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  Then it was pulling up beside the Lexus. The cop was young, and she could see his lips were straight across his face with no smile, but she knew it was waiting to come, because the eyebrows had that wanting-to-be-concerned look that cops sometimes got. He stopped the car, got out, and left the door open so he could hear his radio. He didn’t do the things they did when they were suspicious—put their nightsticks in their belts, say something into the radio. She could hear the nasal voice of a female dispatcher squawking out meaningless words and numbers, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped closer to Linda and said, “Having car trouble?”

  “No,” said Linda. When she smiled she could feel that she had actually induced a blush. Her cheeks were hot. “I thought I heard something in the engine, but it was just my imagination. Everything is fine.”

  He glanced at the car, then back at Linda. “Why don’t you start it up, and I’ll listen?”

  Linda sensed that it was a devious way of being sure the car wasn’t stolen without coming out and asking for her license and registration. She was glad he was so young and handsome, because the sight of him right after Hatcher would be sending hot flashes of jealousy up Earl’s spine mixed with the alarm and the wonder at how desirable the bait really was. She smiled as prettily as she could for both of them and said, “Well, if you wouldn’t mind …,” then obediently opened the driver’s door and sat behind the wheel.

  The shot was so loud that her legs kicked out and pushed her back against the seat. Blood and brain from the cop had spattered the windshield. She scrambled out of the car as though it were on fire.

  Earl’s strong hand clamped her arm. She danced at the end of his arm, tugging to get moving, but he tightened his grip. “He’s still alive, right?”

  At first she thought he meant the cop. “How could—” she began, then remembered. Hatcher was still in the trunk. She held her panic in check as she hurried to the trunk, unlocked it, and lifted the lid three inches. She stuck her big Colt into the dark space, then pulled the trigger four times before Earl grabbed her and slammed the trunk.

  In the sudden silence she could hear the sirens too. More police were coming. Earl dragged her toward the alley, his grip so tight that she could feel the blood beginning to collect below it, so her fingers throbbed. His voice was a raspy whisper. “Don’t ever fire blind into the trunk of a car when your ass is that close to it again, you dumb bitch. The gas tank is right under it.”

  She had forgotten about the gas tank. Imagining the bright orange explosion she had flirted with gave her a giddy feeling of luck, but even better, she detected that the strain in Earl’s voice was genuine concern. He had just dusted a cop to reclaim her, and he really didn’t want to lose her. She let him pull her along the alley, then lead her up the dark space beside the market and over to the next street. In another minute and a half they were on the pedestrian mall along Sixteenth Street, far from the sirens and far from the cops cruising around looking for a getaway car.

  When he saw her turn her head to look at the display window of a boutique, Earl gave a sullen nod and followed her inside. Linda bought a silk summer dress that made her feel light and pretty, a little bit like a butterfly.

  Pete Hatcher was crouching on his knees, shaking. He could tell that he must have lost some of his sight and hearing. He had seen the trunk begin to open. He had just found the safety latch inside the lid by touch and gotten the courage to release it when he had heard the keys in the lock and seen the crack of light appear.

  He had been terrified that the cops would see his hand near the lock, so he had reflexively recoiled, scuttled back into the corner of the trunk behind the loose spare tire and curled up. He had seen the pistol appear in the opening, but he had never expected the gun to go off. The blast, the flash, and the shower of sparks made him bring his knees to his chest, clap his hands over his ears, and close his eyes.

  She had fired again and again at the spot where he had first lay down when she locked him in—first where his head had been, then his belly, then halfway back up, to his chest, then his head again.

  He heard nothing now, but his ears were still ringing, so he wasn’t sure that there were no sounds. The woman had every right to think he was dead, so now she would drive the car somewhere. He waited for the sound of the engine, but it didn’t come. He tried to figure out what he should do, but first he had to know why she had shot at him. No, that was wrong. Somebody was going to open the trunk again soon, expecting him to be dead. When they discovered that he wasn’t, they would certainly correct the oversight. He could die that way, or he could try to run.

  He pulled the safety latch behind the lock and cautiously pushed the trunk open a crack. He heard the sound of a police radio, then saw the police car. He closed his eyes and felt sweet relief. She couldn’t kill him if the other cops had already arrived. That was probably why she had done such a hasty job of it—to finish it before they got here. He popped the lid up, then swung his leg over the rear bumper, misjudged the height of the trunk, and toppled over onto the street. He began to sit up, then lay back down again and stared along the underside of the car.

  He could see the body of a policeman lying on the street at the front, almost under the radiator. There was a big hole in his forehead as though the skull had been punched outward, and blood draining down over his left eye into a pool. Hatcher’s brain tried to take all that it knew and make sense of it. Did she imagine Hatcher had killed the policeman earlier, and then think she was executing him for it? What was he thinking? It was impossible. She had killed the policeman. She was no cop.

  His breathing stopped. He had no idea how long he had been hearing the sirens. He was alone with the body of a murdered policeman. He had just bought two guns, and this woman had probably used one of them on a policeman. It might be lying around here someplace, and if it wasn’t, the police certainly had a way to know he had owned two and had only one left.

