The Face-Changers jw-4

by Thomas Perry

  She drove to the municipal parking lot, walked to the big post office on Santa Barbara Street, and waited at the counter to send the package by express mail. Then she walked to State Street to do her shopping. At the first stop she bought a battery-operated household intercom, and at the second, a new battery and a fresh tape for her video camera. She walked a little farther and bought a cellular telephone as a present for C. Langer of 80183 Padre Street and had the number activated immediately. The last purchase she made was at a store she had visited before. It was a small, sensitive tape recorder exactly like the ones she had hidden in Brian Vaughn’s house.

  Jane spent the rest of the afternoon testing the equipment she had bought and looking out her window at the parking lot of the big hotel next door. Finally she could see that another whole row of cars had been gobbled up by the shadow of the long, low building, and the rear windows of the farthest row were glowing orange in the sunset. It was nearly time. She dressed and looked at the clock. It was Brian Vaughn’s dinner hour.

  She put her purchases into her shoulder bag, went out, and drove to Brian Vaughn’s house, then slipped in through the bathroom window. She was not surprised that he had gone out. It would be maddening to him to sit in this house alone, wondering whether each movement he made was being picked up on the tape recorders. One of them was under his oven, so he would be afraid to do any cooking.

  Jane sat down on the couch and dialed the number of the house in Amherst where she had lived with Carey. The telephone rang four times before the answering machine took over. She had been gone so long that she had forgotten what the recorded answer was. Her own voice startled her. “I’m sorry. We’re not able to come to the phone right now. If you’d like to leave a message, begin when you hear the tone.”

  Jane gave a little sigh. She had hoped to hear Carey’s voice. But there was the beep.

  She said, “Hi. Some nasal-sounding woman just told me we can’t come to the phone. I knew I couldn’t, but I was hoping for a chance to talk to you. I’ve stopped off in Wisconsin, but don’t try to join me, because I’ll be gone as soon as this powwow’s over. I know that when you listen to this, you’re going to be feeling very alone. Remember I love you, and take care of yourself.” She hung up, then went to check the three tape recorders.

  All three were still where she had left them, still had tapes and batteries and functioned when she turned them on. She left them turned off, then turned the fourth one on and carefully placed it behind a row of books high in the bookcase without disturbing the dust.

  She plugged the intercom into the outlet beneath the headboard of Brian Vaughn’s bed, pressed TALK, then turned on the receiver. There was a squeak of feedback that was rapidly growing into a shriek, so she turned it off again. Then she took the receiver with her, and quietly slipped out the bathroom window and through the garden gate to the next street. When she was in her car she looked at her watch. It was eight o’clock. Brian Vaughn had told her that the face-changers would be at his door in three hours.

  Marshall was back in the cafeteria on the concourse at the Los Angeles airport. This time he was carrying a tray of food to a table. He automatically picked the one where he had talked with Alvin Jardine, but only because he had spent some time there and found it acceptable. He had come here to pursue a worry, and he didn’t want to be distracted.

  Jardine had been lying, which was what he would do if he were conspiring with Mrs. McKinnon. But Marshall was not comfortable with the theory that a woman like Mrs. McKinnon would know how to look for a man like Alvin Jardine and get help from him. It didn’t feel right. It also didn’t feel right that Jardine would pass up the chance to drag in a fugitive of the stature of Richard Dahlman.

  Jardine had not seen Richard Dahlman. What he had seen was a pretty woman with long black hair coming through the airport. Yet he had instantly decided to follow her all the way to the distant long-term parking lot. Marshall had watched the airport security tapes again. The woman had definitely been walking toward a white Buick in the parking lot. She had reached into her purse, presumably for a set of keys. Then Jardine had come along, and she had gone off with him. What nagged at Marshall now was that the Buick had not yet disappeared from the parking lot.

