by Thomas Perry
"That's what I want to be," said Linda. "I want to be able to fight back."
"You don't want to fight," said Jane. "You want what I want, which is to get away."
"I guess that's true."
"I was planning on helping you with that. We'll start tomorrow after the appointment at the doctor's office."
The next day was cooler but bright and clear, with a breeze that seemed to Jane to be an early summer treat before the humidity set in. Jane drove Linda along East River Parkway to the edge of the University of Minnesota campus. When she reached Harvard Street she turned left and pointed at the big building that dominated the area. "That's it."
"That's what?"
"The hospital. The Fairview-University Medical Center."
"It's big. And impersonal."
"Two wonderful qualities that we really want right now."
"I was thinking of maybe a small, private kind of place where everybody knows me and stuff."
"I know this seems as though it ought to be about your preferences, but it isn't. When you're having a baby, you've got to prepare for the possibility that things are not going to go smoothly. If they don't, the place you want to be is a big urban hospital with lots of really good surgeons and pediatricians and specialists and fancy equipment and superbly trained staff. We'll go in and interview Dr. Molinari. If you don't love him, we'll keep looking."
Jane drove up Harvard Street until she came to the parking structure for the hospital. They parked and walked to the main building, then rode the elevator up with a pretty woman about thirty years old who looked about six months pregnant. The woman said to Linda, "When are you due?"
Linda shrugged. "Early fall. Late September, early October."
The woman said, "Are you with Dr. Kwan?"
"Molinari."
Jane stood with a fixed smile on her face. The woman craned her neck to look across her at Linda as though she were some obstacle like a piece of furniture. Even the way the woman held herself when she spoke, leaning close to Linda, made it clear she was speaking only to Linda. The elevator door opened, and Jane led the way down the hall to Dr. Molinari's office.
Inside the waiting room, Jane saw that there were five women in various stages of pregnancy waiting for Dr. Molinari or one of his partners. While Jane waited, she found herself studying them, wondering what made it so easy for them to conceive, when it didn't seem to be possible for her. Had she simply waited too long? That didn't seem to be it. Two of them were about Linda's age, but the other three looked older than Jane. As the nurse came to the doorway and called them, one by one, to go back to the examining rooms with her, Jane watched them and compared her body to theirs. Maybe it was all the exercise she had done for the past twenty years, the running and martial arts. Maybe the stress on her body had stimulated some receptor, released some unnoticed chemical, that told the body not to reproduce. There were all of those teenaged gymnasts who never got their periods. Maybe—
"Linda Welles?"
After they had met with Dr. Molinari, Linda Welles decided he was the one. She officially selected him as her doctor, and made her first set of appointments.
When they got to the car, Linda said, "Now we're done with doctors for today. Can you show me some self-defense moves?"
Jane nodded. "I'll show you something that will work for you." Jane drove them out of the city into the nearly flat, empty land to the north. When they had driven for about an hour, she slowed down, looking for a particular spot. Finally, she turned off the road and guided the car along a barely visible unpaved road consisting of a pair of tire tracks winding through a forest of second-growth trees. She stopped in a place that looked as though it had been used as a turnaround. "This ought to be the right sort of place."
"For what?"
Jane pulled the car around so it was facing out again, then turned off the engine. She picked up her purse, opened it, and took out a small snub-nosed revolver.
Linda gasped, "Oh, my God. A gun?"
Jane swung out the cylinder, showed Linda that it was empty, and closed it again.
"Where did it come from?"
"When we stopped at the house in Amherst, this is one of the things I picked up. When I go, I'll leave it with you. It's a tricky thing to have a gun in the house at the best of times. When you expect to have a curious baby crawling around, it definitely has to be both locked up and well hidden. I have mixed feelings about doing this, but I don't see any other way for you to be safe."
"You don't? I thought you would teach me something from martial arts."
