Pursuit: A Novel

32

Varney was standing by the bed, folding clothes and putting them into his suitcase, when he heard Mae’s light footsteps on the stairs. She had never said anything about Duane, but he suspected she knew about him, because since Varney had killed him, she had never raised the issue of painting the kitchen again. She must have noticed that the tarp that had been in the closet with the paint was missing, and figured out where it had gone. She had also changed the way she entered the apartment. He stood in the doorway and looked across the kitchen at the door. The key in the lock was quiet. The door swung inward an inch or two and stopped, as though she was looking for signs of trouble. She saw Varney, came in the rest of the way, and set the bag of groceries on the kitchen table. “Hi,” she said, watching him.

“Hi.” He returned to his packing, folding shirts expertly and setting them aside. He always took special care with his shirts. They would be the final layer, so when he opened the suitcase he could pull them out quickly and hang them up. When he traveled, he liked to have his clothes professionally washed, ironed, and packaged, because wrinkles made him nervous. Anything that made him the one in a crowd that somebody remembered was dangerous. But this time he was not going to take the clothes to a laundry: he was too impatient to get on the road.

Mae padded around silently, putting away the food she had bought, waiting for Varney to speak, to tell her what was happening. He watched her for a moment. She was pretty, especially when she was alone with him and preoccupied like this. She was alien, like a different species of animal, with thin, birdlike bones and graceful movements. He kept looking at her while he folded the last shirt he had chosen. She wasn’t too pretty, he decided. She had probably gone all the way to the store and back without having a man stare at her.

“I’m going on a trip,” he said.

“Oh?” She was being careful to sound casual about it, and knew enough not to ask any questions.

He tried to find words like the ones that other people might use, then pitched his voice to sound the way theirs sounded. “Would you like to go with me?”

She seemed to struggle, as though she had never considered that he might say such a thing, and she had to convince herself that it was true. Then she had to select the safest response.

“I think I would,” she said. “If I wouldn’t be too much trouble.” She stood with her shoulders drawn up to her neck in a frozen shrug. “Where do you want to go?”

He let the part about wanting pass, even though it irritated him: wanting to go meant it was just some self-indulgent whim, when it deserved to be dignified with “have to” because it was a job. “Minnesota,” he said. “Up north of Minneapolis.” He hurried to spare himself the annoyance she would cause with her next couple of questions. “We’d be gone for a while, probably at least two weeks, and maybe a month. I’m driving up.”

She stared at him and tiny worry lines appeared on her forehead and beside her eyes. He realized it had occurred to her that maybe he was planning to take her somewhere and kill her. The replacement tarp she had been fearing to see on the kitchen floor wouldn’t be necessary if he took her out in some woods.

He said, “It’s a job that I got through Tracy. We drive up, I do it, and we drive home. It’s a long trip, pretty dull. If you don’t want to come, don’t do it for me.”

The lines disappeared, and her color seemed to return. “I want to,” she said. “I do. I like to go places, and I’ve never been up there.” She was suddenly animated. “I’m so excited.” She hurried to the closet and started picking hangers off the rod and putting them back. “I don’t know what to bring.”

“You don’t want a lot of luggage,” he said. “A couple of pairs of jeans, a couple of sweatshirts, sneakers . . .” He relented. “Maybe one nice outfit. Minneapolis and St. Paul are kind of big, so we may be able to go out a little to good restaurants.”

Mae was a person who could actually be seen in the act of thinking. She got through it like a person feeling a pain passing: a slight knitting of the brows, then it was over. Now it was different. She snatched a couple of hangers, threw them on the bed, went to the dresser, pulled a few items from different drawers as she was talking. “I’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes, if we need to leave right away. If we don’t, I’d like to trim your hair and touch up the highlights a little first.” She paused. “Of course, I can do that when we get there, but if you’re working, you probably want to look as good as you can, right? I mean, as different from the way you used to look.” She didn’t wait for an answer, but jumped to the next thought. “I should tell Tracy that I’m going. We should leave a light on in the apartment, and pull the shades down. Maybe the bathroom light, so it’s dim, like a night-light, and you can’t see it from outside in the day. I’ll just take this dress. If you like this dress?” She held it up on the hanger in front of her body.

Varney decided to defend his concentration from her scattered musings by dispatching all of the questions at once. “The dress will be fine. I’ll leave the bathroom light on. Tracy knows. Bring the hair stuff, and you can do me in a hotel on the way. I’d like to get going.”

