Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

Jane took Carey’s arm and began to lead him out of the room. “She’s going to want to get dressed.”

The woman’s voice startled her. It was soft and low, teasing and seductive. “Aren’t you going to say anything, Carey?”

Carey and Jane both stopped and turned as the woman swung her legs out of the bed. She stood up, casually naked. Jane felt shock, a flash of rage. Just what did this woman think she was doing? The woman seemed to read her mind. She shrugged. “He’s not seeing anything he hasn’t seen before.” She reached into the pocket of the suede pants and held up a key. “I guess I won’t be needing this anymore. Did you find the one I left the other night?”

“Yes,” said Carey irritably. He walked toward her, but kept the bed between them and reached across it for the key. The woman’s eyes were on Jane, and the big red lips began to turn up at the corners.

The sights in the room seemed to burn themselves into Jane’s brain. The familiar shapes—the chair, the picture of Carey’s parents on the bureau, Carey’s golf bag full of gleaming silver clubs in the open closet beside her—all were distractions now. The key. What did the woman gain by the business with the key? Forget the key. Jane lifted her eyes toward the bed.

The woman was standing beside it now. She had pulled on the suede pants, and she was buttoning the white blouse. She stopped and tilted her head in a pantomime of false sympathy. “I know how this must make you feel. But it really wasn’t anything serious. I just saw a chance to have some fun, so I thought I’d borrow him. We never thought that this could happen.”

Jane stared at her, mystified. Why was she trying to make it look as though they’d already had an affair? What did it buy her? She should want to get out of here. Jane’s heart beat faster. Something was wrong.

Carey moved to his dresser and opened the box on top where he kept small things he didn’t want to think about—single cuff links, loose screws, keys that fit nothing. As he reached into his pocket to find the key, he said coldly, “Please don’t imply that something went on between you and me. It’s bad enough that you’re here in the first place, but you’re not going to—”

Jane raised her hand and shook her head. “Please. Stop.” She tried to sound annoyed, but she was feeling a growing fear. “There’s no point in discussing this. Let’s leave this woman alone so she can get dressed and go.”

The woman glared at her. “Not ‘this woman,’ ” she said. “Susan Haynes.”

Jane’s body grew tense as she stared at the woman. She couldn’t know that it was the name Jane had seen on the machine for making false credit cards. But she shouldn’t be saying it. She should not want Jane to hear any name.

Jane saw the woman’s hand slip under the bedsheet and grasp something hidden underneath, and she drew in a breath as she recognized the shape of it. As the hand began to come up off the bed, Jane was aware of Carey, still turned away to put the key in the small wooden box on his dresser.

Jane’s right hand shot out beside her and plucked a golf club out of Carey’s bag. The three-iron flew up inside her grasp until the handle reached her hand. She tightened her grip and swung it downward, hard.

Jane’s eyes caught everything during the instant when the shining club swung down. She saw the woman’s eyes read the trajectory, fix on Jane’s eyes, and convey the terrible message: Not you … him! The gun had already begun its move to the left toward Carey, so Jane’s swing sliced through empty air and onto the wooden footboard of the bed.

The club struck on the metal shaft, and the heavy head broke off, bounced once on the bed, and fell to the floor. Jane saw the woman’s thick lips curl upward as the gun continued its rise toward the back of Carey’s head.

Jane screamed, “No!” as she hurled herself toward the woman. She jabbed out at her with the only object she had. She felt the long, thin metal shaft stab into the woman’s body below the rib cage. The woman shrieked and shrank backward, but the pistol swung around toward Jane’s face.

Jane had committed herself. She could only push the shaft of the broken golf club harder, up under the rib cage and into the heart. The woman clawed at it, tried to push it out, then fell backward.

Jane watched Carey hurtle across the bed, kneel beside the fallen woman, touch her carotid artery, put his ear on her chest. He turned to stare at Jane, and his face was a mixture of horror and incomprehension.

“She’s dead,” he said. “I can’t … Why would she—”

“She was staying near you because she thought I would call and tell you where I was,” said Jane. She looked away so she did not have to see the expression of shocked understanding forming on Carey’s face. As she surveyed the room, she tried to sound calm. “Since the easy way wasn’t working, I’ll bet she planted something in here …” Her voice sounded as though it belonged to someone she didn’t know.

Carey stood up, his big hands held toward her, the fingers open in an unconscious gesture as though he wanted to stroke her and soothe away her hurt. “Oh, my God, Jane … I let her in. Days ago, before I knew—or thought I knew—that she was out of her mind.” He seemed to have an afterthought, and it startled him. “I didn’t sleep with her, I just didn’t think—”

She came to him, put her arms around him, and rested her head on his shoulder. “I know,” she whispered. “I got fooled, and you got fooled.” It felt wonderful to be in his arms, familiar and new at the same time and, most of all, safe. She wanted to close her eyes and stay like this, but she could not. She released him and frowned thoughtfully at the dead woman on the floor as she walked around the bed.

Carey stood stiff and still, staring at the body. “This is what it is, isn’t it? It’s not just helping somebody run away.” He paused. “That was what you were trying to tell me that night before you would marry me. That some day I might have to watch my wife stab somebody to death in our bedroom.”

She stared at him, her face expressionless, waiting.

His eyes flicked away from her toward the body on the floor, and Jane could tell he was seeing its last moments again and that what he had seen was different from what she had seen. Jane had seen the cruel eyes narrowing, and quick hands in motion and then a gun muzzle that looked cavernous, and Carey had seen the beautiful, smooth, living white skin being pierced, running with fresh, bright blood, and then turned into this cold, waxy effigy of a woman.

Jane said, “Say what you’re thinking. In a few minutes it will be too late.”

Carey held up his hands, his eyes full of pain, but he was not able to find the words he wanted. He seemed to know he had to try. “I love you.” So he had discovered it too, she thought. That was what you said when you couldn’t say anything else. He tried again. “You’re the best person I ever met … and this was the worst thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. And you did it for me, and that makes me feel awful, and grateful, and sick. And if we somehow get through this, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you never do anything like it again. No more fugitives.”

She turned her face for a second. Then she picked up the telephone, unscrewed the earpiece, removed a small electronic transmitter, set it on the floor, and stepped on it. “So much for that mystery. We’ll probably be finding these for months.” Then she sat on the edge of the bed and screwed the earpiece back on.

Carey came closer. “Maybe I should be the one to talk to them,” he said. “I’m the one who knew her.” He held his hand out for the telephone.

Jane set the receiver back on its cradle, then looked at Carey sadly. “I’m not calling the police.”