Shadow Woman

7

Earl Bliss had once taken a locksmith course during the dead time while he was waiting for his next job to find him. Everybody in his graduating class had been a deep-bottom loser, with no serious hope of finding work fixing locks, but every one of them had learned to handle a pick and a tension wrench. Earl had gotten a great deal of use out of his set, and tonight he held them in his teeth until he and Linda reached the row of mailboxes in the lobby of Pete Hatcher’s apartment building. He quickly slipped behind Linda while she watched the hallway, then set the tension wrench in the lock, pulled the pick out of his teeth, and opened the little door that said #6 HATCHER.

He handed the mail to Linda and walked on toward Hatcher’s apartment door. Linda had always loved Las Vegas hotels, but the idea that the people who dealt cards and waited on her actually lived in Las Vegas had always depressed her. It reminded her of the summer when she was seven and her mother had gotten two days of work in a bikini movie. Linda had been allowed to believe that she was being permitted a rare glimpse at glamour. She knew now that her mother just had not had a place to leave her while school was out.

Linda had been dragged along and had watched a whole group of them waiting in line for a turn to climb into a dusty trailer on the hot, black road above the beach and wriggle into swimsuits handed out off a rack, all of them women like her mother—pretty, but at twenty-five already looking worn and a little bovine.

They were just supposed to play volleyball behind two men who got into a fistfight, but they knew even less about volleyball than the two men did about fighting, so as the sun rose higher and began to sear eyeballs and heat the sand enough to burn their feet, they got breathless and fell and bumped into one another, a couple of them crying. And then—she never was told how her mother had managed it—they had gone to live with Dwayne.

She recognized him as one of the men who had been up at the trailer that day. He was in charge of something or other—could it possibly have been lighting, on a beach? She remembered the long, dull, hot days of the summer living in that apartment on Winnetka Avenue, the doors of the apartments all open on the blindingly bright, lying promise of the empty pool, trying to catch a breeze that could never come because the building itself blocked it from entering the courtyard. Her mother had thrown Dwayne out in a rage one day and had to be reminded the apartment was in his name.

Linda followed Earl and watched him open the door lock with as little effort as he had needed with the mailbox. When she joined him he was already blocking off the bathroom window with towels and duct tape to keep the light from shining through it.

When Earl had finished, she closed the bathroom door, turned on the light, and took out the mail. They sat on the rim of the bathtub together and opened it. Before she even got to the bills, she could see they had something. It was a thick monthly bank statement with a stack of canceled checks inside. She curbed her eagerness and handed it to Earl, then opened the bills, one by one. There was the power bill, which was worth nothing. There was the phone bill, which was worth a lot because it would have the numbers he had called and the cities. There was a bill for rent on this apartment. When she saw the envelope with the Visa logo on it she felt hopeful, but then she saw it wasn’t a bill at all but an offer for a new card. Earl stuffed the mail into Linda’s purse and stood up.

They put on the latex medical gloves and began to search the apartment. She could tell that Hatcher had not been given much time to prepare before he left. There were objects here that were worth money and could have been sold or pawned—gold cufflinks and rings, even a good watch with a couple of small diamonds on the dial. But the same objects told her that somebody had given him a lesson or two about disappearing. Distinctive jewelry was as good as a scar or bright red hair. There were a couple of empty frames on the mantel, but not one photograph was left anywhere.

Earl came and shone his Maglite into the fireplace and carefully examined a pile of ashes. Whatever had been burned in there, it wasn’t done for heat in Las Vegas in June. Linda could see that Earl wasn’t going to be able to tell what it had been, so she left the room.

She found Hatcher’s bedroom and systematically worked her way through it. From his pillow and the sheets under it, she gathered a dozen hairs and put them in a plastic bag. In the bathroom she made a list of all of the brand names she could find—toothpaste, shaving cream, razors, soap, shampoo, hairbrushes. She took the razors in case there was blood from a nick and gathered more hair from the brushes. They were more likely than the others to have been pulled out with the follicles. She searched hard for prescription bottles, so she could find the names of the doctors and pharmacies, but found none, so she moved to the kitchen.

She studied his eating habits. He didn’t own anything even mildly interesting—a crêpe pan or a wok or a can of jalapeños or a jar of saffron. She dutifully noted the brand names in the cupboards and refrigerator, but they were all just the ones advertised on national television, and he had kept little food in the house. He probably had worked late at night and eaten in the hotel restaurants. She lingered at the refrigerator, opening bottles and unwrapping packages of food in the freezer because amateurs sometimes left valuables there, and he had left in a hurry.