He waited until she was in the bathroom before he closed and latched his suitcase, then lifted a second one to the bed and opened it. This one contained his equipment. There were a few pairs of gloves, some hats and shoes, some locksmith’s skeleton keys, a couple of sets of picks, a slim-jim for pulling car-door locks, some Mag-lites in different sizes, three nine-millimeter pistols with spare ammunition magazines, a commando knife with a guttered blade and a nearly flat handle. He added his big envelope to the suitcase, and closed it.

He changed into a comfortable pair of khaki pants, some good, casual shoes, and a blue oxford shirt, pulled down the window shade, and waited. A few minutes later, Mae had filled her small bag and looked at him anxiously.

“Do I look all right?”

“You know you do,” he said. “Hair, makeup, clothes, all that. It’s what you do for a living.” Then he frowned. “That reminds me. Where I’m going now, that’s what I do for a living. If you’re going, you’ll want to listen hard to what I say.”

“I will,” said Mae. “I promise.”

“Start now. Once we leave here, you don’t call anybody on the phone, or anything like that. You don’t strike up conversations with people in restaurants or hotels. What you want more than anything is not to be noticed or remembered. A man or woman traveling alone might get noticed—for different reasons, maybe—but if they’re traveling together, they’re just a couple. The man isn’t dangerous and the woman isn’t available, so people won’t look hard to figure those things out. So you stick close to me.”

She nodded, maybe a little too energetically. He wasn’t sure she really had taken it in and understood. “I know that,” she said. “I’m ready.” He picked up their suitcases and let her open and close the doors for him.

Varney drove out of town with a feeling that was close to joy. He was on the road, with a pretty woman at his side. She was not flashy enough to make him feel visible, but she was pleasant to look at. He knew she probably would have gotten to chattering again if she had been smart enough to realize that she was important to him, that she was the best part of his disguise. He had told her, in case it occurred to her later, but she didn’t seem to have absorbed the full meaning of it.

She was the guarantee that when men looked, they would only let their eyes pass over him on the way to her. If they heard later that somebody had been killed, they would not remember Varney as a solitary young man who looked capable of doing someone harm. They might not remember him clearly at all. He was just another family man on his way somewhere with his wife. She could do some of the driving later, after he got tired. He might even use her to go into motel offices to rent rooms, or into fast-food places to get food, so he could remain completely invisible.

The most important feeling Varney had was elation that he had broken out. He had been like a man in a hospital, his mind like a doctor delivering lectures to him every day that being there was the only thing he could do for the present, while the rest of him was screaming for release. That was over now. He had come away rested and sharp, with an envelope full of money, a clean, honest car, untraceable guns, a companion that he was confident would follow his orders. And somebody had hired him to do what he had always done better than anybody else.

He drove for three hours without stopping, without even having to slow the car for any reason except to keep from speeding. His car sliced between the gatherings of cars ahead, then occasionally edged to the left lane to pass the big box of a tractor-trailer rig and moved back into the right. Much of the time, the road was flat and straight as a surveyor could make it. When there were curves, they were gradual, made without haste, as a boat moves from one compass heading to another.

At the end of the three hours, Mae said, “I’d like to pee, if you can stop someplace,” and he realized that she must have set this time for herself in advance, waiting for a while and hoping he would spontaneously think of stopping, then telling herself she could wait, that she wouldn’t say anything until it got to be three hours.

“Okay,” he said. “Next exit.”

He pulled off the interstate and filled the car’s tank at a gas station while she went inside and got the key to the ladies’ room. He pulled the car away from the pump and parked, went to the men’s room, then came back and waited. When she came out, he saw her look at the gas pump, then whirl her head around more quickly toward him, an abrupt, unconsidered movement. He could tell that he had scared her. She had come out and seen that the car was no longer where she’d left it, and she had panicked, afraid he had stranded her. He felt a strong distaste. She was weak and stupid, like a child, somebody with all sorts of needs that he would have to take into account.

When she got to the car, she shocked him again. It was as though it had been normal. She wasn’t even embarrassed. “There you are,” she said with a smile. “I was afraid you’d gotten impatient and left me here. Want me to drive for a while?” He nodded, got into the passenger seat, and watched her closely while she drove out onto the entrance ramp and moved into the line of cars. He decided she was competent enough for this and began to relax. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

“Do you like to travel?”

He opened his eyes, astounded that she had not understood that he wasn’t interested in talking.

“I do,” she continued. “It’s one of my favorite things. I just love all of it. Being on the open road, packing, hotels. I never got much chance to do it.”

He controlled himself and asked the question. “Why is that?”

