The Face-Changers

14

Jane drove the new car down the hill and along the parkway beside the lake. Dahlman stared ahead for a few minutes. Then he said, “It’s astounding. I’ve been rejected by even the worst criminals.”

“Oh, Sid’s okay,” said Jane.

“ ‘Okay’?” Dahlman said. “He has no mercy, no morality, no—”

“Don’t get launched, or I’ll be listening to what he doesn’t have all night. He got us out of a very hot car and into one we could keep forever if we were careful. That’s more than any number of nice law-abiding citizens could do. He also told me some things we might have died finding out.”

“He probably told you lies … nonsense,” said Dahlman. “He’s probably on the telephone right now, telling the people who are after us exactly where we are.”

Jane shook her head. “Once you’re in a car, he doesn’t know exactly where you are.”

“I don’t know that he’s not following us.”

“I do.” She sighed. “Sid doesn’t have a set of rules. He has to make his decisions as they come up. All things being equal, he would rather I lived than that my enemies did. He knows that he can’t affect the outcome, so it’s unwise to try too hard. But he gave us what we needed.”

“He said several times his only interest is money.”

“Nobody is only interested in money. Sid wants to be important, and he lives on impulse, so he needs money. But the way he gets money means he has to live in isolation in a house with bulletproof walls and armed guards. He won’t sell us out.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“To those ‘faceless guys,’ as he calls them?” said Jane. “They have not endeared themselves to Sid. They’ve been so careful to be sure he doesn’t know who they are that he can’t get word to them to negotiate a price for us. He resents that, and he resents them. They don’t come in person to talk to him. I do.”

As Jane drove through the night, she thought a bit about Sid’s dead companion, Christie. She had always been the one in the background, floating around like the bad fairy. Jane could picture her now, with her anorexic body, close-cropped red hair, and nocturnal pallor, watching with a smug look on her face as though Sid’s visitors were there for some sadistic amusement of hers. It had come as a surprise to Jane that Christie’s sudden absence had made so little difference—not to Sid, but to anyone. Jane had always suspected that Christie had done most of the thinking—concocting the plans and then cajoling and manipulating Sid into executing them. But the atmosphere of the strange household, an uneasy tension between agonizingly slow, patient scheming and temporarily suspended violence, had not changed since Christie had died. Nothing had changed. The teenaged girl Jane had seen watching from the staircase had even looked a little like Christie.

Memories of Quinn were not so easy for Jane to exorcise. During the long minutes while she had been walking Dahlman to Sid’s house, Quinn had been the one she had been thinking about. Christie had made her uncomfortable, but Quinn had frightened her. Quinn had been a changeling—not a fugitive, but a person who had experienced some voluntary midlife transformation. He had been something else once—she had heard lawyer, she had heard insurance investigator, she had heard detective.

Sid had told Jane that one day Quinn had simply stumbled on a truth that Sid considered obvious: that if he never again let anything interfere with his inclinations, he would, inevitably, have everything he wanted. The discovery had been exhilarating, and it had liberated his imagination. He had thought of a great many things that he wanted. But now he had undergone a second transformation. Quinn’s change from alive to dead had been an immense step up.

It was two A.M. when Jane reached the outskirts of Waterloo, Iowa. She turned off the main highway and spent twenty minutes driving up and down the streets, studying the little city. When she was satisfied, she found a motel and checked in. Then she woke Dahlman and hurried him into the room before anyone else was awake.

As she opened the suitcases, she asked, “Are you up to having the bandages changed?”

“Yes.”

Jane undid the bandages on his back and chest, then said, “I can’t tell how you’re doing as well as you can. Take a look in the mirror.”

Dahlman squinted at the bathroom mirror, turned on all the lights, poked the wounds, turned this way and that. “I’d say considering the age of the patient, he’s doing pretty well.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Let me wrap you up again, and then we can get some sleep.”

It was evening when Dahlman awoke to find Jane sitting on the other bed watching him. He saw that she had repacked the suitcases, and that clean clothes were laid out on the bed for him.

“Are we leaving?” he asked.

“We’re not going far,” she answered. “I’ve rented an apartment.”

She drove Dahlman to a one-story building across the town, and pulled the car into a space under a carport that had eight other cars in it. She helped him into the back entrance of the building, hurried him down the hall and into a door marked 3, then went back to the car to unload.

Dahlman looked around him. The apartment was furnished with cheap furniture that seemed clean and sturdy. There was a small kitchen that was separated from the living room by a low counter, and on the opposite side, a bedroom that seemed to be situated so that little light or noise was likely to reach it in the daytime. He heard Jane come back and heard her unlatching a suitcase.

Dahlman opened a cupboard and saw a sparse collection of china and glasses. He peered into the refrigerator and was surprised to see that it was already packed with food. “It looks like an awful lot of food,” he said.

“I wanted you to have enough,” said Jane.

He turned to look into her eyes. “You’re leaving?” He had assumed she was unpacking her suitcase, but she had been unpacking his. Hers must still be in the car.

