Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

“Be my guest. But all they give you on those short flights is a bag of peanuts. She’s not in Buffalo.”

“Where are they holding her?”

“There is no ‘they,’ ” said Grapelli. “And nobody is holding her. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. She called home. The phone tap recorded it and we traced it to a house in Santa Barbara. 80183 Padre Street.”

“Can I hear it?”

“Standby.”

Marshall listened to the sound of Jane’s voice. He felt a little sorry for her, and a little ashamed to hear the words she had meant for her husband. But then he heard what he had been listening for. If she had said she was in Santa Barbara, he would have called it a feint of some kind to draw attention away from somewhere else.

“Okay,” said Marshall. “Good enough for me.”

“I’ll call ahead to get the Santa Barbara police to meet you at the airport.”

“You mind if we wait on that?” asked Marshall.

“Why?” Grapelli paused. “Are you afraid they’ll bust in on them before you get there?”

“They’ll do what they’re supposed to do,” said Marshall. “They’ll put a big circle of plain-wrap cars around the neighborhood so nobody can get out and nobody can get in. Including me.”

“That doesn’t strike me as a drawback.”

“I want to take a look at the place before we do anything irrevocable. If Dahlman’s there with her, then I’ll call them in myself.”

“So what are you worried about?”

“Once the neighborhood is surrounded, we’re committed. We have whoever is inside it, and that’s all we have. If Dahlman’s with her, then the game’s over, and we’re still champions. But what if Dahlman isn’t there? She’s been traveling all over the place without him, so it’s not a sure thing.”

“Okay, so what if Dahlman isn’t there? She must know where he is.”

“Right. If we follow her, she’ll lead us to him eventually. If she’s in a cell, she’s not leading anybody anywhere. She’ll be just one more suspect who isn’t answering any questions.”

“You think she’ll hold out?”

“After what she’s done already, she doesn’t strike me as a person who panics under pressure,” said Marshall. “And the woman she used as a decoy started talking lawyers the second the door of her hotel room popped. These are not unsophisticated people. What her lawyer will tell her is to keep quiet.”

Grapelli sighed. At last he said, “All right. Let’s try this the easy way. Go take a look. The minute you’ve seen the place, you call me. But unless what you’ve seen is a good reason not to, what I’m going to tell you is to get a search warrant on the way to the police station, where you will pick up a few guys to kick down the door for you. Understood?”

“Understood.”

42

Jane packed all of her gear and her suitcase into her car, checked out of her two hotels, and then drove off. If Brian Vaughn got through the meeting, he would try to call her, and he would probably feel a moment of panic when she didn’t answer. But it would be only a moment, because within a few seconds she would be able to stand beside him and tell him there was nothing to worry about.

Jane glanced at her watch. She had timed this correctly. The sky was dark, but it was still two hours before the face-changers were supposed to arrive. She would have all the time she needed to get herself set and make sure she got a videotape of them walking under the street lamp and up to Vaughn’s door.

She parked her car two streets away, moved into the little back yard through the garden gate, then stole along the back of the driveway to hide behind the garbage cans. She looked into the eyepiece of the video camera to be sure that she could see enough of the street to pick them up. Then she set it down, turned on her intercom, and listened.

A voice that wasn’t Brian Vaughn’s said, “If it’s what you want, I guess we could arrange it.”

They were here already. Jane’s heart began to beat faster. She had come early, to see the house and hear what was going on inside before anyone could have expected her. They had come earlier. Since she had done it, she should have known that they would too. They knew what she knew.

The man said, “But we went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get you set up here. You put in months getting the locals used to you, so you’re part of the landscape. That’s a lot to throw away.” There was a brief pause. “And it’s expensive.”

“How expensive?” That was Brian Vaughn’s voice.

“Top-of-my-head figures? Let’s see,” said the man. “Suppose, just for example, it was Port Townsend, Washington, like you say. A pleasant little town, and a nice little house like this. That’s maybe three hundred. We can’t sell this one right away, so there’s no help there.”

“Why not?”

“We just bought it. If you’re not safe here with a new face, we can’t use it for somebody else, can we?”

“But I paid for it.” Jane began to feel tense. His tone was too argumentative.

“We’ll unload it in a year or two and you’ll get the money. Minus expenses and commissions. So figure three hundred for a new house and furnishings up there, you sign over this one, and another hundred on top, it’s going to cost you half a million to get moved.”

“What’s the extra hundred for?” Vaughn sounded angry. What was he doing? He was arguing over money he was never going to give them.

“Shipping and handling.”

There was a sharp laugh. A third voice. It must be a two-man team. Jane held her breath and listened. Just because there were two didn’t mean there weren’t more.

“What’s that?”

“That’s our time and trouble.”

There was a pause, and then Vaughn said, “All right.” Jane rose to a crouch. He had used the wrong tone. It wasn’t grudging and resentful enough. He couldn’t take the man through all that by arguing, and then simply agree.

The man seemed to have sensed it too. He said, “That okay with you?”

Vaughn said, “Sure.”

“You want to leave tonight or tomorrow?” That was the big question. The man was giving Vaughn a chance to salvage this, to save himself.

He gave the wrong answer. “I guess tomorrow. That would give me time to pack and make sure things look normal here.”

The man said, “Sounds good. You got any coffee?”

“I’ll go make some.”

She heard him walking off. Then she heard the man who had been quiet say, “What’s the best way?”

“We could cut his throat in the bathtub, so it won’t be such a big deal to clean it up.”

“I think we’ve got to get him out of here now, and do it on the way. We could drive him north of here, and pull off at one of those turnoffs for the beaches up there. Or maybe some campground.”

Jane set down the intercom and started moving toward the house. If she could get there before Vaughn finished making the coffee and left the kitchen, there was still a chance. She slipped around the corner of the house, up to the kitchen door, and tried to peer inside. The blinds were closed, and she could see only a narrow slice of empty tile floor through a crack at the corner.

She flung open the kitchen door, but she couldn’t see him. Where was he? She looked at the coffee maker on the counter. It wasn’t turned on yet, didn’t look as though he had even filled it. The voices were quiet now. Something must have happened in the brief time it had taken her to reach the house. They hadn’t even let him get started. But if they hadn’t killed him yet, she had to try. As she moved quietly toward the living room doorway, her breaths were shallow and quick, fighting the sick regret she knew she would not have time to feel.