Thomas Perry: Blood Money

As she walked, she found herself eliminating rooms that she passed. Three had PLEASE MAKE UP room signs hanging from their doorknobs. She sensed that men here to kidnap somebody would want privacy, not maid service. As she went on she heard voices behind one door and a television set behind another. There was one door that was open, and when Jane passed she could see that the bedclothes were rumpled, so she guessed someone must have just left to check out. There was one door on the hall that had the PRIVACY PLEASE side of the sign on the knob. Jane knocked on the door quietly, listened, then knocked again. After a moment she decided to take the chance.

She took her pocketknife out of her purse, opened it, and slipped it between the jamb and the door to feel for the bolt. She could tell the shape was going to make it difficult, but if those two men had gotten into Rita’s room, she might be able to get into theirs. The bolt was thick, rounded, and flat on the end, so she wouldn’t be able to slide a credit card behind it and ease it out of the receptacle.

Jane searched her purse until she found the necklace. It consisted of small beads strung on a silver wire. She would have to try it. She cut the wire at the clasp and dumped the beads into her purse. She took the twelve-inch length of wire and bent the end into a hook, then inserted it into the crack over the bolt between the door and the jamb until the end came back below the bolt. She used the knife blade to guide the end of the loop into the receptacle that held the bolt. She kept pushing the wire until she had gotten it in as far as possible, removed the knife, then slowly pushed the two loose ends of the wire back and forth, trying to work the loop to the end of the bolt. When it felt as though it had reached the butt of the bolt, she twisted both loose ends around her forefingers and tugged hard. The bolt gave a click and snapped back into the lock.

Jane was inside. She closed the door behind her and looked around. There were two suitcases, one at the end of each bed, both unlatched. The girl had said she’d stuffed everything important into a jacket. Jane guessed that if the men had found it in her room, they would have taken it back here. There was no sign of the jacket, so Jane turned her attention to the suitcases. She had hoped there would be tags on them from an airline that would tell her where they had been, but there were none.

She opened the first one. It was filled with clothes that had to belong to the smaller, older man, but something struck her. They were all new, still in packages, with tags and pins stuck to them. Even the socks and underwear were new. There was nothing that could possibly belong to Rita. She moved to the second suitcase, and found another trove of clothes that had not been touched since they had come from the store. She looked at the collar of a shirt: neck 17, sleeve 36. That was definitely the bigger man.

There was nothing in this suitcase that could belong to Rita either. Jane moved to the wastebasket. It seemed to be full. She quickly picked out the first few pieces of trash she saw: road maps. There were maps of New York State, pennsylvania, Ohio. That made sense, she supposed. The men had found their way here, and the way home was never as hard to plot. But then she looked deeper. There were other maps: the District of Columbia, northern Arizona, Colorado. Below them was a layer of travel brochures. She looked at the covers of the little folders and booklets. The first one that caught her eye was for Disneyland. There were brochures about Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite, Dinosaur National Monument. There was one about New Orleans, and others about Williamsburg, Virginia, and San Antonio.

Jane stood and moved toward the door. It was time to get the girl out of the stairwell and into the car. This was too much. She opened the door a crack, peered out into the hallway, and saw Rita.

The girl had already knocked on the door of her room, and the door was already opening. Jane pushed off with her back foot and broke into a run. The distance seemed to be just a bit too great. The girl stepped inside, and the door began to close behind her. Jane got her hand on the door just in time to keep it from clicking shut, and pushed it open.

She stepped in, closed it behind her, and stood still. The two men were standing now, the light still behind them so that they looked like silhouettes. The bigger man’s stance—arms out from his sides and his feet planted at shoulder width—made him seem shocked and disturbed, but he made no attempt to reach for a weapon. The smaller man’s face was difficult to read in the shadows. Now that he was standing, Jane could see that he was much older than he had seemed when he was seated. There was a stoop-shouldered, bent look to him.

Rita turned to look at Jane. “Jane. I thought you were in here, and I hadn’t heard any noise, and—”

“I know,” said Jane. “You thought it must be safe.”

Rita waved her arm toward the two men. “Jane, this is—”

This time the old man interrupted. “Hello, there. I’m Rita’s grandfather, Ben Shelford.”

“No, you’re not,” said Jane evenly.

The old man seemed not to have heard her. “And this is my son, David.” He nodded. “Rita’s uncle.”

“He’s Danny,” said Jane. The younger man’s head swiveled to look at the older man in alarm.

The older man went on, unperturbed. “We sometimes call him that, but his real name is David.”

Jane slowly shook her head. “You’re Bernie Lupus.”

The old man stepped closer, and Jane could see his small, pale eyes. He didn’t seem angry. He looked intrigued. “How did you come to that?”

Jane said, “I happened to notice a few minutes ago that you were playing a card game that goes to five hundred without either paying for each hand or writing down the score. Then I went in your room, and looked at your clothes and your trash.”

The old man said, “Ah,” appreciatively. He nodded his head. “What did they tell you?” He sounded, not like a teacher exactly, but like an examiner, maybe a diagnostician.

Jane shrugged. “They told me that somebody staying in the room wanted to go all over the country being a tourist.” She realized he was waiting for more. “Everybody wants to go somewhere. The only one who wants to go everywhere is somebody who’s been locked up for a long time.”

“Or a kid?” he suggested.

“Or a kid,” she agreed. “There were no clothes in the suitcases for a child. What was in there were clothes that came straight from the store. Everybody likes to have new clothes, but nobody has nothing but new clothes unless he couldn’t take anything at all when he left home.”

The old man was quiet for only a moment. “You’re an astute girl,” he pronounced.

The younger man said to Rita, “Who is she?”

“Nobody you want to know,” said Jane. “And just to make everybody feel more comfortable, it makes no difference to me whether he’s alive or dead. My only interest in this is that his death put Rita in danger.”

Hearing her name seemed to strike Rita as permission to join the conversation. “She makes people disappear,” she said. “Somebody in Florida told me about her, and so I—”

Jane interrupted. “Get your things, Rita.” She turned to the two men again. “I’m going to take her with me.”

The old man stepped a tiny bit closer, then realized that Jane’s body had become tense. He sat down on the bed. His stare was now attentive and intense. “She makes people disappear? Interesting.”

Jane was watching the bigger man, preparing herself for the possibility that he might be about to move.

The old man said, “We’re not going to stop you. That was pretty much what we had in mind, too.”