Linda returned to the living room and found Earl busy unzipping each cushion from the couch to check inside the cover. The couch itself had been tipped over so Earl could look up among the springs. He had also tipped over the coffee table, chairs, and lamps. Earl heard her enter and said, “You get started on the bookcase.”

Pete Hatcher had not been much of a reader. Linda wrote down the title, the author, and a description of each book, removed it from the shelf, looked behind it, held it up, and flipped through the pages with her thumb to see if anything fell out or had been taped inside, but found nothing.

At three in the morning Earl began to tip the furniture back onto the depressions in the rug where they had stood before, so Linda went from room to room making sure she had left no signs of her presence.

It was after five when they reached their motel. As soon as they were in the room Linda lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, but Earl was restless. After ten minutes, the sound of him shifting in the squeaky chair by the table and scribbling things on paper made her open her eyes. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Nope,” said Earl. “I’ll sleep later.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to get a picture of how to do this.” He frowned and let his eyebrows bounce up once for emphasis. Linda hated that.

“How’s it going?”

“According to Seaver, he had lots of friends. He was one of those guys who had everything. Everybody loved Pete Hatcher. Especially women.” The contempt and envy in Earl’s voice made Linda feel almost sorry for him. “He may have changed his name, but that isn’t going to change. He’s not the sort that’s going to be lying low for long. He’ll need company. He’ll be out shaking hands and telling lies about himself.” He looked at Linda and she seemed to remind him of something. “He’ll be looking for women. According to Seaver, he’s a regular old snatch-hound.”

“That doesn’t exactly limit his movements,” said Linda. “Sex he can find anyplace. It would be better if there was one woman he couldn’t live without. Her we could find.”

“No sense thinking about what we don’t have. What we do have has got to be enough to get us there.” He consulted his notes. “He used a pro to get out of here. She had him drive out in a car instead of getting on a plane in Las Vegas. It wasn’t a rented car, because then he’d turn it in wherever he ends up. So she bought it for him. If she’s any good at all, she wouldn’t let him stay in Nevada, right? It’s too small.”

“Right.”

“So he’s out of state, with the car. He’s got to do something with it. If he sells it, keeps it, or abandons it, then it gets new plates and the old plates get returned to the Nevada D.M.V. There are only a million, two hundred thousand people in the whole state. How many cars? About half that many. How many of them are going to have their plates turned in this month?”

“I have no idea, do you?”

“No, but not many.”

“What if it’s in her name?”

“If it was, it won’t be. He has to insure it in the new state, be able to get pulled over and ticketed without getting hauled in.”

“He’ll need a license to do any of that.”

“If she didn’t get him anything else, she got him a new license and birth certificate and Social Security card. Those I can’t start with. But the new car registration I can probably get at the end of the month.”

“Suppose he just drove it to an airport outside of Las Vegas? That’s what I’d do.”

“Yeah,” said Earl. “We’ll have to cover that possibility too. It’s not going to be simple. This woman is a problem. She didn’t let him make a lot of mistakes. There’s nothing easy left: no personal letters, no pictures, not even any old credit card bills. Oh, that reminds me. Where’s the bank statement we got? He just might have written a check to his new name.”

“In my purse.”

He snatched her purse off the doorknob where she had hung it, pulled out the statement, and opened it. He quickly shuffled through the checks, then sighed. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, then slapped the checks down on the table.

“What’s wrong?”

“He had a balance of sixty-two thousand bucks. He wrote a check for sixty to ‘Cash.’ You want to know who took it and gave him the sixty in cash?”

“No bank I ever heard of would.… Oh, don’t tell me.”

“Yep. Pleasure Island Casino. The stupid bastards had him under surveillance, and they let him walk up to a cashier and write a check for his fuck-you money.”

“That’s got to be his idea,” said Linda. “I’m sure he’s seen them do it for gamblers. But he wrote it for less than his balance, so he doesn’t have the bank and the police looking for him too. That’s her.”

Earl shrugged. “Her again. Yeah.” He stared into space for a few seconds. Slowly, his jaw began to work, the knotted muscles grinding his teeth together. “Let’s think about her. She sees, probably before he does, that his time is coming. They’ve watched him enough so if they were just going to fire him, he’d be gone already. She knows they’re not going to take their eyes off him while he’s alive unless she makes them. She tells him how to do a quick housecleaning. She gets him a car, and some papers. She arranges to meet him in the one place in Las Vegas where there aren’t a million lights. She gets him out.” Earl’s face assumed a look of puzzlement. “But then she doesn’t go too, she hangs in to buy him time.”

