Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

It moved along a road parallel to the freeway, then turned to get back onto it. "Do you think they were trying to lose us or to see us?" asked Jake.

"I don’t know," she said. She turned around quickly and speeded up the road after it. "I think it was just a precaution."

The car kept going back through town and left the freeway at the Cabrillo Boulevard exit. Jane followed it, keeping the distance as great as she could without losing it. But instead of staying on the winding road past the bird sanctuary and on to the beaches and the harbor, it turned left toward Montecito.

Jane watched it until it moved up one of the little streets below the freeway. She pulled the car to the side of the road and turned out the lights.

’’This doesn’t feel right," she said.

"You think they know we’re following them?"

"You’re sure those are the men who tried to break into my house?"

"Positive."

’’The last time I saw them, they did something like this. They went ahead on a dark country road and waited for us." Jake was silent, so she took a deep breath. "Okay. Then we’re at crazy time now."

"What’s that?"

"I can’t just let them go away this time. They killed Harry. If they go now, chances are they’ll get John, too, sooner or later. Do you understand?"

"You’re saying you’re going to follow two killers up a dark road that’s probably a dead end," he said. "Sounds perfectly sensible to me."

"No, I’m saying it’s time for you to get out."

"You know anybody who does what you tell them to?".

"Lots of them."

"Oh," he said. "Should have brought them."

She drove ahead and pulled over on the gravel shoulder at the end of the street where the car had disappeared. Jake wrapped the two shotguns in his coat and got out of the car.

They hurried away from the roadside, into the darkness, where headlights wouldn’t reach them. Jane knew that walking along the road, even twenty feet from it, was probably what the men wanted them to do. There was a low fence beside her, with thick shrubs and vines entangled above it. She pushed some of the plants aside and stepped over, then held them so Jake could climb over too. When she looked around her, the land she saw didn’t seem to have the silhouette of a house on it. There was a long, curved plot of open grass. She moved along the fence in the direction the car had gone.

As they walked she began to feel more sure. They would be up ahead somewhere, waiting just out of sight of the road. When she had walked along the fence for a hundred feet, she saw the green car. It was on the other side of the field, just below the elevated hill that carried the freeway, parked behind a big grove of trees, its lights off, just about where it would be if the men were waiting for someone to drive up the dark street outside the fence into an ambush. She crossed the lawn above it and looked down.

"What is this?" asked Jake.

"I don’t know. A park or golf course or something," she said. She reached out and tapped the bundle Jake had wrapped in his coat.

He handed her one of the shotguns and put his coat on.

"Last chance," she said.

"No talking," he whispered.

Suddenly, there was a rattle of a car starting, but it came from the wrong place. Jane pulled Jake to the ground and aimed her shotgun toward the sound. There was a second car. This one was white. It was up along the hedge at the edge of the field, and now it was slowly moving along toward them. She pushed the safety off with her trigger finger and then put her hand on Jake’s sleeve. "Not yet."

The car moved closer and closer to them. She waited for the lights to come on, the window to come down. As it drifted past them, she kept her hand on Jake’s arm. She could hear the soft swish of its tires on the grass. She looked up and saw there was someone in the passenger seat beside the driver. On the bumper there was some kind of rental sticker, and then the car was going on into the darkness. There had to be a gate somewhere in that direction. In a moment she saw it coming back up outside the fence. She ducked down before the lights went on, and then it was gone.

She took her hand off Jake’s arm and started to make her way toward the green car, with Jake at her side. They moved onto the grass and approached the car from the side, keeping low along the hedge at the edge of the lawn. Jane touched Jake and put her mouth close to his ear. "Get down and get ready. If somebody shoots, take your time. You’re invisible until you pull the trigger."

"I’ll save a shell for the radiator," he whispered. "Nobody’s going to kill me and ride away from it in comfort." He eased himself to the ground and lay prone with the shotgun aimed at the car. Jane began to crawl on her belly, closer and closer to the dark shape. She had gone twenty feet when she touched something hard and cold. It felt like a piece of metal, set into the ground. A drain? She ran her fingertips across it and felt raised letters. I...N...M...E...M...O... a cemetery. It was a grave marker.

She heard a snick-chuff sound, coming from the other side of the car. Somebody was digging. She could hear the clods of earth landing on the pile, some granules rolling back down, and then snick-chuff again. So that was why the other two had left. They were working in shifts. It was a lot of work to dig a grave, but not much room.

She crawled closer until she was beside the car. The trunk was open, but there was no light inside the lid. She knew she had to look inside, and that when she did, the sight she was going to see was John. They were in a town they didn’t know any better than she did, and they had decided to use the old, reliable way of disposing of the body: finding a fresh grave, digging it up, and burying the new one with the legitimate resident.

She forced her breaths to come more deeply. The air seemed to seep into her lungs and lie there, and then she would have to think to force it out and let in more. She tasted her dry tongue and made her way to the back of the car. She put her hand on the rear bumper and experienced a sensation like the one she had felt when standing on a high diving board as a little girl, those few seconds when it still seemed possible to turn and go back down.

She found herself counting silently: one ... two ... three, and then popped her head up and saw ... nothing. The trunk was empty except for a flashlight. The way it was lying there on the center of the flat, empty surface was almost like an instruction from somewhere to pick it up.

She grasped it and took a few breaths to calm herself. She could hear the shovel noise again, and now she could tell it wasn’t one shovel. They were both digging. She began to crawl toward the sound. She couldn’t see a silhouette or a shadow, but then she reached the place and she knew. They were already too deep in the hole, over their heads with piles of dirt on both sides. She moved to the nearest pile of dirt, feeling her way for John’s body.

She grasped the slide of the shotgun and stood up just as the flash came. She saw all of it at once. The two men were standing over the casket and they had the top half of it open, and the one from the apartment was taking another flash picture. Down in the coffin was Harry Kemple. The darkness closed on all of them instantly, there was the familiar whirr, then the man aimed again and the flash came with a click, and then darkness.

Jane shone the flashlight into the open grave and shouted, "Police officers. Freeze." She hoped Jake could hear her and not just see the light and shoot it.

The two men in the pit below her stood still, straddling the casket. They seemed unsure of what to do, but certain that they weren’t going to be able to find adequate footing in the narrow hole to turn around and face her, let alone draw a gun and shoot her. They raised their hands.