by John Altman
Instinct told her to show her face as little as possible, but she couldn’t resist turning her head to give a commiserating smile. The mother smiled back. She was about Song’s age, with tired lines around her eyes. Her blouse might be Eileen Fisher. The stain on the lapel might be orange juice.
Song faced the front again. Another person was coming aboard, torn ticket in hand. A teenage boy—rash of pimples beneath a long, greasy forelock. A distressed T-shirt bore the smiley-face Nirvana logo. He looked sullenly at Song, waiting for her to move her pack, then gave up and moved down the aisle.
And still the driver lingered. At this rate …
Two policemen walked beneath her window, less than three feet away. They were not paramilitary. They wore no tactical gear, no threatening black like in the city. These were friendly small-town cops, dressed in light, cheery blue. Your friendly neighborhood police officer, straight from a children’s book that would also feature old-timey favorites such as your friendly neighborhood crossing guard and your friendly neighborhood barber.
The two policemen moved out of her line of sight. Maybe to chat with the driver, maybe to go on about their business.
Or maybe to board the bus.
She would be trapped.
She debated for only an instant, then stood, strapping the fanny pack around her waist. She descended two of the four rubber-matted steps and stopped, leaning forward, trying to see outside without being seen.
Shadows cast by three figures stretched into the center of the road, crossing the yellow lines. Voices were low, secretive, urgent.
She could feel the gun’s weight in the fanny pack. But she would not shoot her way out of this. No, she would walk very calmly down these stairs. She had every right in the world to walk down these stairs. She would smile right into the faces of the cops. If it felt right, she might say something to the driver about holding on for a second before leaving. Just be a moment. She would walk back into the New Moon Café. Slightly pigeon-toed, suggesting some kind of female problem, something embarrassing—can’t hold my wee-wee, or maybe a sodden tampon; don’t make me explain. None of the three men would stop her. Surely, between the back doors labeled employees only and emergency exit—alarm will sound, she could find egress into an alley and slip away.
She felt the strange coolness creep over her again, as it had when the siren came on outside Newark. She could do this.
She descended the last two steps.
The cops stood next to the driver. All three looked at her. One policeman’s trouser cuffs were slightly frayed. The other had a canker sore near the left corner of his mouth. She felt preternaturally alert.
“Do we have a minute?” she asked.
The driver frowned disapprovingly. “Behind schedule already.” As if that were her fault.
The cops were studying her face. Too closely.
“Thirty seconds, okay?”
Without waiting for an answer, she struck off toward the café.
Her stride hitched as the bad hip throbbed.
That caught their attention.
She heard snaps opening on leather holsters.
“Miss?” one officer said mildly. “Hold on a second?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Song ignored him.
“Miss.” More imperatively now. “Halt.”
She walked back into the New Moon Café. The bell on the door dinged. Heads turned. Over the past half hour, the place had filled up. Most of the booths were occupied now: by an aging hippie with long gray hair, a happy-looking middle-aged couple, a business-suited woman absorbed in her phone, a man who might be a trucker—although Song had seen no evidence of a truck—applying himself with concentration to a plate of gravy and biscuits.
The two college-age kids stood by the register, flirting with the redheaded girl. One leaned jauntily against the counter like an actor playing a college-age kid flirting with a girl. Through the cutaway, Song glimpsed the short-order cook, the first nonwhite face she had seen in this town besides her own. He wore a bleached chef’s toque and was pushing something that crackled on the griddle.
She ignored nipping panic. To survive this, she must keep her head.
What would they expect her to do?
They would expect her to run.
So she would attack.
She put her back to the wall beside the door, beside curtains glowing with sweet sunshine. The push broom was here, leaning beside her. And the antique umbrella stand—art deco, brass with a solid marble base. The compact SIG Sauer was inside the pack, inside a Tupperware container, inside a baggie. It would take at least three seconds to deploy.
The door opened again. The bell dinged cheerily. The redhead looked around. Surprise made her mouth into a small flower.
Song used one foot to tip the broom down. The handle fell across the open doorway just as the first cop stepped in.
