Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

As she drove along the dark street, she teased herself gently. It would have been much easier to sit comfortably in the darkness of the hotel room and watch through the night-vision binoculars while Earl popped him with the fancy British sniper rifle through the window. The silencer on that thing would have made the whole episode sound like a bird bumped against the glass and broke its neck. But Earl could never feel satisfied unless he made Linda get a taste of it too.

Earl couldn’t just crudely cut him down with a rifle. Linda had to fool him first, make him into an accessory to his own death. He wasn’t going to be a leaking corpse lying on a kitchen floor. He was going to be one of those guys who walked off toward the grocery store and simply never came back. If the police got called in a week or two, they wouldn’t know whether to look for a corpse or a rent jumper.

David Keller walked out of the small grocery store trying to evaluate the odds. If he continued to walk to Danny’s to buy his food, he could just go on buying a little bit at a time and paying cash. If he went to a big supermarket and bought everything he would need for a couple of weeks, he would decrease the frequency of his trips. That would decrease his vulnerability. But he would have to take the car, and he would be seen by more people, and flash more cash, and that would increase his vulnerability.

He hurried to cross the little blacktop parking lot in front of the store where he was lit up by neon beer logos in the window and the yellow sodium light over the tall Danny’s Market sign. He moved quickly onto the sidewalk, where he could stay out of the light. Jane had not had time to explain everything to him, but she had told him he would do well enough if he just maintained the right attitude. He reached behind him to feel whether the revolver was riding up under his coat.

As he touched the lump he felt a small twinge of anxiety. She had implied that a gun was not a good idea. She had said, “You’re out of Las Vegas, trying to live a new life in, say, Chicago. You see the same car outside your apartment for three nights in a row. On the fourth night, at midnight, you see the car pull up again. Two men get out. After a minute you hear a knock at your door. What do you do?”

“Do I have a gun?”

“Yes.”

“I get it ready, hold it where they can’t see it, and open the door to see who they are.”

“Right hand or left?”

“Right.”

“They’re your new neighbors, young single guys who go out every night, a lot of fun. They noticed you watching them through the window, so they knew you were up and decided to ask you over for a drink. One of them holds out his right hand to shake. Or they’re cops. The good guys. They’re watching the neighborhood because somebody has been selling drugs. They came up to see who you are: maybe you’re a witness, but maybe the reason they haven’t caught the dealer is that there’s a lookout, and it’s you. At that hour they’re going to ask if they can come in to talk to you. Or maybe you were right, and they’re professional killers, come to get you. You have the gun in your right hand. You open the door with your left, so you’re ready. They know who you are, but you don’t know them. They won’t hesitate. You will.”

“What was the right answer?”

“What would you do if you didn’t have a gun?”

He had shrugged. “I guess I’d figure out who they were without answering the door. You said it was after midnight.”

“Good,” she said. “Now you know the main thing about guns.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“They make you act differently. And they’re no good unless you’re positive. You have to be so sure that you’re willing to kill the two men at the door right away—not look closer, or ask them anything, just pull the trigger.”

“If they come to my door, intending to kill me, shouldn’t I do that?”

“That’s up to you. What would you do after you killed them? There’s been a lot of noise, and now there are two bodies bleeding in your doorway. Five quarts of blood each.”

“Run, I suppose. Get away. I couldn’t very well hang around to talk to the police.”

“Good. What if you didn’t kill them, just ran instead? Do you get anything from killing them first?”

“More time?”

“It’s after midnight in an apartment building. You’ve fired at least two shots into a hallway. Your neighbors are up dialing 911. The response time on ‘shots fired’ calls in a big city averages around three minutes, and they usually redirect the helicopters at the same time.”

He had said, “I give up. Forget the gun.” Maybe he had known even as he said it that he had been lying. Now, while he walked down the dark, quiet street lined with big, dark houses that had been segmented into apartments, he felt a little better because of the gun.

He turned the corner and walked down the darker side street, carrying his grocery bag in his left arm. He saw the woman long before she saw him. She had the hood of her car open, and she was standing in front of it, leaning over and staring down into the engine with a little keychain flashlight.

Keller walked along the sidewalk until he was within twenty feet of the car. She reached out tentatively and touched something. It must have been hot, because she instantly drew back her hand, gave a little “Oooh!” and sucked her fingertips.

He could see her face in the dim glow of the little flashlight, and it looked so perfect that the air in front of him solidified and cut his speed by half. She had long, shiny blond hair that was pulled tight along the sides of her head and held back in an intricate braid, and skin that glowed. As she drew her fingers out of her mouth he saw long pointed nails that showed she had not spent much time staring into the engines of cars. She wore tight blue jeans and a jacket of some fabric that looked like canvas but couldn’t have been, and the engine she was staring into belonged to a pearl-cream Lexus LS 400 that cost about sixty thousand dollars. She walked around to the trunk and opened it as Keller came abreast of the car. When the light came on and he could see her eyes welling with tears, he stopped.

Whatever anyone thought of women like her, none of them were in the business of ratting on fugitives. As it happened, David Keller liked women like her very much. He missed them. Instead of approaching and spooking her, he called to her from the sidewalk.

“I see you’ve got trouble. Can I call the auto club for you or something?”

She swung her head around, startled. She didn’t seem to have remembered that she wasn’t marooned alone on the surface of the moon. She studied him for a second, seemed to be noting that he had clean pants and a respectable sport coat on. But the fact that he was carrying a grocery bag seemed to make the difference. Jane had been on the money once again. If people could see that you were out on your own business, it was better than a pile of testimonials.

She smiled, and he could see the lush, ripe lips part to show perfect white teeth. She shrugged and held her shoulders in an embarrassed cringe. “My membership lapsed. I called them, and they ran me on the computer, and then I noticed my card was expired.”

“I’m sorry,” said Keller. He stepped a little closer to her car—not to her, but to the open hood. He would let her do the approaching. “I used to have one of these. They’re usually pretty dependable …” The sentence died in his throat. He could not believe he had let that slip out. It wasn’t like looking at a ten-year-old car and saying, “I used to have one.” This one was new.

But he could see that the effect he had wanted to convey was the only one that she had caught. She was coming around the car to join him. She had snatched a clean red towel from the trunk, and she was wiping her hands with it. He said, “At this time of night, I’m afraid all the mechanics might be home teaching their sons to overcharge.” He stared at the engine, pretending he knew what he was looking for. “How is it acting? Does it turn over?” He set his bag in front of the bumper.