by Thomas Perry
Donna walked into the hallway, threaded her new scarf into the sleeve of her big goose-down coat, stuffed her new gloves into the pockets, and hoisted the coat onto the peg. She sat down on the steps to take off her boots, and felt the distressing sensation of having the melted snow from her last trip soak through the seat of her pants. She stood up quickly, set the boots on the mat, and carefully made her way up the stairs in her socks. She felt unfairly punished. She thought she had learned about tracking snow on the steps early enough. The carpet would have dried by now if there had been heating ducts near the entrance at the foot of the stairs.
If she owned this place, she would damned well have a contractor in by tomorrow noon. She would put a big old brass register right by the door where a person could get hugged by that breath of hot air as soon as she made it inside, and then leave her coat and boots in front of it to get toasted before she went out again. She had a brief fantasy about buying the house from the Monahans and getting the contractor on the phone before the ink on the deed was dry.
She reached into her purse and grasped her key. That made her feel better. It was the big old-fashioned kind that was a shaft of steel four inches long with an oval ring on one end and the teeth on the other. It looked like the key to a castle and it made her feel safe. She had some justification for the feeling. The lock set into the thick, solid door looked about the size of a deck of cards, with big steel tumblers and springs that snapped like a trap when she locked it, and it was easy to see that it had been in there for a long time. If there had ever been a break-in they would have replaced it.
She reached the top, put her hand on the yellowed porcelain doorknob, pushed in her key, and felt the door swing open. The lights were on. She turned and tried to step back down the stairs as quickly and quietly as she could, but she knew she was making too much noise—already had made too much noise just coming in and climbing the stairs—so she began to take the steps by leaning on the railing and jumping as many as she could to land with a thump.
She burned with a hatred for her stupidity. When she had felt the cold wet spot on the stairs she should have known someone else had been here. It wasn’t as though it were a faint clue; it was a warning sign practically branded on her ass. She regretted all of it: leaving the sprawling, noisy, busy apartment complex for this old house where they didn’t even have to think hard about how to get her alone because she was always alone; letting herself rent a second apartment at all, because showing the false documents twice raised the risk by exactly one hundred percent; trusting like a child to big locks and keys—no, hiding the way a child did, not by concealing herself but by covering her own eyes with her hands.
As she reached the bottom and realized with a pang that common sense required that she race through the door into the snow without stopping for her boots, the voice touched her gently.
“It’s me,” said Jane Whitefield. “Don’t run. It’s only me.”
Mary stopped with her face to the door. She turned and looked up. She could see the silhouette of the tall, slim woman in front of the dimly lighted doorway at the top of the stairs. The shape was dark, a deeper shadow, and for a second a little of the fear came back into her chest like a paralysis in her lungs. Then the woman at the top of the stairs swung Mary’s door open and said in the same quiet voice, “Sorry to startle you.”
Mary climbed back up her stairs slowly and deliberately because she wanted to let her heart stop pounding. The way Jane had said it was an invitation to join a conspiracy. People who were startled jumped half an inch and said, “Oh.” They didn’t vault down twenty-foot staircases and dash into the snow in wet socks. That was what people did who were terrified, running for their lives. We’ll let your cowardice pass without comment, and we’ll call it something else. That was what Jane was saying. No, it was even worse than that. She knew it wasn’t merely cowardice. It was the only sane response for a woman who was guilty of so much that any surprise visitor was probably there because he wanted to put her in a bag. That was what Jane was passing without comment.
Mary reached the top of the stairs and stepped into her living room. She looked around for Jane but couldn’t see or hear her, which made her remember the strangeness about the woman that had always irritated her. It was that erect quietness that made other people feel as though they talked too much without getting anything in return, like they were emptying the contents of their brains into a deep, dark hole, where it wasn’t deemed enough to amount to much. She drifted around like she was the queen of the swans, and it was okay with her if anybody with her suspected she thought they were dumb, short, and pasty-faced and their voices were too loud.
Mary heard the sound of the teakettle steaming in the kitchen; then it stopped, so that was where Jane must be. She felt tension stiffen the back of her neck and shoulders. This was her place, and there was some primal insult in having another woman walk in and go through her cupboards. She hated owing this woman so much that she had to endure it.
Mary moved toward her little kitchen just as Jane came out with the tea tray, already talking. “I’m really sorry I had to come in like this. It would make me angry if anyone did it to me, but it seemed best. In the first place, I didn’t know you well enough to be able to predict whether you were likely to have gotten your hands on a gun. You’ve had plenty of time to do it.”
Mary felt the words dissolve what remained of her confidence like a sugar cube in a rainstorm. She had been here a month, and it had never occurred to her to obtain the most obvious way of protecting herself. The decision she would have made was by no means certain, but that didn’t help; it made her even more frightened, because she had not given it even enough thought to reject it.
But Jane was going on, and Mary hadn’t been listening. “… didn’t want to get my head blown off, and I figured if your landlord heard a woman coming up the steps he would assume it was you. I’ve been very careful not to cause trouble by coming here. Nobody followed me and nobody had a chance to see me outside waiting. I saw you coming up the sidewalk, so I made tea.” She held out a cup so Mary could take it.