Linda sighed. “This isn’t getting me anywhere. So she bought him time.”

Earl’s irritated look froze her. “You’re not thinking. You know any pros who are going to hang around to get in a fight in an elevator if the client’s already driving out with a big head start?”

“No women, anyway.”

“No men either. The pay doesn’t go up any for bruises. She must have thought he needed the extra minutes, and that means he wasn’t safe until a particular time.”

“It can’t be anything but an airport,” said Linda. “He wasn’t going to be invisible until the plane was in the air.”

“How much time did she need to buy him?” Earl leafed through the piles of tourist literature the maids had left on the coffee table. He found a number and dialed. “Yes. I’m interested in the midnight show, but I want to see another show, too. Is it one of those things where you have a bunch of warm-up acts? What time does the Miraculous Miranda actually get on stage?” He wrote something down. “Then when does the show end?” His pencil scribbled another note. “That’s too bad. I may have to catch her act on another trip. Thanks.” He hung up and studied his notes. “Okay. Miranda comes on right at twelve, first thing. She’s on the stage for two hours.”

“So what?”

Earl scowled. “So this woman figures Hatcher is going to have two hours to drive before the lights come on again and somebody sees he’s not sitting next to her. He’s driving to an airport, and she’s planned on two hours. His plane has to leave pretty soon after he gets there, because she doesn’t want him sitting in an airport when Seaver’s people start looking for him. She wants him to arrive about the time the plane is boarding, so he can walk right in and disappear.”

“Seaver said she bought him an hour after that.”

“Right,” said Earl. “She did it, but she couldn’t know in advance that she could do it. How could this one woman think she could tie up those guys that long? No, she was counting on two hours, and whatever she got after that must have been insurance. Figure he drives sixty miles an hour, so there’s no chance he’ll lose twenty minutes getting a speeding ticket.”

Linda stood up and pulled the map out of her suitcase. She measured 120 miles on a piece of dental floss, tied it to Earl’s pencil, and ran it in a circle around Las Vegas. “Kingman, Arizona, on Route 93; Bullhead City, Arizona, on 95. Maybe Lake Havasu if he pushes it on Route 95 south. Baker, California, on 15 south. There’s no airport for another hundred and twenty miles, so scratch 15 south. Nothing at all on 93 or 95 north, so scratch them. That leaves 93 or 95 south into Arizona or 15 north, into Utah. If it’s 93, it’s Kingman. If it’s 95, it’s Lake Havasu City. Both have airports.”

“What about Utah?”

“No airport until Cedar City. About a hundred and eighty miles.”

“Okay, scratch that too. We’re down to two possibilities, then,” said Earl. “He flew out of Kingman or Havasu City. Now what we’ve got to do is see what flights go out on a Tuesday night at those airports between two in the morning and, say, three. There can’t be many.”

“What if they go to Chicago and Dallas? Little airports usually just feed big ones.”

“We’ll just hope the other things we’re doing give us a break, and tell us which one.”

“What other things?”

He pawed through her purse and saw the apartment rental bill. “First thing is, put on some gloves and mail this in with some cash. I want to make sure his landlord doesn’t evict him, in case we need to go back there.”

“Okay. But where would he fly?”

“Put yourself in his place. This woman must have asked him what places he could go. He can’t go to Atlantic City or Reno or some other place where they gamble. He’s going to pick a place he knows a little about. A place he likes, right?”

“I would think so. The better he likes it, the longer he’ll stay put, and the harder he’ll be to find.”

Earl clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “No close relatives, no permanent girlfriend, lots of friends, too many to narrow down …”

“Vacations?” asked Linda. “Business trips?”

“Maybe. If we can get a hotel charge on a credit report, we’ll have a place to start.”

Linda lay perfectly still. “I just thought of something. He knows he’s in danger. He knows she got him out in the nick of time. He’s never done this before, and he doesn’t know if we’re stuck in this motel or already staring at the back of his head, right?”

“That sounds right,” said Earl. “But—”

“What’s the first thing he’s going to buy?”

“If he dumped his car at some airport, he’ll buy another one.”

“I’m not saying he won’t do that,” said Linda. “But what else do they always do? They buy a gun. If he flew out, he doesn’t have one. If she set all this up in a couple of days, she probably wouldn’t have time to get him one and leave it for him in the new town. Unless it’s stolen, she’d still have the five-day waiting period.”

