Vanishing Act

1

Jack Killigan used the reflections in the dark windows to watch the woman walk quickly up the long concourse, look at her high heels so she could take a few extra steps while the escalator was carrying her down, and then hurry around the curve so she could step onto the conveyor. She didn’t even know he was shadowing her. They always looked behind them every few seconds, but they never looked in front—didn’t really look.

Here she was getting off an airplane, so how could anybody not know where she was heading now? He could have just strolled straight to the baggage-claim area and waited for her there, but this one was worth serious money, so he had decided not to be lazy about it. He was a hundred feet ahead of her on the moving walkway, so he felt confident enough to look back.

She looked like a French model—or maybe Italian— chestnut hair, tall and slender, with legs that seemed longer than they really were because the leather skirt was shorter than it should have been. A lot of times they were like this. They didn’t have any idea of how to be inconspicuous. He only did rich women. Their husbands or whatever they called themselves were the only ones who had Killigan’s fee. The average guy who had this kind of problem would try to take care of it himself, but not just because of the number of dollars. He would do it because he couldn’t conceive of hiring somebody else to bring his woman back for him. He wouldn’t want anybody to know about it. But these rich guys were brought up with it. People washed their underwear for them and emptied the wastebasket where they threw their used rubbers. A lot of times the men were older—too old to do what had to be done.

Killigan’s peripheral vision caught the woman turning away from him again to look back for her imaginary pursuers. He turned his head to watch. She had to bend a little at the hips to lean over the railing and stretch her neck to see around the bunch of Wichita Chamber of Commerce types who had stopped behind her. He couldn’t help noticing the skirt again. That was typical. They would run away from home dressed like they wanted to be noticed, either because they didn’t own a dress that cost less than a used car or because they didn’t know there was such a thing. His eyes lingered on the shiny leather stretched across her buttocks. It was a long time on the road from Los Angeles to Indiana. Once he had her in the van, anything might happen. Women sometimes considered all kinds of options if they wanted out bad enough.

As though she had somehow heard what he was thinking, her back seemed to give a shiver, and he barely managed to turn his head away from her in time.

Killigan stepped off the conveyor and headed for the row of public telephones along the wall, to give her time to get past him. She came within four or five feet of him as she passed the telephones, and he caught a scent of her perfume, a slight change that made the air taste like a spice. He was busy wondering what that stuff cost when she turned the wrong way. "Oh shit," he said into the telephone. "Coitus interruptus." He was getting all geared up for it, and she was... of course. He caught sight of her walking into the ladies’ room.

Killigan hung the telephone on its hook and walked to the other side of the terminal so he would be behind her when she got around to coming out.

The woman emerged after a few minutes, and he almost felt sorry for her. She had put on sunglasses and a short jacket and a long blond wig to cover the dark hair, but she was carrying the same handmade leather flight bag that matched the leather skirt. He could even detect a fresh drop or two of perfume. The only person who wouldn’t recognize her was somebody who wasn’t looking for her at all. Those long legs in those dark stockings: If she’d had any sense at all, that was what she would have covered.

Killigan waited while she put a good two hundred feet between them before he started toward the baggage area. He could feel the universe rolling along smoothly now, the way it was supposed to. That had just been a little bump in the pavement. She was watching for her luggage, staring down at the metal track that wound around the waiting area. It was all a question of timing now.

He saw her spot her suitcase. She watched it all the way from the moment it brushed in through the weather flaps and went around the track; then he saw her lean forward and strain to drag and bump it over the rim onto the floor. It made her seem more vulnerable and ripe to watch her balance on the toes of those high-heeled shoes and do that. There wasn’t a lot of strength in those arms.

Killigan waited until she had hauled it to the door and shown the security woman her ticket with the stub stapled to it that matched the one on the suitcase. Then the door opened and she stepped out onto the sidewalk with Killigan at her elbow. At the curb she stopped and looked to the left to find a taxi, and Killigan moved in.

