting used to the time zone and letting her aches and pains go away. Linda felt herself coming closer and closer to Jane.
She selected the credit check: “Access fee, thirty-five dollars. Do you wish to proceed? (Y/N).” Y, of course. Now for the federal privacy law. “Please indicate your legitimate legal grounds for requesting the information. You are a Prospective: (a) Lender, (b) Employer, (c) Insurer, (d) Other. Please specify.” Linda loved that part of it. They gave you a selection of lies to choose from. She chose insurer. Insurance companies could do virtually any kind of investigation they wanted on anybody, and they often hired detective agencies to help.
When the four credit reports came out of her printer, Linda studied them. Jane Sheridan was employed by the Deganawida School District. She was a teacher. She couldn’t leave town every time the phone rang. Jane Finley was listed as a “home-maker,” which was more promising, but her record was full of late payments, credit extended by appliance stores and car dealers, and interest paid to credit-card companies. It didn’t make sense for the Jane that Linda was looking for to live that way. She didn’t need to, and it made too many people interested in her. Jane Colossi was promising for thirty seconds. She was an attorney. She seemed to spend a lot of money, but the most recent big charges listed for each credit card were for the month of June in France and Italy, when the right Jane was in Las Vegas. Jane Whitefield was the last one in the alphabet. She worked as a “career consultant.” She had the right kind of credit rating—excellent. Then Linda found it. Jane Whitefield had two telephone numbers. She probably didn’t know the telephone company’s computer had spit out the unlisted one when the credit bureau’s computer had asked. She was Jane.
Linda looked down the list of debts. There was no mortgage on the house, and none listed as having been paid off. That interested her. Either Jane had paid cash, which would have raised eyebrows, or she had inherited the house.
Linda returned to Probar’s menu and asked for probate court filings for the state of New York. She started the computer in Santa Ana on its search for the name and waited. This would take some time.
Linda stared at the glowing screen while she thought about Jane. Linda was beginning to feel her now. She was—how had Seaver said it?—fit. That was it. She did exercises and pushed herself the way Linda did. It wasn’t just because she wanted to get the attention that came when your abs were tight and your ass round and firm, but because she might have to run or fight. She had fought a man that night in Las Vegas, Seaver had said—not hit some old night watchman over the head when he wasn’t looking, but faced off with a grown man who was trying to hurt her. That meant she was fast and dirty, because there was no other way it could happen. A man could be dumb as a buffalo and lead with his face, and there was still no way a woman, at most two-thirds his weight, could stand there and take turns throwing punches with him. She was probably a lot like Linda.
The computer screen flashed awake again with the probate documents Linda had requested. The former owner of the house was Alice Whitefield. Before that it had been Henry Whitefield and Alice Whitefield. Linda perused Alice Whitefield’s bequest. She had died twelve years ago and left everything to her daughter Jane, age twenty-one. Everything had not been much—the house, contents valued at under thirty thousand; a ten-year-old Plymouth; a bank account with nine thousand in it.
Linda left the court files. There was one last piece of information that she needed to conjure tonight. She selected the records of the County Clerk of Erie County. Linda typed in Jane Whitefield’s name and address, copied her date of birth from her driver’s license. When the Probar computer found the document Linda was startled. She read it twice to make sure. Jane Whitefield had been married on June 21, to Carey Robert McKinnon, 5092 Dodge Road, Amherst, New York.
Linda felt a sense of fulfillment, of completeness. She was beginning to know Jane Whitefield now. Probably this Carey McKinnon had started her out when she was young, the way Earl had started Linda. It had probably been about the time when her mother had died and she found herself alone with an old house and a cheap car and barely enough money for a good vacation. He had told her she was going to learn a lot and see a lot, and make a lot of money. And here she was, ten or twelve years later, out alone, risking her life to make people like Pete Hatcher vanish.
Linda went back to the menu and began to work magic on Carey McKinnon. It took her an hour to find out more about him than she knew about Jane. She glanced at her watch frequently now, because the time was almost certainly coming. She had given Lenny her telephone number as soon as she had moved in, so Earl would have it by now. The telephone rang at midnight.
“Hello, Linda.”
“Hi,” she said. She wanted to sound unperturbed and self-sufficient. “How’s it going?”
“Not so hot,” said Earl. “I found his car in Billings, between a couple of hotels. I plugged the gas line so it would turn over but not start, but he hasn’t come back for it, and I haven’t had any luck at the hotels. Where are you?”
“I’m in a little place south of Buffalo called the Meadowgreen Suites. You get a kitchen and a refrigerator, but you don’t have to make the bed.”
“What have you got?”
“Her name is Jane Whitefield. She has a house in a little town north of Buffalo along the Niagara River called Deganawida. That’s where the answering machine is.”
“Is she home, or do I have to watch my back for her too?”
“I don’t know yet. My guess is that she’s already out there with him.”
“When will you know?�
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“Tomorrow morning. It’s a little more complicated than I thought. She got married in June.”
“Know anything about her husband?”
“What I know doesn’t make too much sense to me yet. His name is Carey McKinnon, and he’s a doctor.”
There was a short pause while Earl ruminated. “It could be she dreamed that up as an identity for one of her favorite clients and then got him to marry her—you know, he says he’s a doctor that’s retired, and he doesn’t have to explain why he’s got a lot of money and plays golf all day.”
“I thought of that,” said Linda. “But his credit check says he’s actually getting payments from a hospital, and from some surgical group. He’s in the A.M.A. directory. They don’t let you flash a fake ID and go operate on somebody.”
“A double beard, then?” asked Earl. “Maybe he’s queer and gets to hide it—nobody wants a surgeon who might have AIDS—and she gets to be that much harder to find. Does he have a separate house?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know if one of them is empty. If they don’t live together, she wouldn’t be much of a beard in a town that size. I just got this stuff an hour ago, and I’m thirty miles from there, but I’ll be out early to see if she’s at his house or hers, or neither. You know, it occurred to me that he could be some kind of fanatic.”
“What kind of fanatic?”