Poison Flower

by Thomas Perry

  She took the two photograph albums and the letters from Indianapolis. She lifted out the tray and found the other thing she had been waiting for-financial papers. She found a tax return and copied his Social Security number. Then she returned the three trays to the island, closed the top, and went back through the bedroom and living room to the door.

  In the hallway she used Rick's key card to operate the ele-vator, and rode it to the lobby. She walked out of the club, returned to her hotel room, and quickly began to pack. She wanted to be far from Las Vegas before Rick woke up. As she prepared to put Martel's letters into her suitcase with the albums, she opened the top one and looked at the signature. "Love, Mom," it said. "P.S. We can't wait to see you on the 25th. Let us know if we should get your old room ready." Jane looked at the postmark. The letter was only six days old.

  20.

  As Jane drove toward the east, the sun behind her illuminated everything so brightly that it seemed to glow against the blue of the sky. Within a few hours the sun sank, and she was propelling herself into empty night. She had spent only one day in Las Vegas and had left without sleeping there. Probably Daniel Martel had not dared to spend a night there, either. He had simply stopped to pick up a few things, and then had driven on toward Indianapolis.

  She spent four days and nights driving and thinking about what she was doing. For most of her adult life, she had tried to guide her runners away from spots that had become dangerous to new, safe places. She had never encouraged her runners to stand and fight. She had taught them to be rabbits, and shown them how to run from the hounds that were hunting them. Each time she succeeded, the hounds failed, and the rabbits got to live another day. This time would be different. This time, when the hound plunged into the next hole expecting to sink his teeth into the rabbit, he was going to find out that a hole didn't always harbor a rabbit. Once in a while what was down there was something that bit back.

  When she reached Indianapolis she drove around the city a bit, trying to get a feel for the area. It was like a lot of other cities in the Midwest, a small central area of tall buildings all jutting upward like a set of teeth, surrounded by a wide circle of one- and two-story buildings stretching outward like ripples in all directions, fading into suburbs.

  Daniel Martel's mother had written to him on an occasional but consistent basis. She mentioned his father regularly, and a few people who seemed to be friends and neighbors, but there didn't seem to be any siblings. Jane searched for the address on the envelopes as she explored. It was on Meridien Street.

  The houses on both sides of Meridien were large, set back on big pieces of land that had been planted and cultivated into lush gardens and vast lawns that looked as though they had been laid down by golf course greenkeepers. The architecture was mainly copied from the British gentry, much as it was in rich neighborhoods in other cities. There was the usual riot of Tudor and Georgian and a few neoclassical mansions, but the American federalist period and the modern didn't seem to offer anything grand enough.

  When she found the correct house number she drove past, scanning it hastily. It seemed to be much like the others. It was three stories high, a Tudor with a steep roof and chimneys on either end. There were thick-trunked old hardwood trees on the lawns and somewhere in the back, serving as witnesses and guarantors of the antiquity of the building. There was a stone fence that separated the house from the next on each side, with exactly the right number and kinds of climbing plants on it-some rambling roses, a few climbers with white or yellow flowers.

  She tried to get a look at the cars, in the hope of spotting Daniel Martel's Porsche or his Mercedes, but the driveway was like the one at the McKinnon house in Amherst, New York, where she lived with her husband, Carey. It ran straight back until it was past the house and then turned and went out of sight. She thought she could pick out the corner of an old carriage house converted to a garage like hers and Carey's, but it could have been something else.

  Meridien continued through some small, elegant enclaves and out into suburbs where the big houses tended to sprawl at ground level on lots that could have accommodated cornfields, and probably once had.

  Jane needed to find a way to keep watch on the Martel house without being caught at it. The problem was that wealthy neighborhoods were generally watched by many unseen eyes, some of them natural and others electronic. Strangers were not especially welcome unless they had specific, useful business there. It was possible to be arrested going for a walk in some cities if you couldn't prove you were there to offer some service to a specific resident.

  She drove to her hotel and turned on her computer. She got an aerial view of Martel's parents' neighborhood, and then a ground-level view from the streets on all sides, and studied them to find a good way to get close. Under her business name, she ran another credit check on Daniel Martel using his Las Vegas address and the Social Security number she'd found on his tax return.

  There was nothing in the credit record yet to indicate he had arrived in Indianapolis. She guessed this meant that he was traveling the way she did and was using cash and credit cards in a false name. It was possible that since he'd arrived in Indianapolis his parents had been paying for everything, so there was no record that he'd spent any money.

  She arrived in the back yard of the house on Meridien at four in the morning, while the world was still dark. She climbed a neighbor's wall and walked along a dry ditch that had apparently been constructed to channel rain runoff from the yards to the next street. She had seen it on the aerial imagery on her computer. She used it to get to the rear of the Martel yard. She wanted to be comfortably settled and able to watch before the first person in the household awoke.

  The first one was a woman servant, who turned on the light in a third-floor window at five, and then turned it off a few minutes later and appeared in the kitchen as cook. She was wearing a dress that wasn't quite a uniform, but was designed for work. It was light blue with a white collar and cuffs and buttoned up the front. Jane watched her in the kitchen making coffee, laying out food on serving platters, and doing other chores that Jane couldn't see well. She went into the dining room and set the table.

