Perry, Thomas - Jane Whitefield 02 - Dance for the Dead

by Perry, Thomas

  Jane left the Ventura Freeway and continued eastward on Burbank Boulevard. It would still be another hour before the sun came up. At exactly 5:20 she was driving beside the golf course, and as she came around the long curve, she saw his car. It was a new, dark gray Chevrolet parked beside the road on the small gravel plateau above the empty reservoir. She could see the little stream of exhaust from the tailpipe that showed her the car was running. She took her foot off the gas pedal as she approached, and coasted to a speed of under ten miles an hour. She made a left turn onto the lot, then pulled up ten feet away from his car and stared into the side window.

  It was difficult to tell how tall he was when he was seated in the car, but he gave her the impression of being big. His hands on the wheel were thick and square-knuckled, and his shoulders were much wider than the steering wheel. The white pinstriped shirt he had on seemed a little tight on his upper arms, the way cops wore theirs. He was obviously wearing it without a coat to make her believe he had actually come unarmed.

  She looked directly into his face. The corners of his mouth were turned up in a wry half smile. She reminded herself that she had known he would try to rattle her with some intimidating expression, maybe the poker player’s look when he raised his bet: my money’s on the table, so let’s see yours. But his face set off a little burst of heat in her chest that rose up her throat into her jaw muscles. She could not turn away from the eyes. They were light, almost gray, squinting a little because of the false smile, and watching her with a disconcerting intensity. They took in her fear and discomfort, added his savoring of it, and reflected it back to her. His mind was focused utterly on her, on what she was feeling and thinking. His eyes revealed that he felt nothing except some vicarious glow from the anxiety he could inspire in her.

  It was time to lose whoever he had brought with him. Jane stamped her foot on the gas pedal and the car’s back wheels spun, kicking up gravel. It fishtailed a little as one wheel caught before the other and then it squealed out of the lot onto Burbank Boulevard. She drove to the east, took the ramp onto the San Diego Freeway at forty, and sailed into the right lane at sixty-five. She checked her rearview mirror to be sure he was coming, and saw the gray Chevrolet skid around the curve and shoot off the ramp toward her. She kept adding increments of speed while she held the car steady in the center lane.

  She watched the mirror so she could spot his helpers coming up to join him, but no other car on the freeway was traveling as fast as theirs were. She checked the cars ahead, but none of them did anything out of the ordinary either. She waited until the last second to cut back across the right lane to the feeder for the Ventura Freeway, then stayed in the eastbound lane until it was almost too late before she cut across the painted lines to the westbound ramp. She looked into the mirror again, not to confirm that he was still chasing her but to be sure that no other car could have followed him.

  She drove westward until she saw the telephone with the blue “177” painted above it, then turned on her emergency flashers and coasted along until she made it to the shoulder and stopped twenty feet past the call box. She got out of her car and walked to the spot where she had aimed her directional microphone and camera. She saw his headlights after five seconds, then the turn signal, and in a moment he was rolling up along the shoulder of the road to stop behind her.

  He swung his door open on the traffic side, got out as though he were invulnerable to getting clipped, and walked up to her. His arms were out from his sides, but he was carrying something in his hand. She stepped backward to the door of her car. He saw her move and seemed to understand that she was preparing to bolt. He set the object on the ground and stepped back.

  Jane kept her eyes on him as she stepped forward and picked it up. It was a small box with a metal hoop and a thumb switch. She recognized that it was a hand-held metal detector like the ones they used in airports when somebody set off the walk-through model. She ran it over herself from head to foot, then tossed it to him and he did the same, turning around so she could see there was nothing stuck in his belt. The little box didn’t beep.

  Barraclough’s eyes scanned the area around him in every direction, returning to her face abruptly now and then to see if she reacted. He said, “Mind if I look in your car?”

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Mind if I look in yours?”

  The mysterious smile returned. “No.” He watched her as he took a step toward her rented car. She never moved. He said, “You driving or am I?”

  She said, “I’m not getting into a car with you.”

  He looked around him again, as though this meant he needed to do a better job of searching the middle distance for witnesses. He said, “What made you panic back there?”

  “That’s not what I want to talk about. I say it was a trap, you say it wasn’t, I say you’re a liar.”

  His smile seemed to grow a little. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “You’ve been chasing Mary Perkins, I’ve been hiding her. Now I’m ready to sell her.”

  He squinted a little as he studied her face. “Why?”

  She returned his stare. “I’ve been at this a long time. A lot of people would be dead without me.”

  “I’ve heard that,” said Barraclough. “Sometime I’ll get you to give me a list.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said simply. “Mary Perkins isn’t the sort of person I want to risk my life for. She’s not worth it. I gave her a chance and she disappointed me. I know that she’s got a lot of money. You seem to think you can get it. I’m not interested in that kind of work.”

  Barraclough tilted his head a little to watch her closely. “You know what will happen when I have her?”

  “You’ll end up with her money. I also know that if you have her she’s not coming back to ask me how it happened.”

  “That’s true,” he said.

