A String of Beads

by Thomas Perry

  Once when Jimmy was taking his turn to drive, he said, “I’m getting a little tired of small-town America. Can we switch to the thruway for a couple of hours?”

  “It’s better to stay off any road with tolls,” Jane said.

  “Are we out of money?”

  “No. It’s not the tolls that bother me. It’s the booths. They all have cameras mounted on them, and the police have been using them more and more often to see if a car with a license plate they’re looking for has gone through.”

  “Do you think they know this car or its license number?”

  Jane shrugged. “Can’t tell. The people who chased us out of Cleveland saw it. If all they need to do is get you into a jail, they might pass that information to the New York State police through some innocent-looking intermediary.”

  “Slow back roads it is, then,” said Jimmy. “I’m always shocked by how far you think ahead.”

  “It’s not clairvoyance. It’s avoiding situations that might increase the risks. If you don’t want to be found, you stay away from cameras, particularly ones operated by police agencies. You try to be sure as few people see your face as possible. None of these precautions is hard. They’re just inconvenient.”

  “The hard things are more than inconvenient. It’s hard not to be able to go home, and not to be able to check up on my mother, to be sure she has what she needs. Half the time her car isn’t working right.”

  “You’re luckier than most people in that way. Your mother is surrounded by people who care about her. There are probably four hundred people on the reservation who would love to drive her wherever she wants—one a day for a year and a month.”

  “But none of them is me.”

  “I think you’ll be back before long.”

  He smiled. “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll know when we get there. We’re just passing through New York State on the way, because as soon as you cross a state line, you’re no longer at the top of the list of fugitives. You’re somebody else’s problem.”

  In the evening Jane rented a motel room near Saratoga Springs, and the next morning after breakfast they crossed into Vermont. In the afternoon they drove through miles of hills covered with thick, old-growth forests, and then crossed the Connecticut river into Lebanon, New Hampshire.

  Jane drove north through Lebanon. There were restaurants, a couple of plazas full of huge discount stores, a few hotels, a sign for a hospital that was back from the road at the end of a driveway that wound out of sight among the trees. Next the road narrowed again and they passed rows of clapboard houses, most of them white, built with steep, smooth gray roofs designed to make the deep snows of the winter slide off them. And then they were in Hanover. As they drove past small stores selling clothing, food, furniture, and housewares, they reached the center of the small town and were surrounded by the lawns and the white spires and redbrick buildings of Dartmouth College.

  “Dartmouth,” said Jimmy. “We’d better get out of here before somebody notices I don’t fit in.”

  “We look perfect,” Jane said. “The place was started as a school for Indians. Thayendanegea’s sons were among their first graduates. It must have been in the seventeen seventies or so.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot you went to Cornell. You and Thayendanegea are Ivy Leaguers. Is this where they taught him to call himself Joseph Brant?”

  “No,” said Jane. “After his father died, his mother married a Mohawk named Brant. She had the same clan name as I was given—Owandah. That’s why I was curious about her when I was a kid. What do you think of the town?”

  “It’s pretty nice. Not big, but nice. I’ll bet it’s a bear in the winter, though.”

  “Is there some part of Haudenosaunee country that’s not a bear in the winter? Some tropical island in the middle of Lake Ontario?”

  “Not that I know of, but I can dream.”

  “You remember I said I’d know the right place when I saw it?”

  “Sure. Is this it?”

  “I think so. It’s hundreds of miles from the last place anybody saw you, and it’s not on any of the usual routes people use to get anywhere. It’s a college town, so maybe half the town is made up of strangers from all over the world. Most of them won’t even arrive until early fall. It’s got everything necessary for a comfortable life, but it’s too small to attract creeps. It’s hard to rob somebody you’ll see again in the next week.” Jane turned onto Wheelock Street and kept going slowly, looking at the buildings and the people walking on the sidewalks.

  Jimmy said, “It seems pleasant enough. How long do you want to stay here?”

  “That’s the next thing I have to tell you,” said Jane. “Not long. I’m leaving you here on your own for a while.”

  “You are?”

  “Somebody has to go back and find out why people you don’t know are chasing you. There isn’t any way for you to go with me. You’d be recognized.”

  Jimmy said, “No. Please don’t do that. At least one of the guys in Avon killed Nick Bauermeister. And one of the guys in Cleveland fired two rounds into our car.”

  “You see the problem?” she said. “The number seems to be growing. I don’t know why. And one of these times they’re going to succeed in killing us.”

  They stayed at a Marriott hotel in Lebanon near the hospital for the next two nights while Jane found an apartment to rent. She picked one that was on the lower floor of a house near the downtown section of Hanover on Chambers Street and rented it as Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Kaplan. She filled out the application, paid the deposit and a month’s rent with her Melissa Kaplan credit card. She listed her husband’s profession as “disabled veteran” so nobody would wonder why he never went out to work, and hers as “sales” to explain why she was going to be away most of the time. It took less than a half hour before she received the call telling her that the application had been approved. She bought a bed, a dresser, a couch, and a laptop computer. Then she set up an Internet account under Melissa Kaplan’s name. The next day she bought a set of dishes, a table and chairs, filled the refrigerator with groceries, and spent the night on the new couch.

