Vanishing Act

by Thomas Perry

  Twenty minutes later, John Young walked up to the Honda Accord. He put his suitcase into the trunk, hid all of the documents except his new driver’s license in the wheel well, and closed the trunk. Then he got into the car, drove it around the block, and parked it again. From here he couldn’t see the ocean, but he could see the fog coming in, the ocean’s presence beginning to obscure everything else. He sat perfectly still and prepared his mind for what he now had to do.

  18

  Jane stepped off the airplane at five in the morning. While she went about picking up her suitcase and finding a taxi, the sun used the time to rise high enough to irritate her eyes. She had slept the last couple of hours on the plane, but it had only made her feel hollow and light-headed. The Buffalo airport was small and simple, but the emptiness and lack of distractions gave her time to succumb to the feeling that she didn’t want to be in the flat landscape outside the windows. While she was still inside an airport, she was still in transit, in motion. She could turn back and choose a gate, and beyond it would be the world. But once outside the door, she was only in western New York again, back where she had started.

  At other times when she had arrived here, the sensation had been relief that she was finally home. Even the grimy, wet pavement of Genesee Street used to feel friendly to her. Today she clenched her teeth until she was on the Thruway, and then the houses she could see beyond the fences were small, dirty, and depressing.

  She had no trouble understanding it, because she had been trying to prepare herself for this morning from the second when she had walked out of the hotel in Vancouver. She shouldn’t be here. She should be with him. She reminded herself that she had invented all of the rules, and what they said was that a guide was not in the business of transporting people with all their attachments to other addresses—a guide took them out of the world. When she set the rabbit free, he had to be a new rabbit. He could only be that if he was alone.

  When he arrived unencumbered and uncomforted, he would be forced to form new relationships, to dig deeper into the new ground and quickly become indis- tinguishable from the people around him. People who had never had anything happen to them always seemed hard and unchanging, but they weren’t. Human beings were vulnerable and malleable. Within a couple of years they picked up regional accents, walked differently, changed their preferences and habits without ever noticing it. They didn’t do it to fool the chasers; they did it because it was the only way to touch the people around them, and touching them left an imprint, made them like the people they saw every day. People needed not to be alone.

  The cab took only fifteen minutes to reach Deganawida, and then Jane took over. "Turn left at the next light. Go straight for two lights. Turn right up here. It’s the third house from the corner, the one with the green door."

  The cab had just made it out of her driveway and Jane was picking up her suitcase when Jake Reinert came outside. It was only six-thirty in the morning, but there he was, all dressed and walking stiffly outside with shower-wet hair combed straight back on his head. She was too tired for Jake. "Hi, Jake," she said, and hurried toward her door.

  The old man danced down his steps and, with a haste she couldn’t remember seeing in years, stepped across both his lawn and hers, leaving deep, wet depressions in the saturated grass. "Hold up, Jane," he said. "Got to talk to you."

  She set down her suitcase on the porch and got out her keys. "Sure," she said unenthusiastically. "Come on in."

  She swung open the door and hurried to the keyboard on the wall to press in her code and turn off the alarm system. When she turned around, Jake was inside and shutting the door. "You had a burglary while you were gone."

  "Oh?" she said. "Did they get caught?"

  "Not exactly."

  She had been expecting this, right up to the word no, and she assumed that she was going to have to face a big housecleaning because they would have vented a little of their rage on her belongings while they searched. It didn’t matter. She never kept records of her clients. Her clothes were the only expensive things in the house, and it would probably make her feel better to spend the next few days buying new ones. "Why not exactly?"

  Jake seemed to be shuffling his thoughts into logical order. "Here’s how it happened. They broke your back window, here." He took a couple of steps toward it to show her the plywood nailed over the break. She could see the black fingerprint dust the police had used all over the glass, but he answered the question she hadn’t asked. ’’That set off the alarm at the police station. They heard it ringing inside, so they started to run. But I woke up, and turned on my porch light just as they were coming around between the two houses. You know how bright that is. It’s a two-fifty flood. Like daylight. It was so bright it startled them. They all turned to look right at it for a second, then covered their faces and ran to their car."

