The Face-Changers jw-4

by Thomas Perry

  It was just possible that leaving the theater at the beginning of the film was her way of luring Foalts away from her husband. Officer Foalts decided not to risk letting Mrs. McKinnon see him make a move. Mrs. McKinnon’s call to the airline had been the first thing either of them had done since the beginning of the surveillance that showed promise of revealing anything. His superiors in the Buffalo police department and his colleagues in the F.B.I. would be very upset if she were spooked into canceling her trip.

  Foalts stayed in the back and watched Dr. McKinnon. After what seemed to him to be a long time, he heard the door to the theater behind him open and close. The complex was new and well designed. A person had to enter a little anteroom and walk two paces before opening the inner door, and in that time, the outer door would automatically close to prevent a splash of light from disrupting the movie. Officer Foalts saw the shape he had been waiting for float down the aisle past him—a tall, thin woman, the long, straight black hair hanging at the back of the pale blue dress, the canvas shoulder bag. The shape found McKinnon in the dim light from the screen and sat down beside him.

  Foalts stayed in the back until the film was about to end. He slipped out the door through the tiny anteroom and waited in the rear of the lobby near the back entrance that opened into the enclosed shopping mall. When the film in Theater 5 ended and the crowd streamed out, he faded into it and followed the couple outside. He rejoined Sergeant Horowitz in the chase car, and when the male and female subjects got into the BMW and drove away, the two policemen followed.

  The BMW returned to the McKinnon house, and the team observed lights going on in the upstairs rooms, then going off. Officer Kemmel in the monitoring van heard the usual footsteps, the usual swishing noises of clothes being taken off, water running, toilets flushing, the clicks of light switches, the creaks of bedsprings. There was even less conversation than usual. The male subject said, “You’d better get some sleep. You have an early start,” and the female said, “Uh-hunh.”

  At five A.M. the next shift observed a tall, slim woman with dark hair leaving the house and driving off in the car that had been parked in front. A team was waiting for her at the airport. As expected, the woman checked the bag that had been in the car trunk, then went to the downstairs desk and showed identification that said she was Violet Peterson. F.B.I. agent William Grey surreptitiously photographed her while she was waiting for her plane and moved off to transmit the photographs electronically. Agents Leah Caldicott and Ralph Mandessi boarded the flight to Chicago after her.

  A second set of agents, using Grey’s photographs, waited for her at Chicago, where they followed her onto the flight to Rapid City, South Dakota. They reported that in her entire journey, she appeared to meet no one, and to speak to no one who didn’t work for the airline.

  In Rapid City, she went to a car-rental agency and picked out a red Ford Escort. She drove the car from Rapid City east on Route 90 to Wall, near Badlands National Park, then took 14 north, switched to 63 outside Hayes, drove north across Cherry Creek onto the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. She checked into a motel in Eagle Butte, and the F.B.I. agents settled in to wait. It was ten hours since she had driven to the Greater Buffalo International Airport, and seventeen since she had left the Cinema 12 complex. Then the subject of the surveillance showered and went to sleep.

  At approximately that moment, Jane Whitefield was driving into the parking lot behind the apartment complex in Waterloo, Iowa, still trying to decide what her present to Violet Peterson would be. She supposed it would have to depend on what sort of inconvenience the F.B.I. caused for Vi and Billy. If they held Vi overnight in some women’s jail and frightened her, then a bouquet of flowers would seem like a pretty empty gesture. If she just got to spend a week or two at a few major Indian get-togethers at Jane’s expense, then anything more than the flowers would offend her.

  Jane had no doubt that Vi had done the job properly. When Jane had arrived in the ladies’ room at Cinema 12, Vi had already been waiting. She had quickly changed from her jeans and sweatshirt into Jane’s pale blue dress, then helped Jane braid her hair, pin it into a bun, and fit the baseball cap over it.

  Jane had said, “Are you sure you can handle this?”

