The Face-Changers (8 page)

Dahlman was, Jake found himself silently praying that he was worth it – not to society, or some other word for a bunch of strangers, but to Carey McKinnon.

Carey McKinnon tried to think the way his wife would, and found it impossible. His brain wasn’t as quick as Jane’s was, and he had no experience at her kind of deception. He was reduced to trying to remember what she had told him to do. He had a difficult time bringing it all back.

Since she had left him he had been concentrating on the specific tasks that he had needed to perform to get Dahlman through the surgery. It had been one of the most nerve-racking procedures he had ever done: trying to be sure that he left no bits of metal or bone in the shoulder, that he sutured the torn muscular tissue and vessels properly without injuring tendons or nerves – so that one of the finest surgeons alive could heal and continue to perform surgery on other people. Every second, while his hands had been working, he had been aware that those eyes were open and staring into the overhead mirror: the eyes of his old teacher, evaluating, scrutinizing every move his fingers made.

Now he had to be certain that no policeman or reporter could ask him any questions. Certain parts of the job were obvious. He could not walk out the rear door of the hospital and stroll to his car in the parking lot. What he really needed was to disappear and reappear somewhere else.

Time was going by, and the longer he waited, the more likely it was that someone would begin to look for him. He put on his sport coat, walked to the fire stairwell, and descended to the first floor. He stepped into the unoccupied break room for the radiologists, walked past the coffee machine, opened the door to the little patio, and slipped onto the lawn.

Carey walked briskly along the side of the building to the street, then took the long way around the block until he came to his office building. He supposed it was smarter to go in the back door from the parking lot than the front door, so he kept going until he reached it. He could see that the usual collection of cheapskates had parked their cars in his lot so they didn’t have to tip the valet-parking attendants at the restaurants down the street. That reminded him that he hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and he was hungry. Hours and hours ago he had hatched some plan to take Jane to a restaurant. It might as well have been years ago.

Then he noticed that the third car from the end was Jane’s.

He stopped, paralyzed with alarm. He had assumed that she would be driving Dahlman out in her car. He looked at his watch. He had finished the operation nearly an hour ago, and Jane had been waiting for the first chance to slip him out.

What if it had never come? He turned and started to walk back toward the hospital, then stopped. If he went back, he might be putting her in danger. If he found her, what could he do to help her?

He squeezed his eyes shut. What would she want? What had she said? Every minute that Carey stayed out of sight now would buy her another minute before anyone knew Dahlman was missing. That could last, at most, another hour or two if he didn’t panic and rush back there.

Carey turned and walked slowly and reluctantly up the side street away from the hospital and away from the restaurants.

The best he could do would be to go kill some time. There was a movie theater not far from here. The Rialto. He would watch a movie, eat dinner, and then come back. Later tonight there would be lots of questions, but he didn’t have to face them yet.

Where was Jane? He tried to summon a picture of her driving off somewhere with Dahlman, but since he had just found her car parked behind his office, the picture wouldn’t coalesce. He tried to imagine her on an airplane, but he was fairly certain Dahlman would not have been up to that – not the flying, but fighting the crowds and keeping himself from attracting attention during the long walks in an airport.

It occurred to Carey that he really had no idea what Jane would do in this situation. For the decade after he had met her in college they had simply been friends. They saw each other maybe once a month until the year before they were married.

At that time he would not have guessed that she was doing anything secret and dangerous and illegal. He had not guessed until the night when she had told him. And she had initiated that conversation only to warn him that marrying her could put him in danger too. After that she had not talked about her old clients – told him the tricks she had used to make them invisible or throw off their pursuers. He had no clear, specific knowledge of how it was done. It was just something she used to do, and talking about it had made both of them uncomfortable.

Jane walked down the wooden steps to the cellar. The damp, musty air seemed to her like the house’s breath. The house was a relic of the days when cellars were made of mortared stone and the beams under the floors were rounded logs with the bark stripped off. The coal furnace had been replaced by an oil furnace before she was born, and above the corner where the coal bin had sat there were still old ducts that led up to floor registers that had long ago been blocked off.

She took the stepladder to one of them, pushed two sections apart, removed the small metal box hidden inside, and set it on the top step of the ladder. She took out a handful of cards and folded papers and shuffled through them.

In the past two years the only fake identification papers she had obtained were in matched sets, with her picture on one and Carey’s on the other. There were some very good ones in the collection, as well as a few that wouldn’t be ripe for some time. A good identity needed signs of a long history, with a real birth certificate and Social Security card, a couple of renewals on the licenses, visa stamps on the passports, and small but regular charges on each of the credit cards going back a couple of years.

Jane went past the recent identities, the ones she had made for a couple on the run. They were a part of her dowry that Carey didn’t know about, and that she hoped he would never need to see. When she had retired from being a guide, she had known that people who were running would still come to her for a while, and there would still be people whose business it was to chase them. Some of the chasers might have heard of Jane or seen a little of her work, and would like the chance to get her into a small, quiet place somewhere and ask her questions until she died.

She found four identities for men who had birth dates in the 1930s, took four sets of cards she had made for herself, and then reached deeper into the heating duct to take out ten thousand dollars in cash. She put the box back into the heating duct, joined the two halves again, and carried the stepladder to the other end of the cellar to leave it with the tools and paintbrushes.

When she returned to her room she found Jake sitting on the bed watching television. He looked up when she entered.

“There was just another news bulletin, but they didn’t say anything about him being gone. They don’t seem to know.”

“Good,” said Jane. “Do you think you have any clothes that you don’t care if you ever see again?”

“Yes. All of them. I’ll go put some in a suitcase.”

“Nothing bright-colored, nothing new. You may not have noticed, but men over retirement age seem to have a lot of clothes of an earlier vintage.”

