Michael Prescott - Stealing Faces

Shepherd tossed the photo album on the bed. His hand was shaking just a little.

He picked up the manila envelope. Inside it was a sheaf of documentation establishing a series of false I.D.’s. Different names, birth dates, backgrounds, but all of them were Kaylie McMillan.

She had been busy, these past twelve years.

“Roy, what in Christ is going on?” That was Alvarez, at the door, Galston and Bane behind him.

Shepherd looked up from the documents in his gloved hands, surveyed the wreckage in the room, and said simply, “She flew.”

A mile from the motel, Elizabeth pulled onto a side street and parked at the curb, then sat for a long moment, shaking all over as fear and relief and anger throbbed through her in a sequence of vivid aftershocks.

Too much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. She couldn’t absorb it all, couldn’t make it real.

Obstacles and threats everywhere. Danger, pursuit, the walls of her life closing in.

If Cray or his henchmen didn’t get her, the police would. The police, who were there to protect and serve. Who were they protecting now? Cray? Who was served by that?

She raised a trembling hand to her throat and felt the memory of Walter’s fingers tightening like a vise.

Close call. Really close.

She’d faced death twice since yesterday evening. She’d risked arrest when she made her 911 call, and again this afternoon.

So far her luck had held, but she knew she could press it no further. Anyway, she couldn’t stay in Tucson. Everybody here was after her. She had to leave town. Leave Arizona entirely.

It was time to go to Texas, as she’d thought of doing before all this bad business began. Dallas had been her original destination, but the city seemed too big, too complicated. She could try San Antonio, maybe. It was supposed to be nice there. They had a riverwalk. She would like to see that.

In San Antonio she could obtain or forge a new I.D. Elizabeth Palmer would have to go. That was all right. Names didn’t matter. She’d had many names.

As soon as possible, she would ditch the Chevette, obtain another car. She had no idea how she would manage this, with no money and no credit history and no collateral, but she would find a way.

She had to. Because the police would search her things. They would find the documents that established her various false identities. They would run a motor-vehicles check on Elizabeth Palmer. The make and model and license plate number of her car would be known to them immediately. The information would go on a hot sheet, or whatever they called it, and she would be at perpetual risk of being spotted and pulled over.

In the short term, she might be able to steal somebody’s license plate, put it on the Chevette, buy some time.

All right. Get to Texas. Tonight.

In the glove compartment she kept a map of the western U.S. She unfolded it and checked the route she’d have to take. Interstate 10 would get her all the way there. A fifteen-hour drive, no problem.

She checked her purse, counting bills. Fifty-four dollars.

Most of that would be spent on food and fuel. And she had no luggage, no change of clothes, not even a toothbrush. Nothing to fall back on, nothing to pawn or barter.

In San Antonio she would need a job immediately. Well, she had waitressing experience, clerical skills. She could find something.

This was bad, so bad. She’d been down-and-out at other times during her twelve years on the run, but never had she felt so completely beaten, so lost.

Could be worse, though.

She could be in handcuffs.

She could be dead.

The thought lifted her, just a little. She would get through this. And after all, she was not entirely alone. There was Anson. She could reach him, calling collect, at any hour and hear his grave, slow voice. And though she hated asking him for money, she had done it before, and he’d wired it to her without hesitation.

Strange behavior for the father of the man she’d shot in the heart and left to die, but Anson had his reasons.

She checked the map again, steadying herself in the study of its clean, logical lines. Everything made sense in maps, it was all laid out for you, and you always knew just where you were going.

Driving the interstates was like that, too. A straight road, no surprises, the destination dead ahead.

“Okay,” she said aloud, “so get going.”

And forget about Cray.

It was her only option at this point. The police had boxed her in. She couldn’t pursue her quarry any further.

Anyway, damn it, she’d done all she could. She’d done everything that could have been asked of her.

San Antonio.

A fresh start.

“Oh, hell,” Elizabeth said, and she crumpled the map and tossed it on the floor.

She wasn’t going to Texas. She knew that.

Whatever the risk, whatever the consequences, she had started this game of cat-and-mouse with Cray, and she would see it through.

She put the Chevette into gear and pulled away from the curb, heading east to Safford and the Hawk Ridge Institute, where she would make her stand.

Alvarez and the two beat cops entered the room slowly, taking in the damage.

“Looks like a goddamn tornado hit the place,” Leo Galston said.

“More like a hurricane.” Shepherd shrugged. “Hurricane Kaylie.”

“You think she’s cleared out for good?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah.”

“But she left her stuff.”

“She was in a hurry. She must’ve sprinted out of here. Left the door wide open.”

“Why would she trash the place and run?”

“Way I see it, she realized she’d made a lot of noise, and somebody might call the manager about it. She didn’t want a confrontation, so she panicked and fled.”

Alvarez frowned. “That doesn’t explain why she made all this mess in the first place.”

Shepherd didn’t answer. He was staring at an item he’d overlooked earlier, a crumpled newspaper on the floor near the bed.

Carefully he picked it up in a gloved hand. It was today’s edition of the Tucson Citizen, open to the Tucson & Arizona section.

The page had been partially shredded. It appeared Kaylie had made a furious effort to obliterate an offending article. But the headline, at least, was still intact.

“Here’s your answer,” he told Alvarez. “About why she trashed the room. She’s still upset about the White Mountains case. She went nuts — more nuts than usual — when she read this story.”

Galston asked, “What story?”

“It’s got to be the retraction of the false lead that went out over the radio. She must have heard there was a breakthrough as a result of a nine-one tip. She got all excited. She thought we’d bought her story, arrested Cray. That’s what she wants. She hates him. Then she reads this, finds out it was all a mistake, Cray’s not under arrest, there are no breaks, no suspects, nothing — and she loses it.”

“And we lose her,” Galston said grimly.

“Looks that way.”

“How about her car?” Alvarez asked. “Did the manager see it?”

“Not that I know, but we can run it down easily enough. It’s registered to Elizabeth Palmer.” He found the birth certificate in the sheaf of papers. “That’s one of her three fake I.D.’s — the current one, I think.”

Bane, the rookie, asked how Shepherd knew it was current.

“Because the documentation she kept on the other two includes her driver’s license and Social Security card. Those items are missing for the Elizabeth Palmer alias.” Bane still looked puzzled, so Shepherd spelled it out. “She’s carrying them in her purse.”

“If we know what I.D. she’s using, and we know what she’s driving,” Alvarez said, “then she won’t get far.”