Vanishing Act

by Thomas Perry

  Jane carried the bag of money to his canoe, pushed off, and began to paddle out of the wilderness. As she moved the canoe back up the chain of lakes, she stopped every hour or two, put down her paddle, and dropped something into the deepest places: the rifle barrel and action into Lake Lila, the shotgun barrel into Round Lake, the melted fishing pole and loose eyelets into Little Tupper, each fragment miles from the last one.

  At the portage she had to drag the canoe for part of the way, because it was too heavy for her to carry. When she felt tired, she rested. It took her almost four days to emerge from the forest onto big Tupper Lake.

  She had no way to get rid of the canoe, so she paddled to the Bronco, dug up the battery cables, took the plastic bottles of gasoline off the exhaust manifold and poured them into the tank, loaded the canoe onto the roof, and drove out of the mountains. She reached Lake George after dark and left the canoe at the edge of the water there.

  She used the cash from John Young’s wallet to buy gas in Glens Falls, clothes in Saratoga Springs, and a gigantic meal of pancakes and eggs on the outskirts of Albany. The coffee tasted so good that she bought a sixteen-ounce cup of it to drink in the car.

  A few hours later, she carefully wiped the Bronco clean inside and out while she washed it at a coin-operated car wash in Yonkers. Then she left it parked on the street with the keys in the ignition in Queens near La Guardia. It wasn’t a neighborhood where she could be certain the Bronco would be stolen and disappear forever into the world of chop shops, but it might, and if the police noticed it before the thieves, it wouldn’t matter. It led only to a person who had never existed. If the police started making a list of other people who might have left it there, they would begin with ones who had taken flights out of La Guardia. She walked to the waiting area outside the terminal, took a cab from La Guardia to Kennedy, and bought a ticket for the next plane to Rochester.

  It was after three in the morning when she parked the rental car on the quiet street and walked across the thick grass to the railing. She looked down into the deep chasm at the place where the longhouses had once stood, all running east to west beside the winding stream of the Genesee. She listened, and this time the city was so quiet that she could hear the water down there, running into the rocks and curving around at the far bank to head north to Lake Ontario.

  In the old days the people would have been asleep in the longhouses. Probably, on a cool night like this one she would have been able to smell a little smoke coming up from the coals of the fires. Up here in the cornfields the ground would be bare. Very soon it would be time for Ayentwata, the planting festival, so the women would have begun to turn the ground with digging sticks to prepare it for seeding.

  She heard a dog in a yard a block away give a low bark, and then another dog joined him in a pained, crooning howl. "It’s only me," she whispered. A few seconds later, the low wail of a fire engine’s siren moving past on St. Paul Boulevard reached the range of human hearing and then diminished.

  She walked on along the railing to the place above the rocks. She opened her pack and took out the two big pouches of Captain Black’s pipe tobacco that she had bought in the shop at the airport. She opened the first and held it out over the cliff, then shook it to let the shreds pour down into the chasm and spread in their long fall to the rocks where the Jo-Ge-Oh lived. "This isn’t the stuff you’re used to, little guys," she whispered, "but it must be good because my father used to smoke it." She opened the second package and poured it down to them. "He was Henry Whitefield."

  Then she picked up the knapsack and unzipped the top. She held it out over the railing. "Thank you for my life." She turned the knapsack upside down. In the moonlight, she could see the hundreds of pieces of paper money fall, turn, flutter like butterflies, and drift down toward the dark water below.

  She carried the knapsack as far as the trash barrel at the edge of the park and left it there. Then she got into the rental car and drove back down the street toward Mt. Read Boulevard. At this time of night she expected she could make it most of the way to the Thruway entrance without running into any traffic.

  Jane Whitefield came up the sidewalk in Deganawida in the early morning, wearing the new outfit she had bought in Saratoga Springs. She saw that Jake Reinert was watching her from the old wooden swing on his porch. She walked up the steps and sat down beside him.