  In the morning while they were having breakfast she said to Jimmy, “Today is the day.”

  “Are you—”

  “Sure? Yes.”

  “What time is your flight?”

  “No time. I’m taking the Greyhound bus to Boston. The bus stop is at Wheelock and Main, within walking distance from here. Then I’ll fly from Boston to Buffalo, and arrive tonight.”

  “I could drive you to the Boston airport. In fact, I could drive you to Buffalo.”

  “Not a good idea. I’ve got everything worked out.”

  “What’s everything?”

  She opened her purse and began taking things out. “Here’s some cash. It’s nearly five thousand dollars. Pay for things with it—food and so on.” She put a thick pile of hundred dollar bills on the table. “The rent, electricity, water, and gas are all paid for a month. If a bill comes due, write in the number of this credit card and sign Melissa Kaplan’s name. Try to keep your fingerprints off things like that. There’s a box of thin disposable rubber gloves in that drawer, and you can use them for handling mail. That reminds me. Don’t write letters to anyone, or use your phone to call any number but my cell.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “I’m stupid, but I learn.”

  “Just remember all the things I’ve taught you about staying invisible. If you have to go out, do it mostly at night in the car. I’ve filled the tank with gas so you’ll be able to wait awhile before it’s empty again. Keep the tank at least half full in case you have to get out quickly. Don’t start conversations with people, but if they speak to you, smile and answer in a friendly way. After that, don’t linger. Have your fake life story re
ady, and rehearse it when you’re alone. You know what it has to be—dull, average-guy stuff. Nothing anybody can use as an interesting story about a guy she met at the Laundromat. Wear the clothes I bought you when you go out. Look clean and neat. Before you leave, take a look out the window to see what other men have on that day. Right now the men I saw on the street are wearing polo shirts, shorts, sneakers, baseball caps. Keep the other stuff for evenings or cooler weather.”

  Jane looked up at the ceiling. “What else? Be observant, but don’t seem to be staring at people. There’s no reason to believe anybody knows you’re here, so you don’t need to look too hard. The main thing is to remember that every contact is a risk. Minimize risk. Anything I’m forgetting to say? Any questions for me?”

  “You know I feel terrible about this, right? The idea that you’re doing something dangerous for me makes me sick.”

  “I know that,” she said. “If it helps, I’m not going back to fight any battles. I’m going because if I can find out what we’re running from it will give me a way keep us both safe.” She patted his shoulder and lifted her backpack as she headed for the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If you have to get out in the meantime, do it fast, and then call me later.” The door opened and closed, and Jane was gone

  IT WAS AFTER NINE AT night when Dr. Carey McKinnon drove along the highway toward home. Even after dark he would be able to see the house in the next mile, he knew, because he’d been using this route since he was a small child. The McKinnon house was an old one, built along the side of a minor Seneca trail. In 1726 the French had built Fort Niagara about twenty miles from here to control the place where the river flowed into Lake Ontario, and when the British and Iroquois took it in 1759, a McKinnon had been at the nineteen-day siege.

  A few months later the former soldier built his two-story log-and-mortar house and began to farm and trade with the Senecas. Later he sheathed the house in fieldstones, and expanded the structure beyond the simple rectangle it had been. The house today still stood on a remnant of his farm, and it had been expanded periodically over the next two centuries. Most of the trees in the ten acres around the house had been alive at the time the house was built, all of them now three or four feet thick and very tall—white oak, black walnut, sycamore, bitternut hickory, sugar maple, chestnut. The next few generations of McKinnons had been doctors, and the farming they did on the side became less and less important. If Carey had been the sort of fool whose pride in his family depended on their long tenure in the area, marrying a Seneca woman was the perfect cure for that folly. How long had Jane’s family been here? Ten thousand years? Twenty? He missed her, and it seemed that almost any thought he had led him back to her. Worse than missing her was thinking about the way they had parted. Worse than that was the worry.

  This time when the big stone house came into view, there were lights on in the first-floor windows. He searched his memory, trying not to leap to conclusions, but he remembered turning off the last light when he had left for the hospital before dawn. His foot involuntarily stepped harder on the gas pedal, and the BMW took the turn into his driveway a bit faster than he had intended. He pulled around the house, craning his neck to see into the lighted windows, but all he saw from the car was ceilings. He drove into the garage that had once been the old carriage house, and then trotted to the kitchen door. It was unlocked.

  He swung the door open and saw her standing on the other side of the big old kitchen, a figure in black. The doctor in him took note that she seemed thin. She said, “Pretty fast driving, Doc. If you roll your car when your wife is away, who will call the ambulance?”

  He crossed the kitchen and held her in his arms. “I must have been showing off for you.”

  “It’s not necessary,” she said. “I’m already sufficiently seduced. You’ve got me on your hands for life.” They shared a long, slow kiss, until Jane gently separated herself from him and held him at arm’s length. “You don’t seem that mad at me anymore.”

