by Thomas Perry
She went out to her car and drove back to the apartment complex. She walked to the front door again and buzzed Christine's apartment several times, but there was still no answer. She saw a small car coming up the main road of the complex. Its turn signal began to blink as the car approached Christine's building. Jane pivoted and went back down the steps as the car stopped in the driveway. The woman in the car looked young, only a couple of years older than Christine, with wavy red hair. She appeared not to notice Jane as she pressed her remote control and the iron gate across the entrance swung upward. The woman drove in and turned to the right, and Jane cut across the flower bed and sidestepped into the garage just before the iron gate came down again.
Jane stopped beside the nearest car and sat down on the pavement between its grille and the cinder-block wall. She listened as the woman who had driven in turned off her engine. That was reassuring to Jane. If the woman had seen her slip inside, she would have kept the car running, and probably driven out again. Jane waited and heard the door slam and echo in the enclosed space, then heard her high heels—pock, pock, pock—go to the door and into the building.
When Jane heard the door swing shut, she got up and moved to it. The door was steel, and it was locked. Jane reached into her purse and took out a bookmark made of thin, flexible plastic. She slid it into the crack between the door and the jamb, then moved it down to the metal guard beside the door handle that kept people from slipping credit cards into the space to open the door. She pushed the plastic a few times until it slid the lock's plunger out of the way. She tugged the door open, stepped into the stairway, and climbed up to the corridor. When she was at Christine's apartment, Jane used the plastic bookmark again, went inside, and closed the door.
Everything was wrong. The air smelled old, as though no window had been opened for a long time. Jane felt uneasy. She walked into the bedroom. The bed was made. Jane bent down and sniffed the pillowcase. There was a very faint perfumy scent from Christine's hair, but there was also a thin layer of dust.
Jane noticed a copy of Vogue by the lamp beside the bed. She stepped closer and glanced at the date: September. It was a month old, because Jane had noticed that the October magazines were already out. Under it was a copy of American Baby. There was no address sticker on the front of either magazine. Christine didn't subscribe, almost certainly because she was only here using the name Linda Welles for a few months. She had undoubtedly bought the magazines at a supermarket or drugstore, where the only issues for sale were the latest. Would she buy them and not get around to reading them for so long?
Jane went back through the living room and into the kitchen. She reached out to the refrigerator door. Before it was open an inch she knew. There was plenty of food—butter and eggs on the top shelf, squash, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, tomatoes in the bottom drawer, a steak in its market package. Jane looked at the date on the open milk carton. The milk was about two weeks past its "sell-by" date. She looked at the steak. It was gray. The label's "sell-by" date was three weeks ago.
Jane closed the refrigerator, turned around in the kitchen, and studied the apartment in a new way. Now it was a place that Christine had abandoned or been taken from. Jane knelt on the floor and examined the tile from the side, then eyed the carpet in the living room. She didn't see any stains or streaks from a big cleanup. Nothing in the apartment seemed to have been broken, and she couldn't see large footprints on the carpet. Whatever had happened here had been quiet and neat.
She walked into the bathroom. The electric toothbrush was still plugged in, charging. The razors, lotions, makeup, bubble bath, shampoo, and conditioner were all still here. She looked closely at the bathtub. It was clean and dry.
As Jane went back into the bedroom, she checked the windows, looking for one that had an open or damaged latch, but she couldn't find one. She went to the closet. The clothes Christine had picked out at the mall were all hanging on their hangers. The apartment looked as though Christine had left it to go out on an errand. Jane entered the second bedroom. The baby things were all still there. She moved to the living room again, found the telephone book in a drawer beneath the phone, and looked up the number of the hospital where Christine had been planning to deliver. As she dialed the number, dozens of possibilities crowded one another in her mind. Christine could have been admitted early because of complications, and been lying in bed to avoid a miscarriage. She could already have had the baby prematurely, or be in labor right now. She could have been subject to paranoid fear, decided the apartment wasn't safe and checked into a hotel. Christine could have met new friends and been invited to stay with them. She could have fallen down and broken a leg.
"University Hospital."
"Hello," said Jane. "I'm calling to find out whether you've admitted my niece, Linda Welles, as a patient. That's W-e-l-l-e-s. She'd be in maternity, a patient of Dr. Molinari."
"One moment please. I'll check for you."
Jane waited, holding her breath. The woman's voice had sounded warm and motherly. Maybe that was a good omen.
"No. I don't see her here."
"Is it possible she's been admitted and already discharged? I've just arrived from out of town."
"I'm sorry, but discharge information isn't on my computer. You said Molinari, right? If he's the admitting physician, you should probably check with his office. I have the number right here. Do you have a pen?"
"I have the number, thanks."
After a few rings, Jane got Dr. Molinari's answering service. "I'm the aunt of one of Dr. Molinari's patients, Linda Welles, and I need to have the doctor or his office call me as soon as possible about her. I'll be at her phone number." Jane read the number off Christine's telephone.
It was thirty-five minutes before the doctor returned her call. "Doctor, I'm Linda's aunt. I was with her when she first came to you, and we've talked a few times since then."
