Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

“Well, probably not,” admitted Grapelli. “But she can’t know that.”

“What else has she got to think about?”

“Very interesting theory, anyway,” said Grapelli. “One of your better ones.”

“Thank you,” said Marshall. “It’s nice to feel that I’m growing as a theorist, especially in these times when I’m unable to actually put anything into practice.”

Grapelli’s voice changed. It was lower and quieter, and the ironic edge was gone. “I’m afraid I wasn’t calling to check up on you, John. I was calling to tell you what’s going on here.”

“About time,” said Marshall. He could tell it was something he was not going to like, and he could tell Grapelli knew it and felt he still had to do it. Marshall determined to keep his feelings to himself.

“It’s time to bring her home. Since she seems to have a flair for going where she pleases without being picked up, I only know one way to do it.”

Marshall reminded himself that he was going to keep the disapproval out of his voice. “I have no way to prove this, but I think we’re giving up on the strategy too early. But it’s your call, and I respect that.”

“Thanks, John,” said Grapelli. “You want to come back to be there when she comes in?”

Marshall thought for a moment. “If you need me, I will. But I have a few leads I’d like to check here. This bounty hunter she met ought to be interviewed, and if he gives the right answers, I might be able to follow her in. Somebody should try to see where she stops on the way home.”

“We’ll call when she shows.”

37

Carey sensed that something had changed. There was an odd, charged feel to the air. While he was in the shower, he kept imagining that he heard not sounds, but parts of sounds coming from somewhere in the old house—doors opening but not closing, single footfalls that were not repeated.

He turned the handle and heard nothing but the last of the water falling from the showerhead and making tiny pops as each drop shattered on the tile near his feet. He dressed quickly. He was sure now that he had picked up some alteration that was too subtle to be identified, and his own mind had supplied the explanation that it must be a sound.

Carey went from room to room, not sure whether he was doing this to verify that the police had not come into his house or because of his growing suspicion that his time had run out. That was it: he had given it a name. He was looking into each of the rooms in the house where he had grown up because he was afraid he might never see them again. He glanced at his watch. It was all right, he decided. If this was the day, then he had done it. If it wasn’t, then let this serve as the last look. He would not need to look again.

He walked down the staircase to the small foyer and through the living room and the dining room to the big old kitchen to make his breakfast. As he was taking out the eggs and the frying pan he suddenly stopped. Somehow he had a feeling that this morning he should leave the kitchen spotlessly clean, with no dishes in the dishwasher and nothing out of place.

He went out the back door and locked it, then to the old carriage house in the back that his grandfather had been the first to call “the garage,” and glanced at the yard. The two gigantic maple trees behind the house that shaded the windows of the master bedroom reminded him of the day he had shown Jane the revised deed. It now said Carey McKinnon and Jane McKinnon. She had chuckled at the idea, and he had asked her why. She had said, “Because I love you and because people are so funny.”

“Funny? Why?”

She had left him standing in the back entry and run the sixty or seventy feet to the trunk of the taller maple tree. She had called, “Look at me.” The trunk was nearly four feet wide at the base, and at this distance he could use her height as a measure and count upward ten times to the tallest branches. It had been big and old before his grandparents were born. He had walked out to stand ten feet from her.

She had bent back to look up at the huge, thick limbs, some of the lower ones wider around than her body, and his eyes had followed hers. “See?”

He had nodded. “So what’s funny?”

She had raised an eyebrow. “Do you think it knows that I own it?”

Carey got into his black BMW. The car was perhaps his only idiotic purchase. It had cost too much, but he decided he was glad about that too. Even if this was the last time he drove it, and it had to be sold while he was in jail, it hardly mattered now. There was no sense in having a few more dollars for a retirement he and Jane would never reach, or for children who would never be born.

He pulled out of his driveway and watched the car behind him to see whether the policemen did anything differently. They stayed the usual two blocks behind him, drifting along near the curb because he was close to the median stripe. The other cars nearby weren’t familiar and didn’t seem to have policemen in them, but he knew that such impressions meant nothing.

He drove to the hospital by the usual route, introducing no changes. He certainly didn’t want to behave erratically and precipitate some action they were only contemplating. If they were already committed, then he would gain no advantage by letting them know that he suspected.

He parked in his reserved space, then walked into the hospital with his head up and his eyes ahead. He went into his office in the surgical wing and sat down to review the files of the three patients he would be operating on today. He was glad they were fairly routine: Mr. Reardon’s gall bladder, a hernia repair for Don Schwartz, and Mrs. Miller’s partial colostomy.

Today might be his last day as a surgeon, and that made him concentrate harder on the X-rays he had in the viewer on the wall. He knew that no matter how the day ended, he was going to need to tell himself that this part of it had ended well.

He put the files back on his desk and stood up. It was time to scrub. As he closed the door behind him, he left inside all of the thoughts about his life and his personal worry. He thought about the specific movements his hands would need to perform to make Mrs. Miller’s trouble go away.

Four hours later, when he was leaving the operating room for the last time, his mind seemed to awaken. It was saying, “What’s next?” and the answer settled on him.

He showered and dressed in a state of passive receptivity. Nothing came to startle him. He carefully made his way out of the wing through the recovery room and then slipped into the first empty room he came to. He went to the window and looked out at his car in the parking lot.

The three vans that had been there the night he had operated on Richard Dahlman were back. The long booms on their roofs had been extended, and there were men and women in jeans inside doing something technical. He looked at the other vehicles in the lot. There were no regular police patrol cars, as there had been that night, but he could see two large, plain American cars with audio antennas above their rear windows and little emergency lights inside over the back seats. He walked to the bed and pressed the remote control for the television set high on the wall.

There was a cartoon mouse swinging a meat cleaver down toward a cat’s head. The cat leaped into the air, spun around, and shot off like a bullet. Carey pressed the channel button and let the television set cycle through flashes of channels until he found a picture of the hospital. The Channel Four Noon News woman was saying, “—have said they would be making an official announcement concerning the mysterious disappearance of murder suspect Dr. Richard Dahlman in just a few minutes.” Carey turned off the television set and left the room.