Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

She moved quietly into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Then she sat and listened to Mary waking up and remembering and making her way toward the smell of the brewing coffee. The door opened and Mary walked out into the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and stood at the sink to drink it. "I've been thinking," she said. "I've been on my own most of my life and I think I can stay out of Barraclough's way if I don't do anything stupid." It was a question.

"It can be done." Jane sat still. It was time already. She would have to work up to it gradually, tell Mary what she knew and let her draw her own conclusion. "You just have to avoid doing anything stupid."

"Like getting my picture in the papers," Mary offered.

"Right," said Jane. "You might want to keep it off things like credit cards and driver's licenses too. Barraclough is the regional head of a very big detective agency, so he can probably find a way to have your picture circulated. You know, a reward for a missing person."

"I guess I can," Mary said. "And keep from getting arrested."

"Or fingerprinted."

"That's what I said."

"You've got to keep from being a victim too. If your house is burglarized or your car is stolen, they fingerprint the owner so they can identify prints that aren't supposed to be there. Some states take your prints for a driver's license. And a lot of employers require it; if you need to be bonded or licensed or need a security clearance, it's hard to avoid. Most companies hire a security service to handle the details and report the results - a service like Intercontinental."

Mary Perkins glared at her. "You're trying to scare me."

"Yes," said Jane. "It's better. I don't want to hear you sometime saying, 'Why me?'"

"All right," said Mary. "What else?"

Jane stared at the wall. "Well, they're not just passively waiting for you to turn up. They're searching. I know that because I talked to somebody who was hired to help. But the easiest way is to get you to come to them. You know - an announcement in the paper says some rich aunt of yours died and the following eighty people are named in the will. Or the help-wanted section says there's a job for a blue-eyed woman age thirty-four and a half and five feet four and seven eighths who's good at arithmetic. Or a personal ad says a wealthy widow with a large secluded mansion wants a roommate: a quiet female nonsmoker from the South who plays cribbage, or whatever else you do but not everyone does. Barraclough is perfectly capable of renting houses in the ten most likely places and having ten women sit there for a month waiting for you to show up."

"He'd do that?"

"Sure," said Jane. "It's quick, it's easy, and it's cheaper than the alternatives."

"What are those?"

"Well, you have a history. There are people you were close to. They'll go see them. Maybe watch to see if you come for a visit, or maybe bully them into telling what they know. If you ever left clothes anywhere when you started running, they'll have translated the labels into places where you might buy the next batch. The more expensive they were, the fewer places to buy them, and they know you'll need spring clothes or risk standing out. They'll also use them to construct a projection of how you're likely to look now. so they don't miss you in a public place: exact height, weight, style, and color preference. Then there's chemical analysis."

"What do they have to analyze?"

"If you wore perfume or cosmetics when you wore the clothes, they'll identify them and add them to your profile. If you love Thai food or going to the zoo, they'll know that too."

"That's crazy."

Jane shrugged. "No crazier than having people meet us in airports all over the western half of the country. Intercontinental is an enormous detective agency, much bigger than most police departments. There isn't a city in the country that doesn't have a crime lab with a trace-analysis section. There's a machine called a gas chromatograph that vaporizes whatever substance they find and identifies it. There's no question Intercontinental has one, and probably an emission spectrometer and an electron microscope. If you're in the business of tracking people for money, that stuff pays for itself quickly."

"You're making it sound hopeless."

"Not hopeless. It just takes some thought."

Mary protested. "But there are thousands of people in this country nobody can find."

"Millions," said Jane.

"Well, who are they? You can't tell me they all get caught."

"It depends on who's looking for them and how hard. A lot of them are divorce fugitives: the man who doesn't want to pay alimony or the parent who loses custody and takes the child out of state. Somebody else runs up a debt or embezzles a few bucks. Unless the person is foaming at the mouth and shooting people at freeway rest stops, the only ones who are very interested are the local police back home. Then there are a few million illegal aliens. There's not much reason to look for them because nobody gets any benefit from finding them. There are also personal cases: some woman breaks up with her boyfriend and he threatens her. There's practically no place where the police will do anything to help her, so she moves away and changes her name. There are millions of people hiding under assumed identities, and the reason most of them don't get found is that nobody's looking."

"What you're saying is that if anybody tried, they would."

"No," said Jane. "What I said is that it depends on who's looking and how hard."

"You think I'm going to get caught, don't you?"

Jane hesitated. "You can take that chance, or you can choose to take other chances."

"What does that mean?"

"He's not going to give up. He has lots of trained people at his disposal in offices all over the country, and he can probably dream up a charge to get the police looking for you too, if he wants to. If you learn fast and never make a mistake, he might not find you." Jane looked at her closely. "Or you could make a mistake - intentionally."

Mary's eyes widened and the color seemed to drain from her face. "You want to use me for - "

"Bait. Yes. What he's doing isn't just evil; it's also illegal."

"I can't. I don't have the money. You're wrong. He's wrong."

"It doesn't matter. He thinks you do, and he wants it. That makes him predictable, and that can be turned into a weakness. Your chance of trapping him and getting him convicted might be better than your chance of hiding from him."

"No. I won't do it." Mary looked at Jane defiantly.

"Suit yourself."

"Are you leaving this morning?"

"I said I'd help you get settled."

"But I told you I wouldn't do it. You can't use me as bait."

"I heard you."

For the next six days, Jane Whitefield waited. When Mary woke up she would find the quilt folded neatly and stowed beside the couch. Jane would be in the middle of the only open space in the small living room going through the slow, floating movements of Tai Chi.

On the sixth day, Mary Perkins said, "Why do you do that?"

"It keeps my waist thin and my ass from getting flabby."

Mary repeated, "Why do you do that?"

"It helps me feel good. It keeps me flexible. It helps me think clearly and concentrate."

"Don't worry," said Mary. "I'll shut up."

"You don't have to," said Jane. "Part of the idea is that after a while the body makes the movements flow into each other without consulting the conscious mind much."

"What's that one?"

"What do you mean?"

"They all have names, right?"

"Oh. 'Cloud Hands.'" Then her body was in a radically different position without much apparent movement. " 'Golden Cock Stands on Leg.'" Her body continued to drift into a changing pattern of positions.

Mary watched for a long time. "Where did you learn to fight?"