“I wasn’t lying to Sid when I told him I had to leave you for a little while.”

“How long?”

“I may be back tomorrow, and it may not be for two weeks. How long depends on what’s out there.”

“But what’s your plan?” He seemed frightened.

Jane stepped away from the doorway into the kitchen. “It’s not much of a plan. You said before that you’re healing okay, and there are no complications, right?”

“Right.”

“So now we use up some time. If you’re not traveling or making noise or even going outdoors, nobody sees you and you’ll heal. And the longer we keep you safe, the more likely it is that something big will happen.”

“I’m supposed to sit here waiting for something big to happen to me?”

Jane smiled and sat down at the kitchen table. “Not to you. We’ve got problems because your story is peculiar, and that makes it newsworthy. There are a lot of murders in this country—maybe a hundred a day. But for two days, the face on television and in newspapers has been yours. It’s very much in our interest to have the newspeople stop putting it in front of everybody’s eyes. And they will, as soon as there’s something bigger, or odder, or more compelling to replace it. If the stock market crashes or an airplane blows up or the chief justice is caught soliciting an undercover cop, your picture will disappear and people will forget about you.”

“I wonder how long that will take.”

“We can’t know that. Of course, there are people who know it’s in their interest to prolong your notoriety as long as they can. The F.B.I. will probably try to release intriguing tidbits each day. Even if they know a lot, they’ll feed it to the reporters a pinch at a time. One day it’ll be places where somebody may have seen you, and the next day, inside details of your previous life. They’ll get people you operated on to say you did a great job but were not very friendly—”

“How do you know what people will say?”

“I don’t,” she said. “I’m guessing.”

“I’m extremely friendly,” he protested.

Jane shrugged. “I suppose I’m not seeing you at your best. It doesn’t matter. News articles aren’t statements of fact. They’re some writer’s attempt to flesh out very small bits of information into a full, coherent story. Lots of things about you will be twisted to fit a pattern of behavior, like a profile. If we’re lucky, they’ll concentrate on the things that aren’t true; those won’t help anybody recognize you.”

“But what about the trial? Any potential jury will have heard all this nonsense.”

Jane frowned at him. “No matter what we do, a jury would hear it from the prosecution. Let’s see what we can do to keep from having a trial.”

Dahlman stared at her. “I remember you said that it wouldn’t be wise to go to the authorities before I have a way of defending myself. But at some point, after they’ve studied the evidence and found it isn’t as neat and perfect as it sounded, why shouldn’t I?”

Jane could feel a headache developing behind her forehead. She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them and said, “I want this to end the same way you do. I thought at the beginning that we could slip you away for a short time, let the police catch the killer, and bring you home. But it hasn’t happened yet. I think we have to start thinking about the possibility that it isn’t going to happen soon.”

“I don’t think the situation has changed. What’s different?”

“What has changed is what we know. The killer isn’t some amateur, and it isn’t some psychopath. It isn’t even one person. There are some people making a good living doing what I used to do. They helped somebody disappear—this ‘Hardiston’ guy—and now he’s just about home-free. He has a new name, he’s in a new place. But there’s still one living person who saw the way he used to look and saw the way he looks now. Just one.”

Dahlman stared at her.

Jane waited. Then she asked, “Enough said?”

“Yes.” He began walking around the apartment again, looking closely at each piece of furniture, then at the four walls.

“I’ll only be gone for a week or two.”

He gave a reassuring little smile that vanished after he was sure she had seen it. “I’m not uncomfortable alone. I’ve lived alone for a long time. I was just thinking how much this reminds me of the place where the two policemen put me—only they weren’t policemen. I don’t mean it’s the same physically. There’s just something about spaces that have been closed up for a while …”

“It’s probably got the same feel because this is the way the game is played, and those men seem to know it. The best place to hide is where nothing in your daily life forces you to put your face where lots of people see it. Sometimes a farm is good. So is a small town, as long as it’s not small enough so people ask about you, and not a rich small town, where police check out newcomers.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Soon. Tonight.”

He came back into the kitchen. “Then in case I don’t see you again, I would like to thank you. I can see I haven’t been an easy companion, and it seems no advantage can come to you from helping me.”

Jane saw that he was telling her that he was ready. She slipped her purse strap onto her shoulder and stood up. “You’ll see me again.”

“You’ve taken me away from the police and away from the people who wanted to kill me. Now I’m in a place that seems to be safe. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that this is the end of your services.”

Jane walked to the door and put her hand on the knob. “Don’t open the blinds, don’t answer the door. Don’t go outside unless you’re sure the building’s on fire, and even then, leave by the bedroom window. And don’t forget to take the rest of the antibiotics. When I come back for you, what I want to find in here is a man, not a body.”

Jane waited until Dahlman gave her a single nod. Then she slipped out the door. When she closed it behind her, Dahlman listened for a few seconds, but he heard no other sound.