Mary sniffed it and said, “It’s different.”
“I picked it up in L.A.,” said Jane. “It’s mixed with blackberry leaves. I’ve got a weakness for nonsense like that.”
Mary sipped. At least this woman had not come in and put her hands into the cupboards looking for things. The teakettle and the water were in plain sight. She resisted the feeling. Whatever this woman wanted, she was not going to get it by dropping a teabag into a cup of water. She smiled. “Me too.”
Mary’s smile was like a cat purring while it rubbed its fur against a person’s leg. Jane could see that the smile had not just been practiced in front of a mirror. It had about it the cat’s ease and grace that could only have come from bringing it out and using it to get what the cat needed. She looked around. “I like your apartment,” she said.
Mary longed for her to say something insincere about the furniture.
“You got everything right,” said Jane. “It would be pretty hard for somebody to get all the way up that stairway if you really wanted to stop him. The building looks like a single-family house from the outside, so nobody would look for a stranger here. That’s the important thing. Not what you’ll do if they find you, but being where they won’t look.”
“How did you find me? Or were you here all the time watching me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to see what I did.” Mary realized that she had not said anything. She resolved not to make this mistake again. “To see if I was good enough at it to have a chance.”
Jane said, “No, I don’t play games.”
“Then you changed your mind about me.” Without any reason at all, Mary thought.
“No again,” said Jane. “I expected you to be good at it.”
Mary was tired. She had spent the day trying to get personnel managers to give her a competitive test of business skills when
all they wanted was references, then to give her the benefit of the doubt based on her ability to speak knowledgeably, and the promise that references could be obtained, and finally just to give her a break because she was pleasant, well-groomed, and eager. Now she was sitting in a pair of pants with a wet seat. “Let me try to be more direct,” she said. “You helped me, and I thank you for that. Then you walked out on me. Rather mysteriously, I might add. Now you’re back. You tell me I played a good game of hide-and-seek, but here you are. You seem to have had no trouble finding me, or opening the lock to my door to get in and make yourself a cup of tea. I’ve never had any difficulty believing you’re better at this than I am, but now I’m not just awed, I’m scared to death. So what do you want?”
Jane put down her tea. “You shouldn’t be scared to death. I found you because I knew where to look. If you had been stupid, you would have left Ann Arbor, put yourself in the airports and hotel lobbies again, and inevitably found your way to one of the places where they’re looking. I knew you weren’t stupid, so I was pretty sure you must still be in this town. So what would you be doing? If you had wanted to give up on life you would have stayed put and done nothing. A person can sit in the right locked room forever without getting found if she has enough to pay the rent. I figured you would be too lively to go that way, so I tried the job route.”
“What’s the job route?” Mary asked.
“I knew you had the sense to figure out that the more you do with a fake identity, the better it gets because after a while it’s not exactly fake anymore. You’re not the only woman in town with records that only go back a few years. Pretty soon it will take a lot of digging to detect whether you’re entirely rebuilt or just went through the usual changes—a couple of marriages that brought new names, a couple of moves from one state to another, a career change or two. Having eliminated the possibility that you had left or gone into a coma, I knew you would be applying for jobs. It’s the best way to start a new life.”
“That was enough?” asked Mary.
“The biggest and safest employer in Ann Arbor is the university. I called the personnel office and said I was a member of a faculty committee trying to hire someone to do the accounting and clerical work for a big research grant in the medical school.”
“Why that? Why not something else?”
“Faculty members aren’t hired by the university personnel office. They’re hired by the faculty, so there was very little chance she would look for a personnel file on me and not find it. Medical schools are semi-autonomous, so I could play an insider without knowing anything about her operation. I asked her to send me copies of applications with a bookkeeping background, since I figured that would be your strength. I asked how long it would take to bring them to my office. She said a day or two, so I offered to come over and pick them out myself. That way I didn’t need an office.”
“You got this address off my application. God, it’s easy.”
“Not that easy,” said Jane. “Nobody knows what I knew—your new name, the city, and where you’d have to apply for work if you wanted any.” She stared at Mary Perkins over the rim of her teacup. “Not even Barraclough.”
Mary felt her spine stiffen. She considered her options. She could pretend the name had made no impression on her, and later find a chance to slip away quietly. She could create some kind of disturbance—throw the cup at Jane and run. But even if she got out the door, the only way of taking the next step was to fall back on the name and the credit that Jane had given her. She wasn’t ready. She should have been ready. “How do you know that name? I never told you.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Jane. “You told me you didn’t know who was looking for you.”
Mary Perkins’s mind stumbled, held back from the conclusion it was about to reach. That was right. She had come to Jane Whitefield, and Jane Whitefield kept nagging her about who it was. She hadn’t known. She couldn’t have been working for Barraclough. At least a month ago she couldn’t. “I wanted you to help me,” said Mary. “I only provide the arguments for what I want. You have to supply your own arguments against.”