"Of course I remember you," said the doctor.
"I'm in town now to help her during the delivery and the first month or two with the baby. I'm at her apartment, and she's not here, and I'm worried. Is she all right?"
"I'm very glad you called," he said. "I haven't seen her for nearly a month. She skipped her last couple of checkups. My office has been calling and sending her reminder cards, but we haven't heard from her. I don't have her file here, but as you know, she could deliver any time now. Having regular checkups is essential to ensure her well-being and the health of her child."
"I know," said Jane.
"If it's a question of the fees or transportation, we can always work something out."
"No, there's nothing like that," said Jane. "I was calling because I thought she might have been admitted to a hospital. She had been talking about visiting another aunt before the baby is born, so she may have done it and forgotten to tell us. Thanks, Doctor. We'll be in touch."
"Good-bye."
Jane couldn't be sure exactly what had happened, but she knew she had to exhaust a few possibilities. She opened the telephone book again and made the same call to all of the hospitals in the area. There was nobody named Linda Welles in any of them. She called the police and asked if Linda Welles had been arrested or involved in an accident. She asked about the gray Volkswagen Passat, and was given four numbers to call to see if it had been towed. After three hours on the telephone, Jane ran out of numbers. She went outside, drove her SUV to the hotel, picked up her suitcase, and checked out. She went back on the interstate and headed west. When she reached a patch of highway with the traffic thinning as it moved away from the city, she took out her telephone and dialed the number of Sharon Curtis's house in San Diego. She waited while it rang, but no voice-mail system or answering machine took over. Jane drove faster.
As Jane drove, she remembered conversations, things she had told Christine about being Linda Welles. Christine had nodded and said, "I understand," or "Don't worry, I'd never do that," when she had told her of possible mistakes. Jane had tried to mention everything she could think
of that might happen and how to respond to it. But the main lesson had been intended to instill the right attitude. Not being found was mostly accomplished by not wanting to be found. It involved cutting every tie to the past. It required not doing anything risky for a very long time, and making a consistent effort to avoid being easily visible. If Christine had been doing those things, then she should have been safe.
But Christine wasn't safe. If she'd detected danger and had to flee the apartment, she would have called Jane or found another way to let her know. She had been gone for at least three weeks, and maybe more, which meant she'd had plenty of time to send a letter. Her car was gone, and she could have driven to Amherst or De-ganawida in two days and started over. But she had done nothing.
If Christine had planned even ten minutes in advance to leave voluntarily there was no reason to leave her toothbrush, her good clothes, or any of the rest of her belongings. She had not run from here, either. If enemies had been at her door, she would have had to leave through a window, and she couldn't have relocked it. The apartment was still neat, with nothing out of place, so she had not been dragged out, resisting.
Suddenly, Jane knew exactly what must have happened. The four chasers had come to Minneapolis—how they had found Christine was unknowable for now—and made their way to her apartment complex. They had watched the building, and after a time, had seen Christine's car emerge from the underground garage and come out the driveway. She had driven somewhere by herself, probably at night. She had not been hiding long enough to pick up the knack some runners had of acquiring friends and allies quickly, so she had been alone. When Christine arrived at her destination—the parking lot of a supermarket or a shopping mall—conditions had been right.
In her mind's eye, Jane watched. The four saw Christine take a few steps from the gray Passat, then drove in quickly and stopped between her and her car. The two men held something over her mouth so she couldn't scream and dragged her into the car with them, while one of the women wrenched her purse away. The driver, probably the other woman, threw the car into gear and drove off. The woman with Christine's purse searched it, found the car keys, and drove the gray Passat off after the others. If it hadn't happened almost exactly that way, Christine would have had time to reach into her purse for the gun, the gray car would still be wherever she had left it, or someone would have had a chance to see and help her. The whole abduction would have taken no more than ten seconds, and probably closer to five.
Jane wished that she could get on an airplane and not have to drive the vast distance ahead, but putting herself in airports and planes would leave her at the other end unarmed and visible, and this time she couldn't afford either of those things. Jane stayed on the road for several hours at a time, trying to keep moving. She stopped only when she had to, and then only long enough to use the rest-room, top off the tank, and buy food she could eat in the car.
As she moved west, the distances she could see began to extend ahead for miles, and the driving became a simple question of staying between two white lines and preventing her speed from increasing enough on the long, straight stretches to attract the attention of the police. In the late afternoon, when the sun sank low enough ahead of her to get in her eyes, she pulled over at a rest stop and slept two hours, until the sun was beneath the horizon and she could again drive into the darkness.
26
Jane drove across the border from Nevada into California at three A.M., her headlights making the phosphorescent markers on the black highway gleam. The slopes and curves in the darkness of the high desert made her feel as though she were above the world, swooping and climbing and banking. She kept the car above the speed limit, because the passing of time was making her anxious.
As she had driven across the country for the past three days she had felt a growing sense of impatience that was becoming unbearable. Coming into California made it seem that she was at the end of the trip, but she still had a long drive ahead of her. She would reach the heavily populated areas near the coast in the morning rush hour, so she tried to beat the other cars, pushing her speed higher.