  The car raised a great many questions. He had put a pair of agents in the lot more than thirty-six hours ago to watch it for her return. She had not come back, and the car was still there. He had been operating on the assumption that Alvin Jardine was some kind of ally of Mrs. McKinnon’s. It seemed clear from the tapes that she had thought so too. But that didn’t mean she had been right. It was just possible that Mrs. McKinnon had miscalculated, and Alvin Jardine had killed her.

  Marshall had not yet reassured himself on that point, but in the past few minutes things had grown more complicated. Marshall had just come along the counter with his tray, intentionally dropped a fork, and bent down to pick it up in exactly the same way that Mrs. McKinnon had. He had found that he was not nearly as flexible as Mrs. McKinnon, but he had managed to put his right hand in the same place. The underside of the stainless-steel counter was plywood. There was a sticky residue of adhesive on the plywood in two rectangular strips about five inches apart. It was just as though something about that size had been stuck there with duct tape, and yanked off.

  It had occurred to Marshall early in his inquiry that there was no obvious explanation as to why Mrs. McKinnon would have keys to a Buick registered to Gormby Boat Sales in Marina Del Rey, California. She had stopped to talk to no one from the time she had gotten off the plane until she had met Jardine. It was just possible that the F.B.I. should be more interested in how a set of keys to a clean, respectable car nobody was looking for got taped under a counter in an airport than in what had become of Richard Dahlman. For a decade there had been rumors that there were professional services that helped fugitives disappear.

  The attractiveness of the idea was hard for a law enforcement officer to resist. Sometimes a person who should have been easy to catch seemed to vanish. But every time one of those fugitives surfaced, it seemed to Marshall that the fugitive had spent the time in plain view, hardly hiding at all. One had run a popular restaurant in Seattle; another had moved to a resort town in upstate New York and told people he was a film producer.

  Just as Marshall set his tray down and prepared to lose himself in cogitation, his pager began to beep. He looked at the tray with grim resignation. He had come here as a way to check the counter, but he had gotten used to the idea that he was going to get to eat the food.

  As he walked out of the cafeteria onto the concourse, he looked at the number on the pager: Grapelli. It must be time for him to fly back to Buffalo. It would be interesting to ask Mrs. McKinnon exactly why the keys to the Buick had been taped under the counter, and what she had talked about with Jardine.

  He dialed the number and Grapelli said, “Hate to interrupt your dinner.”

  Marshall said, “I take it she turned up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. I guess you can’t keep me from eating on the plane.”

  “Be my guest. But all they give you on those short flights is a bag of peanuts. She’s not in Buffalo.”

  “Where are they holding her?”

  “There is no ‘they,’ ” said Grapelli. “And nobody is holding her. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. She called home. The phone tap recorded it and we traced it to a house in Santa Barbara. 80183 Padre Street.”

  “Can I hear it?”

  “Standby.”

  Marshall listened to the sound of Jane’s voice. He felt a little sorry for her, and a little ashamed to hear the words she had meant for her husband. But then he heard what he had been listening for. If she had said she was in Santa Barbara, he would have called it a feint of some kind to draw attention away from somewhere else.

  “Okay,” said Marshall. “Good enough for me.”

  “I’ll call ahead to get the Santa Barbara police to meet you at the airport.”


  “You mind if we wait on that?” asked Marshall.

  “Why?” Grapelli paused. “Are you afraid they’ll bust in on them before you get there?”

  “They’ll do what they’re supposed to do,” said Marshall. “They’ll put a big circle of plain-wrap cars around the neighborhood so nobody can get out and nobody can get in. Including me.”

  “That doesn’t strike me as a drawback.”

  “I want to take a look at the place before we do anything irrevocable. If Dahlman’s there with her, then I’ll call them in myself.”

  “So what are you worried about?”

  “Once the neighborhood is surrounded, we’re committed. We have whoever is inside it, and that’s all we have. If Dahlman’s with her, then the game’s over, and we’re still champions. But what if Dahlman isn’t there? She’s been traveling all over the place without him, so it’s not a sure thing.”

