by Thomas Perry
He yawned, zipped up his pants, took his coffee cup out of the water, and set it on the edge of the sink while he washed his hands. When he carried the cup back to the window he could still see the bright orange package through the bronze and glass door of the woman’s mailbox, so he sat down and took a sip.
He had a perfect view of the small shop from his office window. His elevation placed the rows of mailboxes in his field of vision, and he could see the surface of the counter and part of the workspace behind it where bored employees wrapped, weighed, and stacked packages, sorted letters, and sent faxes. The streetlamp in front of the shop threw a splash of light on the sidewalk outside the door.
He sipped the lukewarm coffee and watched. At this time of night, so few customers came in that his cop’s brain wondered whether the purpose of keeping the shop open might be that other customers besides the dark-haired woman were doing something illegal: leave your money in some other mailbox on Tuesday, and come back on Wednesday and pick up your heroin from your own. But he had watched the boxes for a full cycle of shifts now, and he had detected no signs that he could interpret as commerce. Nobody who came in to open a mailbox seemed to take the time to look around him first for cops or thieves. Nobody seemed to bring anything in with him that ended up in one of the other mailboxes.
It was nearly midnight when he recognized the new clerk coming up out of the subway and walking toward the shop for the changing of the guard. The skinny kid with jeans and a black T-shirt came in the door, and the older man collected his belongings—a greenish brown sport coat that looked as though it had been picked up off a rag pile and a paperback book that he put in the side pocket so the coat hung down and made him look like the scarecrow he was.
But then he did something that made Seaver put his coffee cup on the desk and lean forward. He stepped behind the mailboxes. Seaver saw him reach into Box 345 and start sliding envelopes into a big padded mailer. Seaver watched as the orange and yellow package disappeared with the others.
Seaver snatched up his coat, stepped to the door, and ran for the stairwell. As he hurried down the steps, he switched on his receiver and watched the direction indicator for a base reading. He slipped it into his pocket, stepped out into the darkness at the side of the building, and walked slowly toward the street, his eyes on the lighted window of the little shop. He paused in the shadow until he saw the older man come out the door carrying the mailer under his arm.
Seaver followed the man along the dimly lighted street for three blocks, staying close to the buildings, sometimes keeping his silhouette obscured by the irregular outlines of pilasters and ornamental brickwork on the facades, sometimes pausing in the alcoves at store entrances to be invisible for a time.
The man turned left onto another street and Seaver broke into a run to shorten the man’s lead. As he turned the corner, he saw he had misinterpreted the man’s intentions. He wasn’t on his way to meet the dark-haired woman and hand her the mail. He was walking in a diagonal course along the broad, empty sidewalk toward the curb, where there was a big blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox. When the man had taken the woman’s mail with him, Seaver had been sure he wasn’t sending it off again. But he was definitely heading for that mailbox. The woman must have given him orders not to leave any packages lying around the store with her forwarding address on them.
Seaver’s mind was flooded with disappointment at the unwelcome news. There would be more airline trips, more nights sitting and watching doorways. No, it was worse than that. If that package went into the postal system before Seaver knew the address, he would have no idea whether it was going to an apartment a block away or to Ethiopia. He had to keep that man from reaching the mailbox.
Seaver called, “Excuse me.”
The man glanced over his shoulder and straightened. He was surprised to see Seaver suddenly so close. He kept going, a little more quickly.
“Wait!” shouted Seaver. “Sir?”
The man went more quickly, his long legs taking steps that made him strain. Seaver had made a mistake by not letting the man get a clear look at him right away, on a lighted street. In the light, Seaver could easily have passed for a prosperous middle-aged executive coming home from a restaurant. But the man was acting as though he expected to be mugged. Instead of stopping, he went faster. He seemed to want to get rid of the package so he would have both hands free to defend himself. It didn’t matter what he thought he was doing, or what Seaver had planned. The man was hurrying toward the mailbox.