“Oh,” she said, and looked at him uncomfortably. “Just the way things worked out. My parents never seemed to think of it. I got married young, and my husband always said we’d do it, but there was never any money. He was just saying that, because he was like my parents: like a stone that just stays wherever it’s dropped, and doesn’t move an inch unless it’s kicked or something. As far as he would go was saying he would do it, which was more than my parents would do, I guess. They would just say it was stupid. He would lie to me so I wouldn’t try to convince him. If he said yes, but that there’s no money, then I couldn’t say anything, just wait until there was more money. There never was enough. Then that was over, and he was gone, but that meant I had even less money.” She shrugged. “I was doing hair and nails and makeovers, and people had to have regular appointments, so if I went away, then I knew that when I got back, they would have found somebody else. It never worked out.” He unhooked his seat belt, and she looked alarmed. “What are you doing?”

“Just watch the road,” he muttered. He was fast and flexible from his years of martial arts training, and he easily rolled over his seat into the back of the car. He looked over her shoulder at the windshield. “Keep heading north for a couple of hours while I get some sleep.” He lay on the back seat and closed his eyes.

“Okay.”

He could hear in her voice a quiet, sad resignation. She sounded as though she was being punished. He supposed that she must know he was back here to escape her meaningless, empty talk. He was aware that there was a range of feelings he could select from and she would accept. He could be sympathetic, curious, apologetic, or even angry. He knew that people felt those things and expected him to act as though he felt them too, and he knew how to do it: how his voice should be modulated, how his face should look. But he did not feel any of them. Sometimes he imitated emotions, practiced them as he practiced his other skills, because they were useful. Right now he didn’t need the practice, and he didn’t need to know anything she was saying, and didn’t need to manipulate her into doing anything. He closed his eyes and let the steady hum of the tires on the pavement below his head soothe him and put him to sleep.

He awoke a couple of hours later, and she was still driving steadily. She went a little bit slower than he had, but she was careful and methodical and had put them a good hundred and thirty miles on. He said, “How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” she answered. “Just fine. But I’m not sorry you woke up just now. I’d like to stop again, if you don’t mind.”

“No,” said Varney. “I’m hungry.”

They parked at a truck stop, went inside, and sat in a big booth with red vinyl seats and a Formica table. Varney ordered a hamburger, then took it out of the bun, cut it up, and ate it with the garnish of lettuce, tomato, and pickle. Mae asked, “Why do you do that? If you’re worried about gaining weight, the milk and meat both have fat in them.”

He said, “I eat what I need. I need protein for my muscles. Milk builds bones. Everybody needs plants.”

“Why did you ask me to come?”

He stopped chewing and looked up. Her eyes were in his, searching for something. He swallowed. “I like having you around. I thought you might want to get out.”

“Why don’t you like to talk to me?”

“I never said that.”

“You never said anything much,” she said. “We’ve been together for three months. You never even look at me, except at night, naked. And then you don’t talk.”

“I look at you other times,” he said. He put on a false expression of apologetic concern that he had once seen on a man trying to keep his wife from embarrassing him with a fight in public. “I’ve had a lot on my mind,” he said quietly. It occurred to him that it sounded right because the man had said exactly those words. He tried to remember what else the man had said, but couldn’t. “I’m not much of a talker,” he said. “I think about you a lot, though.” He considered saying he would talk more, but it would be like breaking a dam. She would spend the rest of the trip yapping in his ear like a little terrier, and he would have to dream up things to say in return, as though he wanted to keep her talking.

“You never talk about yourself, or where you came from, or anything.”

He was astounded. It was like inviting him to step off the top of a building, and she should be smart enough to know that. “None of that stuff is very pleasant. If it had been any good, I’d probably still be there, having a good time. Instead, I got out as soon as I could.”

“You don’t have to tell me, if it makes you sad.” She reached under the table and gripped his forearm. “I was doing a lot of thinking while I was driving. Kind of catching up, because I didn’t have any time to think before we left. I was thinking that maybe we could use this trip the way some married people do, to make a fresh start, maybe make everything new again.”

He had no choice now. His hand was still clenched in a fist on his thigh. He opened it and put it over hers, then watched her look of discomfort turn into a smile. He said, “I think that’s a good idea.”

She gave his hand a quick squeeze and released it, but as she looked at her plate the smile lingered on her lips.

When they had finished eating, Varney pulled the car to the gas pumps at the end of the lot and refilled the tank. Mae didn’t begin again until he had gotten into the driver’s seat and begun to drive back to the highway. She said, “We didn’t really need gas. We’d only gone about a hundred and fifty miles.”

He resisted the impulse to shut her up. He said gently, “Remember what we said before we left?”

“I think so.”

