The Face-Changers (21 page)

Nothing had changed. The teenaged girl Jane had seen watching from the staircase had even looked a little like Christie.

Memories of Quinn were not so easy for Jane to exorcise.

During the long minutes while she had been walking Dahlman to Sid’s house, Quinn had been the one she had been thinking about. Christie had made her uncomfortable, but Quinn had frightened her. Quinn had been a changeling – not a fugitive, but a person who had experienced some voluntary midlife transformation. He had been something else once – she had heard lawyer, she had heard insurance investigator, she had heard detective.

Sid had told Jane that one day Quinn had simply stumbled on a truth that Sid considered obvious: that if he never again let anything interfere with his inclinations, he would, inevitably, have everything he wanted. The discovery had been exhilarating, and it had liberated his imagination. He had thought of a great many things that he wanted. But now he had undergone a second transformation. Quinn’s change from alive to dead had been an immense step up.

It was two A.M. when Jane reached the outskirts of Waterloo, Iowa. She turned off the main highway and spent twenty minutes driving up and down the streets, studying the little city. When she was satisfied, she found a motel and checked in. Then she woke Dahlman and hurried him into the room before anyone else was awake.

As she opened the suitcases, she asked, “Are you up to having the bandages changed?”

“Yes.”

Jane undid the bandages on his back and chest, then said, “I can’t tell how you’re doing as well as you can. Take a look in the mirror.”

Dahlman squinted at the bathroom mirror, turned on all the lights, poked the wounds, turned this way and that. “I’d say considering the age of the patient, he’s doing pretty well.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Let me wrap you up again, and then we can get some sleep.” It was evening when Dahlman awoke to find Jane sitting on the other bed watching him. He saw that she had repacked the suitcases, and that clean clothes were laid out on the bed for him.

“Are we leaving?” he asked.

“We’re not going far,” she answered. “I’ve rented an apartment.”

She drove Dahlman to a one-story building across the town, and pulled the car into a space under a carport that had eight other cars in it. She helped him into the back entrance of the building, hurried him down the hall and into a door marked 3, then went back to the car to unload.

Dahlman looked around him. The apartment was furnished with cheap furniture that seemed clean and sturdy. There was a small kitchen that was separated from the living room by a low counter, and on the opposite side, a bedroom that seemed to be situated so that little light or noise was likely to reach it in the daytime. He heard Jane come back and heard her unlatching a suitcase.

Dahlman opened a cupboard and saw a sparse collection of china and glasses. He peered into the refrigerator and was surprised to see that it was already packed with food. “It looks like an awful lot of food,” he said.

“I wanted you to have enough,” said Jane.

He turned to look into her eyes. “You’re leaving?” He had assumed she was unpacking her suitcase, but she had been unpacking his. Hers must still be in the car.

“I wasn’t lying to Sid when I told him I had to leave you for a little while.”

“How long?”

“I may be back tomorrow, and it may not be for two weeks.

How long depends on what’s out there.”

“But what’s your plan?” He seemed frightened.

Jane stepped away from the doorway into the kitchen. “It’s not much of a plan. You said before that you’re healing okay, and there are no complications, right?”

“Right.”

“So now we use up some time. If you’re not traveling or making noise or even going outdoors, nobody sees you and you’ll heal. And the longer we keep you safe, the more likely it is that something big will happen.”

“I’m supposed to sit here waiting for something big to happen to me?”

Jane smiled and sat down at the kitchen table. “Not to you.

We’ve got problems because your story is peculiar, and that makes it newsworthy. There are a lot of murders in this country – maybe a hundred a day. But for two days, the face on television and in newspapers has been yours. It’s very much in our interest to have the newspeople stop putting it in front of everybody’s eyes. And they will, as soon as there’s something bigger, or odder, or more compelling to replace it.

If the stock market crashes or an airplane blows up or the chief justice is caught soliciting an undercover cop, your picture will disappear and people will forget about you.”

