Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

She spent most of her time studying the police. Each morning the policewoman would put on her running suit and jog past the house at the same hour. The shift changed right after that, so no doubt she went home for her shower. The new shift included two men who followed Carey to work at 6:30, and two men to putter around the Water Department truck and monitor the bugs. Jane began to experiment with these two to see what happened when she left the house.

The answer was not unexpected. If Carey was already at work, then one man followed and the other stayed in the van to monitor the bugs. If she drove to the market, or drove to the river and jogged five miles, or went out, drove around the block, and came back, as though she had forgotten something, one man followed and the other stayed in the van.

She had been half-expecting that when she left, the man in the truck would head for the house to read their mail, but if they worked for the F.B.I., she supposed they would have read it before it was delivered. And the men obviously felt that hearing a live call from Dahlman instead of listening to it on tape ten minutes later was critical, but searching the house periodically to get evidence on Carey was not. That was a good sign.

Jane began to introduce variations on the routine in order to get them bored and overconfident. Sometimes she was in a big hurry, heading straight for the Thruway just above the speed limit. Once she drove to the airport, but that didn’t seem to make the follower nervous. Once she left late at night, and still the chase car kept its distance. The only way she could get them to add a second car was to pick up Carey and drag his follower along with hers.

On the ninth day she opened the newspaper and read the headlines: LAWMAKERS CAUGHT IN F.B.I. STING. There had been yet another patient, quiet effort to offer bribes to a group of congressmen, but judging from the article, the F.B.I. had become more sophisticated in the past few years, and played the game the way it was normally played. They had not dressed up like visiting Middle Eastern potentates. They had not had sleazy bagmen hand over briefcases full of cash in motel rooms. Instead they had gotten the cooperation of four genuine lobbyists, who had gone to congressional offices during business hours and offered checks made out to congressmen’s campaign funds in exchange for their explicit promises to sell their votes. The F.B.I. had then waited until a bogus law had been introduced and the congressmen’s votes recorded. It was good, but it wasn’t good for Jane. The old stings had been more vivid, and drawn more attention.

She looked down the page. There was a train crash near Boise, Idaho, the murders of three policemen in New Jersey. On the second page there were a few hot local issues, including a chemical company caught dumping waste in Lake Erie at night. Pages three and four ran the international stories that were probably important but didn’t sell newspapers. The second section of the paper had human-interest stories and what amounted to free publicity for various events arranged by public-spirited groups. She kept turning the pages and searching, but there was not a word about Richard Dahlman.

That afternoon she went to the public library on Main Street in Deganawida. A few minutes after she had gone to the corner to search the newspapers of other cities, Amy the librarian appeared at her shoulder. “Jane …”

Jane looked up and smiled. “Hi, Amy.”

Amy took off the silver spectacles that she wore only when she was working. “I know this is going to sound crazy …”

“Really?” asked Jane. “Then I’d love to hear it.”

Amy’s eyebrows tilted apologetically. “There’s this man who pulled up across the street just after you came in.”

Jane said, “Tall, kind of cute, like a young prizefighter with dark, curly hair?”

Amy put on her glasses again and looked over them at Jane. “I thought he was a little creepy.”

Jane shrugged and looked back down at her San Francisco Chronicle . “He’s waiting for me, all right. He’s not a creep, though. He’s a policeman. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring, and with the hours he keeps I don’t think he’s married.”

“But you are, you bad thing.”

“I was offering him to you. It’s not social. He’s got me under surveillance.”

Amy was shocked. “Why?”

“It’s nothing, really. Carey operated on that man a couple of weeks ago. You know, the one who was supposed to be a murderer?”

“Well, of course I knew that. But why are the police …” Then her eyes widened. “It was a woman he killed. Did he threaten you or something?”

“No. I never met him,” said Jane. “But Carey used to know him. I guess they think he’s dangerous.”

“You didn’t even ask them?”

Jane shook her head. “The one out there isn’t bothering me, and if there’s any chance we really are in danger, it would be nice to have our own family cop.” She stared into Amy’s eyes. “Of course, you wouldn’t mention this to a soul, right?”

Amy said, “Of course not.” After a few seconds she drifted off toward her desk to pretend she wasn’t studying the police officer in the parked car. Jane was satisfied. Unlike most people, Amy actually wouldn’t volunteer anything about it, but if anyone happened to notice it, she would feel she had to explain. Jane was glad that the explanation made a better rumor than anything so familiar as a woman cheating on her husband.

Jane went through ten newspapers from major cities. Most of them had headlines about the congressional scandal. A few had pressing local issues that bumped the Washington story to the bottom of the page. Not one ran anything about Richard Dahlman in the front section, and only four mentioned him at all. He was old news. She had no illusion that the F.B.I. would let him be entirely forgotten. If they had to, they would probably release a negative progress report just to get a few lines of print.

For the next few days, their spokesmen would be kept busy with the congressional sting. It was clearly an instance when they had fearlessly done what they were supposed to do, and done it superbly, so they would have to devote the week to weathering the publicity. They had enough experience to know that the network news shows would run with the scandal, and that they would never devote two segments to interviews with the same F.B.I. men on the same night. It wasn’t good TV.

Jane smiled at Amy as she left the library. Amy glanced again at the police officer’s car, and returned Jane’s smile conspiratorially. Jane felt a little guilty. Amy wouldn’t have smiled if she had known that the cop had no purpose parking this close unless his car was equipped with a directional microphone that would pick up the vibrations of speech on the big front windows of the library.

Jane’s time under surveillance with Carey was like a play in which nothing ever happened. At breakfast each morning they spoke about the probable temperature and the likelihood of rain while they held hands and caressed each other gently and soundlessly. In the late morning when Carey was out of surgery, he would call her on the telephone and say it was because he had forgotten to tell her what time he would be home for dinner, or ask her if she had paid the electric bill, or say that he had run into someone at the hospital who had sent her regards. He never said it was because he wanted to hear her voice, and knew that very soon she would be gone and he might never hear it again.

In the evening, she would sometimes drive to the hospital to take Carey out to dinner and then wait for him in his office down the street while he made his rounds of his patients’ rooms. During the long nights they would be entwined in each other’s arms with their eyes open, not daring to speak for fear their jailers would hear and know they were in the wrong room.