Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

He thought back on the shot he had taken at Swan Lake and wanted to bite his finger off. She had already given away everything she had just to buy him that shot, and he had squandered it. Then he had the shadow pass across his vision that maybe Linda, deep down, wasn’t as miserable about this as she had to make him think she was. He brushed all of these thoughts into the back of his mind. “You just think about what happens to him the minute I’ve got Hatcher. You’ll get to do the cutting. Keep your mind on that.”

“You can bet I will,” said Linda. Her voice was hardening now into cold, clean anger, and that made Earl feel better. But then her voice changed again, and he could tell her mouth was away from the receiver. “In the bathroom,” she called. Her voice was soft and thick. “All right.” To Earl she whispered, “I’ve got to go,” and hung up.

Earl placed the telephone receiver into its cradle and put the telephone back on the nightstand, then stepped to the door to the next room and looked at Lenny.

He was lying on the bed staring at the television. The two black dogs lifted their heads and looked at Earl, but Lenny kept his eyes on the screen, where one man was chasing another one along a catwalk in a dark factory.

“Load up the car,” said Earl. “Keep the camping gear on top.”

“We going someplace tonight?” He said it as though the idiocy of loading the car at night would be self-evident.

“Yeah, tonight. And get the dogs into their carriers. They’re going too.”

Linda pushed her chair away from the kitchen table and stood to hang up the wall telephone. She smiled to herself contentedly. Linda looked around at the bright, clean surfaces. She loved the careful, economical use of the space. The pots and pans were all heavy and old; only French gourmet companies still made them that way, and they charged hundreds of dollars for them.

She padded around the kitchen in her bare feet, collecting the ingredients and implements she would need for this recipe. As she bent down to pull a big pot out of the cupboard, she acknowledged that Jane’s blue jeans felt a little tight in the thigh and the ass, but she wasn’t sorry. When Carey got home from the late shift at the hospital, that wouldn’t be something that he minded. Even men who thought that wearing tight clothes made you stupid would look hard at whatever you let them see.

She filled the pot with water and set it on one of the back burners to boil, then opened the door of the big old-fashioned pantry. There, hanging on a brass hook, was Jane’s apron. She slipped the loop over her head and tied the strings behind her back in a bow. She looked down at the apron and smiled. It was dark blue with a red ribbon border and little blue cornflowers and yellow buttercups embroidered on it. It was almost too pretty to use.

She began to open the drawers under the counter, looking for ladles. In the second one she opened, she found an old boning knife that had been sharpened like a razor. She recognized instantly that this was the perfect tool. It was simple to hide and felt good in her hand, too secure to slip, too sharp to be brushed away. She set it sideways just inside the drawer, where she could find it quickly without cutting herself, and opened the next drawer. “Now,” she whispered. “Where do I keep my ladles?”

An hour later Earl drove the car past the sign that said GOING-TO-THE-SUN ROAD OPEN MAY 15—SEPTEMBER 15. Jane was about a day too early. Earl was simply too much for her. He forced himself not to acknowledge the way he had come by the information, because that would make him think about what Linda was doing right now. Earl was the one who was too much for all of them. When you won the pot it didn’t much matter who put what chips into it.

He could drive quickly now that it was dark, gliding into the turns and accelerating out of them to keep his traction. Lenny gripped the door handle but kept silent. Earl reached the Logan Pass visitor center, pulled into the parking lot, and studied the cars that had been left there overnight. When he didn’t find the one he had followed in the morning, he drove past the building and found it parked at the edge of the woods not far from a garbage Dumpster. “That’s it.”

Lenny said, “We going to do something to the car?”

“Yeah. We’re going to look at it.”

He parked beside the car and looked inside. The keys were in the ignition. He opened the door, took out the keys, unlocked the trunk, and found it empty. He could see that they had cleaned the car out thoroughly. He said to Lenny, “Don’t touch anything. Just let the dogs out, but keep them behind the car. They don’t let dogs in the park.”

Lenny let the two big black dogs out of their traveling cages. They panted and huffed for a few seconds, wagging their tails and trotting in circles. Earl opened the doors of the abandoned car. “Get in,” he said. “ Einsteigen in .”

The dogs leapt through the doors, sniffing the car, the upholstery, the steering wheel. Earl turned to Lenny. “Give them a few minutes to get the scent.” He took a flashlight from Lenny’s car, walked to the Dumpster, and opened it. He found the two suitcases covered with garbage. They would be of no use.

Earl gingerly reached down, pushed the garbage aside with his light, and opened the first suitcase. Clothes … they had left clothes inside. His heart beat faster as he took out his pocket knife.

In a moment he was back at the car. He said quietly, “ Herauskommen .” The dogs jumped out of the car and waited for his command. He held the two shoes up so the dogs could take their time sniffing them. “ Fund! ” he said.

The two big black dogs circled the cars for a few seconds, looking puzzled. They sniffed the ground and came back, then turned their wide heads to stare in various directions. Lenny looked at Earl nervously, but Earl said, “Give them as long as it takes.”

The dogs finally agreed that the visitor center building was the right direction. They trotted to the door and sniffed the steps and nosed the glass. Earl said, “They probably walked over there, but they didn’t come back.”

Earl picked up his backpack, then eased his arms into the straps and walked to the visitor center. “ Auf den fersen folgen .” The dogs fell into place at his side. He crossed the road with them and watched their faces. They seemed not to smell the scent, but maybe to dimly suspect it.

Lenny joined him beside the sign that said HIGHLINE TRAIL. He gazed at the dogs. “Doesn’t look like they picked up anything here.”

“No,” said Earl. “The two of them bought new shoes. The first time they wore them was probably when they got out of the car and walked over here.”

“Then why did you get them to sniff the car and the old shoes?” The man’s head might as well be a helmet. His was a mind that never failed to disappoint.

“Because in a day or so, when we need help, the new shoes are going to smell exactly like the old ones.”

Earl stood and stared into the darkness where the trail led off under the trees. His mind formed the words, “I’m coming. You’ll wish you had put a gun in your mouth while you could.” He wasn’t sure precisely whom he was talking to. The distinction didn’t mean enough for him to try to sort it out. He would have all of them in their turns and in the ways that they deserved.

It seemed to Calvin Seaver that he had called Earl and Linda a hundred times—first from Kennedy Airport, then from his stopover in Chicago, then Denver, and finally from Billings. He had never gotten anything but the answering machine, and he could hardly leave a message telling two killers that Pete Hatcher was in Salmon Prairie, Montana.

It was in the Billings airport that he saw the story on the television news, and he was glad that he had been cautious. There was film of a lot of people milling around outside a restaurant in Swan Lake, just a few miles up the road from Salmon Prairie. The newsman, who looked enough like the one Seaver usually watched in Las Vegas to be his brother, said a sniper had fired through the window and killed a man. What caught Seaver’s attention had not been the body bag being wheeled out on a collapsible stretcher. It was the woman with long black hair who was being helped into a police car beside the ambulance.