Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

"Timmy," said Jane. "I didn't send the note. If I ever come for you again, I won't send a note or make a telephone call either. I'll make sure you see me. Don't go to some woman with dark hair who waves from a hundred feet away. I'll be up close, so you can tell."

He looked alarmed. "You're taking me back?"

"I can't drive you to a policeman's house in a stolen car," said Jane. "I'll have to drop you off in a safe place."

Jane leaned forward a little to glance at the black box. The needle was moving again. They had swung around to the east, just as she had. She had only the vaguest idea how direction finders worked. There was some kind of transmitter in Barraclough's car, and the black box received the signal and pointed out the direction it was coming from. But what could the range possibly be? A mile? Five miles? As though the machine had read her thoughts, the needle wavered, then swung to a straight vertical position and stayed there. It had already lost touch with Barraclough.

Jane maneuvered through the crush of vehicles. At any minute Barraclough or one of his lieutenants would know that she had the car, and they would take the necessary steps to find it. Probably they would report it stolen and let the police catch her for them. She had only one way to avoid the police. She drove to the parking structure at the Burbank airport.

She parked beside the gray Toyota and took the car keys from under the bumper. For a moment she considered ripping the black box out of the red car and trying to install it in her own car. But by now Barraclough certainly knew she had it. If she got the direction finder to work, eventually she would find that it was following a transmitter Barraclough had placed where she could be ambushed. She ushered Timmy into the gray Toyota and drove out of the parking ramp.

Ten minutes later Jane dialed a pay telephone and listened to Judge Kramer's voice. "Hello?"

She said, "Judge, it's me. Do you know for sure that your phone is not tapped?"

"I have it swept every day. No bugs so far. What's going on? How did you get this number?"

"Listen carefully. I'm with Timmy. They found him and lured him out. They know I've got him back and they're about to start looking for us, if they aren't already. I'm leaving him in the waiting area of the emergency room at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Burbank. He's faking a stomachache, so they'll have to keep him at least long enough for a doctor to be sure it's not his appendix.

The guard inside thinks I'm calling his father to say we got here. Say that's who you are when you come for him."

"But what - "

"He'll tell you. Bye." She hung up and looked in through the glass doors of the emergency room at Timmy for a heartbeat, then hurried to her car.

As Jane got back on the freeway she had to struggle against the feeling that Barraclough was simply too smart for her. Every time she tried anything, he seemed to have anticipated it and brought it back to bear on her. She pulled off the freeway and made her way to the quiet side street in Sherman Oaks. She climbed the fence with a growing dread. She made her way up the little hill and crouched beside the freeway. The rented car was still where Mary had left it, and across the freeway she could see hers too. She moved to Mary's car, looked in the windows, then under the seats and mats and in the glove compartment. Barraclough had won again. When he had produced Timmy, Mary had gone to him with the tapes still in her purse.

Jane forced herself to move. She slipped away from the freeway, leaving the camera, microphone, and recorders in the brush. She climbed the fence and drove out to Riverside Drive. Everything depended on her ability to use time efficiently now.

She glanced at her watch. It was six-thirty a.m. and the sun glinted on the windows ahead as she drove west. She tried to think of all of the facts that carried with them some bit of hope. Timmy was alive. Barraclough would never have kidnapped him if he had not expected the driver to take him somewhere and kill him quietly as soon as Barraclough had Mary. Mary was also alive, and would stay alive as long as she was able to keep from giving Barraclough the last dime she had stolen. This thought led Jane in a direction she did not want to go, so she forced herself away from it. Even the black box might help. If Barraclough thought Jane had it, he would try to use it to trap her. This would take some of his time and attention, and anything that accomplished that would help to neutralize the enormous advantage he had.

Jane had an advantage too, and she began to concentrate on it. There was no way that Barraclough could know that the young man she had met in the housing project had told her about Enterprise Development. He had said 5122 Van Nuys Boulevard. She turned right on Van Nuys Boulevard and watched for the building.

When it came up on her right, she could see the car Barraclough had been driving. It was parked on the street near the side door of the small, four-story building. Jane took a breath and felt the air keep coming and coming, expanding in her chest with a feeling of joy. Maybe Barraclough had finally done something foolish. She had assumed he would take Mary to a safe house somewhere. Maybe he had gotten overconfident and stopped at Van Nuys Boulevard to direct the search for Jane. Maybe the driver of the red car had not been heard from yet and Barraclough assumed she and Timmy were dead. Even as she formulated the idea she knew it was impossible. Barraclough had stopped here just long enough to change cars. She pulled her car around the corner out of sight, then went across the street into a coffee shop.

She waited in the coffee shop and watched Enterprise Development for half an hour before a man came out the door of the building. She checked her watch. It was exactly eight. Something prearranged was going on. The chance that someone would happen to emerge from the building on the stroke of the hour was exactly fifty-nine to one against. As the man approached Barraclough's car she studied his wiry gray hair, the razorsharp crease of his pants, the cocky toe-out walk and impeccably shined shoes.

He must be Farrell, the one who called himself the training officer at Intercontinental but who ran the undercover operation out of this building. He took a set of keys out of his pocket, pretended to look down to select the right one while his eyes scanned the block, then got in and drove off. Jane was confused for an instant. Of all the people Barraclough had working for him, Farrell was the only one she had been sure would not be here. He would be where Mary was.

Jane made up her mind quickly, hurried to her car, and drove after him. She had gone only a couple of blocks before she noticed the second car. It was black and nondescript, with one man in it. She turned off Van Nuys Boulevard, then left up the parallel street and watched her mirror, but he didn't follow. She pulled back onto Van Nuys Boulevard two blocks behind him. When Farrell turned right on Victory Boulevard and he followed, she realized that the black car had not been following her; it was following Farrell.

After the turn Jane pulled a little closer to the black car. Even if he was the star graduate of the police auto-surveillance team he couldn't follow a car ahead of him and watch his own back at the same time.

Then Farrell's gray car reached its destination. Jane watched the second car pull to the curb ten feet from the entrance. She drove another two blocks before she parked and watched them in her rearview mirror. Farrell was returning Barraclough's gray car to the agency from which it had been rented. A few minutes later he emerged from the little building, walked out to the street, and got into the black car with the other man. Jane drove around a block to come out behind them on Van Nuys Boulevard. They continued south only as far as the Enterprise Development building and turned in at the parking lot.