  At six thirty the father came down the stairs and into the dining room. He wore khaki pants, a belt of military webbing with a gold buckle, brown leather shoes, and a blue shirt. The wife was down a minute or two later, wearing a dress that appeared to be light silk with a pattern of blue and white like Delft china. These were people of the last generation, but they had the air of an earlier generation.

  She felt a small tug of sympathy for them. She wondered if there was a hidden feeling of doom because they had raised a murderer and were trying to keep from knowing it. Either way, they betrayed no evidence that they weren't delighted with their lives.

  The mother had apparently been a beauty when she was young. She was still straight and slim, and her summer dress had a flow and a dignity that showed she was used to being looked at. Her letters to her son that Jane had read were what old-fashioned mothers wrote-little newsy paragraphs about how "Dad" was doing, and what had been said when they'd had the Stevenses or the Putnams for dinner and bridge. It was like reading a message from the 1940s.

  Jane waited for the son to come down. At nine thirty, she was losing patience. There were probably eight or ten bedrooms in this house. In her experience, what fugitives were doing when they went home was resetting the calendar. They were trying unconsciously to go back to a time before their lives had become chaotic and dangerous. It was a time when they had been safe. She supposed that when he was growing up, this big, imposing house must have provided a sense of security for Daniel Martel.

  She waited until noon, but there was no sign of him. At twelve thirty, the cook came out and supervised a younger woman wearing the same light blue dress in setting a large round table on the patio with utensils and china for something that looked a bit like afternoon tea. At one fifteen, two couples came outside on the patio. The women both wore broad-brimme
d hats and thin summer dresses. One of the men wore a seersucker sport coat; the other wore a loose white shirt with no collar. After a few minutes the host and hostess reappeared.

  There was a pleasant, unhurried lunch followed by a period of sitting at the table in the shade under the old trees drinking lemonade and sparkling water freshened by the younger maid every fifteen minutes. At a little after three the sun, which had hung high overhead so the big trees provided shade, sank lower, to an angle that threw bright, harsh rays into the diners' faces. Jane watched the two visiting couples go through the ceremonial steps. The wife would throw a glance at her husband, who had received very little of her attention until then. He would look at his wristwatch in surprise, as though the device had suddenly jumped up from the ground and wrapped itself around his arm. Jane was too far away to hear words, but she could see all the mimed expressions of surprise at how quickly the time had passed, and then a brief recitation of responsibilities that had to be met-Billy's baseball practice, Madison's piano lesson. The women all hugged each other and then hugged each of the men. The men shook hands, with one quick, tight grip and release. Then the host and hostess walked their guests through the house to the front door.

  Jane waited while the maid and the cook cleared the table and disappeared into the kitchen. The afternoon had been dreamlike, a turn-of-the-century painting of life among the bourgeoisie. But her attention had never flagged. She'd watched to see whether each phase would be the one that signaled the arrival of Daniel Martel. Would he come to see these visitors Wait for them to leave

  She was patient. She had succeeded in preventing him from murdering Jim Shelby, and for now, Shelby was safe. Martel would stay in Indianapolis for a time, probably until he realized how vulnerable it made him to hide in his hometown, or until he began to see the futility of trying to return to a world that had a place for him as a child, but didn't have a place for somebody like the man he had become. It could take months, and it was almost sure to take weeks. She could wait.

  In the old days, during the wars of the forests, there were always warriors out in groups of three or two, or even alone, simply staying in the countries of enemies, living unseen in the woods, and observing. Sometimes they would stay there for a few weeks, sometimes for as long as a year.

  Jane left the yard during the late afternoon, and returned to her hotel. She showered, ate, and changed into clothes for night, then drove to a Sears store and bought a green-and-brown plaid stadium blanket. When she was back in the car, she put a gun and a knife in her jacket. She returned to the house at dark, parked her car on the street around the corner with its front wheels aimed in the direction of the Martel garage, and walked back into the yard. She stationed herself in a row of ornamental shrubs, wrapped herself in the blanket, and became one of them.

  The night was warm, and the windows and sliding doors were all open, with only the screens to cut the sound. She could see into the living room, the kitchen, and the dining room. Upstairs there were lights on, and she could see a couple of ceiling fans spinning to keep the air moving.

  The cook and maid came through briefly to finish the last of the kitchen cleaning, and then disappeared into the upper levels, probably for the night. At eleven, Jane stretched out full length with her feet down the incline of the ditch and her blanket wrapped around her. She slept peacefully for a time in the silence of the residential neighborhood. When the noises came, they were not loud. It was just the sound of the mother closing the first-floor windows and sliding doors.

  Jane opened her eyes, rested her chin on the blanket, and watched the mother appear at one window, then the next. Then she disappeared for a moment. The back door of the house opened, and then Mr. and Mrs. Martel went down the back steps carefully, and walked, arm in arm, toward their garage. Jane looked at her watch. It was after one thirty.