"You're pregnant. Even if you weren't, it takes years of practice to learn enough to do you any good at all. Ninety-nine percent of the time, all the practice does for a woman is to make her think she can stand her ground against some male attacker who takes her apart in a second. This works."
"But I've never even fired a gun. And I heard experts on TV say having one is more dangerous than not having one."
"The only experts whose opinions mean much are cops. Every cop in the country has one strapped to him right this minute."
Christine looked at the gun warily. "What do I do with it?"
"We'll buy you a purse that has a center compartment, and you'll keep it there, where you can reach it instantly, but you can also open the other parts of your purse without showing it."
"But how do I use it?"
"That's why we drove way out here. Come on." Jane got out of the car and set off into the woods. "This used to be a farm once. Now it's part of a huge piece of land that's been put together. The Manitou Paper Company owns all of it. Nobody lives around here anymore."
When they had walked far into the woods, they came to a clearing. It looked like a meadow, but the ground was too soft and swampy to walk on. "Stay here." Jane skirted the meadow, walking among the exposed roots of trees. She picked a tree twenty-five feet from Linda, took a white handkerchief from her purse, and hung it on a pair of thorny twigs. Then she made her way back.
Jane stood beside Linda, and opened the cylinder of the gun. "Notice how I open the cylinder. The barrel is away from us, pointed down at the dirt. I don't have a finger inside the trigger guard."
She took a box of bullets out of her purse. "Here. Hold this. It's .38 caliber ammunition. It's what police used to use in most towns until nine millimeter automatics became popular. This load is a little hotter than I would have chosen for you, but people send things to me with the idea that I'll be the one to use them. If you ever fire at anybody, you'll wish it were more powerful." Jane began to load the gun.
"If I lose it or something, will the police trace it to you?"
"No. This one was part of the inventory of a gun dealer who died. Before his death was reported, his suppliers were all paid in full, and a lot of guns and the records that came with them disappeared mysteriously. If somebody asks you, this one was in a trunk you bought at a garage sale in Oregon."
Jane closed the cylinder, stepped to the side, and aimed the gun with a two-hand stance. "This is probably the easiest for you. Shooting a pistol is like pointing a finger. Holding it with two hands doesn't change that. You point, line up the sights on the target. You don't close one eye. Then you squeeze the trigger so the barrel doesn't get dragged off target. This is a double action, so pulling the trigger cocks and fires." She handed Linda the gun. "Do what I did, but don't pull the trigger."
Linda assumed a stance, and Jane adjusted her limbs to make it right. "Your arms should be out ahead a bit more, and your knees flexed, not locked. If you're aiming that at somebody, he's going to want to be moving, so you may have to move, too. Open your other eye, Linda."
"Sorry."
"You're fighting for your life. You can't afford to lose depth perception or peripheral vision. You're not going to be firing at something a hundred feet away. You'll be fifteen at the outside."
"It feels weird to me."
"It won't if you get used to doing it right. Now, some preparation. It's going to be much louder
than you expect. There will be a bit of a kick that will make the gun jump back a little, and the natural tendency is for the barrel to jerk upward. Be ready for it by keeping a good, firm grip on it so you don't drop it. Instead, you want to bring it back down to aim again. Can you remember all that?"
"I think so."
"Then hand me the gun, but keep it aimed downrange." Jane took the gun. Then she handed Linda a set of earplugs. "I picked these up for us at the drugstore. The best would have been to get real ear protectors that look like earphones, but these will do." She put hers into her ears and waited for Linda. "Now I'm going to fire one round, so you can see what I mean."
She aimed and there was a sharp bang, and the handkerchief jumped.
"You were right. That was loud."
"It's worse in an enclosed space. Your turn."
Linda took the gun and assumed the stance. Jane stood beside her and watched to be sure she was doing it right. "Any time you're ready."
Linda fired. The gun jumped up and she winced, then leveled it.
"Again."
She fired once more.
"Again."