“Yep,” he said. “We’re all timing it to wear them out at the moment of death so everything comes out even.” When Jake returned to the house with the suitcase, Jane had Dahlman sitting up on the living room couch and she was just finishing putting new gauze and adhesive tape on his shoulder and back.

Jake opened the suitcase so she could look into it. “Nothing to get him a lot of invitations, but nothing with blood on it, either.”

Jane quickly fingered through the suitcase. “These are perfect. Thanks.” She pulled out a plain tan shirt, slipped it onto Dahlman, and buttoned it quickly. She had taken the necktie off him by loosening the loop, so now she slipped it over his head again and tightened it, then helped him to his feet. “We’d better get going.”

Jake followed her into the kitchen and watched her turning off lights and checking windows. “I’d like to go with you.” Jane shook her head. “Sorry. One geezer per trip.”

“He’s weak. You can’t drag him around and watch your back at the same time.”

“I said no,” she said. “If you’re so eager to take one more unnecessary risk, I’ll accommodate you. Give me a spare key to your car. Call a cab tomorrow morning to take you to the airport. After he lets you off at the terminal and disappears, stroll over to the short-term lot, find your car, and drive it home.”

“That’s it?”

“No,” she said. “Make sure this place is clean when we leave. Wipe off anything Dahlman could have touched. And when you think of it, tell Carey I love him.”

Jane walked into the airline terminal and saw the clock on the wall. It was ten-fifteen already. The first flight out would have to do. But as soon as she was on the escalator and had ascended near enough to the top to see the second floor, she knew that it was too late.

It was likely that a stranger who seldom flew into Buffalo would not have noticed the change. The single sleepy security guard who spent most of his time talking to the airline man who weighed luggage and issued tickets was still downstairs at the door, but here on the departure level, where the people slowed down and formed a line to pass single file through the metal detectors, plainclothes policemen loitered, their eyes on the procession. The time was up. They had discovered that Dahlman was running.

She skirted the departure area and kept her eyes on the windows of the shops and restaurants. As long as she stayed away from the metal detectors, the cops would not consider her eligible for close scrutiny. There would be some kind of cut-off team up here too; if Dahlman got this far and saw the cops waiting, he might turn and head for me door.

Jane went into one of the shops and bought some items that wouldn’t be wasted – toothbrushes, toothpaste, a hairbrush and comb, all in compact sizes for travelers. When she came out she – joined the stream of tired passengers who had come off an airplane and were now headed toward the baggage area.

Jane was one of several in the group who stopped just before the escalators at the row of car-rental counters. She rented a big, roomy Oldsmobile Cutlass. In Buffalo the car-rental lots were all outside the door behind the terminal, so it took her only a few minutes to join the next crowd heading downstairs, get out the door and into the car she had rented.

She drove it to the short-term lot and helped Dahlman step out of Jake’s car and into hers. She put the two suitcases into her trunk and drove out onto Genesee Street.

Dahlman looked alert and maybe even a Utile scared.

“Where are we going?”

Jane shrugged. “There are police waiting in the airport, so right now we’re only one very small jump ahead of them.

What we’ve got is a big new car with a full gas tank, and that’s about it. In a minute I’m going to turn left on Bailey Avenue.

That’s Route 62. By midnight we should be passing Warren, Pennsylvania. Then we switch roads and make a pretty straight run down to Pittsburgh.”

“Why Pittsburgh?”

Jane said, “I know this is all very strange. You’re in pain, you’re weak, you’re tired. In fifteen minutes we’ll be out of the congested area and going through farmland, with a little town every ten or twenty miles. You can stretch out on the back seat and sleep.” She turned south onto Bailey Avenue and accelerated slightly.

“I’m not ready to sleep,” said Dahlman irritably. “I asked you a question, and I’d like an answer. What’s in Pittsburgh?” Jane glanced at him. The momentary glare of a set of oncoming headlights showed her the sharp little gray eyes glittering. At some point he was going to collapse, but until he did, his agitation had to be borne. “Okay, here’s the situation.

Staying in town is a bad idea. There’s a term for people who thought they knew some city better than the local police.

They’re called ‘convicts.’ We don’t seem to be able to fly out, so we’re driving. We can’t get on the Thruway, because there are toll booths, and in at least the first few around here, the State Police might be waiting for you. But once we cross the border into Pennsylvania, some of the searchers will be left behind. You’re a fugitive from Illinois who escaped from custody in New York. Unless the Pennsylvania police have some reason to believe you’re headed there, then you’re just one of a thousand or so New York criminals they’ve been warned to keep an eye out for this year. You’re very important to the Buffalo police because you embarrassed them by walking out of the hospital and you might be dangerous. To the Pittsburgh police you’re just a name that’s most likely to be somebody else’s problem. They have at least a thousand murderers of their own to catch.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“I’m glad.”

“You don’t believe me?” He was incensed.

Jane looked ahead and paid attention to her driving. If he had been young and healthy, she might have put him into the trunk and avoided the chance of his being seen at a lighted intersection. It was too bad he wasn’t young or healthy. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. It just doesn’t matter right now. I think that should be your first lesson,” she said. “For tonight, it doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. If you could listen to the police radios right now – or even the television news – you would hear that you’re an escaped murder suspect, armed and dangerous, probably desperate because you’re wounded.

They’re warning each other and everybody else who’s awake.”

“I’m a well-known physician who has not only saved thousands of lives, but taught a fair share of the best surgeons in this country how to – ”

“Then use your brain and think about it the way they do,” said Jane. “If you’ve suddenly killed somebody who isn’t related to you, it means you’re crazy. The fact that you’re a doctor who slipped out under their noses means you’re devious and probably smarter than they are. The fact that you’re famous only means they won’t have to rely on one of those crude police drawings. They have lots of pictures of you