  She took a deep breath and blew it out. She had done it. He had agreed on tape that he was going to take the money and kill her. “This is a one-day sale,” she said. “Tomorrow she goes up for auction. You want her or not?”

  “I want her.”

  “The price is three million in cash. You hand it over and I give her up three weeks later. I know you’ll mark it, so I need time to pass it on before you start tracing.”

  A laugh escaped him abruptly, as though a small child had surprised him by saying something unintentionally profound. “Done,” he said. “Of course, that’s assuming I get to see her in person so I know you can deliver.”

  “You can,” said Jane. “She’ll be along any minute.”

  “Here?” he said. She could see his mind working. He wanted to get back to his car to retrieve the weapon he had hidden, but he had not yet thought of a way to do it without Jane’s noticing.

  “There,” said Jane. She pointed across the ten lanes of the freeway at the white car just like hers gliding onto the shoulder on the eastbound side. “That’s her now.” Mary Perkins’s car rolled to a stop just at the spot Jane had shown her. “She’ll get out of the car so you can see her. Then she’ll pick up something I left for her in the bushes over there. She thinks you’re a wholesaler who sells me stolen credit cards and licenses.” Jane watched Barraclough’s hands. “You’re not trustworthy, so I can’t pay you until she has them.” Mary got out of the car and stepped over the barrier into the bushes.

  Jane let her eyes flick up to Barraclough’s face. “Well?”

  “Hard to tell,” he said. “She’s so far away.”

  “Nice try,” she said. “I saw you start to drool the second she opened the door. You get one more peek.”

  Mary Perkins came back out of the bushes. Jane could see the bulge of the tapes from the video camera and the recorders in her purse. Mary nodded and Jane stepped away from Barraclough, closer to her car. Now was the time when it would occur to him to hold her.

  Barraclough was smiling again. His arm straightened and he waved happily at Mary Perkins.

  “What are you doing?” Jan
e snapped.

  He turned to face her, but his arms were poised in front of him. He looked like a fisherman about to make a grab for a hooked fish. “Just waving to the lady. We don’t want her to think I’m not a friendly wholesaler.”

  Jane’s body tensed, not certain whether to run for the car or attack him. He was signaling someone, and it wasn’t Mary. What had she missed? She jerked her head to the left to look back up the freeway – and saw the man Barraclough must have been waving to. He stepped out of the bushes and ran back along the shoulder just at the entrance ramp. In another two steps he disappeared around the curve.

  He must be getting into another car that had been idling out of sight beside the entrance ramp. Now she saw its lights come onto the freeway and they seemed to jerk upward into the sky before they swung around and leveled on the pavement ahead of it. The car accelerated toward Jane and Barraclough, its right tires already on the shoulder as though it were going to obliterate them.

  Jane waved her arm at Mary. “Go!” she shouted.

  Mary seemed to be transfixed by the sudden arrival of an unexpected car. She stared across the ten lanes of the freeway and watched the red car rushing up the westbound side toward Jane, knowing it was time for her to leave, but not knowing how.

  Jane screamed. “Go! Go! It’s a trap!” She started backing toward her parked car, the adrenaline making her legs push too hard so she half walked and half danced, trying to watch the car bearing down on her and Mary and Barraclough at the same time.

  Mary dropped her keys, bobbed down to pick them up, then got into her car. Jane took one more look at Barraclough and hurried to the door of her own car.

  The headlights of the car Barraclough had summoned dipped down as it decelerated suddenly, moved past Barraclough, and then pulled over. As it slowly moved up behind Janes car, her heart began to pound. Its headlights went out, the driver’s door opened an inch, and the dome light came on. The one in the passenger seat was Timothy Phillips.

  Barraclough opened the other door, pulled the little boy out onto the shoulder of the freeway and yelled, “Hey, Jane! How about a trade? Is he worth it?”

  These were the first words loud enough for Mary to hear across the freeway. She started the engine and shifted to Drive, but her eyes were on the activity going on across the freeway. The little boy must be the one Jane had told her about. Who else could he be? He was scared, straining to get closer to Jane Whitefield, but the big man in the white shirt had a grip on his thin arm and it was hurting him. Anybody could see it was hurting him. Headlights settled on them, grew brighter and brighter, and then flashed past. Were those drivers blind? Couldn’t they see that something horrible was happening?

  The knowledge slowly settled on Mary that none of the drivers knew who the big man was, and you had to know that. They probably thought he was a father who was afraid his son might stray too close to the lane where their cars were speeding past. There was only one person here who had any idea of what she was looking at.

  Mary turned off the engine, got out of the car, and stood on the shoulder of the road. She could see Jane ten lanes away, caught for a second in the headlights of a speeding car, staring back at Mary, her mouth wide open and her arm in motion, waving her back into the car. Her voice reached Mary faintly across all the lanes, but whatever it was saying was only a distraction.