This time the handkerchief puffed backward as another hole appeared in the thin white linen. She aimed again.
"How many rounds are left?" Jane asked.
"Two."
"Good. Fire again."
The handkerchief jumped and fluttered downward toward the foot of the tree, but caught on a small branch jutting from the trunk. "There's one left."
"Then fire it."
Linda fired. She was controlling the recoil better, not flinching at the sound, and she appeared to be holding the gun with more comfort and confidence. She lowered the gun and held it out to Jane, the barrel pointed away from them.
"Want some more practice?"
"Yes."
"Then you load it this time."
Jane held the box while Linda opened the cylinder, poured out the brass casings, pushed in another six rounds, and closed it. Jane said, "Hold your fire. I'm going to walk to the tree and put my poor handkerchief up again."
"Okay."
While she went to the tree and returned, Jane watched the way Linda handled the gun. She was careful, she was alert, and she was getting more comfortable. Jane said, "All right. Fire when you're ready."
Linda fired the next six rounds, hitting the handkerchief each time.
Jane said, "You seem to be getting the idea. Do you think you can do that if you have to?"
"I can fire the gun. I don't know about shooting a person."
"That means we're done, I think. I don't have another handkerchief." She scooped up the empty casings at their feet, counted them, and then retrieved the shredded handkerchief. "This wasn't much of an introduction. I just wanted you to be able to load and fire in an emergency. People practice for a lifetime and still keep learning things. What I want you to do when we get back is go through your apartment with the lights on and again with the lights off, figuring out exactly what you would do in an emergency—where you would take a firing position, what you would be able to see from there, what you wouldn't be able to see. Where you would retreat from there. Everything you know and don't have to spend time deciding will help."
As they walked back to the car, Jane suddenly bent down in a clearing, and began picking leaves from a vine with red berries on it that ran along the ground.
"What are you doing?"
"This is partridgeberry. I didn't know it grew this far west. But of course it would."
"But what are you going to do with it?"
"The berries are full of seeds, and they don't taste like much. But you boil the leaves in a little water and make a tea out of it. It's a cure for morning sickness. The old people say it even helps make childbirth easier later on."
"Are you sure it's safe?"
"If you're worried, I'll drink it first. You can watch me for a day and then try it." Jane picked a pound or more of the leaves, then put them in the trunk of the car. "You'll thank me for this."
They drove back to the city. On the way they stopped at a grocery store and replenished the supply of staples and picked up lots of extra food that Linda particularly liked. Jane used a plastic bag from the store to hold the partridgeberry leaves, then loaded the car trunk with groceries. While they were driving back toward the apartment, Linda said, "You're getting ready to leave, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"When everything I can do here is done."
The next morning Linda had her first dose of partridgeberry tea, and her last day of morning sickness. Over the next few days they filled the cupboards with canned and preserved food. They went to bookstores and bought pregnancy and child-care books, magazines and novels. The health insurance card in the name Linda Welles arrived, and they went to the doctor for Linda's next checkup.
One morning, when Linda woke, Jane was sitting in the living room with her suitcase packed. "It's today?"
"I think it's time," Jane said. "You're Linda Welles now. Your identity has held up, and you've been out of sight for a couple of weeks. You're in a safe place with just about everything you'll need, and you've got a car with Minnesota plates. Your neighbors are used to you already. It's up to you now."
"I'm scared to do this without you."
"Don't be. All you have to do is live quietly, take care of yourself, and let the time go by. Do exactly what your doctor says. And don't worry. I'll be back near the end of the summer to help you get everything ready for the baby."
Linda looked relieved. She put her arms around Jane and hugged her, holding on for a few seconds before she let go. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "Thank you, Jane. I'll see you then."
Jane went out, and looked carefully at everything she could see, trying to sense anything that might be out of order. She got into the rental car, then drove around the apartment complex once before she went up the long drive to the main street and turned right to find the entrance to the long highway.