  “Okay, so what if Dahlman isn’t there? She must know where he is.”

  “Right. If we follow her, she’ll lead us to him eventually. If she’s in a cell, she’s not leading anybody anywhere. She’ll be just one more suspect who isn’t answering any questions.”

  “You think she’ll hold out?”

  “After what she’s done already, she doesn’t strike me as a person who panics under pressure,” said Marshall. “And the woman she used as a decoy started talking lawyers the second the door of her hotel room popped. These are not unsophisticated people. What her lawyer will tell her is to keep quiet.”

  Grapelli sighed. At last he said, “All right. Let’s try this the easy way. Go take a look. The minute you’ve seen the place, you call me. But unless what you’ve seen is a good reason not to, what I’m going to tell you is to get a search warrant on the way to the police station, where you will pick up a few guys to kick down the door for you. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  42

  Jane packed all of her gear and her suitcase into her car, checked out of her two hotels, and then drove off. If Brian Vaughn got through the meeting, he would try to call her, and he would probably feel a moment of panic when she didn’t answer. But it would be only a moment, because within a few seconds she would be able to stand beside him and tell him there was nothing to worry about.

  Jane glanced at her watch. She had timed this correctly. The sky was dark, but it was still two hours before the face-changers were supposed to arrive. She would have all the time she needed to get herself set and make sure she got a videotape of them walking under the street lamp and up to Vaughn’s door.

  She parked her car two streets away, moved into the little back yard through the garden gate, then stole along the back of the driveway to hide behind the garbage cans. She looked into the eyepiece of the video camera to be sure that she could see enough of the street to pick them up. Then she set it down, turned on her intercom, and listened.

  A voice that wasn’t Brian Vaughn’s said, “If it’s what you want, I guess we could arrange it.”

  They were here already. Jane’s heart began to beat faster. She had come early, to see the house and hear what was going on inside before anyone could have expected her. They had come earlier. Since she had done it, she should have known that they would too. They knew what she knew.

  The man said, “But we went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get you set up here. You put in months getting the locals used to you, so you’re part of the landscape. That’s a lot to throw away.” There was a brief pause. “And it’s expensive.”

  “How expensive?” That was Brian Vaughn’s voice.

  “Top-of-my-head figures? Let’s see,” said the man. “Suppose, just for example, it was Port Townsend, Washington, like you say. A pleasant little town, and a nice little house like this. That’s maybe three hundred. We can’t sell this one right away, so there’s no help there.”

  “Why not?”

  “We just bought it. If you’re not safe here with a new face, we can’t use it for somebody else, can we?”

  “But I paid for it.” Jane began to feel tense. His tone was too argumentative.

  “We’ll unload it in a year or two and you’ll get the money. Minus expenses and commissions. So figure three hundred for a new house and furnishings up there, you sign over this one, and another hundred on top, it’s going to cost you half a million to get moved.”

  “What’s the extra hundred for?” Vaughn sounded angry. What was he doing? He was arguing over money he was never going to give them.

  “Shipping and handling.”

  There was a sharp laugh. A third voice. It must be a two-man team. Jane held her breath and listened. Just because there were two didn’t mean there weren’t more.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s our time and trouble.”

  There was a pause, and then Vaughn said, “All right.” Jane rose to a crouch. He had used the wrong tone. It wasn’t grudging and resentful enough. He couldn’t take the man through all that by arguing, and then simply agree.

  The man seemed to have sensed it too. He said, “That okay with you?”

  Vaughn said, “Sure.”

  “You want to leave tonight or tomorrow?” That was the big question. The man was giving Vaughn a chance to salvage this, to save himself.

  He gave the wrong answer. “I guess tomorrow. That would give me time to pack and make sure things look normal here.”

  The man said, “Sounds good. You got any coffee?”

  “I’ll go make some.”

  She heard him walking off. Then she heard the man who had been quiet say, “What’s the best way?”

  “We could cut his throat in the bathtub, so it won’t be such a big deal to clean it up.”