The cop tripped, sprawling into the khaki-clad backside of the flirting college boy, who spilled across the counter. A cup of toothpicks overturned and scattered everywhere. In a tangle of limbs, the cop followed them onto the tiled floor. The college boy managed to hold on to the counter, awkwardly keeping his feet.
Song watched herself pick up the empty umbrella stand. She watched herself wind up like a home run slugger, using both hands. If the second cop had followed right behind the first …
She swung the stand into the doorway and was rewarded with solid contact and the whoof of escaping breath. Still hyperalert; she smelled coffee, tobacco, a sour tinge of eggs. Beneath it was a trace of aftershave or maybe scented shaving cream—something leathery and masculine.
The first cop was trying to roll over. The second was buckling, down on one knee, struggling to refill his lungs or keep down his breakfast, or both. Neither had drawn his weapon before following her into the diner. A flash of disdain. Amateurs.
She had all the time in the world to unzip the pack, find the gun, and finish them. Instead, she dropped the umbrella stand. It rotated on the heavy base, oscillating like a dropped coin as she stepped daintily around the kneeling cop. She went back out through the front door. No one inside the café called after her.
The bus driver stared. She turned on her heel and walked away fast. No shots rang out. She took the first possible turn, down a path alongside a white picket fence. Red-white-and-blue bunting hung from rain gutters. She cut through a yard, past a doghouse, past an inflatable kiddie pool decorated with ducks wearing skirts, emerging onto a residential street, almost but not quite running.
Cars were parked on roads and in driveways. But soon her pursuers would establish a perimeter, if they hadn’t already. Checkpoints, barricades, dogs. She had to stay off the roads.
She ducked into another yard. Pain radiated from her hip. But adrenaline made the pain distant, academic. She moved past a wraparound porch with rocking chairs and an old-fashioned swing. You could relax in a swing like that, she thought, and enjoy a tall, cool glass of lemonade. Yawn, stretch, and let your arm fall around your sweetheart’s shoulder. Nothing to do but while away a pleasant early summer day. Maybe try for a kiss.
She paused to listen. She heard nothing except twittering birds, a faraway jet plane, and a distant television set, Wayne Brady on Let’s Make a Deal.
She drew the gun, racked the slide. She crossed a backyard that became a rolling field. Weapon held down by her side, straight-armed. Tendrils of mist had yet to burn off beneath the morning sun. Her shoes picked up clots of damp, dewy earth, which meant she was leaving footprints. Damn it.
A dog gruffed somewhere off to her left. Her heart flipped like a trout inside her chest. She bore right.
She paced an embankment. A long hill sprawled down, and for a moment she could see three distinct towns, like sets accompanying a model railroad, straggling into the distance. She passed an old water tower, rusted scaffolding, flaking pai
nt. Cigarette butts and plastic bags and beer cans littered the ground underneath. She passed a chain-link fence with a bold red sign insisting that this was private property.
She reached a brook and walked down the middle, getting her sneakers soaking wet again. Slipping on algae-covered rocks, she climbed back to shore.
A dirt road. The skeleton of an old tractor. How fast would a tractor move if she could start it? Not fast enough. She took the dirt road on foot, staying beneath cover wherever possible.
A helicopter passed, so far overhead she could barely hear it. She hid anyway, beneath a thick canopy of branches, until it was gone.
The dirt road narrowed to a path. The path became rough. She crackle-crunched through underbrush.
She was tired. She allowed herself sixty seconds of rest, then moved again.
Past another flat plain, a soccer field with goals. A low red-brick building stood in the distance. She heard the yelling laughter of small children. Monday morning. School day. A wave of self-pity surged, crested, tried to break over her. She kept moving.
She heard a thread of rising sirens. It faded quickly. Then she heard only birds again.
But she wasn’t fooled by the pretty birdsong. She could feel the eyes above her. Prodding, seeking. Drones, satellites, helicopters. She could not stay undercover forever. She had to get inside.
How far had she come from the diner? A mile, at least. Maybe two. Maybe more. They couldn’t knock on every door. Could they?
She angled across another stretch of backyards, seeking a house without an alarm system decal, with an empty driveway and shrubs or fence high enough to hide a clandestine entrance from prying eyes.
