Nightlife: A Novel Page 23

  “I’m going to try to persuade Lieutenant Hartnell to get me a chance to talk to Tanya.”

  30

  Driver’s licenses were difficult, and they were the form of identification that counted. She judged that the Rachel Sturbridge driver’s license from California was the best one to scan. It had been issued most recently, and it had the greatest number and variety of devices on it to deter counterfeiters. There was a large color picture of her on the left side, a smaller one on the right, and lots of overlapping silver hologram state seals with the letters DMV. But once she was out of California, the address and numbers had no meaning to anyone.

  She scanned the Rachel Sturbridge license onto a CD, typed in the name Anne Margaret Forster, her new eye color, hair color, and birth date, printed and cropped it, then inserted it into the plastic sleeve in her wallet. With the slight clouding, the license looked perfect.

  She scanned Ty’s high school group picture, and began to play with the images. In a few minutes she had separated Ty’s face from the others and superimposed it on the image of the California license. Then she typed in the name James Russell Forster. She put in a new eight-digit number in red and changed the birth date. Then she printed it and cut it to size.

  She took off her clothes and washed them with Ty’s. While the clothes were in the dryer she took a hot bath. Before it got dark she found Ty’s mother’s nail kit and did her nails. In the last of the natural light she did her makeup and brushed her hair.

  When she heard Ty’s car come up the driveway, she moved to the kitchen to wait for him. She heard the garage door open and the car glide in. Ty closed the garage door, then came to the kitchen door, opened it, and turned on the light. He was carrying a bag of food from El Taco Rancho.

  “Welcome home, Ty.”

  At first he was startled, but he recovered quickly. He stepped closer to her, looked at her hair, stared into her eyes. “Unbelievable.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s awesome. You look like my aunt.”

  “Now I’m your aunt?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You just look a little bit like her. Not like she looks now. It’s my aunt Darlene, my mother’s sister. You’re a lot younger, but I bet that’s what she looked like when she was young. She was supposed to be hot. My father says she was a piece of ass, but now she’s just a pain in the ass.” He walked around her in a circle. “I can’t get over this. You look so different. Your eyes and everything.”

  “So it looks all right?”

  “Yeah, it does. It’s a turn-on.”

  “You’re a sixteen-year-old boy. Everything is a turn-on to you.”

  “Everything about you is.” He set the bag of food on the counter and put his arms around her, so she had to kiss him. When his hands began to move from her waist, she grasped them and held on.

  “I’ve got some other things to show you. Come on.” She pulled him to his bedroom, where she had the new birth certificate and driver’s license for James Russell Forster.

  He picked them up and looked from one to the other. “Man, I can hardly believe this. It’s . . . like, perfect. Can you make me one that says I’m twenty-one?”

  She laughed. “You mean so you can get into bars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to use this one when we’re traveling.” She grinned. “But later I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all I ask.” He went to his closet, opened the door, and took off his uniform shirt. As he pulled out a clean shirt, she saw something.

  “Is that a gun?”

  He reached into the corner of the closet and grasped it by the walnut foregrip and pulled it out. “Yeah. See? It was my father’s old one, the first one he ever had, when he was my age. It’s a thirty-ought-six.”

  She touched the smooth wooden stock, the bolt, and the scope. “Have you ever fired it?”

  “Hell, yes. A million times. I’m a great shot.”

  “What have you shot at?”

  “Deer, elk.”

  “You kill deer?”

  “We didn’t last year. My dad had to work weekends for practically the whole season, and I had football practice.”

  “But you’ve used it?”

  “Yeah. Now you’re going to tell me you hate me because I iced Bambi’s mom, aren’t you?”

  She realized she must have had a lapse of concentration and let him see her disenchantment with hunting. She touched his arm. “There’s nothing about you I don’t like, Ty. You’re a special person.”

  He put the rifle back in the closet, turned back to her, and said, “Shit. I forgot to bring in all the stuff I bought. It’s still in the trunk.” He hurried out of the room, then came back a few minutes later with three large shopping bags.

  He reached into his pocket. “I had about sixty bucks left from buying that stuff.”

  “Hold on to it. I need to give you more, so you can get some supplies tomorrow for the trip.”

  He studied her. “Is that when we’re leaving?”

  She shrugged. “The longer we wait, the safer it is. But I’d like to be out of here at least two days before your parents show up.” She frowned. “Why don’t they ever call you?”

  “They do. They called me about five times while they were in Lake Havasu. I think they were feeling guilty. Or maybe they just wanted to be sure I was going to work. Since then I called them twice on my cell phone.”

  She grinned. “You don’t want me to hear what you’re saying, huh? Do you call them ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’?”

  “No,” he said. “I just don’t want any trouble. If they heard you talking or I sounded like somebody was with me, we’d be screwed.” He asked, “Where are we going? We haven’t talked about it at all.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where were you going before?”

  “I didn’t know then, either. We need to get out of Flagstaff, out of this part of the country, where people expect to spot me. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter. Every place has something nice about it.”

  “But we have to be heading somewhere.”