  “I think we’ve got to get him out of here now, and do it on the way. We could drive him north of here, and pull off at one of those turnoffs for the beaches up there. Or maybe some campground.”

  Jane set down the intercom and started moving toward the house. If she could get there before Vaughn finished making the coffee and left the kitchen, there was still a chance. She slipped around the corner of the house, up to the kitchen door, and tried to peer inside. The blinds were closed, and she could see only a narrow slice of empty tile floor through a crack at the corner.

  She flung open the kitchen door, but she couldn’t see him. Where was he? She looked at the coffee maker on the counter. It wasn’t turned on yet, didn’t look as though he had even filled it. The voices were quiet now. Something must have happened in the brief time it had taken her to reach the house. They hadn’t even let him get started. But if they hadn’t killed him yet, she had to try. As she moved quietly toward the living room doorway, her breaths were shallow and quick, fighting the sick regret she knew she would not have time to feel.

  She would have to read the pattern of sights in the room instantly while she was in motion—the positions of the men, where their hands were, what it would take to propel Vaughn out the door with her—and act before they’d had time to think. She stepped out of cover into the doorway, her eyes flicking about her wildly.

  Brian Vaughn was alone, sitting on the couch, aiming a pistol at Jane. The three tape recorders he had watched her hide were lined up on the coffee table. From one of the them, the conversation resumed.

  Vaughn’s voice said, “The coffee will be ready in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks,” said the other man’s voice. “You know, Brian, we’ve been talking. We’d like to get you out of here tonight.”

  Vaughn’s forehead was damp with a faint, sticky sweat. His skin seemed to have lost the suntan glow and bleached out to a pale gray. He looked terrified. His own voice came out of the recorder: “I’m a little bit worried about leaving without wiping this place for fingerprints and so on …” The sound seemed to distract him, irritate him, as though he was having trouble concentrating. He punched the button and the tape recorder stopped. He raised his head to yell, “She’s here!”

  Jane hissed urgently, �
�You’ve still got a chance.”

  He shook his head frantically, denying it as though he was trying to keep his ears from even hearing it.

  “They were outside waiting for me to arrive, weren’t they?”

  He seemed angry at her. “Of course they were.” Jane could see that he had lost his nerve hours ago, maybe blurted out the whole story the minute the face-changers had arrived. He hated her for not saving him, and for having tried. He hated her for his own collapse, and the longer he felt the danger that she had brought him, the more certain he seemed to be that she had caused it.

  She stepped closer, whispering now. “You can still save us both.”

  In reply, he jerked the gun up to point at her face, his arm muscles so tight that it looked as though he wanted to jab her with it. Jane saw a faint smirk playing about his lips, as though he were trying it on, testing the way it felt. She sensed that he was determined to show the face-changers how loyal he was: he was going to be sure he was the one to kill her. He was utterly lost.

  Jane had one final chance, and she would have to use Brian Vaughn’s eyes to know when it came. She could hear footsteps coming up the walk toward the front door behind her. She heard a shoe on the bottom step, then one on the top. She tensed her muscles and watched Brian Vaughn’s eyes.

  At the instant the door behind Jane opened, Brian Vaughn’s eyes flicked toward it. Jane leapt and spun to throw her shoulder into Vaughn’s chest as she wrapped her arm over Vaughn’s so it was clamped in her armpit, and used both of her hands to squeeze his fingers. The gun discharged into the wall beside the door. The man who had been coming in dived to the floor as Jane bucked to jerk her head into Vaughn’s face. In the second when she felt him loosen his grip on the gun, she wrenched it out of his hand and dashed out the doorway the man had left open.

  She veered to the right without having to choose, because it was harder for a right-handed shooter to follow a target moving in that direction. She dashed across the neighbor’s flower bed and reached the first tree before the man on the floor could make his way back to the open door. He fired his first shot into the ground behind her feet, then overcompensated and fired again four feet ahead of her, and by then she was beyond the corner of the next house.