10
Richard Beale had lived in San Diego all his life, but he didn't like the Pacific Ocean. His father had been wasting money on boats since before Richard was born, and this was just the latest boat, maybe the fifth one named after his mother. This one was fifty-eight feet long, all gleaming white hull and deck. The steps and rails and benches and roofs were all outlandish molded fiberglass in soft streamlined shapes, so it looked as though they had melted in the sun and begun to smear. The sun was another thing. Where the hell was the June gloom—the cloud cover that was supposed to make this time of the year dark? The sunlight this morning was the cruel, sharp kind that usually came during full summer. It seemed to always be at the worst angle for the whole day, so no matter where you looked it was in your eyes or bouncing back into them from something like the glass and steel on this big white boat. Even the surface chop of the ocean was full of mirror surfaces that popped up and were swallowed again in their millions, throwing a dancing glare into his eyes.
The monotonous thrum of the two enormous engines below the deck made him feel tired and irritated, and the repeated rise and fall of the boat on the long Pacific swells brought back dozens of episodes of motion sickness. Each time was exacerbated by his expert nonseaman's knowledge of every aspect of seasickness—exactly how bad it was so far, how long it would take to get worse under these specific conditions, at what point he would begin to fear the nausea would lead to vomiting, and how long after that he would accept his fate, surrender to it, and finally welcome it. He stood near the stern and stared back at the harbor.
"Richie."
Ruby Beale's voice was still high and a little screechy when she was straining it, but it had a gravelly unevenness that a lot of old smokers got. Richard turned and looked up the steps toward the flying bridge. That was what they called it: flying. When the ocean was choppy it felt up there as though the boat were trying to fling everyone off it. She was holding on to both railings at the top, her cigarette hanging at the corner
of her lip. She was wearing a brightly flowered orange one-piece bathing suit with a voluminous pair of shorts over it, leaving the flabby white flesh of her arms and calves a feast for the sun.
"What, Ma?"
"Come up here."
"Why don't you come down? I like it down here." It wasn't true. He hated it down here, but at least he didn't feel as though he was about to be catapulted into the sea.
"Your father wants to talk to you."
He muttered, "Oh, shit." That was what he had been dreading. When he had arrived at the marina this morning, he had seen that flinty look in his father's blue-gray eyes. He had hoped the expression was just because it was a bit after six in the morning and the old man was still gruff from being up so early, but even then he had known it wasn't. The old man had told Richard to be there by five-thirty. It had always struck Richard as insane that people always went fishing at that hour. He could understand if they had been on their way to a tiny trout stream in the mountains, but how could anybody think the sort of fish that swam in the Pacific Ocean—half of them a mile below the surface and as big as a truck—would be so picky they cared what time it was?
But Andrew Beale was the sort of man who attached moral values to his own preferences. Men who were worth anything were on deck before the sun's rays touched it, their goddamned gear stowed and ready to cast off the lines. When Richard had roared into the marina parking lot in his Porsche Carrera at six-twenty-five, he had known his father would be less than cordial. As he was stepping cautiously along the little gangplank, he had heard his father saying something to his mother about leaving him on the dock.
Richard tested the lowest step to the bridge, and felt slightly relieved. The darker strip on each step was a substance like sandpaper that kept his foot from slipping, and the double railings on this boat were thicker and more substantial than they'd been on the last one. He fought the rocking of the boat by gripping the rails hard as he climbed, so by the time he was aloft and taking his first step onto the bridge, he felt as though he'd been lifting weights.
His father was at the wheel, staring through the huge windshield at the featureless, changeless ocean as though he could see something ahead that was invisible to Richard. At least the sound of the engines was quieter up here. Andy Beale was a man who looked as though he were made of blocks—big head with a neck invisible from behind, square shoulders in his starched white shirt with epaulets, short khaki pants. He was wearing his old navy blue USS Constance Kerr cap. He glared over his shoulder at Richard to see that he had arrived, but he let him wait.