  "Glad to see you, Janie," he said. "You might even say relieved."

  "Me too."

  He looked off into the distance at the big old trees planted along Franklin Street, swaying a little in the breeze and fluttering their thousands of leaves. "The fellows we met in California never came to see you."

  "I didn’t think they would." She patted his arm and stood up to go to her own house, but he stood up too, looking a little nervous.

  "The person who did come was a fellow a bit older than you. He came in the middle of the night, like they always do. He had a little boy with him, looked to be about six or seven. He was scared ..." Jane looked at Jake, waiting for the rest of it. "They’re back in my kitchen now, eating some breakfast."

  NOW IN BOOKSTORES, THE LATEST RIVETING JANE WHITEFIELD NOVEL

  DANCE FOR THE DEAD BY THOMAS PERRY

  JANE WHITEFIELD WILL HELP YOU DISAPPEAR,

  IF IT HELPS YOU STAY ALIVE....

  DANCE FOR THE DEAD

  In bookstores everywhere.

  Published by Ivy Books.

  For a glimpse of this thrilling novel,

  please turn the page ...

  1

  The tall, slim woman hastily tied her long, dark hair into a knot behind her head, planted her feet in the center of the long courthouse corridor, and waited. A few litigants and their attorneys passed her, some of them secretly studying her, more because she was attractive than because she was standing motionless, forcing them to step around her on their way to the courtrooms. Her chest rose and fell in deep breaths as though she had been running, and her eyes looked past them, having already dismissed them before they approached as she stared into the middle distance.

  She heard the chime sound above the elevator thirty feet away. Before the doors had fully parted, three large men in sportcoats slipped out between them and spun their heads to stare up the hallway. All three seemed to see her within an instant, their eyes widening, then narrowing to focus, and then becoming watchful and predatory, losing any hint of introspection as they began to move toward her, one beside each wall and one in the middle, increasing their pace with each step.

  Several bystanders averted their eyes and sidestepped to avoid them, but the woman never moved. She hiked up the skirt of her navy blue business suit so it was out of her way, took two more deep breaths, then swung her shoulder bag hard at the first man’s face.

  The man’s eyes shone with triumph and eagerness as he snatched the purse out of the air. The triumph turned to shock as the woman slipped the strap around his forearm and used the momentum of his charge to haul him into the second man, sending them both against the wall to her right. As they caromed off it, she delivered a kick to one and a chop to the other to put them on the floor. This bought her a few heartbeats to devote to the third man, who was moving along the left wall to get behind her.

  She leaned back and swung one leg high. The man read her intention, stopped, and held up his hands to clutch her ankle, but her back foot left the ground and she hurled her weight into him. As her foot caught him at thigh level and propelled him into the wall, there was the sickening crack of his knee popping. He crumpled to the floor and began to gasp and clutch at his crippled leg as the woman rolled to the side and sprang up.

  The first two men were rising to their feet. Her fist jabbed out at the nearest one and she rocked him back, pivoted to throw an elbow into the bridge of his nose, and brought a knee into the second man’s face.

  There was a loud slapping sound and the woman’s head jerked nearly to her left shoulder as a big fist swung into her cheekbone. Strong arms snaked around her from b
ehind, lifted her off her feet to stretch her erect, and she saw the rest as motion and flashes. The first two men rushed at her in rage, aiming hard round-house punches at her head and face, gleeful in the certainty that she saw the blows coming but could do nothing to block them or even turn to divert their force.

  Two loud, deep voices overlapped, barking for dominance. "Police officers! Freeze!" "Step away from her!" When her opponents released her and stepped away, she dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands. In a moment, several bystanders who had stood paralyzed with alarm seemed to awaken. They were drawn closer by some impulse to be of use, but they only hovered helplessly nearby without touching her or speaking.