  “What’s to handle? I’ll have a plane ticket in my own name to take me to a legitimate party. Billy is envious.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t tell you what this is all about.”

  Violet had shrugged. “It’s about a small favor for a clan sister.” Then she had given Jane a little push.

  When Jane had turned back and kissed her cheek, she had caught a glimpse of the two heads and torsos in the bathroom mirror. There was a blur of shining black hair, Violet’s skin a half shade darker than Jane’s and her eyes black, but their shapes were almost identical. Even the little turn as Violet raised her shoulder to shrug off the peck on the cheek was familiar: Jane had done it herself.

  Jane had left the ladies’ room, slipped into the gaggle of people leaving Theater 8, hurried across the lobby to the rear entrance that opened onto the shiny floor of the mall, and kept walking. She had not looked back until she’d reached the far end of the mall and made her last check to see if the policemen had followed. Then she’d gone out, found the car that Violet Peterson had left for her in the lot, and driven it into the night to the south and west toward Iowa.

  18

  Marshall watched Dale Honecker pick up the color photograph of the dark-haired woman that had been taken at the Buffalo airport. He pinched it with his fingers at the edges as though it were a glossy print, probably because somebody had once told him he would ruin a picture if he touched it. This one was printed by a computer. Honecker rested it on his lap. He squinted, then held it at arm’s length. In a minute, he was going to say yes, that’s the one, and Marshall would have to put him through a few tricks to be sure he wasn’t just saying yes because it would please Marshall.

  “No,” said Dale Honecker.

  Marshall’s mind raced. Had he piled so much weight on the side of caution that he had paralyzed the boy? Could there possibly be two women? “Okay,” said Marshall evenly. “How about these?”

  He handed the boy four photographs that he had printed out from the Wanted List. All of them were pictures taken at bookings, so the women had little black placards under their chins with white NCIC numbers and lines behind them that gauged their height. The boy leafed through them carefully. He handed Marshall one of them. “This looks a little bit like her, but it isn’t her.”

  Marshall looked at the picture. It was Smithson, Wanda Dee, wanted in Alabama for manufacturing and sale of methamphetamines. She had a triangular Anglo-Saxon face with a thin, pointed nose and deep, clear blue eyes. Her hair was long and straight, parted in the middle, and it was bright, luminescent blond. Marshall said, “Something in particular about her?”

  “The eyes, I think,” said Honecker. “And I guess the hair too.”

  Marshall studied the boy. “I thought the woman you saw had black hair. And the eyes … you didn’t know what color they were.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said the boy. He frowned uncomfortably at the floor. “You know those police artists? Maybe if you could get one of them …”

  Marshall nodded unenthusiastically. “You might be right. The problem is, I haven’t had very good luck with them in the past. It’s possible my bosses will send one to you at some point, but as a rule, they haven’t worked too well for me. I heard somebody say once, ‘If they were any good as artists, why would they want to be cops?’ But I think it’s more complicated than that. There’s something about the way faces get recorded in the memory that isn’t like a photograph. You remember something distinctive—the style of the hair, or the shape of the eyes, but your mind doesn’t hold on to the rest. Maybe you can describe what you saw in words, and maybe not. So the artist has to fill in the blanks with something he thinks you must have seen. Then everybody in the country looks at this line drawing. We get calls turning in a
ll the young women who have long, straight hair and pretty eyes. Now, that’s quite a few. In fact, I’d say that they’re one of our greatest natural resources.”

  “It was just an idea,” muttered Honecker. “Trying to help.”

  “I know,” said Marshall. “We appreciate it, too. But see, I don’t know if she did anything, and if she did, sketches can come back to haunt us in court. Usually if you hold the picture up next to the defendant, you have to stretch your imagination pretty far to convince yourself they’re the same person. This makes juries extremely nervous.” He smiled. “If I bring you the right picture, you’ll recognize it?”

  “I guess so,” said Honecker.