  Jane was so exhausted that she felt giddy. She started to laugh. Jake’s floodlight was so powerful that on the few occasions when he had turned it on, she had been furious. "You really did get your money’s worth on that light, Jake."

  "The hell I did. The damned hardware store sold Margaret the fixture years ago, and when I got a look at it and took it back, they wouldn’t accept it. The bulbs cost five dollars even in those days. You could use it to jack-light deer."

  "Well, for once I’m glad you had it. They didn’t get inside at all?"

  "No," he said. "Not with the light and all. And of course they knew an alarm must be connected to something, and how long could it take for the police to get here in a town this size?"

  "How long?"

  "Too long. Maybe four or five minutes. By then they were probably that many miles away."

  "Well, if they didn’t get in, then nothing’s lost," she said, and lifted her suitcase to take it toward the bedroom.

  Jake ignored the hint. "I saw them."

  "Yes," she said noncommittally.

  "Really saw them," he said. "Saw them so clearly it was like a flash picture. There were four of them, and not kids, either. Grown men. When I turned on the light, one of them started to pull out a gun. He couldn’t see me, because the switch is inside by the front door."

  "Did you describe them to the police?"

  "Sure, but they’re not from around here. The Deganawida police aren’t going to pick them up and put them in a lineup for me."

  "I don’t think they could do a lineup for you, Jake. They have to put in extra people to fool you, and you know everybody," she said. "But if they were just passing through, at least they won’t break into somebody else’s house tomorrow."

  "Jane ..."

  "What?"

  "You know the chief, Dave Dormont, he’s a good friend of mine. I pulled him out of Ellicott Crick one time when we were kids. The Rowland boys had tossed him in and I was ten years older, and ... Anyway, he’s a really good cop. Maybe it’s because he got picked on when he was little, so he doesn’t put up with the strong hurting the weak. He was an F.B.I, agent for years."

  "I heard that," she said.

  "That wasn’t just gossip. I was saying he might be able to help."

  "Oh," she said. "I don’t think I need anything special. Look around. Unless they wanted some women’s clothes ..."

  "They weren’t after your stuff," he said quietly. "And you know it."

  "I do?"

  "I said your house was burglarized, and you didn’t get scared or run around looking to see what they’d taken. I said ’they,’ instead of ’he,’ and you didn’t say, ’How many?’ When I said I saw them, you didn’t ask what they looked like. You knew what they looked like because you’ve seen them too."

  "Jake," she said carefully. "You know I love you and I value your friendship and I don’t forget the things you did for all of us kids when we were little. It didn’t matter whose kids were whose, we all piled into the car and fought for the window seats and lined up for Popsicles. But I don’t need any help."

  "You mean I’m wrong?"

  "I mean
this is a conversation we’re not going to have all the way through."

  He stared at the floor for a moment. "All right. I just want you to know that it won’t matter if it turns out to be your own fault. I saw those four, and I know men like that don’t just come out of the blue after a young woman in Deganawida. You have to go where they are to attract their attention. How it happened doesn’t matter to me. I’m on your side." He started for the door, then stopped. "And thanks for not lying to me about it. You know I’d hate that."

  "Yes, I do," said Jane.

  Jake went out and closed the door, and she hurried to lock it behind him and activate the alarm system. She blew out a sigh of exhaustion, frustration, and despair. She decided she would face her life better after a bath and some sleep. As she walked into the bedroom upstairs, she saw that the light on her answering machine was blinking. Her heart stopped, and she actually heard herself gasp. Did he know her number? Why not? He’d been in here alone for days, and it was on the dial. Maybe something was wrong. She carefully pressed the button, superstitiously afraid that somehow she could press the wrong one and erase it.