  Hatcher stood and backed away from the car, his head swiveling around, first to see if the madwoman was still nearby waiting to fire, then to see if any of the people in the houses had come out, then just to see where he was going. He walked to the front of the car and picked up his grocery bag. He turned, and then his feet were pounding on the sidewalk, carrying him away, the momentum building and building, his mouth open in a grimace so the air hissed in and out through his clenched teeth.

  His mind burned through the mass of impressions into a bare, heightened clarity as he ran. There was no moment of indecision, no wavering among choices, because he had no choices. He knew the police would come toward this spot from three directions at once, because there were only three ways for a car to come. They would flood each end of the block and come up the alley. He took the fourth way, entering the lobby of an apartment building that looked a lot like his own, walking through it, down the first-floor hallway and out the back door, then beside the next one and across the street, where he entered the lobby of the next one, so he emerged on his own street a block from his apartment.

  He walked into his entryway and climbed the stairs for the last time. He knew that the madwoman almost certainly believed he was dead. Even if she had any doubts and knew where he lived, she would have had a difficult time getting here before he had. He opened the apartment door, slipped inside, and locked it behind him.

  He had no difficulty working out the order of tasks. He made the telephone call first. She wasn’t home, but he left a message. Then he collected the cash from its hiding places in the apartment, packed his clothes quickly, and wiped his fingerprints off all the surfaces he usually touched. He took all of the food jars and bottles out of the refrigerator, put them into the sink, and ran water over them until he was sure they carried no fingerprints, then put them all into a big plastic trash bag with his groceries.

  He went out, locked the door, wiped the doorknob, walked quietly down the hall, and carried his suitcase and his trash down the back staircase. He put his trash in the Dumpster. Then he walked ar
ound the corner to where his car was parked, set his suitcase in the trunk, and began to drive.

  Earl and Linda sat in a cowboy bar in Golden, a half hour into the mountains west of Denver, and watched the eleven o’clock news on the television set on the wall above them. The newswoman was reporting “the senseless, execution-style killing of a young police officer.”

  Earl knitted his eyebrows. “Now, that’s typical, isn’t it? They haven’t found out why it happened, so they say it was senseless. They read the words on the prompter, but they don’t seem to know what they’re saying.”

  Linda could see the newswoman standing about twenty yards away from the Lexus, and behind her the police crew was dusting it for prints. The car trunk was open. “The police are urging anyone who has information about the incident to contact them. They have no solid leads as to why anyone would have shot the officer. One theory I’ve heard is that even though the new Lexus sedan had not yet been reported missing, the officer might have seen something suspicious and pulled it over.”

  Linda held her breath, waiting for Earl to notice what had not been said. Finally she knew that he already had. He swallowed the last of the beer in his glass, set it on the table, and said, “Well, we’d better go see if we can figure out where he’s gotten to now.”

  “I’m sorry, Earl,” she said. She wanted to waste some time in the bar, where there were people, before she blithely stepped into the dark with Earl. He was perfectly capable of hiding his anger until they were somewhere along a deserted road. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know how I could have—”

  “I did it,” he said. “I stopped you before you could do him right.” He added, “1 keep thinking, ‘So she might have put a round into the gas tank. If we’d been back a few yards it wouldn’t have been so bad.’ ” He pulled her up by the arm. “Better than this, anyway. This is a joke.”

  When they reached the neighborhood where Hatcher had been living as David Keller, they drove past the place where he had parked the used Saturn that evening. For an instant Linda felt the thrill of surprise and anticipation: the space was not empty. But when Earl drove closer she could see that the car in the space was a Thunderbird.

  Earl left their car a block from the rear of Hatcher’s building and they climbed the back stairs. Earl opened the lock effortlessly and they stepped inside, put on their gloves, and began the search. As soon as Linda opened the refrigerator, she knew what the rest of the small apartment would be like.

  After fifteen minutes, Earl sat down on the couch. “He’s getting better at this.”

  “He doesn’t have as much stuff to worry about,” said Linda. “She made him travel light.”

  “Let’s see,” muttered Earl. “He’s in the trunk of the car. You put four shots in there. You would think with four rounds rattling around in there and bouncing off things, one of them would have clipped him, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes. I did. But it didn’t happen. There’s no blood anyplace.”

  “He knows he’s a lucky man, but he’s scared to death. He hears us leave, he pops out and runs like hell—probably through back yards, or the police would have picked him up. He’s too stupid to do the wrong thing and run across town. He comes right back here. What does he do?”

  “It looks like he spent some time cleaning up.”

  “Right. He couldn’t have done that for us. We know who he is already. He must think the cops are going to come here looking for him. What else did he do?”

  “He took his car.”

  “That’s last. What’s first?”

  “He packed his stuff. Probably some money, the other gun he bought.”

  Earl nodded. “He did that. Put yourself in his mind. You’re scared. You’re so scared you just ran home as fast as you could. You clean up, throw everything in a suitcase. You’re about to go out the door and drive until you run out of gas. Where are you going to go?”

  Linda’s eyes narrowed, and she bit her lower lip, then released it to reveal a little smile. She looked across Earl at the telephone on the table. “Does it have a redial button?”

