Thomas Perry - Blood Money

3

Jane drove along Lake Erie into the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, then on across the Ohio line. It was dark now, and she had watched the mirrors for three hours. There had been no car that had stayed in their wake more than a few minutes, no indication that they could have been followed. Rita had slouched in the front seat reading the newspaper Jane had given her at the hotel for a time, then fallen asleep. Every time Jane had glanced up at the mirror, she could see Bernie’s sharp, pale eyes staring ahead at the road. She said, “Bernie?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“Do you know where you want me to drop you off?” Jane saw Rita stir and sit up. The voices had awakened her.

He said, “Someplace sort of on the small side. Not Cleveland or Cincinnati. How about Mansfield?”

“How do I get there?”

“How is he supposed to know?” said Rita. “The paper said he hasn’t been out of the house in, like, twenty years.”

“He knows,” said Jane.

Bernie said, “Stay on 90 until just before Cleveland, and then take 271 south. Stay on it, and it’ll change to 71. Keep going until you’re right outside Mansfield, then switch to 30. It’ll take us right into town.”

Jane looked at Rita. “I found road maps in their trash at the hotel. That was what made me sure who it was.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I know how people running from trouble behave. A road map isn’t big, it isn’t heavy, and it isn’t incriminating. So who would throw one away?”

Rita was silent, so Jane answered her own question. “A person who can look at it once and still have it later, in his memory. Bernie Lupus.”

Rita sucked in a breath and turned to Bernie. “But you left them in the room. What if—”

The old man said, “Don’t worry, kid. If the guys who are chasing you were as good as she is, we’d be riding in their car, not hers. Even if they played way over their heads and found the maps, what would they do with them? They’d spend two weeks looking for fingerprints on them that aren’t there.”

Rita seemed skeptical, but she was silent. Jane drove the dark highway, thinking. She couldn’t get the sight of Danny’s face out of her mind. He had been moving along the hallway in a quick, stiff-legged gait, his face only slightly touched by worry, like a man in an airport hurrying to catch a plane. When he had seen the man step out of the doorway, there had been no question he had recognized him. He had made no attempt to avert his eyes and walk past, just stopped and died.

She glanced at the old man in the back seat again. That was what he was thinking about too. He stared into space, probably remembering some good qualities in the man that Jane would never know.

She thought backward from that moment and remembered the bath. She had been running the water for her bath, heard the doorbell, turned off the water. It seemed to her now that at that moment, the floor beneath her feet had simply given way and dropped her here. She thought about Carey. What must Carey be thinking? He would be sick with worry. She had to find a way to call him. “Bernie?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there a good place to make a stop up ahead?”

He considered for a moment. “There are some little towns. And there’s a rest stop on 271 just after the exit for Richfield, if you can hold out that long.”

Jane glanced at her watch and drove on in silence, keeping the car moving. At this hour, the rest of the traffic was moving fast, the pace set by the long-distance truckers who planned to drive all night, pushing the speed limit a little while they could.

When she reached the rest stop, she drifted past the small buildings that housed the rest rooms and the telephones before she began to search for a parking space. Near the entrance, everyone who pulled in would be glancing at all the spaces, and they would see her car. She wanted them to go past her car after the building, when they would be staring ahead at the ramp onto the highway, matching their acceleration to the speed of the traffic, and not noticing cars in the lot.

Jane glanced at Rita. The girl had fallen asleep again, and now she sat up and looked around her, dry-mouthed and blinking. “We’re at a rest stop,” said Jane. “The bathrooms are in that building, if you need one.”

The girl got out without speaking and walked toward the building. Jane looked at Bernie. He said, “I suppose that’s not such a bad idea.”

Jane waited until both of them had started out, then locked the car and followed. She stopped at a telephone beside the first building, dug a handful of change out of her purse, and dialed the number of the house in Amherst.

His voice was tight and worried. “Hello?”

“Hi,” said Jane. “It’s me. I love you.” It wasn’t the first time that she had noticed that “I love you” was what you said when the rest of what you were going to say was bad.

“I love you too,” said Carey. “What happened?”

Jane said, “It’s hard to describe. I was getting ready for dinner, and this young girl came by. She had come from … a long distance to find me.”

“So you dropped everything and took off without telling me.” His voice wasn’t angry. It was disappointed, as though a grim expectation about her had merely been confirmed. He had simply left off the word “again.”

“I’m sorry. She had left some things in a hotel room, and I could tell that she hadn’t made a serious attempt to keep people from finding out she was there—didn’t know it was necessary, didn’t even know how. I was trying to pick up her belongings and get out before anybody else showed up. I couldn’t hang around waiting for you, or even send people around the hospital to hunt you down.” She hesitated for a moment, then realized that she owed him the next admission. “I didn’t even know what to say to you if I did.”

“That brings us to my next question,” he said. “Where is ‘out’? Where are you?”

She thought for a moment. If anyone was listening to this conversation, they would already know where it had come from. “I’m in Ohio right now, but I’m just at a rest stop, and I’ll be on the road again in a minute. I know this makes you angry and it hurts your feelings. I know I promised never to do this again. I swear I’m not doing this because I missed the old days, or that it’s fun. I don’t, and it isn’t. I felt that I couldn’t say no.”

“I figured that out,” he interrupted. “This call isn’t exactly a surprise, you know. I’ve had a couple of hours to think about where you must have gone, and about what I should feel about it, what I should say. What it comes down to is this. When I said ‘I love you’ it wasn’t just automatic, like ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine, and how are you?’ It’s the truth. The decision is made. It’s too late to talk you out of it, so all I can do now is figure out how to make this easier for you. I would like you back in one piece, and very soon.”

Jane could feel tears beginning behind her eyes. “Every time I think I have you figured out, you always amaze me.”

“I don’t think I want to get into an amazement contest with you. Now, what can I do? Do you need me to send money, or—”

“No,” she said. “Nothing. I don’t need anything. I just called to tell you that I’m all right, and to say I’m sorry I had to do this. I probably won’t be home for at least a couple of weeks, and I may not be able to call.”

“A couple of weeks?”

“That’s a guess,” said Jane. “Her situation is a little vague, so I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to have to do to get her out of it. It could be longer.”

“You mean you did this without even knowing what her trouble is?” he asked.