about the canoe. It was fourteen feet long, built to be light 'the way the Indians made ’em,' with a very shallow draft. He had insisted on lifting the canoe and carrying it around in the parking lot before he would pay for it. That, the man told her, had been a sight, because it had been more canoe than he personally would have been happy carrying any distance on his head, but this guy could handle it and hold a horse under his left arm at the same time. He had set it up on the roof of the Bronco, strapped it down, and then paid cash.
Jane spent the rest of the day selecting her own provisions without returning to any of the stores she had visited. She bought her own canoe at a fancy outdoors-man’s store in Saranac Lake. It was only eight feet long and weighed forty pounds. She bought an axe, a survival knife with fishing gear in the hollow handle, and a backpack at a hardware store in Wawbeek. She bought the rifle in Veterans Camp. When this was done, she had reached her weight limit. There was no way to carry a sleeping bag or tent, so she picked up a light nylon tarp. That afternoon when she went back to her room in Saranac Lake, she opened the prison file again.
She read through the file searching for any piece of information that might help. She studied his medical records closely. There were no allergies, no old injuries that had left him with a weakness, no medicines he had to take, no deficiencies in his vision or hearing that would give her an edge. Ron the gravedigger had said something about his having killed another prisoner in Marion, but if it was true, there was nothing in his record about the fruitless investigation that must have followed, so she had no indication of how he had chosen to do it.
She turned to the report of his final arrest. He had been working when they had spotted him in the surveillance of Jerry Cappadocia, so maybe the report would give her a sense of how he behaved when he was planning to kill somebody. The place of the surveillance was 9949 Madison Street. He had been picked up outside a building called Dennaway’s. What was that? It sounded like a bar, or maybe a restaurant. She picked up the telephone and called long-distance information, then dialed the number they gave her.
'Dennaway’s,' said a female voice.
'Hello,' said Jane, forcing her voice into the cheerful, businesslike tone she had learned years before when she worked as a skip-tracer. 'I’m calling from the Better Business Bureau, and I find we have a blank in our descriptive listing for Dennaway’s. Can you help?'
The woman hesitated. 'Well, we have a little of everything, from Versace to Donna Karan.'
It was a women’s clothing store. Martin had been planning to kill Jerry Cappadocia at a women’s clothing store. 'I’m just drawing from memory here,' said Jane, 'but didn’t you have a men’s department at one time?'
'No, we’ve always been exclusively a ladies’ couturier.'
Jerry Cappadocia must have been shopping for the girl, buying her presents. What was her name? Lenore Sanders. 'I’ll make sure that we get it right. Thank you for your help.'
'It’s a pleasure,' crooned the woman. 'Is there anything else I can tell you?'
Jane decided there was no reason not to push it as far as she could. Any bit of information she could change from a speculation into a fact was worth having. She made her voice go soft and confidential. ’’Well, if you’re not too busy, maybe we can clear this up right now. Do you have a regular customer named Lenore Sanders?' Unless Jerry Cappadocia was stupid, he would have tried to buy Lenore the clothes she might have chosen. He would go to the stores where she shopped.
'Let me look in the computer,' said the woman. Jane didn’t feel hopeful. Five years was a long time. But after some audible clicking of keys and a pause, the woman said, 'Oh, here she is. But I can’t imagine why she’d be writing to the Better Business Bureau about us. She hasn’t bought anything here lately.'
'Oh?' said Jane with a hint of suspicion. 'I can’t imagine that it isn’t the same person. It’s such a distinctive name. Do you have an address for her?'
'Oh,' said the woman triumphantly. 'I see the reason. She lives in St. Louis now. Lenore Sanders Cotton. Mrs. Robert Cotton, 5353 Dibbleton Way in St. Louis.'
'That’s the one,' said Jane. 'But you say she hasn’t bought anything lately?'
'Not in almost a year. I guess she must stop in whenever she’s in town.'
'Yes,' said Jane. 'That’s got to be right. She said she mailed something back to you that was damaged, and it wasn’t credited. What is your return policy?'
The woman sighed. 'I’m afraid I know just what happened. The person who used to handle returns was ... Well, she’s no longer with us. So we’re undoubtedly guilty. What was the item?'
Jane took a guess. 'It looks like a sweater.'
The woman scanned the computer. 'Yes. I see it. We’ll just send her another one.'
'That sounds like a good idea. And I’ll tell you what. Since it was just one of those things and you’re going to the expense of fixing it, why don’t you just tell her it was a mistake you discovered yourself without talking to us? It’ll seem like a happy coincidence.'
'Thank you so much,' said the woman.
'You’re welcome,' said Jane. 'Goodbye.'
She sat on the bed and thought about it. Lenore Sanders had managed to bounce back from the death of Jerry Cappadocia. She had left town and married somebody named Robert Cotton. Jane felt a strong curiosity about her that she couldn’t think of a way to justify. She certainly wasn’t going to find out anything about James Michael Martin from Lenore. The girlfriend hadn’t been present during the surveillance or she would have been mentioned in the report. She certainly wasn’t at the poker game the night Jerry was murdered.
Jane leafed through the pile of newspapers she had collected over the past few days, until she found the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was a morning paper, so they would be very busy right now. She scanned the bylines for a name that fit. It had to be somebody in one of the distant offices. She dialed the number she found on the editorial page.
'This is Ginny Surchow at the Washington bureau,' she told the operator. 'Can you connect me to research?'
There was only a second of delay before a woman answered, 'Research.'
'Hi,' said Jane. 'This is Ginny Surchow. I was wondering if you had anything for Mrs. Robert Cotton.'
'Mrs. Robert Cotton? Yeah, some advice on choosing a husband.'
Jane chuckled, not sure how funny that was. 'Maybe I’d better start with him. Got a lot?'
'What haven’t we got? Come on down and take a look. We’ll be here until they put the paper to bed.'
'I can’t come down. I’m in Washington. Just give me a quickie.'
'All right,' said the woman. 'Give me a minute.' After the minute was up, the woman returned. 'I have an article here that has him being investigated for money laundering in ’seventy-nine, another one for receiving stolen goods in ’eighty-two. He owned the warehouse and he owned the truck, but the guys on the scene said they were moving the TV sets on their own. In ’eighty-five it was drugs, but he was nowhere near them and there was something wrong with the evidence, so the charge went away. By ’eighty-nine, we start running articles describing other people as ’having connections’ with Cotton.'
'Anything really solid?' asked Jane.
'No recent convictions that I can see. So he’s described in the late ones as ’alleged organized crime figure.’ No, this last one has him promoted to ’suspected gang kingpin.’ '
'I get the picture,' said Jane. 'Thanks.'
She hung up before the woman had a chance to ask her any questions. The whole exercise had been pointless. All she was doing now was filling in blank spaces in the story that didn’t need to be filled. Lenore Sanders had drifted out of the story entirely. She had gone off to another city and found herself a man who probably wasn’t noticeably different from Jerry Cappadocia. Jane knew all she was going to know about James Michael Martin.
She picked up the telephone again and called Jake Reinert.
'Janie?' he said. 'Where are you?'
'I’m sorry I had to leave without you, Jake,' she said. 'I just wanted to spend some time alone. You understand.'
'Where are you spending time alone?'
'The beach. It’s very restful here, and I was having such a good time that I started to feel guilty about you.'
'Janie? Maybe you ought to come home.'
She rapped on the table beside her bed. 'Oh.' She called over her shoulder, 'I’ll be right there,' then said, 'I’ve got to go. It’s dinner time here. And no, it’s not a date, worse luck. It’s just another woman I met on the beach. ’Bye.'