He flashed his identification wallet in her face as he said, "Come with me, please, Mrs. Eckerly," clutched her arm, and pulled her along with him, so there was never a second for her to think.

She tried to dig in her heels, but he knew exactly the way they reacted, so he gave her a first taste of it. He bent her wrist down enough so she knew it would break if she didn’t come, and jerked her along more quickly. It wasn’t just the pain that worked on them, it was the fact that he knew how to inflict it so easily. It proved to something deep inside them that he represented genuine authority—cops and law and government and, even more, all the massed force that made people do what they were supposed to do.

He hustled her across the street in the crosswalk, not even waiting for the light to change, just holding up a hand and counting on the drivers’ reflexes. He knew that, too, would help. And then he had her inside the big concrete parking structure and he was already feeling relief, because he was through the hard part, where real airport cops might be loitering and where, if she screamed and ran, it might be hard to subdue her without attracting some man he couldn’t scare off by flashing an imitation-leather wallet with his license on one side and a business card with a picture of an eagle on the other.

He had parked the van on the first floor, just about twenty feet from the exit. To get that space he’d had to be here early and hang around all evening, but it was paying off now. She was already to the back door before she said, "Wait, you’re making a mistake. Don’t do this." She never pulled herself together enough to look up at him.

It was exactly what they always said, but it was a little disconcerting, because usually they tried to use their faces—the tiny quiver in the lips, the big wet eyes. And there wasn’t that little sob in her voice. It was like a whisper in the big concrete place, and it went right through him. He couldn’t let up for a second, he knew. "No mistake, Mrs. Eckerly. There’s a legal complaint, and you’ll have to go back and clear that up. Face the van, please." He had hoped to do this after she was inside, because the sight of the handcuffs sometimes made them panicky, but he had a feeling about this one. He slipped the cuffs off his belt and turned her away from him. As he pulled her left arm around behind her, it came too quickly.

He pulled harder, but that didn’t seem to help. He had been keeping her off balance, trying not to give her a chance to think, but she had been waiting for him to have to use one hand to get the cuffs. She stomped on his instep, turned with him, and brought her elbow up against the bridge of his nose. He heard the bone break and felt the warm blood streaming out of his nostrils into his mouth. He knew he was in trouble, because of the pain and the slowness. And something bad had happened to the bones in his foot. He stepped back to try to get time working with him again, but his toes didn’t want to hold him, so he had to rock back on his heel and use his other foot for balance. He was angry, maddened with pain. He was going to make her hurt just as much. In a second she would turn to run, and he would be on her. He pushed off to get started.

The woman didn’t turn, and she didn’t run. She drifted toward him, and he sensed what she had in mind. She was winding up for a kick in the groin. They always taught women that in those self-defense classes. He bent his body and held his hands low to grip her leg when she did it.

As he watched her legs, she leapt forward and butted her forehead into his face. The blow to his nose had been painful, but this time the world exploded. She had pushed off the ground with both legs, and knocked him backward with all her strength.

Killigan let out a howl as he hit the pavement. It was a screech of hurt and shock and, for the first time, fear. Killigan was desperately injured now, and he was down, where he couldn’t defend himself. She would go for his eyes in a second. He clapped his hands over his bloody face and rolled onto his belly on the concrete and shouted, "Help! Help me!"

His ears told him she was hovering somewhere nearby, dancing around, circling to look for a chance to do whatever they had taught her to do. He tried to see between his fingers and keep his face down, and then he felt it. The handcuffs went around both of his wrists at once. He was outraged, scandalized.

He scrambled to his knees and tried to stand, but her voice came again. This time it was louder, but still calm: "Stay down on the ground." He put his fists on the pavement and pushed himself up, but the patch of concrete in front of his eyes seemed to flash as though it were electrified, and then he found himself on his side, his legs spasmodically working, trying to run. It had been a kick to the kidney. It occurred to him he could be dying. He lay there and screamed again. "Help!" he shrieked. "Help me!"

