Hit and Run

35

They flew Delta to Des Moines, with a change of planes in Atlanta. Both legs of the flight were routine, except that they had to sit three rows apart from Atlanta to Des Moines, and Dot was sure the man next to her was an air marshal. “I kept telling myself not to do anything suspicious,” she said. “It was nerve-racking and reassuring at the same time.”

She’d booked her ticket in her new name, Wilma Ann Corder. She’d found the name years ago, the same way Keller had found Nicholas Edwards, and had assembled a whole identity kit, passport and driver’s license and Social Security, along with half a dozen credit cards. She’d rented a post office box in that name and even subscribed to a needlepoint magazine, which she tossed every month when she checked her box. “Then for three years,” she said, “they sent me these plaintive requests to renew my subscription. But what the hell do I care about needlepoint?”

As Wilma Ann Corder, she picked up a rental car in Des Moines. It wasn’t from Hertz and it wasn’t a Sentra, and Keller thought that was all to the good. On the way to the Laurel Inn she said, “You were lucky, Keller. Nick Edwards suits you, especially with the new haircut and glasses. And Edwards is common as dirt. Corder’s pretty rare, but there are just enough of them around so that I keep getting asked if I’m related to this one or that one. I tell them it was my ex-husband’s name and I don’t know anything about his family. As for Wilma, don’t get me started.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I can’t stand it. I’ve got just about everybody trained out of calling me that.”

“What do they call you?”

“Dot.”

“How did Dot get to be short for Wilma?”

“I made an executive decision, Keller. Tell me you haven’t got a problem with that.”

“No, but—”

“‘People call me Dot,’ I say, and that’s generally enough. If anybody asks, I just say it’s a long story. Tell people something’s a long story and they’re usually happy to let you get away without telling it.”

Keller waited in the car while Dot went to the front desk to register, wishing she’d parked in back, or at least somewhere other than the waiting area opposite the front door, wishing he’d remembered to bring his Saints baseball cap. He felt more visible than he wanted to be, and tried to remind himself that no one at the Laurel Inn had ever laid eyes on him.

She came out brandishing two key cards. “One for each of us,” she said, “just in case we get separated between here and the room. The girl who checked me in must have been a Chatty Cathy doll in a previous life. ‘Oh, I see we’ve got you in two-oh-four, Ms. Corder. That’s sort of a celebrity suite for us, you know. The man who shot the governor of Ohio stayed in that very room.’”

“Oh, Christ. She said that?”

“No, of course not, Keller. Help me out here, will you? Where do I park?”

Something made him knock on the door of Room 204. The knock went unanswered. He slid the key into the slot and opened the door.

Dot asked him if it looked familiar.

“I don’t know. It’s been a while. I think the layout’s the same.”

“That’s a comfort. Well?”

For answer he tugged the spread off the bed, lifted a corner of the mattress, and burrowed in between the mattress and the box spring. He couldn’t see what he was doing, but he didn’t have to see anything, and at first his hand encountered nothing at all. Well, that figures, he thought, after all this time, and —

Oh.

His hand touched something, and the contact shifted the object out of reach. He wriggled forward, his feet kicking like a swimmer’s, and he heard Dot asking him what the hell he thought he was doing, but that didn’t matter because he’d moved the extra few inches and his fingers closed on the thing.

It took an effort to get out again.

“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” Dot said. “It looked for a minute as though some creature in there had a hold of you and was dragging you under, like something out of a Stephen King novel. By God, I don’t believe it. Is that it?”

He opened his hand. “That’s it,” he said.

“All this time, and nobody found it.”

“Well, look what I had to go through just now.”

“That’s a point, Keller. I don’t suppose too many people go mattress diving as a sport, like all those idiots walking around in the woods with metal detectors. ‘Look, Edna, a bottle cap!’ How many people do you suppose slept right on top of that gizmo and never had a clue?”

“No idea.”

“I just hope one of them wasn’t a real princess,” she said, “or the poor darling wouldn’t have had a wink of sleep. But I don’t suppose the Laurel Inn’s a must-see for European royalty. Well? Aren’t you going to see if it works?”

He flipped the phone open.

“Wait!”

“What?”

“Suppose it’s booby-trapped.”

He looked at her. “You think someone came here, found the phone, fixed it so it would explode, and then put it back?”

“No, of course not. Suppose it was booby-trapped when they gave it to you?”

“I was supposed to use it to call them.”

“And when you did — boom!” She frowned. “No, that makes no sense. You’d be dead days before Longford even got to town. Go ahead, open the phone.”

He did, and pressed the Power button. Nothing happened. They got back in the car and found a store that sold batteries, and now the phone powered up just the way it was supposed to.

“It still works,” she said.

“The battery was dead, that’s all.”

“Would it still retain information, though? With the battery dead?”

“Let’s find out,” he said, and pressed buttons until he got the list of outgoing calls. Ten of them, with the most recent one at the top of the list.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dot said. “Keller, you’re a genius.”

He shook his head. “It’s Julia,” he said.

“Julia?”

“Her idea.”

“Julia? In New Orleans?”

“Suppose the phone’s still where you left it, she said, and suppose it still works.”

“And it was and it does.”

“Right.”

“Keller,” she said, “you keep this one, you hear me? Don’t send her off to walk the dog. Hang on to her.”