could see that they had begun to eat breakfast. Cereal and milk were spilled on the floor, and on the table were two empty glasses with little bits of orange pulp residue almost to their brims.
Jane swung her tire iron and smashed the small window over the door, reached inside and turned the knob. Neither of the men moved. She walked past them into the living room and quietly climbed the stairs to the second floor, holding the tire iron. She looked in the door of each room and saw only four empty, unmade beds. She descended the stairs again and found a closed door off the hallway. She tried the knob, but it was locked. She pushed the flattened end of the tire iron between the jamb and the door at the knob, lifted her foot to step on the lug end to set it, then pushed with all her strength. The door gave a loud creak and then a bang as it popped inward, bringing a piece of the woodwork with it.
The sight of Mary was worse than the sight of the two men Jane had poisoned. She was naked and bruised, one eye swelled so that it was nearly closed, her lips dry and so chapped that when her mouth moved a clotted wound at the corner cracked and a thin trickle of blood ran down to her chin. She didn't seem to have the strength to stand up, so she started to crawl across the bathroom floor toward Jane.
Jane stepped to her and put her arm around her waist to lift her to her feet. 'Come on,' she said.
'They said you were dead.' Jane could barely hear her.
'I'm not, and you aren't either. We have to hurry. Where are your clothes?'
'I don't know.' She was seized with tremors, and it was a moment before Jane heard the rest of what she was trying to say. 'Just get me out.'
'Stay here a minute,' said Jane, and quickly went into the kitchen to search for car keys. They were lying on the counter. As she snatched them up, she sensed movement behind her.
Mary was reaching for the bottle of milk on the table. 'No!' Jane said sharply, and knocked it to the floor. Mary cringed and stared at her without comprehension.
'I poisoned everything.'
Mary seemed to notice the two men on the floor for the first time. They had died in terrible pain and convulsions, and their faces were so contorted that they didn't look quite human. She seemed to marvel at them. 'They look so young,' she said. 'I thought they were older.' Then she seemed to remember something she had known before. 'The devil is always exactly your own age.'
'Come on,' said Jane. 'We'll forget the clothes for now.' She dragged Mary out of the kitchen and onto the porch. She tried the car key in the van, but it didn't fit. It opened the white station wagon, so she eased Mary into the passenger seat, started the engine, and drove up the driveway. 'Here,' she said, and put the black sweatshirt on Mary's lap. 'It's dirty, but it's better than nothing. Put it on.'
Jane drove the next mile staring into her mirrors and up the road ahead for signs of Barraclough and Farrell. When she reached the place where she had parked the gray Toyota, she pulled the station wagon up to it, put Mary in the back seat, and drove up the road. She said, 'Keep down on the seat and rest. Whatever you do, don't put your head up. Do you need a doctor right away?'
'I don't want one,' said Mary. Her voice was raspy and brittle, but it was beginning to sound stronger.
'We'll get you some clothes and some food as soon as we're far enough away. Nothing's open yet.'
'Just get the clothes. I can eat on the plane.'
'The plane?'
'I have to go to Texas.'
Jane felt a reflex in her throat that brought tears to her eyes. She didn't want to let pictures form of what they had done to Mary, but there was no way to avoid thinking about it. She wasn't dead, because her heart was still beating and she could form words with her bruised face, but she could easily spend the rest of her life in a madhouse.
'Ask me why.'
The voice was self-satisfied and coy, almost flirtatious.
Now Jane was going to have to follow Mary down whatever path her deranged mind was taking. She owed her a thousand times more than this tiny courtesy. 'All right. Why?'
'Because I can remember numbers.'
Jane tried to keep her calm. 'I know, Mary. I noticed you were good with numbers the first time we talked. You're an intelligent, strong woman, and you're going to be okay.' It was a lie. She was not going to be okay. Jane had done this to her. Barraclough had taken the bait and chewed it up.
'They finally made me give them the money I stole.'
'I know,' said Jane. 'There's nobody who wouldn't have done what you did. Forget the money.'
'Let me finish,' said Mary impatiently. 'They knew I had stolen it from banks, but they thought I did it by being an insect or a rat or something who crawled in and took it. It didn't even occur to them that the reason I could do it was that I know all about the business, and that I was smarter than the people I took it from. They filled out bank-transfer slips. They listed my bank account numbers and the number of the account where the money was supposed to go. I signed them all, one after another, so I saw it six times.'
'Saw what six times?'
'There's no need to write it down. I can close my eyes and read it any time I want. 08950569237. He's transferring all the money into his bank account at Credit Suisse in Zurich. He has a numbered account, and that's the number. I captured it.'
27
As Jane drove, Mary lay on the back seat talking at the roof of the car. 'It has to be Dallas.'
'Why Dallas? You told me once that you couldn't go there because people knew you.'
'And I know them,' said Mary. 'They have you, and you have them. It's like the tar baby.'
Jane tried to choose her words carefully. There would be nothing accomplished if she managed to nudge her own agitation into hysteria, but Mary had to know that it wasn't over. 'I killed those two men back there. Barraclough wasn't there.'
'Yes,' said Mary. 'He's in San Francisco.'
'How do you know that?'
'That's where the big West Coast banks have their main offices. What he's doing right now is riding the jet stream, and you can't get on it very easily in some branch office in Stinkwood, Minnesota. All they can do for you is to ask the big offices to do it for them, and he can't fool around all day and let all those people know what he's doing.'
'What do you mean by 'riding the jet stream'? Is he flying to Switzerland?'
'No,' said Mary. 'That's way too slow. Stock exchanges, bond markets, commodities, currency, the treasury securities of a hundred countries go up and down a hundred times a day. Some tyrant is shot in South America, and before the ambulance reaches the hospital, billions of dollars from Hong Kong are already buying up copper and coffee beans in London and New York. Barraclough isn't going to travel to Europe and then to the Caribbean to hand six tellers withdrawal slips and collect fifty-two million dollars. He's got to move the money the way big money moves - electronically, in thin air. Bonn, Paris, London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A. Zurich, Melbourne, Singapore, Hong Kong.' After a breath she added, 'Dallas.'
Jane tilted the rearview mirror to get a glimpse of Mary on the back seat. She was bloody, bruised, and exhausted, but she seemed to be describing something that was real. 'You mean you want to try to get your money back? Is that what this is about?'
Mary Perkins gave a quiet cough, and Jane realized that it had been a kind of mirthless laugh. 'You told me before and I didn't get it, did I? You have to strip yourself clean. Lose everything: friends, clothes, medical records, your name, even your hair. The money was the last thing to go. That's gone, Jane. I had to give it to him, and I put it right in his hands so I could see which pocket he stashed it in.'
Jane dressed Mary in a pair of blue jeans because the welts and bruises on her legs were so bright and angry that a dress would not have covered enough of them, and it was impossible in the small store in Gilroy to buy any other kind of women's pants in a length that fit an actual, living woman. The blouse was off another rack in the same store, a plain blue shirt that would attract no attention and was big enough to let her shrink inside it without having much of the fabric touch her skin.
Jane left the car in the long-term lot in San Jose because Mary insisted there was no time for a more elaborate arrangement. 'Get me to Dallas,' she said. 'After that I don't care.'
'What don't you care about?'