  “I have an idea. After dinner, why don’t you go on the Internet and see if you can work out a route heading east, with maps and everything?”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll map out a couple of ways, in case the first one is too dangerous.”

  “Good idea.” Then she added, “Jim.”

  “Thanks, Anne.”

  After dinner she cleared the table and went into the living room to examine the clothes he had bought. She looked into the first bag with trepidation, but in it she found two pairs of pants—one black, which was perfect, and one brown, which was ugly—a pair of blue jeans, and a pair of Nike running shoes. The tags told her he had bought the sizes she had given him. She was relieved.

  In another bag were six pairs of socks, six pairs of panties, and three bras, supposedly obtained for the price of two. She thought of Ty going into that section of the store to buy those things and it made her smile. He had bought himself a jacket, as though to assuage his embarrassment.

  The third bag had a couple of T-shirts, one of which had a picture of a cat and said “Cat-fight Boxing”; the other said “Hotel Juicy.” The sweatshirt with them mercifully said nothing. There were three other tops, one a hideous pink, one sky blue, and the other the sort of green that people wore on St. Patrick’s Day. All of the tops were completely wrong for her, but with the exception of the green top, none of them stood out, and all seemed to be the right sizes. She had never been seen wearing anything like them before. The more she considered the clothes, the happier she was.

  She noticed that Ty was standing in the doorway, looking at her anxiously, so she said, “Ty, this is just fabulous. You did a wonderful job, much better than I ever expected.” She put her arms around his neck and hugged him.

  “Did I get the right sizes?”

  “I haven’t tried them on yet, but the tags say you got what I asked for.”

&
nbsp; “How about the suitcase?”

  She took it out of the bag, unzipped it, and said, “It’s perfect. Thank you so much.” She busied herself removing all of the tags and pins, and throwing them in the trash with the plastic bags. Then she went into Ty’s parents’ bathroom to try on the clothes. She went through the process quickly, and found that everything would serve its purpose. Since she had been trying to hide, she had found little in the refrigerator, and nothing Ty had brought home from El Taco Rancho was more than marginally edible, so she had lost weight. She put on the black pants and the sky blue top, and went back to Ty’s bedroom.

  She opened his closet and studied herself in the full-length mirror that was attached to the closet door. Today she had made some good progress. She studied her eyes, her hair, her clothes. She looked like a new person again, and felt strong. She heard the sound of the ink-jet printer taking in a sheet of paper, and raised her eyes slightly to look into the mirror at the part of the room behind her.

  Ty was printing his maps and directions, but he wasn’t looking at the printer. He was staring at her now, looking at her longingly, hoping that the lightning was going to strike again.

  She looked into the mirror at herself. “They fit,” she said. She locked her eyes on his. She had to keep him happy, just a little bit longer. She began slowly, deliberately, to take off her new clothes.

  Two hours later she lay on the couch in Tyler’s bathrobe with her head on his lap. As he held the remote control and flicked from channel to channel, she said, “Stop.” The policeman with the potbelly that hung out over his silver belt buckle was behind the podium again.

  Behind the chief were four severe-looking men in suits and a woman in a navy blue pantsuit with the cuffs and collar of a white silk blouse showing. She liked the look of it, she decided. She would probably look good in navy, now that her hair was light again.

  “Nicole?”

  “Anne. Learn to call me Anne. Get used to it, Jimmy, because we leave in a day. We’re Anne and James Forster.”

  “Do you think—”

  “Hush,” she said. “I want to hear this.” She took the remote control out of his hand and turned up the volume.

  The chief said, “. . . and now I would like to let Detective Sergeant Catherine Hobbes of the Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau have the microphone.”

  “Oh, my God,” Anne whispered. “It’s her.”

  “It’s who?”

  Someone off camera shouted, “Sergeant!”

  “I’ll be around to take questions after the conference,” said Catherine Hobbes. “I just wanted to speak for a moment to Tanya Starling. Tanya, we’ve spoken on the telephone, so you probably recognize my voice.”

  “You bet I do, bitch.”

  “If you’re anyplace where you’re able to hear me, I want to appeal to you to turn yourself in now. If you can’t get to a police station, just dial nine-one-one, and officers will come to pick you up and take you there. At this moment police organizations in at least fifteen states are watching for you, and it’s only a matter of time until you’re found.”

  In the pause, Anne said, “Fuck you.”

  “I know you’re frightened,” said Catherine Hobbes. “But everything I told you on the telephone still holds. I can guarantee your safety if you will come in voluntarily.”

  “You see?” said Anne. “She’s threatening me, trying to scare me and get her face on television at the same time.”

  Tyler Gilman gaped at her. He had never seen her when she wasn’t in control of her emotions. She seemed to be irrationally angry.

  “She’s hounding me. She won’t leave me alone until she runs me down and gets her cops to kill me.”

  “She doesn’t seem like that,” said Tyler.

