Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

“It’s probably got the same feel because this is the way the game is played, and those men seem to know it. The best place to hide is where nothing in your daily life forces you to put your face where lots of people see it. Sometimes a farm is good. So is a small town, as long as it’s not small enough so people ask about you, and not a rich small town, where police check out newcomers.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Soon. Tonight.”

He came back into the kitchen. “Then in case I don’t see you again, I would like to thank you. I can see I haven’t been an easy companion, and it seems no advantage can come to you from helping me.”

Jane saw that he was telling her that he was ready. She slipped her purse strap onto her shoulder and stood up. “You’ll see me again.”

“You’ve taken me away from the police and away from the people who wanted to kill me. Now I’m in a place that seems to be safe. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that this is the end of your services.”

Jane walked to the door and put her hand on the knob. “Don’t open the blinds, don’t answer the door. Don’t go outside unless you’re sure the building’s on fire, and even then, leave by the bedroom window. And don’t forget to take the rest of the antibiotics. When I come back for you, what I want to find in here is a man, not a body.”

Jane waited until Dahlman gave her a single nod. Then she slipped out the door. When she closed it behind her, Dahlman listened for a few seconds, but he heard no other sound.

15

It was nine o’clock in the evening when Carey McKinnon finished his rounds. The six patients he had operated on in the past three days were all doing extremely well. He wondered whether he had been somehow overcompensating for his anxiety, and therefore doing a better job. Maybe he had been concentrating on the clear, logical work of surgery as an escape from the unpleasant and unmanageable realities that were waiting for him outside the O.R. But maybe he had been unconsciously scheduling the easy ones for this week, and pushing the risky, demoralizing surgeries off for later. Both of these possibilities were, in different ways, disturbing, but at least he could test the last one. Mr. Caputi certainly was not an easy one. His pre-op physical exam had shown elevated blood pressure, he suffered from emphysema, and he had a history of complications in earlier surgery. Mrs. Trelewski had been rushed into surgery from the emergency room, so scheduling had nothing to do with it.

It was entirely possible that he had been focusing his mind more intensely on the practiced movements of his hands. Certainly he was doing something like that now, as he walked along the street in the dark. If things had been as usual, he would have been thinking about Jane. Maybe he would be on his way home to have a late supper in the kitchen with her, and he would be forming a picture of her in his mind. The picture was almost formed, but he pushed it away. Thinking about his work was safer, and it kept his features set and impenetrable—no worry lines, no frowns.

They would be looking for signs that he was weakening. Every moment when he was not in the operating room there seemed to be someone observing him. When he was out and on the move like this, sometimes he would see them. Tonight it would be the team of two big, benevolent-looking policemen who always worked in the evening. Usually one of them would be in a car parked near the back entrance of the hospital in sight of Carey’s reserved parking space. The other would be in one of the waiting areas or the gift shop off the main lobby.

He knew that behaving as though nothing had happened was the right thing to do. It was also completely insane. He was not trying to avoid creating suspicion: the police already suspected him. And the policemen weren’t pretending not to be policemen. Both sides were engaged in a long, silent face-off that had become like a dialogue … or an interrogation. It was as if he had said, “I know you think I had something to do with Richard Dahlman’s escape.” They would answer, “What makes you think that?” He would say, “Because you’re watching me.” And they would answer, “What makes you think we’re watching you?”

He was aware that, sooner or later, their patient immovability was going to end and someone was going to say, “Where is your wife?” They must have noticed by now. If they could devote policemen to sitting in cars and watching him, then they must have done a background investigation on him, or simply asked his colleagues at the hospital about him. They must know he had a wife.

The thought re-activated another bit of anxiety. Several of his colleagues had been questioned by the police, even a couple who had not been on duty the night Dahlman disappeared. A few of his close friends had said things like “Carey, what’s going on? Why are they asking so many questions about you?” The ones who made him anxious were the ones who had said nothing to him. He suspected that a few of them must be trying to build distance between him and them to preserve their careers. Others might even have told the police things that were incriminating.

Carey made his way along the sidewalk in front of his office building toward the parking lot in back, where he had left his car. He had been walking this same route every day at least twice for a couple of years. When he was scheduled for surgery in the morning he would park in the hospital lot, then walk to the office around one to see patients, then back for his rounds. Since Jane had been gone, he had made a point of parking at the office and walking to the hospital, so it had become four trips. As he came around the corner into the shadow of the building, the blackness seemed to congeal in front of him into a darker black. It was the shape of a person, but some template in his brain had already measured it as small, thin—a woman. He was too late to keep his body from giving a jerk to defend itself, but then he held himself stiffly and finished his step to pretend it hadn’t.

The shape took a step backward out of the shadow, and became Jane. Carey drew in a breath, but she was holding her finger over her lips, so he blew it out. She took his arm and silently pulled him through the office door, guided him down the dark hallway, and hurried him out the front door to the curb, where there was a car he had never seen before. She pushed him into the driver’s seat and went around the car to sit beside him. As he stared at her in incomprehension, she kissed his cheek and whispered, “Drive. I want to see who follows.”

Carey drove up the street, then turned up the second side street, then turned again at the next corner, zigzagging through the quiet streets while Jane stared out the back window. Finally she rested both shoulders on the seat and seemed to relax.

She looked at him. “You can talk, you know. That’s why I rented this car. Nobody could have put a bug in it. So let’s hear some sweet nothings.”

“I love you,” he said. “How bad is it on your end?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Here too. I was hoping that by now Dahlman would be safe in Illinois again, and we could forget about him and go back to living a normal life.”

“Me too.” She watched him as she said, “I’m afraid that’s not exactly imminent.” He looked as though his lungs were deflating. Then he straightened, and began compulsively glancing in the rearview mirror. When he had seen her, his hopes must have ambushed him, she thought. “But I’m curious,” she said. “What could a fellow like you mean by a normal life, and what makes you so sure you want one?”

He looked at her, and his lips slowly came up into a smile that turned into a small, rueful laugh. He was Carey again. “There are many ways of assessing these matters,” he said. “But I find that what the term really means is frequent sex.”