  It was too late for them to be going anywhere for a social engagement. They had to be doing something extraordinary. Jane rolled up her blanket, went low, and trotted quietly along the ditch to the street where her car was parked. She got in behind the wheel, rolled down her windows, and waited. She heard a car door slam, and a moment later she heard a second one slam. The electric whirring of the garage door opener as it raised the door was surprisingly clear in the night air. She heard their car start, counted to thirty, then started her engine and moved ahead to the intersection. She sped up and turned the corner in time to see the Martel car at the end of the block, just disappearing into a right turn.

  Jane had spent many hours thinking about the ways of following a car, because she had needed to be sure she wasn't making herself easy to tail. There were plenty of tricks-using two followers in cars and taking turns staying in sight, changing the driver's appearance every few miles, passing on a long, straight stretch and then watching through the mirror instead of the windshield. Police departments sometimes installed two different sets of headlights so they could change the way their cars looked from the front. Others planted electronic transmitters or GPS units and followed without ever coming in sight. Tonight Jane could only drop back as far as possible and stay aware.

  It was unlikely that the Martels were very good at spotting a tail, but even in a city the size of Indianapolis, there was much less traffic to hide her Honda as the clock moved toward two a.m. She tried to stay behind a car that was going in the same direction, but it soon turned and disappeared. She knew that the moment of greatest danger for her would be when the Martel car stopped for a red light. That would give the driver-probably the father-nothing to do for a couple of minutes but keep his foot on the brake. He would spend some part of it looking into his rearview mirror at whoever was coming up behind him.

  A light ahead of the Martels turned red. Jane continued to the next intersection ahead of her, turned right, went about thirty feet, turned around, nosed out at the corner where she had just turned, and looked up the main road toward the Martels.

  The Martel car didn't wait for the red light. The driver paused at the edge of the intersection for a second, saw there was no car coming to his left or right, and accelerated through and kept going.

  Jane hesitated. If she came after them, the Martels would see her car and think she was a cop who had witnessed the infraction. The driver wouldn't be able to take his eyes off her. She stayed where she was, waiting and watching their car move farther and farther ahead. She waited until it had moved far enough along the slight curve of the road so a glance in the rearview mirror would not include her pulling back onto the road and following.

  There was something she had not anticipated. She had hoped they had simply been told to wait until the middle of the night to visit their son. But they seemed to be doing things that would force a follower to reveal himself. Had Daniel told them to do that Were they so wised-up on their own They didn't look like criminals, and they didn't live like criminals, but neither did their son.

  Jane sped up. Her turn and pause had reduced the likelihood that they would recognize her car as the one behind them earlier. She was virtually starting over again as just another car that happened to be out late. Another stoplight was coming up. It was already red. Probably now that Jane was visible again, they would be afraid to run it.

  No. The driver tapped the brakes at the intersection, then accelerated through it. Jane kept coming. She was far enough behind them so that she arrived at the intersection just as the signal turned green.

  The Martels were speeding. Jane hadn't thought much about it at first, but now that she was closer, she could tell that they weren't just a bit over the limit. They were going at least fifty in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone. She concentrated on keeping her distance steady by timing lights without going too fast. No matter how eager she was to find out where they were going tonight, she couldn't afford to be pulled over by a police officer.

  At the next big intersection the Martel car turned to the left. Jane followed it into the left-turn lane, but she was too late to catch the green light. She watched, and
saw the car far away, making a right turn into a driveway at the side of a large building.

  When the light changed, she followed; then she saw a big red sign that read, "Emergency," and a blue sign that read, "St. Vincent Hospital." She made the turn and followed the driveway up the side of the building in time to see the Martel car stopped under the roof at the emergency room entrance. The wife was out of the driver's seat, and she and an orderly were helping her husband get into a wheelchair.

  Jane drifted past and turned to enter a parking lot about fifty yards away. She swung into a parking space and switched off her engine and lights. The orderly wheeled Mr. Martel into the doorway where the doors automatically slid apart to admit them. The wife seemed torn, doing a little dance toward the doors, then looking back at her car sitting there blocking the entrance circle with both doors open and its engine running. She ran to it, slammed the passenger door, continued around the front end, got into the driver's seat, and drove the rest of the way around the circle.

  Jane realized that there was only one place for Mrs. Martel to go. Jane rolled over into the back seat of her car, then pulled the blanket over her. Seconds later she heard the car pull into the space beside hers. The engine stopped, the door slammed, and she heard the sound of high heels clicking away toward the emergency room entrance. She waited for a few minutes, then sat up. The lot was empty of people again for the moment.

  What this looked like was a heart attack. The wife's erratic driving had nothing to do with being followed. She had not noticed other cars and had not cared. She had just been rushing her husband to the hospital.

  Jane stayed where she was and watched for cars coming up the driveway to the emergency room. There was an ambulance. Two big male EMTs pulled a gurney out the back. There was a small, slim girl EMT with long black hair tied tight behind her head perched on the gurney above the patient, doing chest compressions to restore his heartbeat as the gurney clattered through the doors into the emergency room.