  "Jane?" It was a woman’s voice. "You know who this is." There was a pause. "I wanted to let you know I made it. I’ll never forget what you did for me. Never." There was some complicated clicking, and she heard two seconds of dial tone before the machine disconnected. It was Rhonda Eckerly, and the message was at least a week old. Jane released the breath she had been holding. She could hear the happiness in Rhonda’s voice, her throat so tight she was almost choking on it. Jane tried to feel the happiness, but she couldn’t. She had wanted it to be Felker. Even though it would have been a stupid thing for him to do, she wanted to hear his voice. She wanted him to be as stupid as she was.

  Jane lay in the bathtub for nearly an hour, until the water was cold and her fingertips and toes were wrinkled and every molecule of dust from the road had been soaked off. Then she put on sweats and lay down to think. She awoke on top of the covers at four in the afternoon, already thinking about the police.

  She sat up and dialed information to get the number they used for normal business. "Deganawida police," said the deep, resonant voice.

  "Hello," she said. "This is Jane Whitefield. I just got back from out of town and I understand I had a burglary?"

  There was a short pause. "Are you reporting it, or did you already?"

  "The police were here already."

  There was another short delay, and the voice came back sounding cheerful, so he must have found what he was looking for. "Yes, ma’am."

  "I just wanted to know if there was anything I had to do. I was gone when they were here."

  "Well, no," he said. "If you find anything missing, you should come fill out a report. Your insurance company will need a copy of that."

  "Nothing’s missing. They never got inside."

  "Okay," he said. "I’ll just make a note."

  "Good," she said. "Thank you."

  "Oh, and one more thing." Where did they all learn to say that? "If you see any suspicious activity, be sure to call and we’ll check it out. Sometimes they come back."

  "I sure will," she said, and hung up quickly. She sat cross-legged on the bed and considered. The fact that the four men had come here at all was an immense relief. It meant that they had completely lost the trail in Olcott, only a few miles from here. If they hadn’t even gotten inside the house, they hadn’t learned anything about her that would have helped. Whatever they learned from now on was useless. There was no logical way for them to piece together the trail from Olcott to John Young of 4350 Islington, Apartment B, Medford, Oregon.

  She walked down the stairs and took his picture out of her purse. The best course of action would be to take it into the kitchen and burn it. Then it occurred to her that the picture didn’t lead anywhere, either. If they had been following him, they didn’t need a picture. And if they had seen him come put of this house, they already knew she knew him. She stopped in the dining room and looked at the boarded window. It was special glass put in by the alarm people, and in order to get to it, the men had ripped the special conductive screen over it.

  Jane picked up the telephone in the living room and dialed the alarm company’s number. She had perfected the nervous-young-woman-who -lives-alone voice, so the man on the other end was eager to send a technician to replace the window in the morning.

  Then she called Cliff.

  "Janie, Janie," he said. "You do the weirdest things to my cars."

  "Is it broken?"

  "No."

  "I didn’t paint it, did I?"

  "No."

  "I didn’t keep it too long."

  "No, you just parked it out in the boonies."

  "Cliff, I’ll make you a deal."

  "You’ll wash and wax it, and I won’t charge the wear-and-tear fee and the pickup fee and the reshelving fee? Gee, I don’t know ..."

  "No," she said. "You’ll forget your fees, and I’ll forget my refund."

  There was a shocked silence. "Jane, you okay?"

  "Why?"

  "You don’t seem ... normal."

  "You know a lot of normal people, Cliff? You have a lot of them come by to rent a car?"

  "Well, no, but—"

  "I’m just tired. I’ll try to screw you out of some money next time. Thanks for handling things."

  "Sure, Janie."

  The next morning when she went out to get her mail, the man from the alarm company pulled into the driveway. It took him twenty minutes to fix the window, and then Jane said, "Can you wire the vent in the peak under the roof for me too?" She said it with a sad look in her eyes, so he didn’t argue. "We’ll just put it on your next bill," he said, and hurried to get his ladder off the roof of his truck.

