Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

When Jane was satisfied that she had included every detail that she knew, she folded the letter, addressed it to Dahlman, and placed it inside the box with the tape. She had decided that the information belonged to him. If all of this misery ever resulted in a trial, then the name of the trial was most likely to be The People v. Richard Dahlman .

She drove to the municipal parking lot, walked to the big post office on Santa Barbara Street, and waited at the counter to send the package by express mail. Then she walked to State Street to do her shopping. At the first stop she bought a battery-operated household intercom, and at the second, a new battery and a fresh tape for her video camera. She walked a little farther and bought a cellular telephone as a present for C. Langer of 80183 Padre Street and had the number activated immediately. The last purchase she made was at a store she had visited before. It was a small, sensitive tape recorder exactly like the ones she had hidden in Brian Vaughn’s house.

Jane spent the rest of the afternoon testing the equipment she had bought and looking out her window at the parking lot of the big hotel next door. Finally she could see that another whole row of cars had been gobbled up by the shadow of the long, low building, and the rear windows of the farthest row were glowing orange in the sunset. It was nearly time. She dressed and looked at the clock. It was Brian Vaughn’s dinner hour.

She put her purchases into her shoulder bag, went out, and drove to Brian Vaughn’s house, then slipped in through the bathroom window. She was not surprised that he had gone out. It would be maddening to him to sit in this house alone, wondering whether each movement he made was being picked up on the tape recorders. One of them was under his oven, so he would be afraid to do any cooking.

Jane sat down on the couch and dialed the number of the house in Amherst where she had lived with Carey. The telephone rang four times before the answering machine took over. She had been gone so long that she had forgotten what the recorded answer was. Her own voice startled her. “I’m sorry. We’re not able to come to the phone right now. If you’d like to leave a message, begin when you hear the tone.”

Jane gave a little sigh. She had hoped to hear Carey’s voice. But there was the beep.

She said, “Hi. Some nasal-sounding woman just told me we can’t come to the phone. I knew I couldn’t, but I was hoping for a chance to talk to you. I’ve stopped off in Wisconsin, but don’t try to join me, because I’ll be gone as soon as this powwow’s over. I know that when you listen to this, you’re going to be feeling very alone. Remember I love you, and take care of yourself.” She hung up, then went to check the three tape recorders.

All three were still where she had left them, still had tapes and batteries and functioned when she turned them on. She left them turned off, then turned the fourth one on and carefully placed it behind a row of books high in the bookcase without disturbing the dust.

She plugged the intercom into the outlet beneath the headboard of Brian Vaughn’s bed, pressed TALK, then turned on the receiver. There was a squeak of feedback that was rapidly growing into a shriek, so she turned it off again. Then she took the receiver with her, and quietly slipped out the bathroom window and through the garden gate to the next street. When she was in her car she looked at her watch. It was eight o’clock. Brian Vaughn had told her that the face-changers would be at his door in three hours.

Marshall was back in the cafeteria on the concourse at the Los Angeles airport. This time he was carrying a tray of food to a table. He automatically picked the one where he had talked with Alvin Jardine, but only because he had spent some time there and found it acceptable. He had come here to pursue a worry, and he didn’t want to be distracted.

Jardine had been lying, which was what he would do if he were conspiring with Mrs. McKinnon. But Marshall was not comfortable with the theory that a woman like Mrs. McKinnon would know how to look for a man like Alvin Jardine and get help from him. It didn’t feel right. It also didn’t feel right that Jardine would pass up the chance to drag in a fugitive of the stature of Richard Dahlman.

Jardine had not seen Richard Dahlman. What he had seen was a pretty woman with long black hair coming through the airport. Yet he had instantly decided to follow her all the way to the distant long-term parking lot. Marshall had watched the airport security tapes again. The woman had definitely been walking toward a white Buick in the parking lot. She had reached into her purse, presumably for a set of keys. Then Jardine had come along, and she had gone off with him. What nagged at Marshall now was that the Buick had not yet disappeared from the parking lot.

The car raised a great many questions. He had put a pair of agents in the lot more than thirty-six hours ago to watch it for her return. She had not come back, and the car was still there. He had been operating on the assumption that Alvin Jardine was some kind of ally of Mrs. McKinnon’s. It seemed clear from the tapes that she had thought so too. But that didn’t mean she had been right. It was just possible that Mrs. McKinnon had miscalculated, and Alvin Jardine had killed her.

Marshall had not yet reassured himself on that point, but in the past few minutes things had grown more complicated. Marshall had just come along the counter with his tray, intentionally dropped a fork, and bent down to pick it up in exactly the same way that Mrs. McKinnon had. He had found that he was not nearly as flexible as Mrs. McKinnon, but he had managed to put his right hand in the same place. The underside of the stainless-steel counter was plywood. There was a sticky residue of adhesive on the plywood in two rectangular strips about five inches apart. It was just as though something about that size had been stuck there with duct tape, and yanked off.

It had occurred to Marshall early in his inquiry that there was no obvious explanation as to why Mrs. McKinnon would have keys to a Buick registered to Gormby Boat Sales in Marina Del Rey, California. She had stopped to talk to no one from the time she had gotten off the plane until she had met Jardine. It was just possible that the F.B.I. should be more interested in how a set of keys to a clean, respectable car nobody was looking for got taped under a counter in an airport than in what had become of Richard Dahlman. For a decade there had been rumors that there were professional services that helped fugitives disappear.

The attractiveness of the idea was hard for a law enforcement officer to resist. Sometimes a person who should have been easy to catch seemed to vanish. But every time one of those fugitives surfaced, it seemed to Marshall that the fugitive had spent the time in plain view, hardly hiding at all. One had run a popular restaurant in Seattle; another had moved to a resort town in upstate New York and told people he was a film producer.

Just as Marshall set his tray down and prepared to lose himself in cogitation, his pager began to beep. He looked at the tray with grim resignation. He had come here as a way to check the counter, but he had gotten used to the idea that he was going to get to eat the food.

As he walked out of the cafeteria onto the concourse, he looked at the number on the pager: Grapelli. It must be time for him to fly back to Buffalo. It would be interesting to ask Mrs. McKinnon exactly why the keys to the Buick had been taped under the counter, and what she had talked about with Jardine.

He dialed the number and Grapelli said, “Hate to interrupt your dinner.”

Marshall said, “I take it she turned up?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. I guess you can’t keep me from eating on the plane.”