“What choice do we have?”
Stillman reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the eyeglass case that Walker had found on one of the men.
“You didn’t give that to the police?” Walker was amazed.
“I wanted to take a closer look than I could in the dark, and the police erroneously assumed the glasses were mine,” said Stillman. “I’d like to know what’s printed on the case.”
“So would I,” said Walker.
“Then let’s do it.” Stillman went into the bathroom and snatched three tissues from the box on the counter. He pulled a tiny bottle with a black label out of his pocket. “I picked up some Wite-Out.” He turned on the desk lamp, set the bottle on the desk, then took out the eyeglass case.
Stillman opened the bottle, then used the little brush in the cap to paint over the three lines of print that had been pressed into the side of the case. He used a tissue to wipe the white liquid off the case, then handed it to Walker.
Walker stared down at the case, where the letters were now in clear white. He read them aloud. “Foley Optical, 1219 Main Street, Keene, New Hampshire 03470.”
23
Walker glanced at his watch. He had a few more minutes before boarding time. He took the card out of his wallet and dialed the number of Constantine Gochay.
“Hello?” It was Serena’s voice, but she sounded as though her usual detached manner had been somehow forgotten for the moment.
“Hi,” said Walker. “This is John Walker.”
“I know that,” she said. “Are you all right?”
He hesitated. “Yeah. I’m okay. How are you?”
“Don’t. Don’t do that.” She was Mary Catherine Casey now. “I wasn’t being mean last time, so don’t punish me with that taciturn, manly thing now. You had a horrible experience, and I was worried.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I’ve been reading the on-line
“I’m not sure what I want to say about it yet,” he said. “It’s . . . something happened, and I’m not really sure what it is—all of it, anyway. I think I need time.”
He heard keys clicking. “Stillman just bought more plane tickets. Boston. Why aren’t you coming home?”
“We found something on one of those guys. Glasses from Foley Optical in Keene, New Hampshire. I guess we must be flying to Boston and then New Hampshire. Stillman wanted me to ask you to see what you could find out about Foley Optical.”
She became Serena again. “Tell Stillman I’ll find out what I can about Foley Optical and about Keene, New Hampshire. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you to ask about that. He hates to go anywhere without a printout of hospitals and hotels and things. I’ll have it ready if you call me from there.”
“Sure. Look, I wasn’t hiding anything from you. I just don’t—”
“You don’t know what happened? You hunted down the men who murdered Ellen Snyder and killed them. That’s what happened,” she snapped. “Don’t you have a plane to catch?”
“Yeah. I—”
“Then do it.” The line went dead.
Walker stared at the receiver for a second, but he heard the muffled female voice echoing above his head: “United Airlines Flight 922 to Boston is now boarding at Gate 52.” He replaced the receiver and looked around for Stillman. He had not seen him for the past few minutes, and now he was gone. Walker picked up his pace, moving to the escalator and then climbing it as it rose. He rushed to the metal detectors, then trotted toward Gate 52.
When he arrived at the gate, he saw Stillman coming out of a bookstore carrying a flat white plastic bag. Stillman seemed not to look at Walker, but Walker knew he was aware of him. He strolled directly to the line of passengers and showed no interest when Walker joined him, only handed him a ticket.
Their seats were near the rear of the plane, so they had to stop in the aisle while dozens of passengers ahead of them stood to push oversized bags into overhead compartments, or danced back and forth searching other compartments for an extra inch of space.
After they had found their seats and the plane was taxiing down to the end of the runway, Stillman said, “How are things in southern California?”
“Variable, turning cool,” Walker answered.
“Watch your step with her.”
Stillman waited for a few seconds, then sat back in his seat while the plane reached the start of the runway and the engine noise rose to a roar. The plane began to move, acclerating quickly, and then it was nosing up into the sky. Stillman lifted his bag to his lap, took out a road atlas, and began to turn pages.
After a few minutes, the plane leveled, and Walker said, “What are you doing—figuring out how to get to Keene?”
“Partly,” Stillman replied, his eyes still on the atlas. “Also why to get there.” He noticed Walker’s puzzled look. “A map is an interesting conceptual leap. Travelers spent thousands of years looking at everything from ground level before they thought of making a picture of it from above—long before anybody had ever been above. It’s what places would look like to God.”
“And He tells you why we’re going?”
“He never returns my calls. But if you look at a map, sometimes you can figure out things you might miss if you were on the spot—designs and patterns that you wouldn’t put together.”
“What kind of patterns?”
“Like Keene, for instance . . . ” He held up the atlas so Walker could see the full-page map of New Hampshire. “You have to ask yourself why a criminal would choose to spend time in Keene, New Hampshire. The obvious thing is that it’s about as far from the San Francisco office as you can get without getting your feet wet.”
“It’s certainly not the first place I’d look.”
“Right. It’s small,” said Stillman. “The chart says the population is under twenty-five thousand. That’s a little puzzling, because a person in his line of work usually likes big cities, where he can come and go without attracting attention, there are lots of like-minded individuals, and lots of places to spend other people’s money. But the map suggests some mitigating factors.” He handed the atlas to Walker. “See that?”
“See what?”
“The roads. They’re laid out in a pattern you seldom see—like the strands of a spiderweb—eight highways leaving town at the points of a compass rose: north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, and northwest. If somebody left town just before you got there, you wouldn’t have the faintest idea which direction he went. Then there are borders.”
“What about them?”
“You drive west across the Connecticut River into Vermont, it’s about twenty miles. Keep going another forty and you’re already in New York. Go south twenty miles instead, and you’re in Massachusetts. If you want to fly, there’s a small airport south of the city. There are others in Manchester and Nashua, or Pittsfield, Massachusetts, or Albany.”
“So he looks like he’s in the middle of nowhere, but he can get anywhere,” said Walker.
“Assuming we’re right, and that’s where he lived,” Stillman said. He took back his atlas.
“It’s a quite an assumption, isn’t it?” said Walker. “He could have been there on a vacation five years ago and lost his sunglasses.”
“It’s thin, but not out of the question. It takes a while to get an appointment with an eye doctor, see him, get the prescription, go to an optometrist, get glasses made. It’s not something you can do in a day in a strange town. But there’s still something about it that doesn’t feel right yet, some other attraction to the place that would make him go there. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, that you can only see from a human’s-eye view.”
