Thomas Perry - Runner

"I will." She released him, then stepped back to look at him. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"I'm not hungry right now. I'll get something at the hospital later."

"I love you," she said, and kissed him on the cheek, then picked up the carton of eggs and put it back in the refrigerator. "I love you" had always struck her as a foolish, inadequate thing to say, but it was exactly what she meant in exactly the way she had said it. She remembered times, years ago, when she had called him from various places around the country, only daring to talk on a pay phone for a minute or two. In her memory it was always night, and always raining. She wouldn't be able to tell him where she was because she was afraid his phone would be tapped or he would forget and mention the name of the place to someone else. He would be impatient for her to come home, and she would say, "I love you," and what it meant was "I'm sorry." And then when it was time to hang up she would say "I love you" again, and wait, holding her breath and listening, because it meant "Do you still love me?" In the past five years, since she had quit going away, the meaning had always been happy and sure. Maybe five years of that was as good as a life. It was more of a life than many people had, and she felt lucky to have had it. By this time tomorrow she could be dead.

15

After Carey had left for work she completed the rest of her preparations for her flight. Seeing Ketter in Kennedy Airport had reminded Jane that for her, airports were dangerous places. All she could do was alter her appearance enough so that if she was not face-to-face with an enemy, he might not recognize her immediately. This time she wore tinted glasses to hide her eyes, a cashmere sweater that softened and rounded the thin, sinewy quality of her arms and shoulders, an understated pendant with a single diamond, and a skirt. As soon as she had gone through security in the Buffalo airport and shown her driver's license for the last time, she hid her black hair under a blond wig. She flew to the US Airways hub in Pittsburgh and then boarded her plane to Santa Barbara without ever taking her eyes off the people around her.

Her plane turned and lowered above the ocean off Santa Barbara while the sun still hung well above the blue horizon line. The plane hit the runway and rolled to the terminal, and the sky had a late-afternoon golden glow. Jane stepped off the plane quickly with her sunglasses on and her carry-on bag over her shoulder, scanning the faces of the people in the airport, then went to the car rental to claim the car she had reserved.

She had asked for a luxury car, and when she got to the rental area she found a Cadillac waiting for her. She had decided she wanted something big and overpowered for the drive up the coast. Lompoc was about an hour north of Santa Barbara, and if something went wrong she didn't want to be easy to outrun or bump off the road. She got into the car and drove out Sandspit Road to Ward Memorial Boulevard, a straight strip of concrete over the protected wetland at Goleta Beach, then turned onto Interstate 101 heading north away from Santa Barbara. After a few minutes, when the traffic thinned and cars were far apart, she pulled off the blond wig and shook out her hair.

She looked in the rearview mirror at the mountains that rose abruptly like a wall above Santa Barbara. She had always liked Santa Barbara in the old days because it was beautiful and warm, a city of white buildings with red tile roofs built between a mountain range and a white sand beach. Now it had become a city of ghosts.

Jane could remember the night when she had broken into the apartment on Ocean View Avenue where Harry Kemple had been living for years as Harry Shaw, the name she had given him. Before she got there, the police had already spent hours in Harry's place, and they had left greasy black fingerprint dust all over the windows, the doorknobs, the smooth surface of the table in the kitchen. Harry's body had been taken away, but there was a huge reddish brown stain in the dirty shag carpet where Harry had bled out after his throat was cut. His heart must have taken a long time to stop, to pump out that much blood.

Harry was the only runner Jane had ever had who had been caught, and he had died because of her. His killer had fooled her into believing he was a friend of Harry's who needed help, so she had brought him to Vancouver to the shop of Lewis Feng, the man who had made Harry's identification papers. Days later, when Jane had learned Lewis Feng was dead, she had rushed to reach Harry, but she arrived too late. Since then, Harry Kemple had sometimes visited Jane in her dreams.

Santa Barbara wasn't the best place for Jane to stay the night, anyway. It was too close to Los Angeles, and it had become crowded over the past few years. There were too many people from other places on the street, and any of them might be one of the people who hated her, and might see her face before she saw theirs. The best place to stop would be one of the smaller towns to the north—Buellton, or Solvang, or even Lompoc—but when Jane reached them she kept driving.

She chose Santa Maria. Since she had last been there Santa Maria had begun to evolve from a largely blue-collar ranch area to an overflow community for Santa Barbara. The open spaces looked like vanity ranches where rich people rode expensive horses. She selected a motel off the interstate and checked in for the night. The room was small and thin-walled, and there was a sliding pocket door to the bathroom that kept going off its track, but it was adequate and she was tired.

Jane prepared her clothes and belongings for the next day, checking them off against the sheet of prison regulations she had printed out from her computer at home. Visiting hours were eight-thirty to three on Friday, Saturday, and federal holidays. Processing of visitors stopped at two P.M . A visitor could carry only a clear plastic change purse, eight inches or smaller, forty dollars, and a comb. Jane would be permitted to wear "a reasonable amount" of jewelry. If she brought a baby she could have a clear plastic diaper bag with "a reasonable amount" of baby food, clothes, bottles, powder, and lotion. Shorts, halter tops, sheer clothing, skirts more than three inches above the knee, or khaki clothing were prohibited. Khaki clothes were what inmates wore.

She examined the picture ID she had asked Stewart Shattuck to make her the night she had brought Christine to see him. It was a duplicate of a California driver's license with Jane's picture in place of the original. Jane had known from the moment when Christine had told her the story of her family that she might need it one day. Jane put the license on the dresser and then went to bed and let the fatigue of the long day overtake her. In a few minutes she was asleep.

In her dream she was driving into Santa Barbara. She took the Salinas Street exit from the freeway, and then went by the corner of Ocean View Avenue, but didn't dare to take the turn. She couldn't avoid recognizing the tall hedge at the corner—at least twelve feet high and so thick it was opaque. The hedge was one of the first things she had seen when she had gone to Harry's apartment. She kept going and drove through the city, trying to get away from the memory of Harry's death. And then she made a turn and saw the old main building of Mission Santa Barbara ahead.

The sight of the Mission made Jane feel sick. It was an old adobe church with a tower and a long, low wing continuing to the left of it, the whole complex situated at the top of a vast sloping green lawn set off by big rose gardens. There was a small parking lot and a fountain, and to the right of the church was a high wall. It was what was behind the wall that was important. That was where the truth was hidden.