Langley, VA
On-screen, ARGUS searched a thirty-six-square-mile area around the New Moon Café.
Surveillance camera feeds, helicopter feeds, Stingray, Rainbird, facial recognition, gait recognition, police scanners, tollbooth cameras, news updates—they all had nothing.
Footage relayed from checkpoints assembled around a perimeter twenty miles out in every direction—nothing.
On other feeds, DeArmond’s people had taken control of the investigation. They grilled the local cops who had found the woman but then bungled it. They interviewed customers from the diner, the passengers and driver from the jitney—and learned nothing.
A helicopter followed dogs snuffling through countryside. But there was a lot of countryside within the perimeter. And a lot of countryside meant a lot of scents.
The dogs found nothing.
There were also a lot of houses inside the perimeter. Eventually, Dalia realized, they would have to knock on every door.
Once again, maneuverability trumped manpower. Song Sun Young had moved quickly, unpredictably, and left their overpowering force eating dust.
Lake Togue, NY
The little town dozed beneath the summer sun. Rosemary Keefe drove slowly, partly to enjoy the weather, partly because her eyesight was almost gone, even with glasses. She turned onto a block lined with swaying elm and hickory and maple. Simple Cape Cods of a story and a half, modest but sturdy, white and yellow and wine colored. Low ceilings and central chimneys to hold in heat, steep gabled roofs to shed winter snowfall. A Saturday Evening Post town, Rosemary’s husband had remarked when they moved out from the city nearly four decades ago.
Surrounding towns had long since been taken over by wealthy summer folk. But here in Lake Togue, houses remained humble, with nary a tennis court or swimming pool to be seen. Rosemary’s own cozy cottage was fieldstone, with twin dormers like raised eyebrows above the front door. A small porch was lined with potted geraniums and begonias. The backyard was screened on three sides by tall, lovingly maintained hedges.
She parked in the empty driveway and used the top of her door to hoist herself out of the seat, then fetched her single grocery bag from the Jetta’s trunk. She left the car unlocked. In Lake Togue, nobody locked cars, and few locked houses.
Her neighbor Dotty LaVerne, wearing paint-spattered overalls and a flowery sun hat, was spading the soil in her small garden. Rosemary raised a hand in greeting. Dotty raised a gloved one in return.
As Rosemary opened her unlocked front door, a helicopter passed overhead, rotors beating emptily. Just inside the foyer, her big brindle-coated dog turned in excited circles, tail thumping against the parquet floor. “Hello, Rocky. I missed you,” Rosemary crooned. “My baby.”
Rocky licked her hand, then spied something in the front yard behind her. He made a dash for freedom. Rosemary quickly pushed the door shut, stopping him cold.
She put away the groceries: mayo, iceberg lettuce, Pepperidge Farm fifteen-grain bread, and ShopRite cold cuts. She hung the car key on a rack in the kitchen, then went into the living room. After opening a window, she fell onto the couch. Even the effort of a brief shopping trip exhausted her these days.
Rocky found the open window, put his front paws on the sill, and balanced on his hind legs. His ears moved like radar dishes, scanning for squirrels and birds. Of course, he was such a slobbery, good-natured mutt that he wouldn’t know what to do with one if he ever caught it.
Outside, a car passed. Someone down the block had the TV on, loud. Probably Don Bogut, who was deaf as a haddock. Fox News talking heads yelled about something or other. No doubt, Don watched them for the short skirts, not politics or world affairs. The yelling gave way to a commercial. “Beactive Pressure Brace relieves sciatica. Order now and receive a Bealigned Knee Support Cushion at no extra charge!”
A summer breeze graced the room with fresh air. A sprinkler hissed on somewhere nearby. Rocky left the windowsill, fell heavily across the throw rug, and began licking his not-so-privates.
Rosemary exhaled. Only late morning. Shopping already done. The entire day stretched out before her.
The crossword puzzle, she supposed. Then her exercises. Then walk Rocky. Then lunch. Then a nap. She tried not to turn on the television or have her first drink before five. Speaking of which, tonight she would open the Riesling.