“All right,” said Jane. “Then let’s take the whole issue off the table. I have decided to help you.”
“In spite of Barraclough?”
“Because of Barraclough.”
“Do you know him?”
“I’ve seen his work.” She looked at Mary closely. “Has he ever seen you?”
The question didn’t make any sense unless the way Jane Whitefield wanted to make money was to sell someone else to Barraclough and say she was Mary Perkins. “I suppose he has lots of pictures of me.”
“Not pictures,” Jane said. “Has he actually looked at you face-to-face?”
“Is that important?”
“Yes. Tell me.”
“We never met,” said Mary Perkins. “When I got out of the federal prison eight months ago, he somehow heard about it. He knew where I was living. How he got that I don’t know. They said it was going to be a secret to help in my rehab—you know, help me fit into the community, keep my old cronies away, and all that.”
“He used to be a cop. He knows how to use the system. He didn’t come for you himself?”
“He sent two men,” said Mary Perkins. “They explained to me about Barraclough.”
“What did they tell you?”
“He’s the director of the Los Angeles office of Intercontinental Security. He’s got a huge organization and a lot of power, and connections with every police department. You can’t get away from him and you can’t fight him. He had read about me.”
“Read what?”
“Everything. Newspaper reports, the transcript of my trial, the investigation reports. I don’t know how he got those either. He had decided that I had a whole lot of savings and loan money hidden someplace. He wanted it. I couldn’t call the police and say he was taking it because I wasn’t supposed to have it.”
“You told me the pitch. You just didn’t tell me where you heard it. Since you’re still running and they’re still chasing, you must have gotten away. How?”
“They didn’t put a gun to my head and say ‘Pay or die.’ I told them I didn’t have it. But they said Barraclough knew I did because he had followed my case.” She chuckled sadly. “You know how prosecutors are. They rave around in front of the jury, flinging enormous, impossible numbers around. This is how much is missing from savings and loans in this great, tormented state of Texas. This is the woman caught with ten dollars of it. All that nonsense doesn’t simply go into the jury’s subconscious; it goes into the transcript. Even if your lawyer proves it’s silly, once it’s been said it exists. It had convinced Barraclough I had some insane amount of money—like fifty million.”
“So Barraclough sent them to pick you up and take you with them, right?”
“What else? If I had that kind of money I couldn’t haul it around in a suitcase. It would take a couple of freight cars. It would have to be in a numbered account in Switzerland or someplace. They said they’d have to hold on to me until I had led them to the accounts.”
“What was the up side?”
“Does this sound like it has an up side?”
Jane said, “When it was all over, what did they promise to leave you? Would you have any money left, or just your life?”
“They said Barraclough had done this quite a few times before. He just took half from each one he caught and let him go.”
“Did you believe them?”
Mary Perkins smirked. “Do I look younger than I am, or what? It was like having a man ask you to take off half your clothes.”
“What happened then?”
“They each took one of my arms and led me outside to their car. It was a two-door, so you had to kind of squinch in behind the front seat. They had the passenger seat already tipped forward when they opened the door. They had turned off the dome light so it wouldn’t go on when the door opened. I remember looking in and thinking, I’m going t
o die. I had just read one of those articles they have in magazines about serial killers and rapists, and it said whatever you do, don’t get in the car. Once you’re in, nothing is up to you anymore; it’s up to them. They pushed me in and I started crying.”
“Because you thought you were going to die?”
“Knew it. I knew I would die if I didn’t do something. The crying was all I could think of. It made them nervous and nasty. One of them said if I didn’t stop he’d hurt me, so I stopped. I could see that made them get overconfident. It was a long drive, and they had been waiting outside my apartment for hours. They had to make a pee stop. They were talking about going to a gas station, but they had a full tank, so they didn’t want to stop and have the gas guy stare at them and maybe remember they had a woman with them. So they waited until they were on the Interstate and pulled into a truck stop. One of them was going to go in, and then the other while the first one stayed with me. I kept looking for a chance to get in there, so I could scream my head off, even make one of them hit me, but they didn’t give me any chance. I tried saying I had to pee too. I tried saying I had to change a tampon. I begged, I promised.”
“How did you manage it?”
“Did I mention it was a two-door car?”
“Yes.”
“They kept the motor running so they could get away fast if something went wrong. I waited until the first one got back. He was the driver. He comes to the left door to open it, and the other one opens the right-side door to get out. I pushed the driver’s seat forward, flopped over on it on my belly, set the transmission in gear, ducked down, and punched the gas pedal with the palm of my hand. The car goes. Not real fast, just jerks ahead and coasts at maybe ten miles an hour. The one trying to get into the driver’s side gets his foot run over. The other one jumps back into his seat. The car moves in this sort of stately pace right into the front of the restaurant—crash! When it hit, it kind of jammed me head-first under the dashboard onto my elbows with the brake pedal pressing on my forehead and the steering wheel holding my butt down and not enough room for a somersault anyway. The one in the seat kind of belly-flopped next to me, only his face hit the glove compartment.”