Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

Jane drove up the street until she saw a mailbox-rental store that advertised “Self-Serve Copies, 10¢,” went inside, made a copy of nothing, then used the blank sheet to cover the doctor’s handwriting and make a blank prescription form. Next she used the doctor’s pen to trace his signature and the genuine prescription, substituting the word “Cipro” for “Orthocept.”

It took Jane a little longer to find the right pharmacy. She looked for one on the other side of the city so the druggist would not be too familiar with her doctor’s handwriting. She wanted one that was not part of a larger building, so all sides would be visible, and one that wasn’t part of a chain, because there was no way to know what might come up on the computer of a chain store. After she handed in her prescription, she sat in a coffee shop in the strip mall across the street and waited. No police cars arrived, no stranger showed up to hang around the building. After an hour she went in, picked up her prescription, and paid for it in cash.

When Jane handed Dahlman the bottle of pills he looked at her with his eyebrows raised.

“Something wrong with it?”

“It’s exactly what I asked for.”

“That’s why I asked you to spell it.”

He took a dose immediately, then went back to the bed. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said.

Jane said nothing. She opened her suitcase and brushed her hair.

“Don’t you want to hear what I was thinking?”

Jane stared at him over the lid of the suitcase. “Not if it’s about me.”

“Interesting,” said Dahlman. “What I was thinking about was why a man like Dr. McKinnon would know the telephone number of a woman like you.”

“A woman like me?”

Dahlman went on. “He had it in his head, you know—didn’t have to look it up. I was thinking it was something like this. He did you a favor—maybe operated on you or a friend of yours. You told him that if he ever needed anything in return, he should call. The number just stuck in his mind. He’s a brilliant man, with the sort of mind that things just stick to. And last night I came looking for you. The police shot me before I could make it to your house. I told Carey your name, and out came your number.”

“You think he once took a thorn out of my paw?” Her face wore a mirthless little smile.

“Well?” He looked at her triumphantly. “Am I right?”

Jane picked up a new set of clothes and walked toward the bathroom. “I’m going to shower and change. Then I’m going to sleep for a few hours. You can watch TV quietly, or read if the light’s not in my eyes. When I wake up it will be dark. And then we’re going to check out and drive on.”

“You won’t tell me how he knows you?”

“He knew my number because I’m his wife.” She closed the door, and in a moment Dahlman heard the shower running.

Dahlman eased himself onto the bed. He had done it again. He had met a person he liked, and had studied her for a time, and found her so intriguing that he had allowed his curiosity to explode into life and hungrily turn her into a specimen for study. His life seemed to him a long and distressing series of incidents like this—a sequence of offenses that made him want to hide his face. He found himself wishing he could be back in the clinic in Chicago with the door closed and human beings kept far away, where he wouldn’t be tempted to do something that would make him ashamed. He felt a sudden twinge in his shoulder and shifted his weight to his right side. “That’s another reason,” he thought. “If I were back there, I could make this thing go away.”

10

It was time for the morning flurry of activity around the airport, and Marshall waited for the deep roar of the latest airplane to fade before he spoke into the telephone again. Now and then he looked down at what he had written in the little leather notebook that he carried. “Here’s what I would like. The Buffalo police will be sending prints from the hospital, along with prints on file of the members of the staff who were supposed to be in the area. Anything out of the ordinary goes to me, and to them. Okay?”

On the other end of the line, Albert Grapelli spoke in a preoccupied way, as though he were writing. “Okay.”

Marshall looked down at his list again. “When Dahlman walked out of there, he didn’t take his medicine with him. He’s supposed to have painkillers and an antibiotic. The painkillers we can’t do much about because there are so many kinds on the market, and we can’t even be sure he’ll take one. But the antibiotic seems promising. The guy who operated on him was one of his old students, so let’s assume they both believe in the same antibiotic. Now that he’s on his own, he’ll prescribe the same stuff for himself. It’s called Cipro. If any pharmacist fills a prescription for it anywhere in the next few days, I’d like to have him interviewed.”

Grapelli was silent for a moment. Marshall waited, then heard Grapelli take in a breath, so he knew what was coming. “John,” said Grapelli. “Isn’t that a little …” He corrected himself. “No, scratch that. Let’s hear what else you want before I tell you what you can’t have.”

Marshall said, “Problem?”

“You know what I’d like? I’d like to know what you think is going on.”

Marshall glanced around the little office that the airport people had lent him. The door was still closed, and under it he could see no shadow that would indicate someone was politely waiting for him to finish his call before they knocked. He said, “I think there’s serious strangeness here.”

“What kind of strangeness?”

“A sedated sixty-seven-year-old man doesn’t hop out of bed with a gunshot wound and stroll past cops and newspeople wearing nothing but a hospital gown and a smile. I think even if all of the laws of the universe were temporarily suspended and he did, then you’d still have a wounded senior citizen walking barefoot and bare-assed down a well-lighted and well-traveled public street.”

“I thought he stole a police car and drove it someplace?”

“I don’t,” said Marshall. “It’s possible that it’s just one of those jokers who see a unit sitting there during an emergency, take it for a joyride, and dump it. Unfortunately, the search for it took up maybe half the men and equipment the local police had for a couple of hours. They found it in the garage of an unoccupied house. That meant they had to surround the house and assault it as though he were barricaded in there.”

“Should I send a team to tactfully explain that a man is short and round, and a house is big and pointy?”

“Not necessary,” said Marshall. “They’ll look stupid in the morning papers, but they’re not. They had a wounded murder suspect and a patrol unit disappear at the same time. When they last saw the car it had a shotgun in the rack. When it turned up a mile away in a dark garage attached to an empty house, what were they going to do? No, they’re good. Whoever took Dahlman out is better.”

“What?” Grapelli elongated it into a drawl.

“Just a theory, of course,” said Marshall.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. Dahlman’s surgeon knew him, so there’s a connection that might make him want to help Dahlman. But the surgeon was accounted for during some of the time when the hard part had to happen—wheeling Dahlman out, bringing a getaway car, maybe stealing the police cruiser to create a diversion. The whole thing had to be cooked up in less than an hour, and executed in fifteen minutes. You can see the problem.”

“Yeah, I can see it, all right. Multiple perpetrators of unknown number.”

“If I say it out loud, then it’s crazy time: maybe a conspiracy involving half a dozen people who work in the hospital.”