She pushed off the couch, grimacing, and moved through the kitchen, almost tripping over the dog, who could be a little dangerous in close quarters. She opened the door to a garage so cluttered there had been no room for the Jetta for at least five years. “Stay,” she commanded.
Rocky stood obediently in the doorway. Humming lightly beneath her breath Elvis’ “It’s Now or Never,” Rosemary commenced searching, her only illumination a shaft of light coming from the open door behind her. Between a moldering bag of peat moss and a motorless lawnmower chassis, she found a slat crate, from which she withdrew a dusty bottle. Holding the label up to the shaft of light, she scowled. Yes, the Riesling from ’ninety-two—perfect.
A figure emerged from the shadows behind her. The bottle of Riesling shattered on the concrete floor.
A bolt of pain moved from her left biceps to her chest, then up the tendons of her neck. She put out one hand for support and found the garage wall, smooth and dry.
The intruder was staring. From the kitchen doorway, Rocky watched with tail wagging—the world’s most hopeless watchdog. Rosemary blocked it all out. Her breath came in short, hard jabs. She closed her eyes. Now the burglar would have every chance to crack open her skull as she stood helpless, eyes shut and mouth agape, struggling to stave off the MI.
Already, though, she could feel the filaments of pain withdrawing down her throat, back up her arm. Not yet, then. With eyes still closed, she reached for her breast pocket. She pawed open the small plastic pillbox, fumbled two tablets into her mouth, and chewed, grimacing at the bitter taste.
At last she opened her eyes again, and faced the intruder.
The woman was around thirty, Asian, with dark eyes burning from deep hollows. She held a small silver pistol low near her right hip, like a thug in an old gangster movie. Incongruously, she wore an embroidered fanny pack.
“How many inside?” the woman asked.
Rosemary hesitated. “Just me.” And after a moment: “And Rocky.”
At the sound of his name, Rocky gave a friendly bark.
The gun gestured, like a gun in a Jimmy Cagney flick. Rosemary turned, mind churning. She couldn’t remember the last burglary in this neighborhood. She couldn’t remember there ever being a burglary in this neighborhood.
Together they moved back into the kitchen. Rocky sniffed the intruder’s crotch, presumptuously but without hostility. The gun gestured again, this time toward an empty chair by the gingham-checked table. Rosemary lowered herself.
The woman came very close to Rosemary and spoke directly into her ear. “Don’t make a sound. Don’t move. Or you’ll regret it.”
She shot Rosemary a final warning glance, then moved silently into the living room. Rocky followed, tail wagging.
Rosemary looked at the portable phone sitting in its charger, almost within reach. She leaned forward to peer into the living room without leaving her chair. The intruder was closing the window, then drawing curtains. Inspecting framed photographs, then moving on to the base of the staircase, momentarily out of sight. Rocky followed close behind.
Rosemary looked back at the phone. She strained to listen. The woman must be searching the house. Was that the creaking of a riser on the staircase?
In the next instant, the woman was back, having made a circuit of only downstairs. Had Rosemary reached for the phone, she would have been caught red-handed.
The woman moved to the kitchen window, looked cautiously out into the backyard. Rocky sat on his haunches, head cocked, tail switching back and forth. At length, the woman turned and regarded her captive flatly. “Where’s the man?”
“What man?” Rosemary asked.
“In the photograph.”
The photograph on the étagère, she meant: young versions of Rosemary and Ralph, standing on an altar wearing white and black—like a salt-and-pepper set, he used to say. The wedding had been held at morning mass, with an all-day feast and reception after. The bride and groom had together sawed through a log, with the traditional double-handled saw. They danced the tarantella, accepted weepy kisses and blessings from old ladies. At twilight, they ran through a shower of rose petals, climbed laughing into a waiting car, and caught a flight to Hawaii. The honeymoon had been a gift from Rosemary’s parents. Her father had owned a hardware store; her mother worked the register. They were not wealthy people—just thoroughly decent sorts, rest their souls, who wanted to give their only daughter a honeymoon gift worth remembering. And in that, they succeeded. As the DC-9 neared the Big Island, Rosemary had taken hold of her new husband’s hand, looked out the window of the descending jet, and thought, Paradise.