  “You don’t seem that mad at me, either.”

  “I’m quietly holding a grudge. It’s late, and I’ll bet you’re starving. I made us some dinner.”

  “I thought I smelled something good.”

  “The meat will take a couple more minutes. Go sit down so I don’t burn you, and I’ll bring it in.”

  Carey went to the dining room sideboard and opened a bottle of Bordeaux he had bought and set aside for a time when Jane was home, took glasses from the shelf, and filled them while Jane brought in their plates. “Rack of lamb,” said Carey. “My favorite.”

  “I may not get a high grade for attendance, but I’ve learned a few things you like.” She set the plates across from each other at the far end of the long antique table.

  “To you,” he said. “My eyes don’t want to stop looking at you, so I probably won’t be able to eat this beautiful meal and I’ll starve to death.”

  “To both of us,” she said. “And if I know you, somehow you’ll manage.”

  Carey had come home later than usual this evening, because when Jane was away he took longer with his evening rounds to visit his surgical patients, so they were both very hungry. They ate and drank their wine with little conversation at first, and then Carey said, “I was really worried about you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I kept wishing that I hadn’t reacted the way I did before you left,” Carey said. “I know it’s bad enough to have to do something difficult, without having your family criticizing you for doing it.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just a bad situation. Nobody asked to be in it—not you, or me, or Jimmy. We’ll just have to get through it.”

  When they were finished, Jane said, “Nia:wen.” She sat still and watched him.

  Carey repeated, “Nia:wen.”

  He stood and began to clear the table and she joined him. When they met a few minutes later with their hands free of dishes, they kissed again and held each other.

  Jane said softly, “How much wine is left?”

  “Not enough to drown a hummingbird.”

  “So at least it’s not a safety hazard. Bring some cognac and glasses and I’ll meet you upstairs.”

  After a few minutes Carey came upstairs carrying the two small snifters and the bottle, and walked down the hallway into the master bedroom, where Jane stood waiting for him, naked. “Oh, there you are,” she said.

  Carey put the two glasses on his dresser, poured a splash of cognac into each, and handed her one. “This is a nice surprise. With all these lights on, I assumed you’d be dressed more formally.”

  She shrugged and took a sip of her cognac. “It would be kind of silly to hide anything from you, Dr. McKinnon. There’s nothing new to see, but I know how much you like to verify that for yourself.”

  “Yes, you’re a very practical girl,” he said. He set his glass on the dresser, scooped Jane up, carried her to the bed. The cover had been pulled back, and he set her gently on the sheets. In a few seconds he was undressed too, and they were together on the bed. It felt wrong.

  Their talk had been false, a way to gloss over the distance that had grown between them, and they both knew it. Their movements were awkward. Too much time had passed while Jane was away and they were resenting each other, so they both felt clumsy and uncertain, as though they were strangers.

  Jane sat up and held Carey’s face in her hands so they had to look into each other’s eyes. “I love you,” she said. “I’m not going to let things turn sad because we can’t put our problems out of our minds for a while. We’re going to fight some more about this another time. Not tonight. And we’ll still love each other just as much at the end of that fight too. Right now, be with me.”

  “I am,” he said. “I love you.” He put his arms around her and held her.

  They caressed ea
ch other slowly and gently, a lavish, leisurely expenditure of time, savoring the fact that she was at home with him tonight and not somewhere else that neither of them wanted to think about. They didn’t speak, only touched and kissed, feeling the understanding that they loved each other deeply and permanently—that for him, she was the one woman who would stand in his life for all women, and in her life, he would stand for all men.

  They were grateful to and for each other, and as their pulses and breathing sped up and their skin temperatures rose with the excitement, each of them tried to give the other more pleasure, to cause it and feel it and observe it at the same time. They began to express their own love and receive the other’s love at the same instant, and to increase the pleasure and increase it until the strain of containing it overwhelmed them.

  They lay motionless on the bed for a few seconds, and then Jane got up and turned off the big light on the ceiling, so there was only the moonlight through the window. “I’m not in the mood for the glare anymore.”

  “If I can’t see you I’ll find you by touch.”

  “Or I’ll find you.” Jane leaned over him and kissed him softly, her lips lingering on his, barely touching. They lay close for a time, not talking or needing to talk.

  Then they touched again, neither of them really knowing who had moved a hand first and initiated the touch, but both knowing instantly that this touch was different, and responding to it before it was over, prolonging and intensifying the touch. They were more uninhibited this time, less aware of themselves and their own bodies but more aware of each other, and when it ended it left them tired and at peace. Carey got up and opened the window, and they lay back together on the bed, feeling the cool, soothing air of the night drifting over their bodies. And then Jane fell asleep.

  She was still lying on the bed beside Carey and she knew they had both been sleeping, and that she was still asleep, when she heard the faint sound of a person climbing the stairs to the second floor. The feet were silent, but a few of the steps of the staircase creaked faintly when a person stepped on them. She had trained herself to hear the sounds. In the silence that followed, Jane could feel someone coming along the hallway toward her.