Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

Jane had no doubt that Vi had done the job properly. When Jane had arrived in the ladies’ room at Cinema 12, Vi had already been waiting. She had quickly changed from her jeans and sweatshirt into Jane’s pale blue dress, then helped Jane braid her hair, pin it into a bun, and fit the baseball cap over it.

Jane had said, “Are you sure you can handle this?”

“What’s to handle? I’ll have a plane ticket in my own name to take me to a legitimate party. Billy is envious.”

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you what this is all about.”

Violet had shrugged. “It’s about a small favor for a clan sister.” Then she had given Jane a little push.

When Jane had turned back and kissed her cheek, she had caught a glimpse of the two heads and torsos in the bathroom mirror. There was a blur of shining black hair, Violet’s skin a half shade darker than Jane’s and her eyes black, but their shapes were almost identical. Even the little turn as Violet raised her shoulder to shrug off the peck on the cheek was familiar: Jane had done it herself.

Jane had left the ladies’ room, slipped into the gaggle of people leaving Theater 8, hurried across the lobby to the rear entrance that opened onto the shiny floor of the mall, and kept walking. She had not looked back until she’d reached the far end of the mall and made her last check to see if the policemen had followed. Then she’d gone out, found the car that Violet Peterson had left for her in the lot, and driven it into the night to the south and west toward Iowa.

18

Marshall watched Dale Honecker pick up the color photograph of the dark-haired woman that had been taken at the Buffalo airport. He pinched it with his fingers at the edges as though it were a glossy print, probably because somebody had once told him he would ruin a picture if he touched it. This one was printed by a computer. Honecker rested it on his lap. He squinted, then held it at arm’s length. In a minute, he was going to say yes, that’s the one, and Marshall would have to put him through a few tricks to be sure he wasn’t just saying yes because it would please Marshall.

“No,” said Dale Honecker.

Marshall’s mind raced. Had he piled so much weight on the side of caution that he had paralyzed the boy? Could there possibly be two women? “Okay,” said Marshall evenly. “How about these?”

He handed the boy four photographs that he had printed out from the Wanted List. All of them were pictures taken at bookings, so the women had little black placards under their chins with white NCIC numbers and lines behind them that gauged their height. The boy leafed through them carefully. He handed Marshall one of them. “This looks a little bit like her, but it isn’t her.”

Marshall looked at the picture. It was Smithson, Wanda Dee, wanted in Alabama for manufacturing and sale of methamphetamines. She had a triangular Anglo-Saxon face with a thin, pointed nose and deep, clear blue eyes. Her hair was long and straight, parted in the middle, and it was bright, luminescent blond. Marshall said, “Something in particular about her?”

“The eyes, I think,” said Honecker. “And I guess the hair too.”

Marshall studied the boy. “I thought the woman you saw had black hair. And the eyes … you didn’t know what color they were.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said the boy. He frowned uncomfortably at the floor. “You know those police artists? Maybe if you could get one of them …”

Marshall nodded unenthusiastically. “You might be right. The problem is, I haven’t had very good luck with them in the past. It’s possible my bosses will send one to you at some point, but as a rule, they haven’t worked too well for me. I heard somebody say once, ‘If they were any good as artists, why would they want to be cops?’ But I think it’s more complicated than that. There’s something about the way faces get recorded in the memory that isn’t like a photograph. You remember something distinctive—the style of the hair, or the shape of the eyes, but your mind doesn’t hold on to the rest. Maybe you can describe what you saw in words, and maybe not. So the artist has to fill in the blanks with something he thinks you must have seen. Then everybody in the country looks at this line drawing. We get calls turning in all the young women who have long, straight hair and pretty eyes. Now, that’s quite a few. In fact, I’d say that they’re one of our greatest natural resources.”

“It was just an idea,” muttered Honecker. “Trying to help.”

“I know,” said Marshall. “We appreciate it, too. But see, I don’t know if she did anything, and if she did, sketches can come back to haunt us in court. Usually if you hold the picture up next to the defendant, you have to stretch your imagination pretty far to convince yourself they’re the same person. This makes juries extremely nervous.” He smiled. “If I bring you the right picture, you’ll recognize it?”

“I guess so,” said Honecker.

Marshall stood up and walked to the front door of the Honecker house. There were four flies buzzing and making crazy circles to batter themselves against the screen. They could smell the dinner Honecker’s mother was making in the kitchen. Marshall said, “We’ll find the right one. And don’t get impatient. It may take time.”

He slipped outside the screen door without letting the flies in, then crossed the wooden porch and went down the steps. He was convinced now that Dale Honecker’s memory was not going to be the answer. Honecker had seen the woman, but within seconds he had also seen a dangerous killer. His instinct for self-preservation had forced his attention away from her.

As Marshall drove onto the highway he conceded that there was no basis for adding anything to what he had already published about the woman. She had long, dark hair, and she was young. He had allowed himself to imagine that she was Jane McKinnon, going around the country on some misguided amateur attempt to save her husband’s old teacher. But the boy had just looked at a clear, fresh photograph of Jane McKinnon taken at the Buffalo airport, and said it wasn’t.

Marshall had no choice but to lean toward the hypothesis he liked least: the dark-haired woman was likely to have been Kathy Sirini, the young traveler from New York who had rented the car in Youngstown. Dahlman had gotten her to give him a ride, and somehow either won her over or kept her ignorant while she drove him to his next stop. Then he had killed her and buried the body somewhere out here in the Ohio countryside, not to be discovered until a month from now, when some farmer went out to check the alfalfa in the north forty and smelled something awful.

19

Dahlman seemed affable, almost manic tonight, talking as though he had done nothing but wait for her to come back so he could have someone listen. And Jane listened politely while she prepared dinner, making a sound only when he paused. As Jane and Dahlman finished their dinner in the little apartment’s kitchen, he said, “It’s been an interesting exercise, living here for twelve days. It’s been nearly half a century since I’ve lived in a big apartment building with people at close quarters like this, but things never change at all. The games the children play are the same. Has anyone ever found out how they all learn that awful chant—nyah-nyah nyah-nyah-nyah? They seem to be born knowing it.”

Jane said quietly, “You’ve had a hard time, haven’t you?”

He made a face. “I can’t complain. I’ve been safe, and I’m healing nicely. And I’ve done a lot of thinking.”

Jane said, “What about?”

Dahlman said, “Have you ever been in prison?”

“Yes,” said Jane. “A couple of times, but not much longer than you were.”