Seaver walked faster, screwing the silencer onto the end of the barrel. “Sir?” he called. The man had obviously made his decision. Now he seemed to want to reach the big mailbox and use it as a shield.
Seaver stopped on the sidewalk with his feet apart, bent his knees slightly, extended both arms to steady his right hand, blew the air out of his lungs to keep the carbon dioxide from causing a tremor, and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped upward and Seaver heard the spitting sound.
The man pitched forward. The mailer fell and slid a few feet, but the man had forgotten it. He was writhing on the sidewalk, bleeding.
As Seaver ran to finish him, he saw that a car had appeared near the far end of the block. He clamped the pistol under his left arm, knelt over the man, and said, “I tried to warn you. There was a guy in a car shooting. Lie still now.”
The man seemed to barely hear him. He was squeezing his eyes in an agonized squint and rolling his head from side to side on the pavement. Seaver glanced down at the blood on the shirt. It was bright crimson and bubbly, so the bullet must have passed through a lung.
Seaver saw the car pull up to the curb. It was a yellow cab. “Is he all right?” called the driver. Seaver could see only the dark shape of a torso and an oval head.
“He just tripped and fell,” said Seaver. “He’ll be okay in a minute.” The wounded man struggled to reach out his arm toward the cab, and moaned.
“Does he need to go to the hospital?”
“No,” said Seaver. “I’ll take care of him.” He returned his eyes to the wounded man, shifted his position slightly, and rested his right forearm on his knee. If Seaver heard the click of a car door latch, he would move the hand a few more inches and grasp the gun. He would use the time it took the driver to walk around the rear of the car into the open to pivot and fire.
The driver shook his head doubtfully, then stared anxiously ahead through his windshield for a moment. Just as Seaver acknowledged that he now had the task of killing this one too, the driver pushed a button to roll up the window and accelerated up the street.
Seaver felt an abrupt, wrenching tug, and realized that the wounded man was trying to pry the pistol out of his armpit. Seaver’s right hand swatted the man’s fingers away, and he straightened his legs so quickly that he nearly toppled backward. He pulled out the pistol, aimed downward, and shot the man through the chest. This time he judged that he had hit the heart. The man gave one spasmodic jerk and went limp. Seaver gave him a kick, but it prompted no reaction. Seaver decided there was no reason to keep wondering, so he fired one more round into the man’s head, put the pistol into his inner coat pocket, picked up the padded mailer, stuck it into his belt at the small of his back, and covered it with his coat.
Seaver turned and looked around him. The little discreet surveillance had degenerated into a bloody disaster, a tangle of complications and obstacles and hazards. There was a narrow alley between two buildings to his right, but there was a high iron fence to block it. He could never lift a grown man’s body above his head and push it over the fence. He thought he might be able to carry the body a short distance, but how could he do that without attracting attention? As he considered the problem, he saw another set of headlights come around the corner at the far end of the block and head toward him. He saw the lights jump upward as the car accelerated, but then they dipped and stayed low. The car was going to stop.
Seaver stared at it, and saw the color of the paint. It was yellow, and the little marqu
ee on the roof was visible now. It was the same cab. Seaver waved his arm frantically, and the cab pulled to the curb. The driver stepped out, slammed the door, and looked at him over the roof.
“He’s hurt worse than I thought,” said Seaver. “We need to get him to a hospital after all.”
The driver trotted around the rear of the car and opened the back-seat door. Seaver knelt and began to lift the torso of the body. “Give me a hand.”
The driver squatted to lift the feet. He backed into the cab and set the legs on the back seat, but that gave him a look at the chest. “This guy’s bleeding all over. He’s been stabbed or something.”
Seaver’s hand was already in motion. The gun swung out, he fired into the driver’s belly, then raised the barrel higher and fired into the driver’s chest, then into his head.