  Mary was concentrating, so there was no room for Jane’s voice. She waited for a moment while a truck barreled past and the hot, sulfurous wind from its passing tore at her clothes and stung her face. Then she stepped onto the hard pavement of the freeway. She walked at a normal pace. She never stopped to wait on the dotted line between two lanes, because anything that was not in motion might blend in. It would take only a second of blindness for a driver going sixty miles an hour to travel eighty-eight feet and kill her. She made it across five lanes to the middle island and rested her fear for a moment inside the barrier before she could face walking across another five lanes.

  Now Jane was much closer, and Mary could see the anguish on her face. “Run! Go back!” Jane shouted. Mary was disappointed. Jane simply didn’t understand.

  Mary looked across the last five lanes at Barraclough. They stared into each other’s eyes, and she could see that he understood. He pushed the little boy back into the red car that had brought him, then ran back along the edge of the freeway and got into his big gray car.

  Mary Perkins’s eyes never left Barraclough after that. She could see him glancing in his rearview mirror as he pulled out into the traffic, then crossed over one lane, then another, then another. He had already gone far past her, but she walked in his direction patiently, watching him take the last two lanes and stop far ahead of her on the center island where she walked. Then she saw his back-up lights come on, and he began to move in reverse on the center margin to meet her. She had never seen anybody drive backward so fast. Oh, yes, he had once been a policeman. They all learned how to do things like backing up on freeway shoulders.

  Timothy Phillips looked out the window of the red car and watched Jane staring in horror at the other lady. But as the man who had brought him here started the car, Timmy saw Jane’s right hand move down beside her leg and beckon to him.

  Timmy got the passenger door of the red car half open before the driver lunged across the seat and clutched his shirt to drag him back. The sudden movement was enough. Jane flung the driver’s door open, delivered a hard jab to his kidney, and snatched the key out of the ignition.

  The driver turned with a pained snarl and started out the door after her. Jane retreated toward the front of the car. The driver heard the boy opening the door behind him again just as his foot touched the ground. He yelled, “Stay there or I’ll kill you,” but half turning his head to say it made him a microsecond slower. Jane had time to take a running step and deliver a hard kick to the driver’s door.

  The door caught the driver’s leg just above the ankle. He winced at the pain, pivoted with his hip against the door to keep it from coming back at him, and rolled out onto the ground. He scrambled toward the rear of the car to lure Jane into an attack. All he had to do was get his hands on any part of her and swing her onto the freeway.

  As she advanced a step, he did his best to look as though he were hurt and vulnerable. He got her to take three quick steps toward him while he hobbled backward, preparing to grasp her and roll back to add momentum as he propelled her into traffic. Jane took one more step, slipped into the car, slammed the door, and hammered down the lock buttons.

  The man heard the engine start as he dashed toward her. Just as his fingers brushed the door handle, the rear wheels spun, bits of loose gravel shot out behind, and he had to step back to keep from being dragged out into the traffic as the car shot past him.

  23

  “Fasten your seat belt, Timmy, and don’t be scared,” I said Jane. She drove as fast as she dared, threading her way between slower vehicles and accelerating into the clear stretches. Even half an hour before sunrise there were beginning to be places where knots of cars jammed all the lanes at once. She turned off the freeway at White-oak, then shot under the overpass and up the eastbound ramp. The traffic was heavier heading into the center of the city. She had intended this as an advantage for Mary, because the slow, close-spaced stream would make it hard for even a superior driver to catch up with her. Now Jane was fighting the inertia herself.

  She glanced down at the dashboard. The gas tank was full. Of course it would be. The car didn’t seem to have a radio, but there was a black box about the size of one mounted in front of the shifter on the hump for the drive-shaft. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “How you got here.”

  Timmy shrugged. “They brought some of my stuff. You know, from the apartment where Mona and I lived in Chicago. There were things they wanted me to identify that belonged to Mona. Then there was another box with some of my clothes and things. The next day I tried to put on my good shoes, but I couldn’t get one of them on because your note was
crumpled up in the toe.”

  “My note?” Once again Barraclough had been thinking faster than she had. Timmy’s location had been kept secret, but the Chicago apartment had not. Barraclough had known that the F.B.I, or the Chicago police would search it. Because he had been a cop, he had also known that after they had preserved and labeled everything that could be considered evidence, there would be a lot left. They would release some of Timmy’s belongings. Barraclough had even known that if nothing else got to Timmy, his best shoes would. He was going to have to look presentable in court.

  “Yeah. So I called the phone number on your note, and the lady told me you weren’t home but to call again when I could. And she asked me what the address was. I thought that was kind of odd, but she said you forgot to tell her. So last night when I called, she told me you wanted me to meet you.”

  Jane held herself in check. It wasn’t Timmy’s fault. For over two years he had been surviving by following whatever incomprehensible directions some adult – Morgan or Mona or Jane – had given him. “What else did she tell you?’”

  “That you told her if I could make it to the door by the garden, I could crawl along between the bushes and the house and slip right through the hedge to the next yard without anybody seeing me. You were right about all of it. Nobody saw me go. Then I walked over two streets, found this car right where she said it would be, climbed in the back seat, and lay down to wait. After a long time that man got in and we drove off. He said we were going to meet you.”