  Earl opened his briefcase and found the little microcassette recorder. “Testing,” he said. “You’d better work.” He clicked two buttons. “Testing. You’d better work,” it said. Earl pressed two more buttons, then looked at Linda. He lifted the receiver, clamped the tape recorder to the earpiece with one hand, pressed the redial button with the other, and recorded the series of quick musical tones.

  Linda counted the tones. “Eleven numbers. Long distance. An area code and a number.”

  Earl hung up before the phone on the other end could ring. Then he played back the recording of eleven tones and handed the recorder to Linda. “Get the numbers.” He stood up, took a penlight, and began to shine it on the surfaces of the furniture.

  Linda lifted the receiver and said into the recorder, “One,” then pressed the one button and recorded the tone. She said, “Two,” pressed the two button, and recorded the tone. When she reached six, she hung up to avoid completing a call, then got the last four numbers on tape.

  It took Linda another ten minutes to decipher the recorded tones of the woman’s telephone number. “I think I have it. Should I test it?”

  Earl said, “Give it a try.”

  Linda said aloud, “One. Area code seven one six,” then dialed the rest of it. After four rings she heard a woman’s voice. “Leave a message when you hear a beep.” Linda hung up. “It’s the woman. She has her answering machine on.”

  Earl took his penlight and opened David Keller’s telephone book. “Seven one six.… That’s New York … Buffalo, New York.” He closed the book and looked at Linda. “Maybe this time we got lucky, not him, and not her. She’s got her answering machine on. He called her no more than an hour or two ago. Maybe it’s on because she’s already talked to him and gone off to meet him. But it just could be that he got her machine too, and left a message.”

  Linda looked at the phone as though she could see down the wire to the other end. “Most machines will play back a message if you’re away. Ours will do it if you push a two-digit code. Some use codes with three or four, but it might be worth a try.”

  “There are only a hundred possible combinations. And we aren’t paying the phone bill.”

  It was two o’clock when Linda heard a change. “Leave a message when—” and the recording stopped. There was a click, and she could hear the answering machine rewinding, then another click. Linda held Earl’s tape recorder beside the earpiece of the telephone.

  “Jane? Jane? It’s me. I’m in trouble. Somehow they found me. A woman tried to kill me tonight. I’ve got to get out. I’m going to head north, to Cheyenne. No, too close. Billings. I’ll try to make it to Billings, Montana. I’ll call again when I get there.”

  She was laughing with delight when she played the recording for Earl, but he was staring at the wall, and he wasn’t smiling.

  When it ended, he sat in silence for a moment, then glanced at his watch. “We’d better get going. I’ve got to put you on a plane, and then head up north.”

  “Put me on a plane?”

  He spoke so gently that she was afraid of him. “He saw your face, honey. Having you around isn’t going to do me any good in Billings.”

  “You’re sending me home?”

  “Home?” His grin came like a sudden snarl. “No. You’ve got to go do something about her.”

  13

  “Jane? Jane? It’s me. I’m in trouble. Somehow they found me. A woman tried to kill me tonight. I’ve got to get out. I’m going to head north, to Cheyenne. No, too close. Billings. I’ll try to make it to Billings, Montana. I’ll call again when I get there.”

  The shock in his voice made Jane’s scalp prickle, and a hot, sick sweat began to materialize on the back of her neck. The machine’s inhuman voice said, “End of messages,” and clicked off. She pressed the button again and heard Hatcher’s voice. “Jane? Jane?” She listened to the rest of it, each word of it giving he
r bits of information that Pete Hatcher probably didn’t know.

  He had made a mistake, but even after he had seen the executioner, he had no idea what he had done wrong. He had stayed hidden for three months, so it had nothing to do with the escape route. He must have done something as David Keller that they had expected Pete Hatcher to do. He had gotten himself on some list.

  “I’m going to head north, to Cheyenne. No, too close.” She felt something clutching her stomach. He had been sitting in his apartment in Denver all this time, gotten up a hundred mornings and gone to bed a hundred evenings, and it had never occurred to him to plan the best way to get out if they found him. It sounded as though he were running his finger up a road map while he was talking, looking for a route that sounded safe to his panicked brain.

  She had told him to prepare contingency plans. After something happened, he wouldn’t be able to think clearly, he would forget details, leave things behind that he needed. But had she told him? She tried to remember their two conversations. She thought she had told him. She had tried to instill in him an attitude. Other people could make decisions at the last moment, but a fugitive could not. He had to know in advance the places where he was willing to show his face, what he was willing to do, what he was going to say when somebody asked him a question.

  Jane slowly felt the suspicion harden into a certainty. She had not taught Pete Hatcher how to stay alive. The excuses began to flood her consciousness. Getting him out of Las Vegas had not been a question of redirecting a running man. It had been like staging a prison break. He had been watched, followed, suspected by people who seemed to have no other duties. She had needed to slip him out between the guards from a standing start, and then spend most of her energy delaying the pursuit. But repeating the circumstances to herself accomplished nothing. Words were enough to apologize for her haste, but not enough to absolve her if Pete Hatcher died.