“I wonder how long that will take.”

“We can’t know that. Of course, there are people who know it’s in their interest to prolong your notoriety as long as they can. The F.B.I, will probably try to release intriguing tidbits each day. Even if they know a lot, they’ll feed it to the reporters a pinch at a time. One day it’ll be places where somebody may have seen you, and the next day, inside details of your previous life. They’ll get people you operated on to say you did a great job but were not very friendly – ”

“How do you know what people will say?”

“I don’t,” she said. “I’m guessing.”

“I’m extremely friendly,” he protested.

Jane shrugged. “I suppose I’m not seeing you at your best.

It doesn’t matter. News articles aren’t statements of fact.

They’re some writer’s attempt to flesh out very small bits of information into a full, coherent story. Lots of things about you will be twisted to fit a pattern of behavior, like a profile. If we’re lucky, they’ll concentrate on the things that aren’t true; those won’t help anybody recognize you.”

“But what about the trial? Any potential jury will have heard all this nonsense.”

Jane frowned at him. “No matter what we do, a jury would hear it from the prosecution. Let’s see what we can do to keep from having a trial.”

Dahlman stared at her. “I remember you said that it wouldn’t be wise to go to the authorities before I have a way of defending myself. But at some point, after they’ve studied the evidence and found it isn’t as neat and perfect as it sounded, why shouldn’t I?”

Jane could feel a headache developing behind her forehead.

She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them and said,

“I want this to end the same way you do. I thought at the beginning that we could slip you away for a short time, let the police catch the killer, and bring you home. But it hasn’t happened yet. I think we have to start thinking about the possibility that it isn’t going to happen soon.”

“I don’t think the situation has changed. What’s different?”

“What has changed is what we know. The killer isn’t some amateur, and it isn’t some psychopath. It isn’t even one person. There are some people making a good living doing what I used to do. They helped somebody disappear – this

‘Hardiston’ guy – and now he’s just about home-free. He has a new name, he’s in a new place. But there’s still one living person who saw the way he used to look and saw the way he looks now. Just one.”

Dahlman stared at her.

Jane waited. Then she asked, “Enough said?”

“Yes.” He began walking around the apartment again, looking closely at each piece of furniture, then at the four walls.

“I’ll only be gone for a week or two.” He gave a reassuring little smile that vanished after he was sure she had seen it. “I’m not uncomfortable alone. I’ve lived alone for a long time. I was just thinking how much this reminds me of the place where the two policemen put me –

only they weren’t policemen. I don’t mean it’s the same physically. There’s just something about spaces that have been closed up for a while…”

“It’s probably got the same feel because this is the way the game is played, and those men seem to know it. The best place to hide is where nothing in your daily life forces you to put your face where lots of people see it. Sometimes a farm is good. So is a small town, as long as it’s not small enough so people ask about you, and not a rich small town, where police check out newcomers.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Soon. Tonight.”

He came back into the kitchen. “Then in case I don’t see you again, I would like to thank you. I can see I haven’t been an easy companion, and it seems no advantage can come to you from helping me.”

Jane saw that he was telling her that he was ready. She slipped her purse strap onto her shoulder and stood up. “You’ll see me again.”

“You’ve taken me away from the police and away from the people who wanted to kill me. Now I’m in a place that seems to be safe. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that this is the end of your services.”

Jane walked to the door and put her hand on the knob.

“Don’t open the blinds, don’t answer the door. Don’t go outside unless you’re sure the building’s on fire, and even then, leave by the bedroom window. And don’t forget to take the rest of the antibiotics. When I come back for you, what I want to find in here is a man, not a body.” Jane waited until Dahlman gave her a single nod. Then she slipped out the door. When she closed it behind her, Dahlman listened for a few seconds, but he heard no other sound.