At six A.M. when she smelled the ocean and then saw it at Dana Point, she knew she was nearly finished. If she drove much longer, she would be in danger of falling asleep. She made it as far as Capistrano, saw signs for motels, coasted off the freeway, and checked into the first one that didn't look as though it was part of some criminal enterprise. She brought her small suitcase inside, locked everything she could lock, took her gun out of her purse, checked the load and the safety, and put it under the pillow beside her where she could reach it instantly.
As she lay there drifting into sleep, old stories that her grandfather—her hocsote—had told her began to present themselves in her memory. In the stories there were people who lived alone, away from the longhouses and the communal fields. They built small shelters near isolated trails and pretended to offer hospitality to strangers who passed by. Sometimes the host would be a solitary man, sometimes a group of sisters, or just one lone woman who used her beauty to lure men to her house. But always, somewhere in the forest nearby, there would be a pile of victims' bones.
In the stories, a traveler would be out in the forest searching for a lost friend or a missing relative. While the lonely host was something much worse than he seemed to be, the searcher was much better, and he would find a way to outwit the man-eater. Eventually, Jane's grandfather always got to the part when the traveler saved himself and killed the evil one, then stood over the pile of victims' bones. Her grandfather would give an abrupt jump and yell, "Get up, quick! The tree is falling on you!" The bones would instantly reunite, and the revitalized victims would run in all directions to get out of the way.
Jane felt a moment of amusement as she remembered, and then an onrush of sadness. If only that could happen. She would begin her resurrections with her grandfather, partly because he had been forced to stay dead the longest, and partly because he had taught her the trick when she was a child. And then he could teach her other old tricks, so she could bring back her father, with his sharp black eyes that sometimes seemed shiny and wild like a crow's, and her mother, all milky white and fragrant, with sky blue eyes like Jane's. She and Hocsote would bring them back together, in one instant.
She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. When she awoke her muscles felt half-paralyzed from long immobility and it was the middle of the afternoon. She had paid for two days in the motel because she had known she would not be out by noon. She got up slowly, but after she'd had a shower and dressed she felt strong and fresh.
The first thing she did was take out her cell phone and call Sharon Curtis's number. She had called at least once a day since leaving Minnesota, but had never reached her. One of the rules she had taught Sharon to follow in situations like this was never to leave a message for a runner, because there was no way to ensure that the right person would be the one who heard it. Apparently the warning had stuck, because Sharon had not left Jane a way to leave a message. Once again there was no answer. It was summer, and Sharon was a teacher, so maybe she had left town for the vacation. She hoped the reason was that Sharon was having something nice happen in her life. This year Sharon must be thirty-one. She had always been pretty, with her blond hair and thin figure, and by now, she probably had a boyfriend. Even if she moved in with somebody, Sharon would be the sort of woman who kept a second, secret place where she could keep a bag packed with a little money and the papers to document the second false identity Jane had bought her years ago.
Jane had always told her runners to beware of vacations. Airports, resort hotels, and restaurants were places where people were recognized. But Sharon was a special case. There were only two men who wanted to harm her. She had known both of them so well that she could probably predict their movements accurately enough to stay out of their way.
But what Jane hoped for most was that Sharon was absent for a different purpose. She hoped that Christine had seen something that worried her in Mi
nnesota and had simply come back to San Diego to seek refuge with her. Sharon would have the sense to take her somewhere and hide her.
Jane took the 5 freeway toward Encinitas, pulled off early, and drove to the neighborhood where Sharon lived. She remembered the way to the house, even though she had not been here in ten years. She took all of the usual precautions to be sure that nobody was watching the house from any of the nearby buildings or parked vehicles.
Jane parked two houses away and walked to Sharon's front door. She rang the doorbell and almost immediately heard the sound of footsteps inside, then heard the footsteps stop. She stood still on the porch for a few seconds while she was being recognized through the peephole. Then she waited a few more seconds while the streets and buildings nearby were being studied. She had taught Sharon these things. A person's closest friend could come to the door on an innocent visit and be followed by killers.
The door opened and Sharon stood there, smiling. She reached out and pulled Jane inside, shut the door and locked it, then hugged her tightly. "I can't believe it's you," she said.
"Hi, Sharon," said Jane. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, thanks to you. And how have you been?"
"Not so good right now. I'm afraid I've lost track of our mutual friend."
"Lost track?" Sharon seemed to turn a ghastly pale color. "Of Christine?"
"I set her up in an apartment in Minneapolis and said I'd be back just before the baby was due. I was there, she wasn't. Sharon, have you heard from her?"
"Oh, God. Yes. I did. It was about two months ago. She called me on the phone one night."
"What did she say?"
"I don't remember, exactly. It wasn't that she was in trouble or thinking she'd been found or anything. I'm afraid now that I might have done the wrong thing."
"What was the wrong thing?"
"I told her that if she wanted to survive she was going to have to give up things like calling her old friends on the phone. I said that running meant giving up her old self and her old relationships and trying to be somebody new. I warned her that Richard knew about me, so he could have had his hired criminals tap my phone and wait for her to call."