  The judge’s chambers were in shadow except for a few horizontal slices of late-afternoon sunlight that shone through the blinds on the wood-paneled wall. Judge Kramer sat in his old oak swivel chair with his robe unzipped but with the yoke still resting on his shoulders. He loosened his tie and leaned back, making the chair’s springs creak, then pressed the PLAY button on the tape recorder.

  There were sounds of chairs scraping, papers shuffling, and a garble of murmured conversation, so that the judge’s empty chamber seemed to be crowded with invisible people. A female voice came from somewhere too close to the microphone. "This deposition is to be taken before Julia R. Kinnock, court stenographer at 501 North Spring Street, Los Angeles, California, at ten ... seventeen A.M. on November third. The court’s instructions were that if there is an objection to the use of a tape recorder, it will be turned off." There was silence. "Will the others in the room please identify themselves."

  "David M. Schoenfeld, court-appointed counsel to Timothy Phillips." Schoenfeld’s voice was smooth, and each syllable took too long to come out. Judge Kramer could almost see him leaning into the microphone to croon.

  "Nina Coffey, Department of Children’s Services, Los Angeles County, in the capacity of guardian for a minor person." Kramer had read her name on a number of official papers, but he had never heard her voice before. It was clear and unapologetic, the words quick and clipped, as though she were trying to guard against some kind of vulnerability.

  "Kyle Ambrose, Assistant District Attorney, Los Angeles." As usual, the prosecutor sounded vaguely confused, a pose that had irritated Kramer through six or seven long trials.

  Then came the low, monotone voices that were at once self-effacing and weighty, voices of men who had spent a lot of time talking over radios. They started quietly and grew louder, because the last part of each name was the important part.

  "Lieutenant James E. Bates, Los Angeles Police Department."

  "Agent Joseph Gould, Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  There was some more shuffling of papers and then Julia Kinnock said, "Mr. Ambrose, do you wish to begin?"

  Ambrose’s parched, uncertain voice came in a beat late. "Will you state your name for the record, please?"

  There was some throat clearing, and then the high, reedy voice of a young boy. "Tim ... Timothy John Phillips."

  Schoenfeld’s courtroom voice intoned, "Perhaps it would be a good idea to ask that the record show that Lieutenant Bates and Agent Gould here present have verified that the deponent’s fingerprints match those of Timothy John Phillips, taken prior to his disappearance."

  The two voices muttered, "So verified," in the tone of a response in a church. Amen, thought Kramer. Schoenfeld had managed to sidestep onto the record with the one essential fact to be established in the case from Schoenfeld’s point of view.

  Ambrose’s voice became slow and clear as he spoke to the boy. "You are to answer of your own accord. You are not to feel that you are in any way obligated to tell us things you don’t want to." Judge Kramer could imagine Ambrose’s dark eyes flicking to the faces of Schoenfeld, the lawyer, and Nina Coffey, the social worker. It was a confidence game, as Ambrose’s legal work always was. The kid would have to answer all of the questions at some point, but Ambrose was trying to put the watchdogs to sleep. "Mr. Schoenfeld is here as your lawyer, so if you have any doubts, just ask him. And Mrs. Coffey will take you home if you’re too tired. Do you understand?"

  The small, high-pitched voice said, "Yes."

  "How old are you?"

  "Eight."

  "Can you tell me, please, your earliest recollections?" Judge Kramer clenched his teeth.

  "You mean, ever?"

  "Yes."

  "I remember ... I guess I remember a lot of things. Christmas. Birthdays. I remember moving into our house in Washington."

  "When was that?"

  "I don’t know."

  A male voice interjected, "The lease on the George-town house began four years ago on January first. That was established during the murder investigation. He would have been four." The voice would be that of the F.B.I. agent, thought the judge.

  "Do you remember anything before that, in another house?"

  "No, I don’t think so."

  "When you moved in, was Miss Mona Turley already with you?"

  "I don’t know. I guess so."

  "Who lived there?"

  "My parents, me, Mona."

