Jane could see Farrell through the front window of the store filling a shopping cart. The moment was going by, and when it was gone there would not be another. She got out of her car and walked toward the station wagon. She could see his overnight bag on the seat, the crumpled receipt from the motel on the dashboard. She moved out of sight behind the truck parked beside the station wagon and watched the window of the store until she saw him move around the shelves at the end of the aisle. Then she walked to the front of his car, pretended to drop her keys, and knelt down to pick them up. While she was kneeling she slipped her hand under the front bumper and stabbed the lower radiator hose with her pocketknife, stood up, and walked on to the corner of the building where she could see the checkout aisles.
She watched while the clerk ran Farrell's groceries along the conveyor belt and past the cash register, then put them into bags. The first had quart-sized bottles on the top. The second had round bulges of fruits and vegetables, double-bagged in smaller sacks inside. The third had cartons of orange juice, milk in a plastic jug, and a box of cereal. She turned and made her way back to the truck parked by Farrell's car.
She waited while he slipped his key into the driver's door lock and electronically released the rest of the locks so he could load his groceries, then put the three bags in the cargo bay. He finished, then turned to push his cart back to the collection rack, twenty paces away.
Jane moved along the right side of the car to the back seat door, slipped the rubber band off her ponytail, doubled it, opened the door, slipped the rubber band over the catch in the door lock, then eased it shut again. Then she moved back around the truck out of sight and made her way back to her own car.
Farrell drove out of the lot and turned east across the flat farm country toward Mendota. Jane glanced at her watch, walked into the store, and bought a can of cola and a box of plastic straws. Then she got into her car, waited three minutes, and drove out after him. She could picture what was happening. When the station wagon's engine started, the water pump began to circulate the coolant, taking the water from the leaky bottom radiator hose, while some of it drained from the hole. As soon as the engine reached its optimum temperature, the thermostat would open. He would go a few miles before his temperature gauge went wild, because the expansion tank would empty, keeping the engine cool until that coolant too drained out the hose onto the road.
She drove down the dark road until she saw the car pulled over on the right shoulder. She turned off the road, killed her lights, and watched. There was no sign of him. Far ahead along the road a truck pulled over to the side and she could see him caught in its lights for a moment, waving it down. He climbed into the truck and it drove toward her. She turned on her lights, pulled back onto the road, and passed it, but as soon as it was out of sight she turned around and drove back to Farrell's car.
She opened the backseat door, took the rubber hair band off the latch, and pulled up the button on the driver's side to unlock the tailgate. She had thought it through carefully on her drive, so she had no decisions to make. She put a tiny slit in the plastic milk jug, stuck a plastic straw into her perfume bottle of water hemlock and mayapple, put her finger over the end, inserted the straw into the milk bottle, and let it drain into the milk. Then she moved the gummed price tag to cover the slit.
She did the same to the cartons of orange juice. The flat packages of meat were an experiment because she had no idea what cooking would do to the chemical composition of the clear liquid, but the holes in the cellophane wrappings were easy to hide, so she used them. She was confident about the bottle of scotch because the alcohol would hide any taste. She found the cap could be opened and reclosed by peeling the blue tax stamp off with her knife instead of tearing it, then pasting it down with a little spit. She was certain that even if a bit of the food was intended to reward Mary for talking, the scotch was for the men. Alcohol made people too reckless to be afraid and too stupid to remember, and it dulled pain. She left the vegetables alone because they would be washed and boiled, but she made a tiny incision in each of the apples and pushed the straw far enough into the depression at the bottom to reach the almost-hollow core, so the poison would come out as juice and the white of the apple would not be discolored by contact with the air.
When the perfume bottle was empty Jane closed the tailgate, went to the driver's side, pushed down the button to relock all the doors, and then drove her own car a mile down the road to wait for Mary Perkins's interrogator to return with a new hose for his radiator.
26
It had been nearly forty-eight hours since Mary had walked across five lanes of the Ventura Freeway and gotten into the car. She did not know this because time had already become one more thing that had to do with other people. Sometimes so much happened in a very short time. If one of the men hit her, the bright sharp suddenness seemed to explode into pain and wonder, then bleed on into the next several hours, slowly tapering down into something she knew but didn't feel.
At first she had been most afraid of permanence. There was some instinct that told her it didn't matter if they gave her a sensation that made her scream, not because having it happen so many times had made her used to it but because it left something. It was like dividing her in half. Each time they did it, half of her was gone. Then they would divide the half, and she would be smaller, but no matter how many times they hurt her, some tiny fraction of her would be left. Even if all that was left at the end was the size of a germ, someday it might grow back. But if they blinded her or crippled her, her eyes or legs would not grow back. She had a deep animal urge to keep her body intact.
But even this feeling was faded now. She had gone from fear to despair. She could not force herself to imagine a future. The past was all lies, arrogance, and deception, and she could not think about her life as separate events now. Even Mary Perkins was more filth she had made up and smeared on herself. She was Lily Smith, and she was sorry.
Sometime after the little window high on the wall in the bathroom turned dark again, a man she had never seen before walked in carrying a briefcase. He was older and had gray, bristly hair. He wore a gray suit with a coat that seemed a little too tight in the shoulders, and a pair of shoes that looked as though he polished them a lot. She thought of him as Policeman. He brought with him a straight-backed chair that appeared to be part of a dining room set and sat down on it.
He watched her with eyes that looked serious and alert, but there didn't seem to be anything else behind them. He had no predatory gleam, no cold contempt. He was simply waiting. She wanted to please him, to deal with this new person and win him over to her side.
She began slowly and logically because she had failed so miserably with Barraclough, and this one seemed even more touchy, more likely to dismiss her and go away. 'I would like to rind a way to make this end.' She tried to sound ingratiating, but her voice came out toneless and monotonous.
He pursed his lips and nodded, as though he were giving her permission to go on. 'I know.'
She ventured a little further. 'Nobody has asked me any questions.'
He shrugged. 'There's no hurry.'
This was like a weight tied to her. 'Why?'
He said, 'We destroyed the tapes you made of the meeting on the freeway - '
'I didn't do that,' she interrupted.
He raised an eyebrow as a warning. She winced, forcing herself to keep silent. That was how she had earned Barraclough's contempt, and if she did it to this one, her last chance would be gone. They both knew she was an accessory to the crime, so she accepted it.
He said, 'Your girlfriend Jane wrote you off. She turned up yesterday at the L.A. airport. Operatives followed her to Chicago.' He opened his briefcase and lifted out a big plastic food-storage bag with a seal on the top like the ones they used for evidence. Inside was a long shock of shiny black hair. He placed it back in the briefcase. 'It seems to me that there's nobody else who even knows that you're missing. You've been traveling under false names for some time.'
She had not realized until now that she had been living on the assumption that Jane was alive. If she was gone, then Policeman was right. Enduring a day or a year made no difference because nobody in the world knew she was gone. There was no possibility that she could ever leave this room. She repeated, 'Is there any way that I can end this?'
Policeman looked at her judiciously. 'It all depends on you.'
A tiny hope began to return. It was from a different source this time, and it seemed more genuine than imagining that Jane could convince the authorities to break down the door to save her. Now that Jane was gone, she could see how foolish she had been to think of it at all. She said, 'What do I do?'
He said, 'Let's talk.'
