Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

“Just a guess.” Her guess was that she had heard a story that they had not. When she had thought about the road crossing and recrossing the stream, she had remembered one of the stories about the Old People. Once, maybe two hundred years ago and maybe two thousand, there had been a small party of Senecas camped at a bend in a river. While they were sleeping, they had been stealthily surrounded by a much larger band of Cherokees. It must have happened on one of these winding waterways like the Conewango that ran south toward Pennsylvania and beyond, because that was the way the raiders had traveled in the endless wars. While his friends prepared for battle, a brave Cherokee had clung beneath a floating tree trunk and breathed through a hollow reed to reach the spot where the Senecas’ canoes were tied, and cut them loose. When he had done it, there was no way left for the Senecas to escape.

But a few Senecas had caught the canoes beyond the river bend. Then they portaged across the narrow spit of land to come out upstream on the river again. They had kept paddling down and carrying the canoes across, until the Cherokees had concluded that a huge army of Senecas was gathering at the camp. The Cherokees had quietly retreated.

Jane did not walk quickly, just kept Dahlman moving at a constant pace. She could tell that the time and the sleep and the cold water and the fear had taken away the last traces of anesthetic that could have been in his bloodstream. Now his body was rigid with pain, but it made him seem stronger, faster. As though to warn her that his personality had not changed, he said, “You could easily be wrong.”

“Yes,” she admitted.

He persisted. “They could simply call the police anonymously and say they saw me getting out of that car and recognized me. We could arrive to find a hundred police officers waiting for us.”

Jane said patiently, “I don’t think that’s what we need to worry about.”

“Why not?”

“Because if having you in police custody was enough for them, they would have left you alone in Buffalo.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those two men didn’t show up because you had escaped from the hospital. We only saw them because they and I happened to know the last few minutes when the police would leave you alone, and which would be the safest hallway in the building. If you’ll remember, we were on our way out, but they were on their way in.” She added, “Carrying guns,” to settle the matter.

“I sort of missed the implication,” he admitted. “There’s no way they could have known I wasn’t still in the operating room, is there?”

“No.”

“It’s still not a very good plan.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “Let’s hear yours.”

Dahlman was silent. Jane looked behind her at the sidewalk. Their clothes were no longer leaving drips on the pavement. The moisture evaporating from her clothes into the night air seemed to be taking most of her body heat with it and leaving her shaking, but a casual observer would not glance at her or Dahlman in the light of a street lamp and know that they had been in the water. At this hour she had little to fear from casual observers anyway. They were getting close to the creek again, because she could detect the familiar scent of it.

She kept scanning the street ahead for the shapes of men on foot. At each intersection she lingered in the shadows of the big old trees and looked up and down to detect any movement, then hurried Dahlman across and into the darkness again.

When they reached the street where she had left the car, she ushered Dahlman into the shadow beside the corner of a house and whispered, “Wait here for me.”

She slipped across the street and down the frontage road, staying close to the buildings. She came first upon the white car that had been following. It was parked three spaces back from hers. She saw no heads in the windows, but she approached it cautiously from behind the right side until her angle gave her a clear view of the interior. It was empty.

She hurried ahead to her rental car, clutching the keys. She went to her knees, examined the tires, then sighted along the top of the hood to be sure there were no spots where fingers had displaced the dust of the road. She lay on her back and stared up at the undercarriage. There seemed to be no booby traps.

Jane stood up, hurried back to the white car, took out her pocket knife, knelt in front of the hood, and reached under the grille. She felt around until she found the bottom radiator hose, then sliced it. She found the fan belt and cut that too. She stabbed the wall of the left front tire, then the right.

She ran to her rental car, started it, and swung it around to go back up the street. When she got there, Dahlman was already emerging from the shadows with a stiff, tottering gait. She got out and helped him into the back seat.

“Thank you,” he said.

Far off, in approximately the direction they had come from, there came sounds: Pop! Pop-pop-pop-pop! Pop!

Dahlman was alarmed. “What was that?”

“Sounds like they’ve found the tire floating down the creek. They just killed it.”

9

The sky was still dark when Jane crossed the line from Pennsylvania into Ohio, but by the time she was on the outskirts of Youngstown, whole blocks of street lamps were turning themselves off. Jane pulled into a gas station, filled the tank, and walked to the little building to pay for the gas. When she returned, Dahlman was still asleep.

She found a motel, checked in, then came back to the car and shook Dahlman. “Wake up, open your eyes, but don’t sit up just yet.”

Dahlman blinked up at the ceiling of the car. “Where are we?”

“Youngstown, Ohio. A motel. I’m going to take you inside in a second, when I’m sure there’s nobody watching.” She took a long look in each direction, then said, “Now.”

She quickly walked him into the building and down the hall to their room. She hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob outside and closed the door. “Make yourself comfortable. Don’t answer the door, don’t answer the phone, don’t open the curtains. I’ll be back.”

Jane drove out of the lot, along Bridge Street to Coitsville Center Road, north to King Graves Road, and west to the airport. She turned in the car she had rented in Buffalo and went to a second agency to get a new one under the name Kathy Sirini. On the way back to the motel she stopped at a big discount chain store and took a shopping cart.

She bought pairs of sunglasses for men and women, two kinds of hair dye, makeup, baseball caps, a big roll of gauze, a bag of sterile cotton balls, a roll of adhesive tape. She bought a bottle of peroxide, some Mercurochrome, Neosporin ointment, a bottle of alcohol. Before she returned to the motel she stopped on Route 224 at a take-out restaurant and bought four breakfast specials that came in foot-wide Styrofoam boxes.

She entered the room and looked around. Dahlman was invisible. “Anybody home?”

“I’m in here.”

She walked into the bathroom to find Dahlman lying in the bathtub naked. “Oh. Sorry,” she mumbled, and stepped out.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Dahlman. “Come in here.”

Jane entered again. Dahlman glared at her. “You are a grown woman. You have definitely seen enough by now so that the sight of an aged person of the opposite sex can bring no surprises.”

“I was being considerate,” said Jane.

“Thank you,” said Dahlman. “Now look at this wound, and you can be more considerate.” He pointed to the hole in his left shoulder. “This is the entrance wound. Very neat and clean. A high-velocity bullet passed through intact. It was sutured expertly by a fine young surgeon. Come around to the back.” He leaned forward. “What do you see?”