Thomas Perry - Blood Money

She walked out to the Explorer and drove off to pick up Interstate 69. She reached the Michigan border at nine, then stopped in Battle Creek, Lansing, and Flint, so it was after midnight when Jane abandoned Interstate 69 and turned onto Interstate 75 toward Detroit.

Jane was premeditated and methodical, because time mattered. At each stop she walked quickly with her head up and her eyes scanning, dropped off her mail, and hurried back to the vehicle. Each time she left a freeway, she memorized the exit she had used to leave it and drove back the same way to the entrance ramp. She spent the night making the circuit of the cities around Detroit.

Jane had driven all day and most of the night after nothing more than a nap on the back seat, and she was feeling exhausted and dirty. She had once hidden a runner in Ann Arbor, and tonight her memory of the city made it seem like a good place to stop for what remained of the night. The University of Michigan was about half the population, so in the summer it probably wouldn’t be difficult to find a vacant place to sleep. Her Wisconsin license plates would not be a problem, because university towns were full of cars from other states.

Jane got off Interstate 94 at State Street and headed north toward the university campus. She found a mailbox after only two blocks, mailed her letters, and began to watch for the right sort of motel. As she crossed Huron Street, she saw one that seemed right. It consisted of a big building in front for the reception area and a restaurant and, behind it, several smaller buildings shielded somewhat from the noise of the highway, where people could park their cars outside their rooms.

Jane stopped in front of the main building and walked toward the lighted glass doors, where she could see a small lobby. She reached for the handle of the glass door and stood still. Just inside the door was a bulletin board. In the middle, among the advertisements for band concerts, dry-cleaning services, and restaurants, was the picture of Jane. This time the block letters above the telephone number said, GRADUATE STUDENT MISSING.

Jane turned on her heel, walked back to the Explorer, and drove out onto the street to continue north. When she reached Highway 23, she turned east again toward Detroit. When she stopped at an all-night station in Plymouth to fill the gas tank, she knew that there was only one solution to her problem. She had to go on.

Jane got back into the car and drove, but within fifteen minutes she regretted it. She had begun to sense a light-headed, vertiginous feeling that told her she wasn’t going to be able to stay on the road much longer. Every time she turned her head to glance at the mirrors, she would see flashes of light, and images that almost had shapes but didn’t have time to solidify before she blinked them away. The next stage would be when they acquired firm, unchanging outlines, and that would mean she had fallen asleep and begun to dream.

She rubbed her eyes and slapped her cheeks hard, so they stung for a few seconds, and stared ahead at the long, dark highway. It was a short run down to Toledo, no more than sixty miles of straight, flat freeway, but it seemed endless to her now.

When she reached the outskirts of the city, she could see that the light was already beginning to change. The sun would be coming up above the other end of the lake in less than an hour, and she would be driving straight into the glare. She was going to have to find a place to rest. She watched the exits until she began to see tall buildings. When she saw a sign that said CONVENTION CENTER, she took the next exit and drove south on Monroe Street. The kind of place she wanted would be in the center of the city, where visitors came to do business and cars were parked underground or in parking structures. She found a big Holiday Inn near the convention center and parked two floors down in the garage beneath it. When she picked up one of her gray suitcases and prepared to go inside, she noticed that one of the boxes of mail was visible, with the letters in plain sight. She quickly covered her boxes of mail with the carpet, and locked the Explorer. She had just seen the proof that she had not stopped too soon. Her life depended on alertness and premeditation, and she had long ago lost her edge.

When Jane entered her room and locked the door, she gave herself permission to feel the two days of exhaustion. It took a great deal of discipline for her to carry her suitcase to the stand near the bed. She stripped off her clothes, turned down the bed covers, then felt an irritated, fussy reluctance to lie down between the clean white sheets. She had been on the road for days without a bath. Could it have been since Milwaukee? She walked into the bathroom, ran the shower, and scrubbed herself. Then she closed the drain and let the shower fill the tub. She lay back in the hot, soothing water for a time, listening to the silence. She let her head submerge, and felt her short hair floating around her ears, then lifted her face just above the surface with her eyes still closed.

Jane awoke with a start, and sat up. The water sloshed in a wave toward the end of the tub, then rolled back toward her. She had fallen asleep. She climbed out, used the big, fluffy towels to dry herself, then the hair dryer and comb on her hair. The short hair dried much more quickly than she had expected it to: maybe it wasn’t so bad.

At last she climbed between the sheets, turned off the bedside lamp, and closed her eyes. The images of the past two days crowded one another behind her eyelids: the lines on a long road coming into being just beyond the range of her headlights, already brightening and streaking toward her like projectiles.

Jane knew that she was in a dream, because the trees around her seemed to form in some instant just before she looked at them. They would change and move to arrange themselves in better order, like a crowd of soldiers falling into line.

Jane was running. She picked out the narrow trail between the trees, keeping her eyes high enough to see the next twenty feet so her mind would record the high spots and obstacles and plant each stride safely while her eyes focused ahead to see that much more of the trail. She used an enormous amount of concentration, because of the ones who were tracking her.

Each stride had to be longer than the ones that they were taking, and the rhythm of her feet hitting the ground had to be more rapid than the pace they were making. They were far enough behind her so that she could not hear them, and they were back beyond seeing in the thick forest. She knew that every time the path curved, the trees would appear to close behind her.

The one concern she had was that the sun had gone down. The light that filtered through the leaves above her was not reaching the path in bright, moving shafts anymore, and it was getting difficult to keep up her speed. The dark would have been comforting if she could have simply crawled into the thick brush and hidden, but she could not. All she could do was keep moving.

Just as the darkness fell, she saw the woman. The woman had thick black hair that was not like Jane’s, because it had a bit of a curl to it, and Jane’s was long and straight. Her skin was smooth and creamy white, and she was wearing a white silk dress that Jane recognized. It had belonged to Jane’s mother once, before Jane was born, and she had worn it for a photograph with Jane’s father that still stood on the mantel. To Jane it stood for all old-fashioned dresses.

The woman was standing perfectly still in the middle of the path, looking directly at Jane. She turned and walked through the low plants to the right, and Jane knew she was supposed to follow. The woman stepped through a thick barrier of bushes, and Jane tried to step through after her, but the opening the woman had found was gone. Jane fought her way through, scratching her arms and legs on the branches that rustled and snapped.