  For the next three days, she went out only at night and in the early morning to run on the long grassy strip along the river. She was too agitated and impatient to read, so she cleaned her house, then invented chores that would make it cleaner, and kept moving all of her furniture into new relationships. When she had finally settled on an arrangement that placed all of the furniture along the walls so that her living room was a vast open space, she did stretching exercises and Tai Chi in the middle of it. In the evening of the fourth day, she acknowledged that it was time to go out and face Jake.

  He had been spending all of his time watching. He had painted the whole side of his house that faced hers, planted geraniums, mowed his lawn, and dug out every nascent dandelion. Finally, in desperation, he had altered the habits of his long lifetime and taken to reading his newspapers and magazines in his yard.

  Jane walked across her back yard and into his and sat down on the grass beside his lawn chair. After a minute he said, "Am I imagining it or are people getting dumber?"

  "I don’t know."

  "Hardly a day goes by when I don’t read about somebody doing himself some real harm when if he’d just called up and asked me, I could have told him what to do."

  "Who is it this time?"

  "Take your pick. Today it’s Washington, but there’s never a shortage of the mentally needy. I ought to hang out a shingle."

  "You’ve done everything else."

  "What?"

  "You’ve painted that wall on my side maybe three times."

  "It’s the weather side. Takes special care."

  "Jake, I’ve decided we’d better talk some more before you fall off a ladder peering in my window and hurt yourself."

  "Very thoughtful," he said.

  She chose her words carefully. "Those four men weren’t looking for me. They were looking for a friend of mine. He was the guy you saw knocking on my door. I helped him to go away."

  "I’m not supposed to ask questions, I take it?"

  "I’m telling you the things you have a right to know," she said. "He’s safe because they can’t find him. We’re safe because they’ll know he’s not coming back here." She stood up and smiled. ’’The end."

  He nodded, his lips pursed
in thought. "Why did you change your mind about telling me?"

  "A lot of reasons. One is that I don’t want you to decide one day to have a talk with your friend Chief Dormont; you can’t be expected to keep a secret unless you know it’s a secret. Another is that if he or someone like him comes to my door some night, I don’t want you to think I’m in danger and haul out the old twelve-gauge and blow his head off."

  "You’ve done this before, haven’t you?"

  She didn’t answer.

  "You said ’someone like him.’ That’s it, isn’t it?" he said. "The secret isn’t him, it’s you."

  "Telling would hurt me," she agreed. "It would hurt me a lot." She stared into his eyes for a moment, until she had seen whatever she was looking for, and then she released him. "I’ve got some shopping to do. You need anything?"

  "No," he said. "No thanks." He watched her go. The long brown legs and the strong, erect back made her seem taller than she was, but not tall enough for this.

  Jake set the newspaper on his lap and stared off at the big trees along Franklin Street. The little girl next door hadn’t grown up to do something as normal as having a little outlaw sex. She was—well, hell—she was Jigonsasee. How could she think he wouldn’t know? Did she expect him to live for sixty years in a town called Deganawida and never bother to find out why they had chosen a name nobody could even spell? They used to teach it to kids in the grammar schools, although God knew what the hell they were teaching them now.

  Maybe she was crazy. White people went crazy and thought they were Jesus Christ or Napoleon, but those two would strike an Indian woman as having no more to do with her than a couple of Australian marsupials. Besides, whatever sex was really about, one of the things it did was determine the way people thought about themselves. He had never heard of an adult woman who identified with a man.

  Jigonsasee would make sense to her, he thought. Sometime in the distant past, a woman lives in a bark lodge all by herself on the trail that runs east and west below Lake Ontario a few miles from here. She feeds the warriors who pass by on their way to murder each other. One day, off the lake comes a canoe with a lone Huron in it who has paddled all the way across from the Canadian side. He’s a fugitive, a man in exile from his tribe up there. He’s been skirting the land, looking for the smoke of somebody’s fire so he can bring them his message. The message doesn’t seem like much, since all it really amounts to is that peace is better than war. His name is Deganawida.