Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

Whatever she had planned to do with that fellow’s file, it wasn’t something that was good for her. He was lost in thought for a long time, and then it occurred to him that there was no rational reason for a woman not to have put down her purse before she took the plates out to the trash bin. He stood up and hurried to the door, but before he opened it he knew that she was gone.

Jane walked without hurrying. There were a lot of pedestrians out at this time of night in Santa Barbara, coming and going from the restaurants and movie theaters. She bought a copy of The Santa Barbara News-Press from a vending machine on State Street near the art museum and sat on the steps to read it in the light of the streetlamps. She could see after only a few minutes that there wasn’t much action in a town this size, but there were enough cases on the calendar to work.

She walked along State Street and turned right on Anapamu. The big white building on the right with its gigantic green lawns and patches of brilliant flowers had been a place that she had liked when she was here before, until she had learned that it was a courthouse. She climbed one of the outer staircases that ran along the wall and stepped into the second-floor hallway. The scuffed, uneven Mexican tiles and antique furniture along the walls outside the courtrooms made it all seem benevolent and pretty. She walked along the hall past the closed doors of the courtrooms and turned down the next hall. She read the names on the doors. Judge Joseph Gonzales, Judge David Rittenour, Judge Karen Susskind. She found a pay telephone at the end of the hall near the restrooms and looked up the number in the telephone book beneath it.

"Police department," said a male voice.

"This is Judge Karen Susskind," she said. "I’d like to speak to the watch commander, please."

"Yes, ma’am."

In a moment there was another voice. "Yes, Judge."

"I need some assistance right away."

"What can we do for you?"

She glanced at the newspaper. "I’m supposed to pass sentence on a gentleman named Richard Winton tomorrow morning at nine."

"Yes," he said. "I remember the case."

"Well, I’ve received some information that I need to have checked out as soon as possible. Nothing in this building is open, and I can’t reach the district attorney. All he could do is ask you, so I thought I’d ask you directly."

"You’re still at the courthouse?"

"Yes," she said in mild frustration. "I’m still studying the case."

"What sort of information do you need?"

"I just received an anonymous phone call here in my chambers. The person said that Mr. Winton isn’t who he claims to be. The person said his real name is James Michael Martin, and he’s not a first offender. This James Michael Martin was supposedly just released from the prison in Marion, Illinois, and he has a long record."

"Well, that’s something we can check," said the watch commander. "We can run Winton’s prints through the F.B.I., but it’ll take some time ..."

"I would appreciate it if you would make the request right away. But we can’t wait for the outcome. Find out if there is a file on this James Michael Martin in the prison, and get it faxed to you tonight. If it’s the same man, I’ll know it in a second, and I’ll have the information I need for the sentence."

"I’ll get on it right away," he said. "Do you want it delivered to your home?"

"Home?" she laughed. "I don’t expect to be home for hours. How long will it take?"

"Give us one hour," he said.

"All right. If I’m away from my desk for a minute, my assistant will be there. And if there are any delays, call me. I’ll give you the number of the private line in my chambers." She read him the number off the pay telephone, then hung up.

It took forty-two minutes before she heard the sound of a large man with heavy shoes and a lot of jangling metal on his belt come up the tiled staircase, taking the steps two at a time. She stood with her back to the big wooden door of the judge’s office so that the thick old-fashioned door frame would hide her, until she was sure he would see. She stepped forward into the hallway and saw the policeman coming. He was a motorcycle cop with high boots and a helmet under one arm. In his other hand he carried a thick manila envelope with a string tie to keep it shut.

She stepped back to the door and put her hand on the handle, then leaned forward as though she were opening the door a crack. "It’s here, Judge," she called, then trotted ahead to meet the policeman.

She pointed at the envelope. "Is that the Martin file?"

The cop said, "Yes, it is."

She snatched it out from under his arm. "Oh, thank you so much. Maybe I’ll get to go home tonight after all."

He grinned at her. "Glad to help." He turned and started to walk off as she hurried back toward the door of the judge’s office. While she walked, she listened for the click of the man’s boots to recede down the hallway. She made sure she didn’t reach the door until she heard them on the staircase.

A minute later, she heard the motorcycle start and then the whine of the engine as it sped down the block toward the station. There was only one more thing that had to happen. She considered not waiting for it, but she decided that a little patience was worth it. The pay telephone on the wall rang once and she snatched it up. "Judge Susskind."

It was the watch commander’s voice. "This is Lieutenant Garner at the Police Department, Judge. I was—"

"It’s not the same man," said Jane.

"So you don’t want Winton picked up and held for the fingerprint check?"

"Definitely not," she said. "It must have been some kind of practical joke. Whether it was on me or Mr. Winton, I couldn’t guess, but someone wanted me to delay sentencing." She added, "Thanks to you, we won’t have to do that. Goodbye."

She used the pay telephone one more time to call for a taxi, then walked down the outer staircase into the dark garden, past the beds of flowers that had closed their petals for the night and up the empty sidewalk toward the art museum to wait for it.

A few hours later, Jane sat in her room in the big hotel beside the Los Angeles airport and stared at the photographs in the file. There was John Felker staring into her eyes, only this time there was a black placard under his chin that had numbers on it. Then there was the one of his profile, the one she had lain next to in bed and studied in the light of the moon, thinking it looked like the head on a Roman coin, or the way Roman coins should have looked. Here it was, labeled with the same number on the same placard.

For a whole night in Santa Barbara she had considered all the ways it could be another mistake. The two men standing in the grave would have said anything to get out of it. Maybe the story made sense because they had anticipated that they would need to have a story to tell. As soon as she had formulated this idea, she had known it couldn’t be true, because the story they had told wouldn’t have done them any good at all with anyone in the world except Jane Whitefield.

The file had ended that. He was not John Felker. He was James Michael Martin, age thirty-eight, 7757213. He killed people for a living. The file was thick. There were all sorts of documents, from his arrest and trial record through his eight years in Marion. There was a note stating that he had a mechanical aptitude, but the prison counselor felt that vocational training was not an avenue worth exploring with this prisoner. He had gotten two fillings from the prison dentist, marked with a pencil on a diagram of numbered teeth. He had taken a class in bookkeeping and one in computer programming. He had been to the prison infirmary once—no, twice—for upper respiratory congestion, and received non-narcotic cold medicines. His general health was, each time, assessed as "excellent."