“This is a business trip. Sometimes in my business some small thing goes wrong, and you’ve got to get away as fast and as far as you can. You don’t know in advance when that’s going to happen, or you wouldn’t let it happen. If we went a hundred and fifty miles, we used a hundred and fifty miles’ worth of gas, right?”

“Well, sure, but the tank holds—”

“It doesn’t matter what it holds,” he interrupted. “It had a hundred and fifty miles less in it than it could have. If things go wrong, you’ll be real glad to be able to get an extra hundred and fifty miles away from it before you have to stop and show your face or run out of gas. It’s a problem that never happened, because I solved it ahead of time. It’s one more thing we won’t have on our minds to distract us.”

She looked at him with appreciation. “I’m sorry.”

“What?” She had surprised him again.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “That was what you meant when we were leaving. That you wanted me to do what you told me to, no questions asked. I was just afraid that if you got gas now, then you wouldn’t want to stop again for a really, really long time.”

“If that was what you meant, you should have said it,” he muttered. He was silent for a mile, then remembered that he had determined to keep her happy, or at least pliable, for the duration of the trip. “Anytime you feel like stopping, just let me know.” He turned to look at her, to let her see the benevolent expression he had placed on his features. “I’ll be happy to stop. We should be enjoying this.”

That night they stopped at a motel in Wisconsin. Mae took a hot bubble bath, then asked him to get in, and let him soak for a long time. Then she had him lie on the bed so she could give him a massage that was long, elaborate, and led seamlessly into sex. When it was over and Varney was lying on the bed listening to Mae’s breathing settling into the soft, slow cadence that meant she was asleep, he looked back on the day. Talking to her in exchange for peace and all the extra attention had not been a bad bargain. But he would have to be vigilant. Women didn’t seem to care much about sex. They tolerated it to get things, and it was simple human nature that when they had traded any kind of service for something, they felt entitled to it. She would probably want more and more talk.

The next morning after his exercises, they took showers and had breakfast, then drove on. She was bursting with chatter about everything they passed, even calling out the license plates for different states. He answered direct questions and grunted now and then to show he had heard, and that seemed to satisfy her. By nightfall, they were in Minneapolis. He had her be the one to check them into a big hotel downtown. Then he left her in the room while he used the exercise machines and went for a swim in the indoor pool.

They ate in the hotel restaurant and then went back upstairs. She didn’t seem surprised when he took off the coat and tie he had been wearing, but when he began to put on jeans and sneakers, she said, “Do we have to leave already?”

He shook his head. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m driving up north to take a look around.”

“At night?”

He turned and leveled his eyes on her, without answering.

“I did it again,” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”

He said, “It’s easy, and it’s safe. This way I can look at the town where he lives, see where the police station is, what the traffic is like at night, maybe drive past his house. They don’t move the roads when the sun goes down, but people won’t get as much chance to look at me.”

She jumped up from the bed. “Can I go?” She saw his frown, and said quickly, “If I drive, you could get a better look. If there are people, you could even duck down, and they’d never have a chance to see you.” She hesitated. “You’re not going to kill him tonight, are you?”

“No,” he admitted. “Put on jeans and we’ll go.”

The road up as far as Hinckley was a big, fast interstate. It would be an easy route to choke off if things went badly. But he supposed that the chance to cover a lot of miles quickly on the way out of there was likely to be worth some risk. The roads after Hinckley were smaller, but fast too. There were very few cars at night, and the only traffic signs had pictures of deer on them and warnings. When Varney came to the last intersection before the road where the farm was supposed to be, he pulled over to the shoulder and let Mae drive.

The farm was everything that Varney had hoped. The house and barn were set back at least three hundred yards from the road, at the end of a gravel drive. The best part was the trees. There were at least forty acres of woods on the west side of the farm that stretched from the southbound highway almost to the house. He could see lights in the upper windows, and a sport utility vehicle beside the barn, but no people. He had Mae drive the next ten miles so he could see where the other houses were, all the way to the next town. Then he had her drive back past the farm and beyond it to the junction with the southbound highway.

He took over and drove back toward Minneapolis, feeling contemptuous. People who knew somebody might kill them always seemed to do the wrong things. They went to live in some remote, deserted area like this, and thought that made them safe. What it did was make them slightly easier to find, and much easier to kill.

As Varney drove, he saw that Mae had dozed off. He used the solitude to construct a mental list. He would have to give Tracy a call from a pay phone to give her the number of the hotel. Tomorrow he would pick up a few items that might be useful: a shovel, for one thing. He couldn’t count on a rich guy from California even having one, let alone leaving it where Varney could find it. He would drive back up and take a look at the place in daylight. Then all he would have to do was wait for Tracy to call and tell him it was time to drive up here and pull the trigger.