  Catherine Hobbes left the podium, and the chief took her place. He said, “We believe that someone picked up Tanya Starling and gave her a ride away from the Flagstaff bus station in a private car. I urge and appeal to this person to call the police immediately. We need to know where you took her, what name she is using, and anything else that might hasten her apprehension. I caution you that her appearance is deceptive. We believe she is armed and extremely dangerous. If you are with her now, you are in peril. Get as far as possible from her right now and dial nine-one-one. You need not fear prosecution. We believe that you merely intended to help a stranger in need.”

  “Liar!” said Anne Forster. “He’s lying.”

  “Him too?”

  “They all are. She’s just the worst, because she’s decided I’m going to be the one that makes her into a success.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “No, it won’t. People think the devil is a cartoon character, all red with horns, but that’s not what it is. It’s a person like that, all self-righteous and sure that anything they do to you is right because you have to be punished. She keeps trying to tempt me. She says, ‘Come in,’ like she was asking me to come to the doctor’s for a checkup. But as soon as I let them know where I am, the cops will come and nobody will ever see me again. They’ll take me out into the desert and shoot me.”

  “You really think they’d do that?”

  “Do you believe her instead of me? Did she come to your house because you said to, and have sex with you to prove that she was a sincere person?”

  “Obviously not, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Tyler said. “She can’t do anything.”

  “You look at her, and I know you only see that she’s pretty, and she’s talking with a soft voice, so you think she must be telling the truth. She’s not. Take a look. See her standing there? That’s what death looks like.”

  The press conference vanished from the screen, and the television stayed on, but neither of them was watching or listening to it, so after a half hour, they turned it off, went into Tyler’s room, and collapsed on the bed.

  She awoke early the next morning and started to make her preparations for departure. She packed her suitcase, then went to Ty’s closet and dresser to pack a suitcase for him too. When they spoke they practiced calling each other Anne and Jim.

  Later that morning she sent him out to run errands. The first was to fill the Mazda’s tank with gas. “Jimmy, when you’re trying to get away from a place, you don’t take a single risk that isn’t necessary, and you prepare. Stopping for gas anywhere near here later with me in the car is foolish, so we won’t do it. You do it alone ahead of time, when it’s safe.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “And go to the grocery store. I made a short list, and here’s the money. Buy at least twelve bottles of water, some nuts—peanuts, cashews, almonds—a few candy bars, some apples, and pears.”

  “What’s all that stuff for?”

  “The drive. We don’t know how long we’ll be on the road. In this heat we’ll need water, and the nuts have fat and protein, so they prevent you from being hungry, and they keep. And by the way, Jimmy. Don’t just buy gas. Check the oil, water, tire pressure, and whatever too. We get one chance at this.”

  “I guess I’ll get started,” he said. “What time do you want to leave?”

  “Tonight. Right after you finish work.”

  “Why then?”

  “Because your going to work gives us extra time before anybody notices that anything else is wrong. Just before you leave, tell your boss you want to take tomorrow night and the next night off. Your parents have car trouble in Lake Havasu and you have to go get them and leave the other car there to be fixed.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to be okay with that.”

  “You say, ‘Gee, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any choice. If you have to fire me for it, then you do.’ ”

  He looked at her with admiration. “That’s really good.”

  “Either way, it keeps anybody from noticing you’re gone until your parents get home, which gives us two full days. Now get going.”

  He went out, and she listened to his car going up
the street. She selected the clothes she wanted to wear for the trip and laid them out on the bed: the black pants and the blue top, with the sweatshirt out where she could reach it if she got cold during the night drive. She took out some clothes of Tyler’s too.

  Now that she was used to Tyler’s computer and scanner and could make birth certificates and driver’s licenses, she made sets in the names Barbara Harvey, Robin Hayes, Michelle Taylor, Laura Kelly, and Judith Nathan. She spent hours diligently performing the kind of cleaning that she had done before in the other places where she had lived. She managed to finish wiping down the surfaces in the master bedroom and bathroom, the den, and the living room before Tyler returned with the supplies.

  She cooked a steak and baked potato for Tyler’s lunch, and served it on plates from the best set she could find in the cupboards, with crystal stemware for his milk. “This is the way you deserve to be cared for, Jimmy. I want you to know what it’s going to be like when we get settled somewhere.”

  Before noon he left to go to work. She made such a big event of his departure that she was afraid for a moment that she had done too much and he would refuse to leave her for his final night of work. While he was gone she cleaned the rest of the house of all traces of her presence, did the rest of the packing, showered and washed her hair, then searched the shower stall for any hairs of hers that might have fallen. She knew that her hair was exactly the color of Tyler’s mother’s, but she did it anyway.

  She dressed and then prepared herself, sitting alone in the house that had now fallen into darkness. When Tyler came in the kitchen door he had to walk through the house, looking for her. He found her in his bedroom, sitting on the bed, looking grave. Beside her on the bed lay his rifle and two boxes of .30-06 ammunition.

  “What is it, Anne? What’s wrong?”

  “You know,” she said. “You saw last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All day I kept telling myself what I always do—that next time it will be better, next time things will be different. But it won’t. There’s really only one thing we can do.”