  Marshall stood up and walked to the front door of the Honecker house. There were four flies buzzing and making crazy circles to batter themselves against the screen. They could smell the dinner Honecker’s mother was making in the kitchen. Marshall said, “We’ll find the right one. And don’t get impatient. It may take time.”

  He slipped outside the screen door without letting the flies in, then crossed the wooden porch and went down the steps. He was convinced now that Dale Honecker’s memory was not going to be the answer. Honecker had seen the woman, but within seconds he had also seen a dangerous killer. His instinct for self-preservation had forced his attention away from her.

  As Marshall drove onto the highway he conceded that there was no basis for adding anything to what he had already published about the woman. She had long, dark hair, and she was young. He had allowed himself to imagine that she was Jane McKinnon, going around the country on some misguided amateur attempt to save her husband’s old teacher. But the boy had just looked at a clear, fresh photograph of Jane McKinnon taken at the Buffalo airport, and said it wasn’t.

  Marshall had no choice but to lean toward the hypothesis he liked least: the dark-haired woman was likely to have been Kathy Sirini, the young traveler from New York who had rented the car in Youngstown. Dahlman had gotten her to give him a ride, and somehow either won her over or kept her ignorant while she drove him to his next stop. Then he had killed her and buried the body somewhere out here in the Ohio countryside, not to be discovered until a month from now, when some farmer went out to check the alfalfa in the north forty and smelled something awful.

  19

  Dahlman seemed affable, almost manic tonight, talking as though he had done nothing but wait for her to come back so he could have someone listen. And Jane listened politely while she prepared dinner, making a sound only when he paused. As Jane and Dahlman finished their dinner in the little apartment’s kitchen, he said, “It’s been an interesting exercise, living here for twelve days. It’s been nearly half a century since I’ve lived in a big apartment building with people at close quarters like this, but things never change at all. The games the children play are the same. Has anyone ever found out how they all learn that awful chant—nyah-nyah nyah-nyah-nyah? They seem to be born knowing it.”

  Jane said quietly, “You’ve had a hard time, haven’t you?”

  He made a face. “I can’t complain. I’ve been safe, and I’m healing nicely. And I’ve done a lot of thinking.”

  Jane said, “What about?”

  Dahlman said, “Have you ever been in prison?”

  “Yes,” said Jane. “A couple of times, but not much longer than you were.”

  Dahlman nodded. “It’s not entirely different from this. You can’t talk to anyone, really, or open the door.” He said, “I would like to apologize for getting you involved. When I heard of you, I wasn’t sure you even existed, but there seemed to be no reason not to look. There was no other direction that led to any destination at all.”

  Jane sensed that something big was coming. “It doesn’t really make much difference how this happened.”

  “It does,” he said. “You see, I was sure you weren’t going to come back, and I’d be rid of you. But here you are. I think it’s time for you to go back to your husband. I’ll go in the opposite direction for some distance before I’m caught, so there won’t be any obvious connection with you.”

  “Sorry,” said Jane. “It’s a lousy idea.”

  He waggled his head in frustration. “I’m sixty-seven years old. I’ve had a satisfying life, and a useful one. But it’s mostly over. If I’m caught, the people I care about—my children, a few colleagues, my patients—will never believe I’m a murderer. All of that matters. But the rest of this doesn’t. If I go to jail, my productive life is over. If I stay in hiding, my productive life is over. Even if I’m cleared, it could take five years of jails and lawyers. I won’t be able to return to operating on patients at the age of seventy-two.”

  “I don’t know what will happen, and neither do you,” said Jane. “It could be that you’ll think of something that cures cancer.”

