Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

"You mean—"

"I’m afraid so. It would probably mean that it’s not a burglar at all. One of the people who is after you has found you. The only thing you can do is get out."

"But if I could subdue him somehow, I might be able to find out—"

"Find out what? Who he is? I can answer that now. He’s one of the hundreds of guys in jail who heard you were worth money, and he’s the one who guessed right."

"What if there is no way out?"

"You’ll have to decide for yourself," she said. "Nobody can tell anybody else what the circumstances are when they’re justified in pulling the trigger. You’re not a cop anymore, so there aren’t any rules. Just make sure you do whatever thinking you have to do in advance."

"Okay, what if I did it?"

"Even if you have the best case of self-defense in history, they’ll still find out who you are. You do whatever you can to hide the body and bail out. Come back to me and we try again."

Each day they walked the same route through the country, taking the roads that ran along the fields and away from the houses. Two days later Jane asked, "Remember the circular that John Felker the policeman was going to put out to catch John Felker the embezzler?"

"Sure," he said.

"What else was on it?"

"Age, height, weight—"

"Can’t help you much there, but there are ways of thinking about it that are useful. What you have to think about isn’t the way you look but what photographs of you exist. Only one in a thousand of the people who will be looking for you have seen you in person. The last picture the police have would be at least five years old, right?"

"Right."

"If there are any more recent ones—say your sister has some—try to get rid of them. Call her and tell her to burn them. Your ex-wife—"

"No problem there. If she has them, they’d be ten years old."

"Good. Then, when you work on your appearance, think of the photographs as though you were John Felker the cop. The best things to do are simple. You’re tall, so you drive a small car. It has an unconscious effect. People just think: small. Wear a hat or sunglasses—anything that would keep John Felker the cop from making the connection at a glance. Unless you’re in some other trouble, a glance is all the time they’ll have. What else is on the circular?"

"Distinguishing marks or scars."

"Do you have any?"

"No." He smiled. "Should I get some?"

"Hardly. What else?"

"Distinctive personal habits."

"Okay," she said. "Go beyond the stuff that’s on the circular because the cops aren’t the only ones who will be looking. You don’t seem to smoke. Do you drink?"

"Not heavily. I’ve been known to have one or two."

"One or two what?"

"Beers. Once in a while some scotch and water."

"Where? Bars?"

"No. We used to spend too much time going out on calls to bars to want to go back after a shift. There were a couple of places in St. Louis that a lot of cops went to—not many civilians, so some cops felt relaxed, but I didn’t. It was the same faces I’d seen at work."

"Good. Stay out of bars. Things happen—fights inside and robberies in the parking lots. If you were in the habit, that’s one of the first places they’d look. Besides, the strangest people get sanctimonious. When some guy goes out to get ripped, he doesn’t want to rub elbows with his kids’ math teacher. What about the rest of your social life?"

"What do you mean?"

She walked along for a step or two. "If you’re uncomfortable about this, we’ll close the topic. Just think about what I’m saying. You’ve been divorced for about ten years. You don’t have any girlfriends at the moment. Are you gay?"

"No," he said.

"Are you celibate?’’

He chuckled. "Not for long, and never by choice."

She seemed to choose her words carefully now. "Okay, I don’t need to know anything about this. If you have some ... attitude about sex that’s unusual, just take it into consideration in the future."

He looked at her closely. "Unusual?"

She walked along for a few steps in silence, and then said, "What I mean is predictable."

"There’s nobody in my past that I can’t resist getting in touch with."

She sighed in frustration. "Good. But there are other possibilities. Since you’re single and you haven’t been celibate, presumably there are a number of women around who could tell somebody things about you. Since we don’t know who is trying to get you, it’s not out of the question that a woman is involved. Women can sometimes get other women to discuss things that they wouldn’t tell a man."

"I don’t think there’s anything they could say."

It came too quickly, so she realized she was going to have to be more specific. She looked ahead and made her voice sound impersonal and cheerful and clinical. "There are also things that can be unintentionally revealing. If your wife and all your girlfriends looked alike, you might want to widen your horizons a little. If you got into the habit of knowing all the prettiest prostitutes, as some cops do, that might be a good thing to change. If you can find the prostitutes in a new town, so can they, and they’ll pay them just for talking. If you subscribed to a pornographic magazine for people who have some ... special interest, it would be smart not to get another subscription in your new name. They make money by selling their mailing lists. That goes for other interests too, from coin collecting to motorcycles." She stopped abruptly. She knew where that had come from—Jimmy’s stupid poster.

Jane walked along in silence for a long time. Finally, she glanced up at him and saw he was staring at her and grinning. He shrugged. "No hits so far. But go on. I like hearing women talk about sex."

"Forget it," she said. "Do you have any chronic physical conditions that would mean you have to see a specialist or take medicine?"

"Is this the same topic or a new one?"

"New one. And I’m trying to help you stay alive, so I’d appreciate it if you’d try too."

He was serious again. "No medical problems."

"All right," she said. "Let’s go into buying habits. Go through your wardrobe in your mind. Picture your closet. Look at the ties, suits, jackets, shoes, and shirts. Men your size sometimes buy particular brands or even through mail order, to get a better fit. Even though you’re gone, the catalogs and things will keep coming to your house. Your clothes are still there, and people will study them. Even if you’re smart enough to buy the same kinds of clothes with different labels, the ones in the closet will give them a very accurate picture of how you’ll look."

"Now you’ve got me," he said. "I’m one of those guys who found a few things he liked and stuck with them."

"Change," she said. "Don’t buy anything you would have bought a month ago. It shouldn’t be too hard. You’re going from being an accountant to being a student."

"I hope I am, anyway," he said.

"You are," she said. "Be absolutely certain of that. You’re only going to be running until we get you settled. Just keep that in mind. This is hard, but it’s going to end."

When they walked back to the house on the fourth day, they didn’t stop. Now there was a frantic quality to their conversations, as though Jane were trying to tell him everything she knew at once. While she made dinner, she had him pretend he was talking to his academic adviser at a college, telling her why he wanted to be a teacher, how he discovered he was interested in working with young people. Now and then she would ask him questions.

"Give me a list of the mathematics courses you had in your first degree program."

"Math 101-102, Math 363 and 4 ..."

"Time out. Say, ’advanced calculus,’ or ’probability theory.’ Don’t give them numbers, because the fake transcript might not have the same ones. The transcript will have to carry the same numbers as the catalog for the college you supposedly attended. Anytime somebody is writing down your answers, you have to think ahead."