Thomas Perry: Blood Money

Jane sighed. “I know who is looking for her. The rest doesn’t really matter, because I know about him. I can’t just let him have her.”

“Who is he?”

“I can’t talk about it anymore,” she lied. “I’m in a public place, and I’ve got to get going in a second.”

“You aren’t saying it because it’s a name people know, isn’t it?” he said. He was too quick, too perceptive.

She took the phone from her ear, wanting to hang it up, but sure that he would know it had been intentional. “Yes,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

“If it’s somebody like that, how can you possibly expect to—”

“I have to try.”

“My God.” Carey’s voice was strained, incredulous. “It doesn’t matter to you who wins, does it?”

“Of course it does,” she said. “But it matters more that somebody try.”

He was silent for a few seconds. She heard him draw in a deep breath and blow it out slowly. “I don’t understand. Or maybe I do, and I just don’t agree. I can’t pretend that I do. Arguing about it isn’t going to do any good, is it?”

“No,” said Jane. “It isn’t.”

“I love you, and I’ll be in the usual places waiting to hear from you. You already know that if I can do anything to help you, I will.”

“Thanks, Carey,” she said. “I promise that the second I can come home, I will. I love you. Got to go.” She hung up.

As she walked to the ladies’ room she felt guilty and sorry and, most of all, unsettled. What she had been doing from a year before they had met in college until the day they had married had always been hard to talk about. She had considered agreeing to marry him to be a promise to stop being a guide. But she had been away twice since then.

The first time it had been Pete Hatcher—a man she had hidden before she had made the promise. One night she had learned he’d been spotted, and was running again. She had considered him unfinished business, and she had gone off to make him disappear for good.

In the year after that, she and Carey had both gotten attached to the idea that making people disappear was just something she used to do when she was young and single. When they talked about the past, it was the shared past—things that had happened to both of them—or the distant past inhabited by parents, aunts, and uncles. But Richard Dahlman had changed that.

Dahlman was a doctor, the older surgeon who had taken Carey on as a novice and taught him. Jane had never met him until the night when he had turned up at Carey’s hospital with a policeman’s bullet in his shoulder. Jane had plucked Dahlman out of the hospital and kept him invisible while she had tried to sort out how a respected surgeon had gotten into that kind of trouble. She had done it because Carey had asked her to.

But apparently then, or in the months after that, something had quietly changed. It seemed that when Carey had asked her to make one more person disappear, he had forfeited—no, knowingly spent—his right to demand that she never do it again. She had heard it in his voice tonight, and she didn’t like it.

While she was listening to the girl’s story this afternoon, she had acknowledged that Carey would not be pleased. Then she had told herself that Carey would understand why this, too, was an exception. But to Carey, this had been merely the first instance to occur after he had given up his right to an opinion. Marriages were more fragile and complicated than she had ever imagined. Trouble came in quiet, unexpected ways. Things had to be said over and over again, all existing agreements renewed and clarified.

When Jane returned to the car, the girl was half-turned in the front seat and the old man was leaning forward in the back, while they talked. As soon as the girl saw Jane coming, they stopped and both stared straight ahead. Jane wasn’t sure that she liked that, either. She got into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove off onto the highway.

It took only a few minutes for the old man to speak. “You know, I think I’m going to need a car. Mansfield is big enough to have a couple of used-car lots. Suppose Rita comes in with me to buy one. I’m old, so nobody is shocked if I’m old-fashioned enough not to trust banks. I pay cash. Rita makes a big deal about what a crazy old coot I am—you know, like she’s embarrassed—and the salesman sells it to me. That way I don’t need a bank account with a name on it and all that.”

Jane muttered, “If you have a valid driver’s license, I assume it must be in your own name. Otherwise it might work.”

“What might work better?” asked Bernie. “How about if we rent an apartment, you buy a car under a false name, wait for the ownership and registration to come in the mail, and sign the pink slip over? Would that be better?”

“You know it would,” said Jane. “But I’m not staying in an apartment with you for a month while the state of Ohio gets around to mailing a lot of papers. I own this car—not in my real name, of course. We’ll go to Mansfield. I’ll sign the car over and Rita and I will be on our way.”

“Oof,” moaned Bernie.

Rita turned in her seat. “What’s wrong?”

“Uh … nothing,” said Bernie. “I guess I’m just tired.” To Jane he said, “Keep going.”

“I don’t have much choice,” she said. “There’s not much point in stopping unless we come to a hospital.”

“No,” said Bernie. “I don’t need a doctor, and if I did, the price of stopping would be a little steep. I’m just not used to the excitement, and I’ve been out a lot today. When we got to the hotel and Rita wasn’t there, I went to see the Falls. Pretty spectacular.” Jane expected him to be quiet, but he added, “The day I died we were in San Antonio, Texas. Before the credit report came telling us where to find Rita, I got to see the Alamo.”

It was clear to Jane that he wanted to continue talking, but she was not sure whether he was trying to ignore some pain or keep her occupied. “What did you think of it?”

“All my life I’ve been hearing about it,” he said. “But it’s not much to look at. A crappy place to die. Don’t you think so?”

“I’m not a believer in last stands,” she said. “I’m a believer in running.”

Bernie chuckled. “That comes with the high I.Q., I guess.” He was quiet for only a few seconds. “I wanted to go to all of those places.”

“You mean since you died?”

“No. I’ve wanted to see Disneyland, for instance. I’ve wanted to know what the fuss was about since they started building it in the fifties.”

“Danny was going to take you to all those places?”

“Others, too. He was a good kid. He was scared shitless for this trip, but I kept him at it. We just got to Niagara Falls this morning.”

When they reached the Mansfield city line, Bernie said, “Honey, I hate to be trouble, but I’d like it if you could stop at a motel around here. I got to rest.”

Jane was careful not to pick the first one. She wasn’t ready to trust Bernie the Elephant.

When the car came to a stop beside the third motel, Jane saw that Rita was sitting stiffly, pretending to stare straight ahead, but her eyes had sneaked to the corners of their sockets to see what Jane was going to do.

“Thanks, honey,” said Bernie. “Get three rooms. If they see you two go into one with an old man, they’re not going to respect you.”

Jane reached across Rita to open the glove compartment and take an envelope out.

Bernie said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m signing the pink slip to the car.” She put it back into the glove compartment and closed it. “This way, if my sanity returns in the middle of the night, Rita and I can get a cab without waking anybody up to say good-bye.” She got out of the car, slammed the door, and walked toward the motel office.