  “And it could be that you’ll go home and save the world from hunger, or bear the child who rids the world of ignorance.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “This isn’t the heart-transplant business. You don’t look down at two people on stretchers and say, ‘This one is young and that one is old, so I have to save the young one because she has more potential for the future.’ The truth is, there isn’t much chance for either of us. There’s none at all if you give up.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “They’re already convinced that Carey helped you, and by now they’ve got their suspicions about me,” she said. “If you get caught and convicted, it won’t exonerate us. It will just change our crime from obstructing justice to accessory to murder. And if you get killed it’s worse, because if there’s a trial our side at least gets to say something.”

  Jane moved into the living room. Dahlman looked at her in disappointment. “I see.”

  Jane stopped at the door of the bedroom. “I’m tired. I’ve been driving for a night and a day. Wake me if you smell tear gas.”

  Jane lay on the bed and closed her eyes, consciously letting the muscles at each of her joints relax—first the toes and fingers, then the ankles and wrists, knees and elbows, shoulders and hips, then slowly, each vertebra along her back to her neck. For a time her mind struggled with bright impressions of headlights and the reflective signs along the superhighways, and white dashes between lanes shooting toward her out of the darkness like tracer rounds. Then darkness came, and Jane began to dream.

  In her dream she was lying in the darkened apartment. She heard a sound, like something scratching against the door. She tried to ignore it for a time, but then she realized that she would have to get up and see what it was. She walked to the window beside the front door, stood on the chair, and looked out over the top of the blinds. On the little concrete slab outside sat a big black dog. With its keen senses it was aware of her instantly, and it turned its broad head upward to look in the window at her.

  Jane stepped to the door and opened it. “Go home, boy,” she whispered. “Home.”

  The dog turned and began to walk down the sidewalk into the dark, and Jane had an overwhelming feeling that she had to follow. She stepped onto the little slab and quietly closed the door behind her, then walked off after it. The dog reached the small circle of light from the street lamp at the intersection, then stopped and looked back at her. Jane stopped too. The dog came to her, then started across the street, and Jane went with it.

  She followed it until she came to a small city park with big trees and a tiny old-fashioned bandstand with a roof on it. As she approached the bandstand, she saw that one of the pillars was out of symmetrical alignment. Then the pillar moved. It was a man. Jane called up to the man, “Is this your dog?” She turned to look down at it, but the dog was gone. Part of Jane’s mind knew that she was dreaming: when she’d stopped looking at the dog, it had ceased to exist.

  The man’s soft, gentle voice made Jane’s eyes water and her throat tighten. “What the hell am I going to do with a dog?” It was Harry’s voice, and Harry was dead.

  Harry the gambler stepped forward into the moonlight.
He was as she remembered him, a bit on the short side and balding, with clothes that had once cost more than they should have but had been worn too long. She even remembered the expression that appeared on his face now—apologetic and regretful. “I’m sorry to make you come out here, honey. But I find it hard to go into a little furnished apartment like that. You understand.”

  It was true. The first step into the apartment had triggered Jane’s memory of the place where Harry had died—the color of the carpet, the arrangement of the windows—but while she was awake she had forced the thought out of her mind. Harry shrugged his shoulders and the suit coat rode up on his arms, so he tugged the cuffs, then lifted his chin to straighten his tie. Even in the moonlight she could see the big, crude stitches the undertaker had used to close the place where John Felker had cut his throat. They were like the ones she had taken in Dahlman’s back.

  Jane climbed the steps and put her arms around him. His body was cold and thin. Jane said, “I’m sorry, Harry. I’m so sorry. You got killed in an apartment like that. And it was my fault that he found you.”

  Harry stepped back and lowered his head, but his sad eyes were still on her. He snapped his fingers. “Must have slipped my mind.”

  “I’ve wanted to tell you something for a long time, but I couldn’t,” she said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t think you were important enough, and didn’t try to protect you. It was a mistake.”

  He looked away for a second, then tried to smile. “Will you please stop nagging me about that? I’m just dead, not immortal and all-forgiving.” He reached out and tried to pat her shoulder, but his hand was cold and stiff. “I’m sorry I had to come now.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I’m an expert on long shots.”