Suddenly, he saw lights that didn’t go away: bright, blinding and steady, and his sluggish consciousness tried to decide if she had gotten his eyes after all. That didn’t make sense, because he could see his hands. And then he heard it. "Police officers! Don’t move!"

He tried to smile, but it hurt. His top front teeth felt loose, and his upper lip was swollen to a tight, hard lump that didn’t seem to belong to him. Then there were footsteps, and they got louder, and he could see one pair of cops’ black shoes and black pants, and he knew it would be all right. Then big, hard hands rolled him over onto his back, and the pain surprised him so much that he didn’t see anything anymore.

When Killigan awoke he was in a hospital room. He had no idea how long he had been there, but he knew he had not been wrong about the damage he had sustained. His whole head had a tender, fragile feeling, as though moving it would cause something to come loose and bleed. He heard a rustling noise, and then the cop was standing in front of him.

"Mr. Killigan?" He was the kind of cop that Killigan liked the least. He was trim and neat, with a short, carefully combed haircut that made him look like an army lieutenant. He pulled a little notebook out of the inner pocket of a gray tweed coat, letting Killigan see the strap of the shoulder holster.

"Yeah," he rasped. He wasn’t sure why his voice sounded like that, and then he tasted that he was swallowing blood.

"I’m Detective Sergeant Coleman, L.A. Police Department. I need to ask you some questions about what happened. Your I.D. says you’re a private investigator."

"Right."

"Were you working?"

"Yeah."

"What were you doing at the airport?"

"Picking up a woman named Rhonda Eckerly. Citizen’s arrest. There’s a complaint. She’s wanted in Indiana."

"What charge?"

"Grand larceny."

"So you’re a bounty hunter?"

Killigan heard something he didn’t like in the sound. It was a careful modulation of tone, as though the cop were trying to keep contempt out of his voice. Well, Killigan would make enough on this job to pay his salary for a year. Maybe he would find a way to mention the number and let this guy chew on it for the next few days. "The victim retained me to locate the suspect and bring her back."

The cop squinted and tilted his head a little. "Who’s the victim?"

"Mr. Robert Eckerly."

"I see," said Sergeant Coleman. He stared at Killigan for a long time without letting his face reveal anything. Finally, he said, "I’d like to bring in the woman who was arrested when the officers found you. Are you up to that?"

"Yeah. I want her held. I’ll press charges."

The detective’s tongue made a quick search of his teeth as he headed for the door, but then he turned around again. "How did she come to assault you?"

So that was it. The little bastard was so sure Killigan was weak—that it couldn’t happen to him. "I was escorting her to the van, and she surprised me. She must have taken one of those courses."

"Were the handcuffs yours?"

"Yes."

The detective pulled a chair close to the bed and sat on the edge of it. "Mr. Killigan," he said. "You’re in a dangerous business. You must have some idea of how to pull this kind of thing off without getting yourself in trouble. I think you made a mistake."

"It would seem so," said Killigan. "Now, where the fuck is Rhonda Eckerly?"

The detective stood up, walked to the door, and opened it. A uniformed cop came in with his hand on the arm of a woman. She was about thirty. She was tall and slender and olive-skinned, with large eyes and black hair. Then Killigan realized that she was wearing Rhonda Eckerly’s clothes. "No," he said. "No. That’s not the one."

"This isn’t Rhonda Eckerly?"

"No!" he shouted. A pain gripped him from his hairline to his jaw. It was as though his whole face had been peeled and a cold wind blew on it. "You got the wrong one!"

"No," said Detective Coleman evenly. "You did."

The sanctimonious little cop hadn’t needed to say that because, even distracted by pain and half paralyzed by the dope they’d shot into him to make him lie here, Killigan had been able to figure out that much. She was a ringer. The clothes, the amateurish way Rhonda Eckerly had tried to do things—it had all been planned so they could change in the bathroom.

The woman said, "Can I talk to him?"

