Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

Jardine had instantly induced in himself an uncharacteristic concern for the welfare of the man in the suit. He had knelt and used his handkerchief to stanch the flow of blood from the man’s nose, muttering quiet bits of optimistic nonsense about his condition. He had helped him to his feet and driven him to the hospital emergency room.

It was at least an hour before he had managed to get any answers to his sympathetic inquiries about what had brought this poor man to Vignes Street and what had led this woman to drop him on the pavement like a sack of garbage. When Jardine had heard that the man was a bounty hunter from New York, he had begun to feel rather festive about the whole episode. Jardine had no love of outsiders who came into his city to hunt his game.

The blond woman, it seemed, had been doing exactly what Jardine had suspected Bobby McKay of doing. She had gone to jail on a disorderly conduct charge and spent thirty days picking up gum wrappers along the freeway while the people who had been chasing her wore themselves out.

Like many hunters, Jardine had always been a convivial companion and an avid listener to his colleagues’ stories of the chase. It was his main consolation in times when nothing seemed to work, and his best celebration of victory. But it also had a practical purpose, because the tales often carried information he could use. There had been times when he had heard things about a particular fugitive he had been chasing that had helped him make money, and other times he had heard things that had convinced him to turn his attention elsewhere. It was not a good idea to chase a fugitive who had once been convicted of something known to be the exclusive province of organized crime—large-scale gambling, or trafficking in stolen securities, for instance.

But along with the rest of the stories came rumors and tall tales. One of them he had heard several times was about a woman named Jane who made people disappear. He had not taken the Jane stories seriously, because they had always been about the one that got away. Some enormous payday had not come for some hunter, and here’s why it wasn’t his fault.

But on that day three years ago when the little blond woman had gotten away, he had begun to listen to the rumors, and to connect Jane with the names of fugitives who had not been captured. Maybe the stories weren’t all true. Any time there was a ready-made excuse for failure, most people would take it. But he was sure that enough of them were true to make this Jane woman worth some effort. If someone managed to put her in a cage, he’d have the aliases and addresses of all the people she had ever hidden.

Jardine was having a difficult time believing his good fortune tonight as he followed her down the concourse toward the escalators. His mind worked frantically. He had just seen her come off an airplane. She could not possibly be armed. If she even owned a gun, it could only be disassembled and the parts scattered around in some big piece of luggage she had checked in. If the baggage claim was where she was headed, then he would simply have to move in close before she had a chance to claim the suitcase and get it out of here into a private place.

Jardine’s gun was in his car, parked right across the street in the short-term lot, where he could get to it quickly. He would have no trouble with her if he kept the initiative and stayed a little bit ahead, so she wouldn’t figure what she should have done until that “should have” had been firmly built in. She had almost certainly never seen Jardine before except on that one day three years ago, when she’d had other things on her mind.

As he watched her he could see that she was working. She wanted to give an overeager pursuer a chance to move in too early and show himself. She stopped to stare into a store window. Then she went into another and came out the farther doorway. Alvin Jardine was not a novice. He didn’t want her in this crowded, brightly lit, heavily policed airport. He wanted to materialize in her path after she was alone out there in the dark.

He began to worry. She might be doing these things because she knew that someone else was following her that Jardine didn’t know about. Jardine stopped in front of a display of guilty-husband presents in a window: perfume, jewelry, stuff with flowers and hearts on it. He tried to keep Jane in sight while he let the crowd behind him go past. He picked out two men who were possibilities, then let them get ahead and watched.

One went into the rest room, and the other walked so fast that he caught up with her and passed her. Jardine was elated. He didn’t have to worry about having to fight over her. She passed the spot where the security people were herding passengers through the metal detectors, then stepped aside into the cafeteria. Jardine went past the doorway and loitered near the television sets where the schedules were posted so he could see which direction she would face when she sat down. She picked up a tray and got into the line of people sidestepping along in front of the food counter. About halfway through, she dropped something and squatted down to pick it up, and that gave her a chance to take a glance at the people behind her. Jardine had seen it coming, and looked away at the television screen.

He moved off while she paid for her food and went to sit in a booth at the wall so she could watch the doorway. Jardine waited on the other side of the wall, where he could see the doorway too. Watching her go through her precautions had made him feel eager. He had noticed before that sometimes people who were running seemed to have a vague premonition, to sense a change in the air that told them trouble was close, but not that the trouble was Jardine. Jane’s extreme caution validated his belief that she was worth having, and he knew that each feint or detour she completed was helping her silence her own intuition and prove to herself that she was safe.

Jardine slapped his back pocket to feel the two sets of plastic wrist restraints. He liked them so well that he had given up carrying handcuffs even on the occasions when he didn’t have to pass through a metal detector. They were quick and easy and gave a better fit, and getting out of them wasn’t a question of picking a lock: they had to be cut. He had to remember that this time he wasn’t going to be able to grab her and intone some meaningless words about warrants for her arrest. She would know that the words were meaningless as well as he did. He would be a fool if he didn’t use the second set of restraints on her ankles.

He saw her leave the cafeteria and move toward the escalator. He waited until she was descending and hurried to the elevator, then walked across the first floor to be outside before she was. He watched the long line of glass doors until she was out. His luck seemed to be getting better and better. She had not stopped in the baggage claim. She didn’t have a gun, and she wasn’t going to have one. She stepped to the island to join the half dozen people waiting for the shuttle bus to take them to the distant long-term lots.

Jardine knew not only where she was, but where she was going. He hurried across the street to the short-term parking structure, ran up the stairs, and got into his car. He pulled out of the space and quickly made the first circuit of the parking structure to the ground floor, then stopped to look at the island. The shuttle bus pulled up to the stop and the people began to get in.

Jardine idled his car and watched to be sure she actually climbed aboard. Then he pulled forward out of the shelter of the parking structure and up to the kiosk to pay. In a few seconds he was on the long circular drive, following the shuttle bus. It stopped several times in front of other terminals to pick up passengers, but she never got off. When the bus finally passed the last stop and left the airport, Jardine could feel his lungs expanding in his chest. He drove far behind the bus, giving it plenty of space.