by Thomas Perry
Jane looked away and walked faster. Jane had seen a dozen women of almost the same general description since she had stepped onto the curb outside the terminal. Women of her age and size with dark hair—even coal-black hair—weren’t unusual. It must have been the letters the woman had been carrying that had made her worth a closer look.
Jane felt a chill moving up from the base of her spine and settling in her shoulder blades. They knew already. The first letters couldn’t have arrived more than two days ago. How could they have picked up the pattern already? It occurred to her that maybe Henry Ziegler wasn’t safe. Maybe they had caught him somehow, and made him tell them everything. She forced herself to think about her immediate problem.
She stepped into the first ladies’ room she came to and waited to let the two men come back up the concourse. She looked at her face in the mirror and was startled by the haunted look in her eyes. She composed her features, then tried to think. She opened her purse and began to freshen her makeup as the door opened and another woman walked past her.
The two men watching the departure gates could hardly be the only ones in the airport. She had never heard that Seattle was a place where organized crime had a big foothold, but Sea-Tac was a big airport, and they could easily have flown a few men in from some city where they were redundant. No, she thought, not easily. It didn’t have to be easy: they were after billions of dollars.
Jane glanced at her watch. It was a half hour before flight time. She had to calm herself and consider her options. She had already checked her two big bags onto the flight to Minneapolis. If she walked away now, the airline would delay the flight and take the bags off. They never flew bags without a passenger anymore. Stopping the flight, with its implication of bombs and airplane crashes, would attract attention from panicky passengers. It might even draw some of the watchers, if only because watching airports was dull work. The airport security people would certainly open the two big duffel bags and find nothing but envelopes inside. She tried to give a size to that loss. There was no way of knowing exactly how much the checks in this load were worth, but it couldn’t be less than a billion dollars a bag. Some of the corporate foundations Henry had invented had been given names that sounded like midwestern agricultural conglomerates, and they would be in this load. A number of the names of individual families had been designed to sound like old fortunes from automobile companies, railroads, and department stores. But the sums of money weren’t the worst problem. Giving the FBI a few thousand of these checks to study and trace was unthinkable.
She couldn’t walk away from her bags. She would have to get on the flight to Minneapolis to claim them. She could wait here in the ladies’ room until the second boarding call, then make a determined walk to the gate to join the travelers crowding together to get aboard.
Jane looked at her hair. Wearing it long and loose was probably not the best she could do. She pulled it tight, braided it, then twisted the braid and pinned it up in back. She searched her purse for the pair of tinted glasses she had picked up for herself when she had bought Rita’s and put them on. She heard the first call for the flight to Minneapolis, then touched up her lipstick and heard the second call.
She took one last look at herself, turned, and walked to the door. Jane swung the door open and stepped out into the alcove. There was a jolt as a big body bumped against hers and slammed her into a side wall. There was the sharp sting of a pointed object pressed against her spine, and a strong forearm around her neck. The voice was low and nervous, so close behind her left ear that she could feel the damp, hot breath. “You’re going to walk with me. The reason is that I can push this blade between the disks of your spine before you could get a word out.”
Jane felt him tighten his grip with his left arm and push the blade a little harder to scare her. She couldn’t tell from the feel what shape it was, or what it was made of, but she could tell it was short—an inch or two—because part of the hand that held it seemed to be resting against the back of her jacket. It could be a sharpened key. It could even be a pocketknife, if it looked short and harmless enough to the security woman at the metal detectors.
“Now walk back toward the escalators.”
Jane struggled to sort out the sensations. The pressure against her back was strong enough to pierce the skin, if her jacket had not been there for padding. The man was standing behind her now, but when they stepped out in the open, he would have to move slightly to the side, as though he had his arm around her—his left side, because he held the knife in his right hand. That was a weak position, good for slashing, but not for stabbing. He would have to lean toward her if he wanted to stab.
He pushed Jane forward and she heard him take a step to move ahead to her left side. Jane’s next step was slightly to her left to reassure him that she was heading toward the exit, and to trigger the reflex in his feet to move that way faster to keep from tripping over her. As he began to lean to the left, Jane started her third step, dropped to the floor just to her right, and rolled. Her legs came up to her chest, then kicked out together.
The man did as she had hoped. He finished his step to the left, then lunged to the right with the knife. His weight shifted to his right foot, and he was off-balance. Jane’s two-footed kick caught his right ankle and swept his leg out from under him. He hit the slippery floor hard on his right hip and shoulder. His first impulse was to roll to his belly and go after her, so his hand came up, and he remembered that the little knife was in it and that people must be looking. He awkwardly rose to his right elbow to slip the knife into the inner pocket of his jacket.
His eyes rolled to survey the area around him to determine whether anyone had seen the knife. He needed to take his eyes off Jane for an instant. If his peripheral vision detected that Jane was still moving, his mind interpreted it as an attempt to stand and run. But Jane was already bringing her left leg toward him, exerting the strong muscles at the back of the thigh and calf that the body used to push off when it ran. Her heel pounded into the bridge of his nose and snapped his head backward.
