Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

The question didn't make any sense unless the way Jane Whitefield wanted to make money was to sell someone else to Barraclough and say she was Mary Perkins. "I suppose he has lots of pictures of me."

"Not pictures," Jane said. "Has he actually looked at you face-to-face?"

"Is that important?"

"Yes. Tell me."

"We never met," said Mary Perkins. "When I got out of the federal prison eight months ago, he somehow heard about it. He knew where I was living. How he got that I don't know. They said it was going to be a secret to help in my rehab - you know, help me fit into the community, keep my old cronies away, and all that."

"He used to be a cop. He knows how to use the system. He didn't come for you himself?"

"He sent two men," said Mary Perkins. "They explained to me about Barraclough."

"What did they tell you?"

"He's the director of the Los Angeles office of Intercontinental Security. He's got a huge organization and a lot of power, and connections with every police department. You can't get away from him and you can't fight him. He had read about me."

"Read what?"

"Everything. Newspaper reports, the transcript of my trial, the investigation reports. I don't know how he got those either. He had decided that I had a whole lot of savings and loan money hidden someplace. He wanted it. I couldn't call the police and say he was taking it because I wasn't supposed to have it."

"You told me the pitch. You just didn't tell me where you heard it. Since you're still running and they're still chasing, you must have gotten away. How?"

"They didn't put a gun to my head and say 'Pay or die.' I told them I didn't have it. But they said Barraclough knew I did because he had followed my case." She chuckled sadly. "You know how prosecutors are. They rave around in front of the jury, flinging enormous, impossible numbers around. This is how much is missing from savings and loans in this great, tormented state of Texas. This is the woman caught with ten dollars of it. All that nonsense doesn't simply go into the jury's subconscious; it goes into the transcript. Even if your lawyer proves it's silly, once it's been said it exists. It had convinced Barraclough I had some insane amount of money - like fifty million."

"So Barraclough sent them to pick you up and take you with them, right?"

"What else? If I had that kind of money I couldn't haul it around in a suitcase. It would take a couple of freight cars. It would have to be in a numbered account in Switzerland or someplace. They said they'd have to hold on to me until I had led them to the accounts."

"What was the up side?"

"Does this sound like it has an up side?"

Jane said, "When it was all over, what did they promise to leave you? Would you have any money left, or just your life?"

"They said Barraclough had done this quite a few times before. He just took half from each one he caught and let him go."

"Did you believe them?"

Mary Perkins smirked. "Do I look younger than I am, or what? It was like having a man ask you to take off half your clothes."

"What happened then?"

"They each took one of my arms and led me outside to their car. It was a two-door, so you had to kind of squinch in behind the front seat. They had the passenger seat already tipped forward when they opened the door. They had turned off the dome light so it wouldn't go on when the door opened. I remember looking in and thinking, I'm going to die. I had just read one of those articles they have in magazines about serial killers and rapists, and it said whatever you do, don't get in the car. Once you're in, nothing is up to you anymore; it's up to them. They pushed me in and I started crying."

"Because you thought you were going to die?"

"Knew it. I knew I would die if I didn't do something. The crying was all I could think of. It made them nervous and nasty. One of them said if I didn't stop he'd hurt me, so I stopped. I could see that made them get overconfident. It was a long drive, and they had been waiting outside my apartment for hours. They had to make a pee stop. They were talking about going to a gas station, but they had a full tank, so they didn't want to stop and have the gas guy stare at them and maybe remember they had a woman with them. So they waited until they were on the Interstate and pulled into a truck stop. One of them was going to go in, and then the other while the first one stayed with me. I kept looking for a chance to get in there, so I could scream my head off, even make one of them hit me, but they didn't give me any chance. I tried saying I had to pee too. I tried saying I had to change a tampon. I begged, I promised."

"How did you manage it?"

"Did I mention it was a two-door car?"

"Yes."

"They kept the motor running so they could get away fast if something went wrong. I waited until the first one got back. He was the driver. He comes to the left door to open it, and the other one opens the right-side door to get out. I pushed the driver's seat forward, flopped over on it on my belly, set the transmission in gear, ducked down, and punched the gas pedal with the palm of my hand. The car goes. Not real fast, just jerks ahead and coasts at maybe ten miles an hour. The one trying to get into the driver's side gets his foot run over. The other one jumps back into his seat. The car moves in this sort of stately pace right into the front of the restaurant - crash! When it hit, it kind of jammed me head-first under the dashboard onto my elbows with the brake pedal pressing on my forehead and the steering wheel holding my butt down and not enough room for a somersault anyway. The one in the seat kind of belly-flopped next to me, only his face hit the glove compartment."

Jane frowned. "Why are you making this up?"

Mary Perkins looked angry, but she seemed to be holding her breath. Finally she let it out. "I'm not sure. I guess I wanted to sound brave."

"What really happened?"

"A Highway Patrol car pulled in beside us. I was too scared to even look at them. The cop saw I had been crying, so he knocked on my window and asked if there was something wrong. I told the cop I was turning myself in - that I left Los Angeles in violation of my parole."

"Why did you tell him you were on parole?"

"I thought it was a stroke of genius. If I said I'd been kidnapped, they'd keep me there to testify. They could do it; I really was out on parole. Even if I did get these two convicted, what good was that going to do me? They might not have been telling the truth about Barraclough, but they were working for somebody. On their own, these two couldn't have known all that about my trial transcripts and everything. They were maybe twenty-one or twenty-two years old, and dumb."

"So what happened?"

"I figured the C.H.P. would just ship me back to L.A. for a lecture, and when that was over I could hop on a plane and disappear. Only wouldn't you know it, when they identified these two characters, they both turned out to be convicted felons, so instead of a little scolding, I get to do ninety in L.A. County Jail. Consorting with convicted felons is apparently more serious than going out of town without telling your parole officer."

"That was what you were in for when you saw me?"

"Yes. They let me out two weeks early, or else those guys would have had me before I got to the airport. But they must have a way of knowing when somebody is released early."

"Not them. Barraclough does." They sat for a time in silence, sipping their tea. The cold wind outside the old house was stronger up here on the second floor. The snow was falling harder now, as it sometimes did after nightfall, and the white flakes came tumbling into the light and ticked the window as though it were the windshield of a moving car.

Mary Perkins said, "What do you know about Barraclough?"