"I guess so," said the cop.

"Alone?"

"No," said the detective. "Not a chance."

She didn’t look surprised. She walked a little closer to the foot of the bed, and the uniformed officer stayed at her elbow. "Do you know anything about Rhonda Eckerly?"

"Enough," said Killigan. "She’s a fugitive. Fair game."

The woman turned to the cop. "Thank you." She took a step toward the door.

"That’s it?" Killigan asked. "Aren’t you going to laugh at me and tell me how easy it was?"

’No."

"Why not?"

"I understand you now. Telling you anything would be a waste of time. You’re the walking dead."

"You both heard it," Killigan said with glee. "She threatened to kill me."

The detective stared at him again, his head tilted to the side a little. "We’ll discuss that later." He took the woman by the arm and ushered her out the door.

When the door closed behind them, Coleman walked Jane Whitefield down the hall, past the emergency room desk and the waiting area, across the black rubber mat. The doors huffed open and outside, in the hot night air, he led her past a couple of ambulances to his plain blue car.

"You got into this intentionally?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Why?"

Jane Whitefield took a deep breath and let it out, then said, "Robert Eckerly married a girl. She was about twenty, he was about fifty. He’s a rich man in a small town. He’s charming. He’s also a sexual sadist."

"Whose diagnosis?"

"She ran away once before, and he managed to have her caught, like this. I don’t know if he thought of the theft charge by himself or if he called somebody like Killigan and that person told him that was how it was done. She was released into his custody. He didn’t just beat her up. He chained her by the neck in a room and invited a few like-minded friends to come and help." She looked at Detective Coleman.

He nodded. "Go on."

"Nothing shocks a cop? This would have. When they got too drunk and tired to just keep raping her in some ordinary way, they started trying to think up ways to make her beg them to stop hurting her, because that turned them on." She looked up at him. "What are you thinking? That you don’t want to hear the rest?"

"Will it do her any good?"

"No."

"Where is she now?"

"If I told you I don’t know, you wouldn’t believe me."

"No."

"Then I’ll just say she’s far away."

Coleman leaned on the hood of his car, folded his arms, and stared at her for a moment. "So what are you going to do?"

"I’ve done it. She’s gone."

"About Mr. Killigan. He went up to a strange woman in an airport and attempted to handcuff her and stuff her into a van. You could file a pretty impressive array of charges. Are you going to?"

"There’s no point."

"Are you afraid?"

"No. Rhonda Eckerly isn’t coming back to testify to anything. And Killigan wasn’t attacking an innocent woman minding her own business. I stalked him and trapped him."

He stared at her thoughtfully. "Then there’s still the issue of what to do with you."

"Nothing. I’m going home."

"I didn’t say you could. You just told me you trapped him and beat him up on purpose."

"You can delay me for two or three hours. If you write up a charge, the D.A. won’t file it. I told you I cooked this up myself, so there aren’t any loopholes. He attacked. I resisted. In this state I could have killed him if I wanted."

"You’re pretty sure of that, are you?"

"I have an attorney waiting for me at the station. He can explain it to you if you want. When that’s over, you can drive me back to the airport and put me on my plane."

"What are you, anyway—a detective? A lawyer?"

"A guide."

"Guide? That’s a new one on me."

"Sometimes people need help. I sometimes give it to them."

"Me too."

"I know, and I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I admire you. I would like to shake your hand and go catch an airplane." She grabbed his right hand and gave it a shake, then started to walk out of the parking lot.

Coleman stared at her, but he made no move to stop her. As he watched her walking away, he tried to explain why he was doing it, but there were too many reasons to pick just one. If he wrote down her name, Killigan was the sort of man who would try to find her. And she was right about the legal outcome. No judge in California would let this one come to trial. Finally, he called out to her, "Is this a woman thing?"

She stopped and looked at him. "No. Sometimes the victim is a man. Sometimes the guide is too." She smiled at him. "Or an animal, or just a figment of somebody’s imagination."