  "Did you have relatives besides your parents? Cousins or uncles?"

  "No, just my grandma."

  "Did you ever see her?"

  "Not that I remember. She lived far away. We used to send her a Christmas card every year."

  "Did you?" There was the confusion again, as though Ambrose were hearing it for the first time and trying to fathom the implications.

  "Yeah. I remember, because my daddy would put my handprint on it. He would write something, and then he would squish my hand onto a stamp pad and press it on the card, because I couldn’t write yet."

  Ambrose hesitated, then said gently, "Do you remember anybody else? Any other grown-ups that you were with?"

  "You mean Mr. and Mrs. Phillips?"

  "Yes."

  "I know about them. I don’t think I ever saw them."

  "So when you say your ’parents’ you mean Raymond and Emily Decker?"

  "They were my mother and father."

  Judge Kramer’s brows knitted in distaste. This was typical of Ambrose. Get on with it, he thought. An eight-year-old’s distant recollections weren’t going to get Ambrose anything in a criminal investigation. Such meticulous, redundant questioning had bought him an inflated reputation as a prosecutor —laying the groundwork for an unshakable, brick-hard case. It looked like magic to juries, but to Judge Kramer and the opposing attorneys who knew where he was going, it was like watching an ant carrying single crumbs until he had a hero sandwich.

  "So you lived in Washington from the time you were four until ... ? We’ll get back to that. Tell me what it was like in Washington. Did you like it?"

  "It was okay."

  "Were your parents ... nice to you?"

  There was a hint of shock in the boy’s voice. "Sure."

  "How about discipline? Rules. Were there rules?"

  "Yeah."

  "Can you tell me some?"

  "Ummm ... Pick up the toys. Brush your teeth. My father always brushed his teeth when I did, and then he’d show me his fillings and tell me I’d need some if I didn’t brush the ones in the back."

  "What happened when you didn’t follow the rules?" Ambrose was casual. "Did they hit you?"

  Now the little voice was scandalized. "No."

  "Did you go to school?"

  "Sure. The Morningside School. It wasn’t far, so sometimes we walked."

  "So life was pretty good in Washington?"

  "Yeah."

  "What did you do when you weren’t in school?"

  "I don’t know. Mona used to take me to the park when I was little, and then later sometimes I’d go with my friends. She would sit in the car and wait for me."

  Ambrose paused and seemed to be thinking for a long time, but then Judge Kramer recognized the sound of someone whispering. After a second exchange it sounded angry. He knew it was Nina Coffey. The lawyer Schoenfeld said, "I
must point out that this is not an adversarial proceeding, and this part of the story adds no new information to any of the investigations in progress. Miss Coffey has consented to this questioning because she was assured its purpose was for the safety and future welfare of the child. She has a right to withdraw the consent of the Department of Children’s Services if she feels this is unnecessarily traumatic. The child has been over this ground several times with the psychologist and the juvenile officers already. Perhaps we could depart from our regular habits of thoroughness and skip to the recent past."

  Ambrose sounded defensive. "Then would one of you care to help us in that regard to make the record comprehensible?"

  Nina Coffey said, "Timmy, tell me if anything I say isn’t true."

  "Okay."

  "Timmy was raised from the time of his earliest recollections until the age of six by Raymond and Emily Decker. They hired Miss Mona Turley as a nanny when they came to Washington, D.C. He has no direct knowledge of earlier events. He was told he was Timmy Decker. From every assessment, he had a normal early childhood. It was a loving home. Miss Turley was a British citizen and a trained nanny, a legal resident alien. There are no signs of physical or psychological abuse, or of developmental difficulties that would indicate deprivation of any kind." She said pointedly, "This is all covered in the caseworker’s report, so it already is part of the record."

  Judge Kramer felt like applauding. His finger had been hovering over the FAST FWD button, but he knew that he wouldn’t have let it strike. Either you listened to all of it or you were just another politician in a costume.