Seaver returned the gun to his coat pocket and walked around the car to get into the driver’s seat. He turned on the meter, then drove the cab to the rear of the building he had rented and parked it. He went up the stairs, through his little office, and into the bathroom. He washed his hands and face thoroughly, then examined his suit, shoes, and shirt for blood spatters. He saw none, but wiped his shoes with toilet paper anyway and flushed it down the toilet. He took a big wad of dampened toilet paper and wiped off the gun and wrapped it in toilet paper, then went about the little suite wiping off all of the surfaces he had ever touched. He collected all of his old coffee cups and lids, boxes, and wrappers, and locked the door behind him before he left. He dropped the trash in the Dumpster at the rear of the building.
Seaver started the cab and drove at least twelve blocks south before he found a dark alley between two stores that met a second, longer alley, so he could turn and leave it beside a loading dock. Then he walked a mile, stuffed the still-wrapped gun into the fishy-smelling center of a trash bag inside a garbage can, and replaced the lid. He walked another mile before he came to a theater. People were streaming out onto the street, walking toward parking lots and climbing into taxicabs. He attached himself to the crowd, climbed into a cab, and had it take him to an intersection not far from his hotel.
When he was inside his room, he pulled the mailer out of the back of his belt. He opened it and poured the mail out on the bed. The envelopes were all addressed to Stewart Hoffstedder, C.P.A. That was something that gave him hope, at first, because Stillman had said something about a man’s name. But the mail was almost all bills, as though they were for a real C.P.A. The bills were all for credit cards in different names—female, male, even corporate names. Were they all for this woman?
A horrible thought came to him. Stillman’s brain was probably not a perfectly developed organ to begin with. Since the age of ten it had probably been shorted out by drugs and jarred by blows. Maybe he had gotten the number wrong. Maybe this was some real C.P.A., a business manager who paid bills for a number of clients. The mail in the pouch seemed to have nothing to do with the dark-haired woman. It was possible that Seaver had scared Stillman so badly that he had cooked up a box number on the spot.
Seaver laid all of the bills out on the bed in a row and began to study them, looking desperately for similarities. On August 8, Wendy Wasserman had rented a car in Missoula, Montana. On August 10, Michael Phelan had rented a hotel room in Potomac, Montana. Katherine Webster had paid for lunch in Condon, Montana, the next morning. Seaver rocked back on his heels and smiled at the ceiling in relief. He had not wasted all this time and energy.
He glanced at the forwarding address on the label stuck to the mailer. It was just another post office box, this one in Chicago. If he needed to, he could go there and watch that one too. But right now, he had something infinitely better. He knew where the dark-haired woman was. She was on the move, driving around Montana with Pete Hatcher.
21
Carey drove up to the gate of the impound lot and parked. Susan stepped to the gate and rang the bell. Carey could hear the old-fashioned jangling noise a hundred feet away in the little shack in the center of the lot, and that meant trouble. There were no lights on in the windows. He stepped to the gate and stood beside her feeling useless.
Then he walked along the fence and around the corner. There was a small sign that said, LOT HOURS 6:00 A.M. TO 10:00 P.M. He walked back to Susan and frowned apologetically. “It’s closed until six in the morning.”
“No.” She seemed to see herself from outside. She was standing in a dark, desolate part of the city in the middle of the night, wearing three-inch heels and a strapless evening gown. Slowly, the beautiful smile reappeared. She let her arms come out from her sides in a “look at me” gesture.
He said, “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
They got into his car and he backed out of the drive. “You can’t really do that,” she said. “It’s all the way out in Orchard Park. If you could just drop me off at a hotel near here, you can go home and get some sleep.”
“Why would you stay in a hotel?” asked Carey. “It’s ridiculous.” Why was it that people who didn’t want to be any trouble always ended up being plenty?
“It’s now after midnight. If you drive me all the way to my apartment, it’ll be two before I’m asleep, and probably three before you are. So I’d get three hours’ sleep, call a cab, and for eighty dollars or so, he’d drive me to the other end of the county to get my car. That’s if I could even get a cab in Orchard Park at five in the morning. But if I stay here, I can be on the spot when the lot opens and drive myself home.”
