'No,' she said. 'Room two forty-three.'
She had lunch in a small restaurant on the way back to the hotel, then walked back to her room. The telephone was ringing when she opened the door.
'Janet?' he said. 'It’s Dave Rabel. It’s pretty much what I was trying to tell you. John Young bought a used Ford Bronco up at Taylor’s Used Cars in Lake Placid. He must have decided he needed a big, roomy car.'
'Did they have his address?'
'I got his hotel from them, but he checked out three days ago.'
'I give up,' said Jane.
'You mean you’ll buy the car?'
'No,' said Jane. 'I mean I can’t. I appreciate your trying so hard, but I’ll just have to wait until I see a car I’m sure about.'
He sighed. 'You’re passing up the best used-car deal in the north country.' He waited for her answer and nothing came, so he decided to end it on a friendly note. 'But I guess you get hurt less by being too careful than not careful enough.'
’’Thanks,’’ she said. 'I knew you’d understand,' and hung up. She said aloud, 'Where were you when I met John Felker, Dave?'
She kept her key but picked up the suitcase she hadn’t unpacked, went downstairs, and then drove to Lake Placid. She parked the car and began to walk from store to store in the small downtown section. She knew exactly what clothes he had because she had bought them. His suit and sportcoat would be useless here, because they would make him stand out. He had a couple of pairs of jeans and some shirts, but he would need a warm jacket for spring in the Adirondacks. James Michael Martin would not have bought one on the way here. He would have waited so he could choose something that local people were wearing, and buy it where they had bought theirs.
At the first store, Jane showed the young man at the cash register the picture of Felker she had taken. The clerk was in his thirties, wearing shorts like the ones she could see on the rack near the door and a T-shirt that said LAKE PLACID. He barely glanced at the picture, so she had to force out a few tears. 'He’s my boyfriend and we had a fight and ...' The clerk was alarmed enough to reassure her. 'No. Honest. I’d remember. He hasn’t been in here.'
At the second store an older woman said, 'Are you a policewoman?' When Jane tried the tears, the woman seemed to harden. 'I don’t think chasing a man around is any basis for a relationship. If I had seen him, I’d be doing you a favor to keep it to myself.' Jane could tell that she hadn’t.
The part about the policewoman gave her an idea. She went back to the car to dig out the prison file. At the third store, she showed the mug shots. 'Have you seen this man?' The clerk looked closely, and said, 'No, ma’am,' very quickly.
The fifth establishment was a big sporting-goods store. As soon as she produced the picture, she knew she had crossed his trail. The girl at the cash register looked as though she was in high school, and at the sight of the mug shots she turned pale. 'What did he do?'
Jane pressed her. 'Have you seen him?'
'Well, yes. He bought some things. About three, four days ago.'
The manager was thin and alert, not many years older than the girl at the register. He had been labeling stock in the back of the store when he realized something out of the ordinary was happening. He hurried to the front. 'Darlene,' he said officiously. 'I’ll handle this.' But when he saw the picture, he looked worse than the girl had. 'Oh yeah. What did he do?'
Jane was stern. 'Did he buy anything?'
'Yes,' said the manager. 'Lots of things.'
Jane said, 'He would have paid cash. Large denominations, probably hundreds.'
'He did,' said the manager. Jane could tell that his mind was running quickly through the list of crimes that hundred-dollar bills proved without a doubt.
'Do you, by any chance, have any of the money on hand?'
'No,' he said helplessly. 'It went to the bank.'
'What bank?'
'Winslow Federal.' His mind tripped over the conclusion she had placed in front of him. 'Is it counterfeit?'
'If it is, we’ll let you know.' She hurried to bury the 'we' in the middle of the conversation. 'What did he buy?'
'Oh, God,' he said. 'You confiscate it, don’t you? If it’s not real you just take it.'
Jane felt sorry for the man; he seemed to be sure he was going to have it taken out of his pay for the next six months. 'If you took it to the bank, it’s not your problem anymore,' she said gently. 'It’s like a hot potato. Nobody gets burned except the one who’s holding it.' This seemed to make him feel better. When she could see the blood rising back into his face, she said, 'Now, I’ll need a copy of the receipt for what he bought.'
'Sure,' said the manager, who, looking about fifteen years old now, ran to the back of the store. He returned with a carbon copy of the receipt. Jane took it and slipped it into her file without looking at it. She said, 'Now, is there anything he said or did that would help us find him?'
'His car,' said the manager. 'I helped him carry all this stuff out. It was black. Big—'
'A Ford Bronco?' she asked.
'Yes!' he said, looking astounded. 'Big wheels.'
'Do you remember any of the license number?'
He looked ashamed. 'No. I’m sorry. I didn’t think—'
Jane decided it was time to get out. 'I didn’t expect you to,' she said kindly. 'You’ve both been a big help. Thank you very much.' She was already at the door by the time she finished the sentence.
When Jane was back in her car, she took out the receipt and studied it. As she read it, her mind was tracking him: a pair of hiking boots, a sleeping bag, a tent, a fishing rod and reel, lures, a hatchet, a down-filled nylon jacket, a compass. He wasn’t going to a hotel in Saranac or Lake Placid. He was on his way into the mountains.
24
Martin was on his way into the back country, into the vast, empty spaces. The Adirondacks were enormous: almost eleven thousand square miles, some of it public park land, some private property, and dozens of towns. In that space, there were only eleven hundred miles of highways. Once he was off the paved roads, he could be anywhere in the six million acres that the federal government had decreed in 1894 would be 'forever wild.' She studied the map she had picked up at the hotel gift shop.
He had a fresh car with New York plates on it. He wouldn’t drive any farther east into Vermont or north into Canada over the St. Lawrence River, where he would be a foreigner again. He certainly wasn’t going south, where the country flattened out and the population centers began, and he wasn’t staying in the eastern part of the mountains, where most of the millions of visitors would start arriving as soon as the weather warmed up a little. He would backtrack now, go west on Route 3, the way he had come in, and back through Saranac toward Tupper Lake. From there he could go southwest for eighty miles without ever being closer to a settlement than twenty miles. Looking at the map, she was almost certain of it.
Before she left Lake Placid, she drove to Taylor Ford and spent ten minutes looking at a new Bronco. She paid very close attention to the oversize tires. Then she drove back along Route 3 toward Tupper Lake. There she spent a few hours wandering from one store to another, as she had in Lake Placid. This time she used the photograph she had taken of him instead of the mug shots. He had bought lots of groceries at Winwood’s Grocery Store, but the girl at the checkout counter didn’t remember much about them except that they were the sort of things men bought. Jane wasn’t sure what this meant until she had watched a few men come into the store. There were a lot of preserved foods, not many fresh vegetables or much perishable meat. They were provisions for people who didn’t want to come back to town for a long time.
It was nearly dark when she learned about the canoe. She walked into a boating store that called itself a marina, showed the picture, and the man at the counter recognized him instantly. Martin had been very particular
