Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

“What if it does?”

“Then I will have wasted a lot of money on the heroin that’s in your bedroom. But that’s okay. There’s some in the garage too.”

She was bluffing. She had to be bluffing. But the picture of his mother staring him in the face reminded him: she had been there. He smirked. “You telling me you flew in with heroin, too?”

The way she shook her head gave him a sinking feeling. “No,” she said. “I didn’t know where to buy it in L.A., but Artie Macias did.”

“Artie Macias?” It was a grave injustice. Maybe when he had taken Artie Macias in, he had been rougher with him than he’d needed to be. But Jardine wasn’t the one who had jumped bail. And Gary the bondsman had offered to pay extra if an example got set for the rest of his customers.

“Yes,” she said. “When I told him who it was for, he couldn’t do enough. He said to make sure you knew who got it for you.”

He stared at the ceiling. He had thought this was his lucky night. “So if I don’t tell you what you want to know, you don’t let me go in time to get there by two-thirty. My house burns down, and the firemen find a lot of heroin.”

Her eyes were steady and unblinking. “Then you get to see what it’s like to be a runner instead of a chaser.”

He stared at the ceiling again, the muscles in his jaw working. He hated her. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to kill her tonight, but he sincerely felt he should. He knew that was absolutely the wrong way to think. She knew things that could make him rich in a day. He would give maybe ten thousand dollars for the pleasure of breaking her skinny neck. Ten million was too much to waste on one night of pleasure. He had to keep her alive, so he would have another chance. In fact, he admitted to himself, he had to do what she said or he was in trouble.

“The time is going by,” she reminded him.

He looked at her, beginning to feel the seconds now. He had to do this and get out of here. “I don’t know where he is.”

“I didn’t ask,” she said. “I want to know why he’s running.”

Jardine’s brain began to work again. “He came to you, didn’t he? He wants you to hide him.”

Jane said, “If we both answer questions, it’s going to take twice as long.”

Jardine took that as a confirmation. Brian Vaughn had run out of ideas on his own, and somebody was about to cash in on him, so he had inquired about hiring professional help. It was actually funny. She wasn’t sure he met her standards. “You don’t even know who he is?”

“This is a lot of trouble to go to if I know,” said Jane.

“Why did you pick me?”

“Because of the way you work. Most bounty hunters get hired to find somebody in particular. You’re one of the few who just sits in one place and watches faces. In order to do that, you need to have a current list of which faces are worth money. You tell me why Brian Vaughn’s is, and I’ll let you go home and unplug your coffeepot.”

Jardine stared at the ceiling again to focus his thoughts, but he found it took more strength than he had to overcome the awareness of each second ticking by. What if tonight was one of those nights when CalTrans decided to repave a section of the freeway between here and his house? “The reason you couldn’t find any Wanted posters on Brian Vaughn is that he hasn’t been charged yet.”

“Charged with what?”

“Murder.”

Jane nodded. It was what she had expected. “Where is he wanted?”

“Well,” said Jardine, “he isn’t, exactly, but he is. The police in Boston found a car with a deceased young lady in it. When they did the tests, they found that she had been freshly fucked.”

“Raped?”

“Not sure,” he said. “That’s always the theory when they’re dead, but she had all her clothes on right. No signs of a struggle, but her blood showed a fatal dose of a sedative. The car, it turned out, wasn’t hers. It belonged to Brian Vaughn.”

“Did they arrest him?”

“Here’s where we get into things I heard that I can’t swear to. He was rich—old money. He lived on an estate in some little town outside Boston. I heard the local police brought a detective or two from Boston out to the estate with their hats in their hands to inquire whether he might have something he’d like to get off his chest. It seems he wasn’t at home. But while they were on the way from the station to the house, some caretaker called to report that the car was missing.”

“Where was Vaughn?”

“Supposedly some servants said he was in Europe, some said they didn’t know. Anyway, the stories didn’t exactly match.”

“Did he have a family?”

“Sure did. His parents were really old—living in Florida. They said he had mentioned some time before that he was going to Europe. Anyway, you get the idea. Nobody knew which country he was in or when he left, but everybody was sure it was at least a week before this girl shows up dead in his car. Nobody can get in touch with him. Only suddenly, he’s got a lawyer.”

“How did the lawyer explain that?”

“The usual. He’s a family friend, he wonders if he can be of help to the police, and so on.” He looked at her nervously. “What time is it?”

“One forty-three. Do you know the lawyer’s name?”

“I never asked. It wouldn’t mean anything to me.”

“What happened next?”

“The police look closer. It seems Vaughn has a record.”

“What kind?”

“On paper, it’s spoiled-kid stuff. Driving fast and parking wherever, then not paying until the car gets impounded. But they also turn up a few people who hate Brian Vaughn, and one of them gives them the names of a couple of young ladies who were given large amounts of money years before. Sure enough, they’re real. Both decline to say what the money was for. The money came from Vaughn’s parents.”

“Go on.”

“The police are drooling. Now they want this guy bad. They don’t have enough to charge him with anything, and there’s no way they can go public and treat him like a fleeing suspect.”

“The car wasn’t enough?”

“They can’t shake the alibi until they find out what it is. They figure if they give him a DNA test, he is almost certainly going to be the missing player in the sex scene. He is also going to have to prove how and when he went to Europe, how his stolen car got to Boston without being hot-wired, and numerous other things too time-consuming to mention when my fucking house is about to burn down.” He sat up.

“You’ve got time,” she said as she raised the pistol. “Why do you know all this?”

“Who hasn’t been heard from?”

“The girl’s family. Who was she?”

“She was from New York. Vaughn definitely knew her. But everybody thought she was in New York that night, and there’s no proof Vaughn was around. Her family had a little money, and they hired a guy—a detective—to unravel all this stuff, and this is what he found out.”

“Was any of this in the papers?”

“Sure. ‘Amanda Barnes found dead in stolen car. Owner could not be reached for comment by press time.’ ”

“How did Vaughn manage that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the lawyer was working overtime. And maybe the police helped. They don’t usually want it all over the news that a guy like this is their only suspect until they’ve got their hands on him. He had the money and the sort of history that would make them think he could stay in Europe forever. They asked Interpol to watch for him and let him know they wanted to talk. Big silence on the other end.”

“You still haven’t exactly said how you heard. Did you know the detective?”

“Not personally.”

“Then how?”

“Word got around.”