It was nine o’clock in the evening when Carey McKinnon finished his rounds. The six patients he had operated on in the past three days were all doing extremely well. He wondered whether he had been somehow overcompensating for his anxiety, and therefore doing a better job. Maybe he had been concentrating on the clear, logical work of surgery as an escape from the unpleasant and unmanageable realities that were waiting for him outside the O.R. But maybe he had been unconsciously scheduling the easy ones for this week, and pushing the risky, demoralizing surgeries off for later. Both of these possibilities were, in different ways, disturbing, but at least he could test the last one. Mr. Caputi certainly was not an easy one. His pre-op physical exam had shown elevated blood pressure, he suffered from emphysema, and he had a history of complications in earlier surgery. Mrs. Trelewski had been rushed into surgery from the emergency room, so scheduling had nothing to do with it.

It was entirely possible that he had been focusing his mind more intensely on the practiced movements of his hands.

Certainly he was doing something like that now, as he walked along the street in the dark. If things had been as usual, he would have been thinking about Jane. Maybe he would be on his way home to have a late supper in the kitchen with her, and he would be forming a picture of her in his mind. The picture was almost formed, but he pushed it away. Thinking about his work was safer, and it kept his features set and impenetrable –

no worry lines, no frowns.

They would be looking for signs that he was weakening.

Every moment when he was not in the operating room there seemed to be someone observing him. When he was out and on the move like this, sometimes he would see them. Tonight it would be the team of two big, benevolent-looking policemen who always worked in the evening. Usually one of them would be in a car parked near the back entrance of the hospital in sight of Carey’s reserved parking space. The other would be in one of the waiting areas or the gift shop off the main lobby.

He knew that behaving as though nothing had happened was the right thing to do. It was also completely insane. He was not trying to avoid creating suspicion: the police already suspected him. And the policemen weren’t pretending not to be policemen. Both sides were engaged in a long, silent face-off that had become like a dialogue… or an interrogation. It was as if he had said, “I know you think I had something to do with Richard Dahlman’s escape.” They would answer, “What makes you think that?” He would say, “Because you’re watching me.” And they would answer, “What makes you think we’re watching you?”

He was aware that, sooner or later, their patient immovability was going to end and someone was going to say,

“Where is your wife?” They must have noticed by now. If they could devote policemen to sitting in cars and watching him, then they must have done a background investigation on him, or simply asked his colleagues at the hospital about him. They must know he had a wife.

The thought re-activated another bit of anxiety. Several of his colleagues had been questioned by the police, even a couple who had not been on duty the night Dahlman disappeared. A few of his close friends had said things like

“Carey, what’s going on? Why are they asking so many questions about you?” The ones who made him anxious were the ones who had said nothing to him. He suspected that a few of them must be trying to build distance between him and them to preserve their careers. Others might even have told the police things that were incriminating.

Carey made his way along the sidewalk in front of his office building toward the parking lot in back, where he had left his car. He had been walking this same route every day at least twice for a couple of years. When he was scheduled for surgery in the morning he would park in the hospital lot, then walk to the office around one to see patients, then back for his rounds. Since Jane had been gone, he had made a point of parking at the office and walking to the hospital, so it had become four trips. As he came around the corner into the shadow of the building, the blackness seemed to congeal in front of him into a darker black. It was the shape of a person, but some template in his brain had already measured it as small, thin – a woman. He was too late to keep his body from giving a jerk to defend itself, but then he held himself stiffly and finished his step to pretend it hadn’t.

The shape took a step backward out of the shadow, and became Jane. Carey drew in a breath, but she was holding her finger over her lips, so he blew it out. She took his arm and silently pulled him through the office door, guided him down the dark hallway, and hurried him out the front door to the curb, where there was a car he had never seen before. She pushed him into the driver’s seat and went around the car to sit beside him. As he stared at her in incomprehension, she kissed his cheek and whispered, “Drive. I want to see who follows.” Carey drove up the street, then turned up the second side street, then turned again at the next corner, zigzagging through the quiet streets while Jane stared out the back window.