The Face-Changers

20

At 3:35 A.M. Violet Peterson awoke to the sound of many feet walking through the high grass outside her motel room. She silently eased herself off the bed, stepped into her jeans, pulled a clean sweatshirt over her head, and then sat down on the bed to tie her sneakers.

By the time the door burst open, she was sitting at the small table by the window, her purse across the table from her where they would see it immediately, and her hands palm-down on the tabletop.

Before the door swung far enough for the knob to bang the wall, the first man in had barreled across the room to her left like a football player, knelt behind the bed, and rested his elbow on it so his rifle would stay trained on her chest. But the second was already in place by that time, since all he did was sidestep through the doorway to his left. The third crouched in the doorway and swept the room with his eyes, his rifle turning wherever he looked. The fourth stepped past him and turned on the glaring light.

Violet watched the proceedings with intense interest. It was good that Jane had explained how to receive such visitors. She spent the next few moments thinking about her daughter and her son, and marveling at how having them had changed her. At one time she had been very impressed by her own physical beauty—even awed by it, since it was unearned and had come unasked for—and she would, at a time like this, have been terribly afraid that something would happen to shatter it. But having her children—not just bearing them, which had distorted that body temporarily and proved for the rest of time that it was not delicate or fragile, but watching the children grow and devoting her life to them—had moved her beyond little fears.

The moment when the first one, Victoria, had begun to walk and talk, Violet and even Billy had in some subtle way become the old generation, superseded by the next. She was very afraid of these men because they might make some mistake and obliterate her children’s mama. She knew that reason dictated that she be afraid for herself, and she told herself that she would be; she had only put it off until she had time to think.

The fourth man through the door advanced close to her cautiously, taking little side steps. She could tell that much of his caution was devoted to staying out of the gun sights of his friends. He snatched her purse off the table and then said, not in the brutal shout she had been expecting, but in a quiet, normal voice, “Listen carefully. I want you to keep both hands in sight at all times, and away from your body. Now slowly stand up and turn to the wall.”

Violet stood up with her hands out like a tightrope walker and stepped to the wall. Before she expected it, big, strong hands pushed her forward so her hands had to lean against the wall, then quickly moved up and down her body, but the touch was not personal. It was like a strong wind riffling her clothes. Then other hands grasped her wrists and brought them around behind her. She felt the handcuffs click shut and she began to feel better.

Jane had told her that this was the time she should eagerly await, because it meant the real danger was over. Once the handcuffs were on, the men would begin to relax and there would be little chance that they would make some mistake and hurt her.

The men kept her standing there for a long time, her face a few inches from the wall. She could hear men going through her purse, shuffling through the money Jane had given her, like a bank teller counting it. She could hear the little slap as each piece of plastic was placed on the table—her driver’s license, her credit cards. She heard the click and snap as they opened her suitcase, and the quiet rustle as they examined the clothes. Somewhere beyond the bed, men were systematically opening drawers and moving furniture.

It was the man who had taken her purse who grasped her shoulders and turned her around. “Sit down, please.”

Violet obeyed. A new man was standing outside the doorway talking quietly with one of the raiders, their backs turned away. This one wore a dark gray suit, and he seemed to be in charge, because he couldn’t dress like that and do all these acrobatics, breaking down doors and diving onto floors with a rifle.

The new man was a person to whom other people brought things. One man showed him the contents of her purse, then brought them back and returned them to the table. Others, one at a time, would go to him and whisper the way the first one had.

Finally, the man turned and looked in at her. He was big, not athletic-looking exactly, but the way that soldiers looked. He nodded at something one of his men whispered to him, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. They were brown, but light brown, not the brown that most of the people she trusted had. They looked thoughtful and tired. He walked in the door past two men in dark blue golf shirts and khaki pants that Violet hadn’t noticed before, who were sprinkling black fingerprint dust on the furniture.

He sat down at the table across from her and stared into her eyes for a moment. “I’m Special Agent Marshall,” he said.

“Hi,” she answered in a small voice.

“You know that you’ve got a serious problem?”

“No,” said Vi. “I don’t.”

He pushed a few of the cards closer to her on the table. “You boarded an airplane under a false identity. You used these cards to rent a car, a hotel room, meals. That’s fraud. Forgery. Now, I know that you planned to pay the bills. Otherwise you would have no hope of fading back into being a law-abiding citizen when this was over. That was one of the reasons why my boss got tired of having people follow you around the country, and decided that I should have this talk with you.” He waited.

Violet watched with curiosity. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something important. If he knew she was going to deny it, then what was all of this about? No, he must be expecting her to admit it and say she was sorry.

She detected a subtle change in his eyes. She had been waiting for a change, but this wasn’t the one she had been expecting. She had assumed he would turn cold and cruel and contemptuous. Instead, he was like a man listening to a small, faraway sound. He knew something was wrong, the way Billy knew when he listened to the hum of their car’s engine. He must be very intelligent. For the first time, Violet was a little afraid of him.

He said, “What’s your name?”

She answered, “Violet Peterson.”

His eyes had a new intensity. “What’s your husband’s name?”

“William Tanaghrisson Peterson. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo.”

“Jane McKinnon bought your plane ticket. Is she a relative? Are you related to Jane McKinnon?”

Violet nodded. “Not in the way you keep track of these things, but the way we do.”

“I see,” said Marshall. He stared at the table, where he had arranged her ID cards and licenses and tickets. He seemed to turn his mind inward, as though he had received a blow and he was testing how much it hurt. “I wish you hadn’t done this.”

“Done what?”

“She was under police surveillance. The F.B.I. thought it was following her around the country for over a week. You’ve been obstructing a murder investigation.”

“I flew out of Buffalo on a ticket with my own name on it. I’m here for a legitimate purpose. I don’t know anything about a murder investigation.”

“What legitimate purpose?”

“This week I was here for the Cherry Creek Powwow. Next I had planned to go to Wisconsin for another one.”

“You’re from New York. You must be some kind of Iroquois, right?”

“Seneca.”

“The people here are Cheyennes. In Wisconsin they’re what—Ojibway?”

“I was going to a Menominee celebration. You don’t have to be a Menominee. You could go, too. I’ve always wanted to make the powwow circuit, but there was always a reason why I couldn’t. This time I could.”

“Was that Jane’s idea?”

“Not really. Senecas made a point of traveling around to visit other nations a thousand years ago.”

“Has she done it?”

“Quite a few times, I believe. She used to be very political.”

Marshall’s face was sad. “You’re not afraid of what’s going to happen to you now, are you?”

Violet surprised herself. “I know you can make things very hard and unpleasant for me right now. But I know that if I wait, there’s a limit, an end. You have to let me out because I haven’t done anything wrong. At that point, my side gets to take its turn.”

“Your side?”

“My lawyers. I don’t know you, and I don’t know anything about this murder, and I don’t know how watching Jane would constitute an investigation. Maybe it does, but maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know what this really is, but I know what it will look like. It wouldn’t be the first time that police have used public safety as an excuse to harass members of a troublesome and politically active minority group who were going to a peaceful assembly.”

“Don’t worry,” said Marshall. “I’ve been around long enough to know better than to arrest people who want to be arrested.” He stared at her hard. “But that’s not the real penalty for obstructing a murder investigation.”

“What is?”

“Thousands of people get murdered in this country every year. We don’t catch all of the killers. Even if we find the man we’re looking for, get him convicted and put away, we’ll probably never know what else he did while we were looking for him. A body is being found somewhere tonight. Right now. We may not ever find out who that person used to be, let alone who killed her. Will you ever be absolutely sure that the man we’re looking for didn’t do it during the extra week you bought him?”