Strong hands grasped Jane and lifted her to her feet. People were muttering the useless words that Jane knew would make them feel foolish. “Are you okay?” “Did you trip?”
“I’m okay,” she said. Then, more angrily, like a woman who resented the embarrassment, she added, “I wish people would watch where they’re going.” She was already moving toward the gate again. As she slipped into the river of people heading in the same direction, she ventured a last, irritated glance back. The man was still lying there. She couldn’t tell whether he had lost consciousness or simply couldn’t think of a way to shake off the people surrounding him and run after her without being caught. Then the crowd gathering around him blocked her view.
Jane hurried on. When she sensed she had gone a sufficient distance, she began to run, dodging slow walkers and heavily laden passengers. She made it to her gate just as one airline woman was putting a new flight number on the board behind the desk and the other was preparing to close the door to the boarding tunnel. She handed the woman her ticket, heard the door slam behind her, then rushed to take her seat.
Jane fastened her seat belt and willed the plane to move, and almost immediately, it did. She watched the terminal moving backward as the plane was towed away from it. She sat back, letting the fear and exertion wash over her now. She felt the light-headed, jittery weakness and the pounding of her heart for a full minute. But then the plane stopped and began to move forward. The pilot must have been trying to preserve his place in the takeoff order. His voice came over the speaker and confirmed her theory. A few minutes later the plane was lifting off at the end of the runway and Jane was already reaching out against the exaggerated gravity to take the telephone off the back of the seat in front of her.
22
As the plane passed above the Rocky Mountains, Jane tried again to think of ways to reassure herself. The man who had spotted her in the airport had not gotten up in time to see which gat
e she had run to. It must have been two hundred yards farther on, and she had made a turn where the concourse did, so she had been out of sight. That was an advantage, but it wasn’t safety. The people he had been with were certainly capable of checking the departure list to find out what planes had taken off at about the time when she had disappeared. The pilot had been in a hurry to get his plane into position, so there must have been a number of flights at that time, but it would be easy to eliminate some of them—ones that had taken off from gates on the other end of the airport, or ones that had been delayed. She had to assume they knew she was on this plane. She had to believe they knew when and where the plane would land, and they would be calling ahead to put friends of theirs into her path.
Jane reviewed her preparations again and again as the plane moved over the immense, flat expanse of geometric patterns of green and tan toward the Mississippi. When the man in the seat beside her stood up to go into the rest room, Jane used the moment alone. She collected three little pillows the airline had put in the overhead compartment and sat down. She watched and waited to see whether any of the passengers nearby had gotten curious. The young man across the aisle was asleep, lying back in his seat with his long legs in a tangle on the empty seat beside him. The others seemed not to have noticed her movement. She wrapped her jacket around the pillows and kept the bundle in her lap.
A few minutes later the man was back. Jane stood up in the aisle to let him duck and sidestep past her to his seat. Then she walked down the aisle toward the rear of the plane. She found one rest room with its little slot moved to say VACANT, so she stepped inside, locked the door, and began to experiment with the pillows in front of the tiny mirror. It took her several tries to get the pillows arranged and the elastic waistband of her skirt over the bottom one to hold them. Then she draped her loose silk blouse over the bulge. The pillows were tightly packed with some synthetic fiber that made them firm, so the visual effect was not bad. It might work, if she was careful not to bend at the waist or let the pillows slip to the side.
Jane worked on ways to hold her jacket to conceal the pillows until she had perfected that obscure skill too. Since the man she had kicked in the Seattle airport had probably described the way her hair had been braided and pinned, she loosened it. She found her nail scissors in her purse, but when she tried to cut her hair, she realized that it would take hours with the tiny tool.
She sensed that the plane was beginning to lose altitude, and there would not be enough time. She combed her hair out and made a ponytail. She took a scarf and tied it around the ponytail so it hung down over her hair. Her reflection in the mirror looked as though she had much more scarf than hair. Since the man at Sea-Tac had seen her tinted glasses, she took them off. She heard the female voice of a flight attendant over the speaker above her head. After the first few garbled words she recognized that it was an announcement that it was time for passengers to return to their seats and buckle up.
When the plane landed, Jane walked out with the same weary, relieved look that she saw on the faces of the other passengers. In the tunnel she stayed as close as she could to a pair of men who were big enough to partially shield her from sight, put on her jacket, and let her belly show.
Jane ventured to the edge of the crowd long enough to scan the line of people along the wall for a man holding a sign that said DEBORAH. When she spotted him, she said, “Hi, that’s me,” and kept walking. He set off beside her, and she kept her face turned toward him, not looking in either direction. “I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ve got to make a quick phone call and stop in the ladies’ room. Could you please take my tags and claim my bags?”
The man eyed her belly. “I guess so,” he said. “What are they?”