Earl grinned and squeezed her so hard her neck hurt. “Whatever else he does, he’ll do that. And that puts him on a list. It’s a list we can get, because it’s a public record. She’ll probably tell him not to, but the minute he’s on his own in a strange place, looking over his shoulder, he’ll do it.” He sat down and wrote more notes. “First, we’ve got to find out what airport he used, then what flight he took. Tomorrow I think we’ll drive into Arizona and see if we can find a car with Nevada plates that got left in one of those two airports at two in the morning on Tuesday.”

Linda Thompson pumped harder on the stationary bike, slowly adding speed, watching the digital readout on the little electronic podium in front of the handlebars. Thirty miles an hour, thirty-five, forty. She moved her legs faster, then pushed the thumb-lever forward to jump to a higher gear, and the speedometer told her she was going fifty. She gradually worked the gears back until the pedaling was almost effortless. She kept moving her legs for a long time to avoid getting knots in her muscles, but she had lost interest in the machine. Nobody went fifty on a bicycle. The scale was designed to give suckers a warm, cozy feeling.

She dismounted and looked out the glass wall of the exercise room. She was still alone. The gawkers were probably at their sales meetings. She went to the weight area, did a few more bench presses, a few more curls, then went to work on her latissimus dorsi, always using light weights and many repetitions to keep the muscles supple and avoid adding ugly body mass.

She had been eager to begin hunting, and it was frustrating to be stalled for days right at the start. Hatcher might have been dumb enough to ditch the car at the Kingman airport or the Havasu airport, but the woman had not been dumb enough to let him. Earl wasn’t saying it yet, but none of the flights out of either airport fit the schedule. The woman wouldn’t set it up so that Hatcher had to drive out of Las Vegas at midnight and wait in an airport until seven for a flight. That was the kind of thing they did later, when she and Earl were getting close, and they were scared and desperate. At the beginning they still had a choice, and the first moves were smooth and efficient.

She walked into the tiny changing area and came out the other door in her swimsuit, cap, and goggles. She ran her toes along the surface of the water and verified that it was cold. It was a pretty good trick to have a cold swimming pool in a place where it was over a hundred degrees in the shade. She slipped in and endured the shock, then began to swim slowly up and down, warming her body and letting the long, slow strokes stretch the muscles and clear her lungs. It was already nearly eleven, so she decided she would do only a half mile and get out. Hotels started to get busy around noon, even in places like Havasu, Arizona. She resented having to do everything in the morning each day. Linda was a night person.

When she had finished her swim, she slipped back into the dressing room, and in a few minutes she was walking back up the hallway of the hotel. She opened the door and found Earl sitting at the table, tapping the keys of the laptop computer. Then she saw that the bags were packed.

“What is it?” she asked. “What are you looking at?”

“Airline schedules.” Earl grinned that strange grin he had. At times like this his face seemed more animal than human. “I think I figured out why none of the flights he could have gotten out of Arizona fit.”

“Why not?” She set down her gym bag and waited. She was relieved that he had not made her bring that up. But he must have found something else. He actually looked happy.

“Listen carefully,” said Earl. “He takes the car from the parking lot in Las Vegas. It’s about midnight. He drives two hours south toward Kingman or Havasu, Arizona. What time is it?”

Linda shrugged. “Two o’clock. Nothing takes off for four or five hours, and then it’s just local stuff.”

“Right. Suppose he doesn’t drive to Arizona. Suppose he drives north about a hundred and eighty miles at sixty miles an hour. He’s at Cedar City, Utah. What time is it?”

“Three o’clock.”

“Nope. Four o’clock. He’s crossed from the Pacific time zone into Mountain.”

Linda sat on the bed. “But Utah is in the same time zone as Arizona.”

“Yeah, but Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings time. That’s why we didn’t have to set the clocks forward when we got here.” He looked at her intently. “Okay. He’s driven three hours to Cedar City. It’s four o’clock. What time is it in Las Vegas?”

Linda lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Three o’clock. She’s just finishing up with Seaver’s men.”

Earl nodded. “We ruled out Cedar City because it was too far to reach before Seaver’s men started looking. I would have ruled out his flight, too, because it left so late. She couldn’t have hoped to buy him enough time to make it, so why would she bother to buy him any time at all? But it wasn’t late. It was just the amount of time she was buying for him. It’s Flight 493 to Denver, at four eighteen A.M.”

Earl looked at her expectantly, but she opened her suitcase, took out a comb, and walked to the mirror.

“Aren’t you interested?”

“Interested?” asked Linda. “Oh, sure.”

“Then why aren’t you happy?”

She sat down on the bed facing away from him to comb her hair so he couldn’t see her. “I was thinking about them. Hatcher and that woman. It’s such a simple trick, and I’ll bet when they thought of it they were laughing at us.”