“Here’s the problem with that. Look around you—factories, warehouses, and an impound lot. It isn’t very scenic in the daytime, so there’s a shortage of good hotels around here. By ‘good’ I don’t mean famous, I mean safe.”
“Oh,” she said.
“On the other hand, I happen to have a perfectly good house about twenty minutes away, with six spare bedrooms, five bathrooms, and clean towels.” He held his breath, hoping she would have a better idea.
“I hate to put you to that kind of trouble.”
That meant “yes.” He had no choice but to push the offer as graciously as he could manage at this hour, and make it sound easy. “I have to be at the hospital by seven, and I can take you to get your car on the way.” He glanced at her. “I might even be able to scare up some clothes for you that won’t look strange at dawn—like the bedraggled party-goer at the end of an Italian movie. Jane’s about your size.”
She looked at him with what seemed to be curiosity. “You would do that?”
“Sure.” What choice did he have?
“Won’t your—won’t Jane feel … uncomfortable?”
“What for?” he said too quickly. He had been concentrating on his own discomfort, so he had not yet thought about what Jane would feel. He cautiously considered the subject. He had a sudden vision of Jane’s eyes resting on Susan, taking an inventory—the long, golden hair, the little wisps on the nape of the long, delicate neck where they had escaped from the place where they had been tied, the impossibly smooth ivory skin—then focusing on Carey. But Jane’s look would be completely unjustified.
What he was doing was a simple act of kindness—no, it was even more innocent: an obligatory refusal to be unkind. He imagined Jane hearing his thoughts, and the gaze turned ironic. No, he thought. That wasn’t the way Jane would react at all—unless she was just teasing him. He was being irrational and unfair to her. She would never give him that look just because the person he helped happened to be female.
Then he admitted to himself that his deepest motive for taking her home with him had been provided by the needle on his gas gauge. He hadn’t insisted on driving her to her place, where she belonged, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find an open gas station at this hour on the long, unfamiliar drive to Orchard Park. He might run out of gas, and then they’d both be stranded.
He realized he was taking too much time inside his own head. “If she were here, she would be the one asking you to stay. She’s always doing things like this.” It
sounded true to him, as far as it went. He couldn’t quite get himself to feel certain that Jane would invite a woman who looked like Susan to stay in the house while she wasn’t there.
She looked at him closely. “I’d feel a lot better about it if I heard her say it. I’d hate to get you in trouble.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m not going to call her in the middle of the night to wake her up and ask her permission, no. But I’ll mention it the next time I talk to her.” He drove onto the boulevard and accelerated. “Of course, the first few times you meet her, you’ll have to get used to my calling you ‘Sister Mary Boniface.’ ”
She laughed the melodious, liquid laugh again. “Oh, well. I guess I’d rather just be your secret.”
Carey was still contemplating those words as he pulled into his driveway. He idled near the front door, where he usually parked in the summer, then found himself touching the gas pedal again to let the car glide the rest of the way up the long driveway before he stopped again at the old carriage house, out of sight of the street. There was no sense piquing the neighbors’ curiosity, he thought. The fact that what he was doing was innocent didn’t make it a worse story.
He opened Susan’s door, led the way to the back entry, unlocked the house, and let her enter first. He reached over her shoulder to flip the light switch just as she stopped to keep from stepping into a dark, unfamiliar room. It would have been much better if they had collided hard, but instead his body met hers softly. “Oops,” he said. “Excuse me.”
She half-turned to give him an utterly unreadable look, then stepped into the kitchen, looking around her. “Great kitchen,” she said. “Do you entertain a lot?”
“No,” he said. “At least I don’t think we do. Jane might let me know I’m wrong at any time. It’s big because that’s the way they were in the old days. Everybody hung around the kitchen because it was warm.”
She said, “Late eighteenth century?”