“Two big green duffel bags with wheels on the bottom.” She tore the two tags off her ticket envelope and held them out. He looked at them without eagerness, so she decided to put an end to his reluctance. “They’re heavy, so I can meet you down there and give you a hand.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said gruffly. “I can handle them myself. You can meet me at the car. It’s in the short-term lot, space 217. Black Audi with tinted windows.” The man set off, glancing down at the numbers on the receipts.
She was relieved that the call she had made to order a car had actually produced one. She had asked the long-distance operator for the number of the private limo service that was first in the alphabet. She had guessed that it would be one with four or five A’s in a row at the beginning. In her experience, the ones who wanted business that badly weren’t usually luxurious, but they were eager. Now all that remained was to make her way to the car. Keeping her eyes forward, she walked along with the crowd. She had gauged the costume carefully, trying not to overdo it. Doctors always told pregnant women not to fly after the eighth month, so she had seen very few late-term women in airports. She had tried for the seventh month—the belly big enough to be unmistakable, but arranged high and not so large as to make her unusual.
Jane spotted a pair of elderly people waiting by a counter. The woman had an aluminum walker with wheels on it, and the man looked nearly as frail. Jane’s ears picked up an electronic chirping sound far up the concourse, and she recognized an opportunity. She stepped closer and caught the attention of the woman behind the counter. “Do you suppose there’s room for one more? I’m a little … tired. I don’t want to be a lot of trouble, but—”
The woman smiled her professional smile. “No trouble,” she said. “Do you have a carry-on bag?”
Jane shook her head. The electric cart chirped up to the counter and stopped with a sudden jolt. The tall, thin young man stepped down from the driver’s seat and said, “Three?”
The woman at the counter nodded, and Jane helped the two old people into a bench seat, then sat beside the driver. The cart started with a jerk and picked up speed. The driver weaved in and out around groups of walking travelers, slowing down only when two groups would unexpectedly converge to close his pathway, then beeping his horn.
Jane’s position beside him was not the one she would have chosen, but there had been no other. The cart moved along with a flashing orange light on a pole and the annoying chirp, so there was no hope of not being noticed. She half-turned in her seat to face the old couple, so her belly would be visible from the front of the cart and her face hidden. She tried to start a meaningless conversation. “Thank you very much for sharing your ride with me.”
The old woman glared at her in such apparent disapproval that Jane suspected some kind of dementia. But the old man muttered in a surprisingly cold tone, “We don’t own it. There’s plenty of room.”
Jane sensed that she was missing something, then surmised what it might be. “Something happens in airplanes. It makes my ankles and fingers swell up.” She waved her hand above the seat where they could see it and added, “After the first flight I could hardly get my wedding ring off, so I didn’t wear it on the way home.”
Jane had been right. Both faces brightened. The old lady said, “Oh, that’ll go away soon enough, but by then you’ll be too busy to notice.” The husband laughed. “But that doesn’t last long either. They grow up and go off on their own, and you’ll wonder where they went.”
Jane saw a pair of watchers over his shoulder. They were walking on opposite sides of the concourse toward the gate she had just left. Now and then they would glance across the open space at each other to keep their courses parallel.
She tried to keep the old people’s attention. “I’ll bet that’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it? Visiting a son or daughter.”
“Wrong,” said the old man. “We’ve been and come back. Been in Los Angeles for two weeks: enjoyed ourselves about as much as we can stand.”
Jane sighed. “I know what you mean. It always feels good to be home.”
“Do you live here?”
Jane said, “Yes,” because there was no choice. If Minneapolis was a stop on the way to somewhere else, the next place would be a sma
ll town, and she couldn’t take the chance that they might know it.
Jane saw the second set of watchers walking along like the first, only this time there were three. One was a tall, heavy-set man who forced oncoming travelers to part and go around him toward the others on the wings. As the three receded into the distance, she realized that the cart must have passed so close to him that she could have touched him.
“Whereabouts?” asked the old man.
Jane told him only the name of the street. It was the address of the apartment she had rented while she had watched Sid Freeman’s house for a visit from the people who were trying to kill Richard Dahlman.
The man said, “I know where that is. Are you right above a lake?”
“Yes,” said Jane. “There’s a beautiful park right below our house, with ducks and squirrels and things.” She lowered her eyes to her belly. “It’ll be a good place to play.”
The old lady was suddenly curious. “Did you live there when they had those murders last summer?”
“Hush,” whispered the old man, as though Jane’s belly might hear.
Jane nodded. “It was only a couple of blocks away. We didn’t hear anything, though. We saw it on the news. My husband said, ‘Hey, isn’t that around here somewhere?’ and sure enough, when they showed it, you could practically see our house.”
Jane detected that an unwelcome dose of real feeling had slipped through her defenses unexpectedly. She could see Sid’s body lying in what had once been the big house’s library, the dirty carpet soaked with his blood. She saw that her accurate memory of the neighborhood had soothed the old couple. It occurred to her that she could have done the same performance in a lot of other cities. In each one there were streets she had seen more clearly than the people who lived there because she had studied them for danger, houses where she had hidden runners, and, in far too many of them, she could conjure from her memory sights that the cameras couldn’t show on television.
