This was her place, and there was some primal insult in having another woman walk in and go through her cupboards. She hated owing this woman so much that she had to endure it.
Mary moved toward her little kitchen just as Jane came out with the tea tray, already talking. 'I'm really sorry I had to come in like this. It would make me angry if anyone did it to me, but it seemed best. In the first place, I didn't know you well enough to be able to predict whether you were likely to have gotten your hands on a gun. You've had plenty of time to do it.'
Mary felt the words dissolve what remained of her confidence like a sugar cube in a rainstorm. She had been here a month, and it had never occurred to her to obtain the most obvious way of protecting herself. The decision she would have made was by no means certain, but that didn't help; it made her even more frightened, because she had not given it even enough thought to reject it.
But Jane was going on. and Mary hadn't been listening. '... didn't want to get my head blown off, and I figured if your landlord heard a woman coming up the steps he would assume it was you. I've been very careful not to cause trouble by coming here. Nobody followed me and nobody had a chance to see me outside waiting. I saw you coming up the sidewalk, so I made tea.' She held out a cup so Mary could take it.
Mary sniffed it and said, 'It's different.'
'I picked it up in L.A.' said Jane. 'It's mixed with blackberry leaves. I've got a weakness for nonsense like that.'
Mary sipped. At least this woman had not come in and put her hands into the cupboards looking for things. The teakettle and the water were in plain sight. She resisted the feeling. Whatever this woman wanted, she was not going to get it by dropping a teabag into a cup of water. She smiled. 'Me too.'
Mary's smile was like a cat purring while it rubbed its fur against a person's leg. Jane could see that the smile had not just been practiced in front of a mirror. It had about it the cat's ease and grace that could only have come from bringing it out and using it to get what the cat needed. She looked around. 'I like your apartment,' she said.
Mary longed for her to say something insincere about the furniture.
'You got everything right,' said Jane. 'It would be pretty hard for somebody to get all the way up that stairway if you really wanted to stop him. The building looks like a single-family house from the outside, so nobody would look for a stranger here. That's the important thing. Not what you'll do if they find you, but being where they won't look.'
'How did you find me? Or were you here all the time watching me?'
'Why would I do that?'
'I don't know. Maybe to see what I did.' Mary realized that she had not said anything. She resolved not to make this mistake again. 'To see if I was good enough at it to have a chance.'
Jane said, 'No, I don't play games.'
'Then you changed your mind about me.' Without any reason at all, Mary thought.
'No again,' said Jane. 'I expected you to be good at it.'
Mary was tired. She had spent the day trying to get personnel managers to give her a competitive test of business skills when all they wanted was references, then to give her the benefit of the doubt based on her ability to speak knowledgeably, and the promise that references could be obtained, and finally just to give her a break because she was pleasant, well-groomed, and eager. Now she was sitting in a pair of pants with a wet seat. 'Let me try to be more direct,' she said. 'You helped me, and I thank you for that. Then you walked out on me. Rather mysteriously, I might add. Now you're back. You tell me I played a good game of hide-and-seek, but here you are. You seem to have had no trouble finding me, or opening the lock to my door to get in and make yourself a cup of tea. I've never had any difficulty believing you're better at this than I am, but now I'm not just awed, I'm scared to death. So what do you want?'
Jane put down her tea. 'You shouldn't be scared to death. I found you because I knew where to look. If you had been stupid, you would have left Ann Arbor, put yourself in the airports and hotel lobbies again, and inevitably found your way to one of the places where they're looking. I knew you weren't stupid, so I was pretty sure you must still be in this town. So what would you be doing? If you had wanted to give up on life you would have stayed put and done nothing. A person can sit in the right locked room forever without getting found if she has enough to pay the rent. I figured you would be too lively to go that way, so I tried the job route.'
'What's the job route?' Mary asked.
'I knew you had the sense to figure out that the more you do with a fake identity, the better it gets because after a while it's not exactly fake anymore. You're not the only woman in town with records that only go back a few years. Pretty soon it will take a lot of digging to detect whether you're entirely rebuilt or just went through the usual changes - a couple of marriages that brought new names, a couple of moves from one state to another, a career change or two. Having eliminated the possibility that you had left or gone into a coma, I knew you would be applying for jobs. It's the best way to start a new life.'
'That was enough?' asked Mary.
'The biggest and safest employer in Ann Arbor is the university. I called the personnel office and said I was a member of a faculty committee trying to hire someone to do the accounting and clerical work for a big research grant in the medical school.'
'Why that? Why not something else?'
'Faculty members aren't hired by the university personnel office. They're hired by the faculty, so there was very little chance she would look for a personnel file on me and not find it. Medical schools are semi-autonomous, so I could play an insider without knowing anything about her operation. I asked her to send me copies of applications with a bookkeeping background, since I figured that would be your strength. I asked how long it would take to bring them to my office. She said a day or two, so I offered to come over and pick them out myself. That way I didn't need an office.'
'You got this address off my application. God, it's easy.'
'Not that easy,' said Jane. 'Nobody knows what I knew - your new name, the city, and where you'd have to apply for work if you wanted any.' She stared at Mary Perkins over the rim of her teacup. 'Not even Barraclough.'
Mary felt her spine stiffen. She considered her options. She could pretend the name had made no impression on her, and later find a chance to slip away quietly. She could create some kind of disturbance - throw the cup at Jane and run. But even if she got out the door, the only way of taking the next step was to fall back on the name and the credit that Jane had given her. She wasn't ready. She should have been ready. 'How do you know that name? I never told you.'
'Why didn't you?' asked Jane. 'You told me you didn't know who was looking for you.'
Mary Perkins's mind stumbled, held back from the conclusion it was about to reach. That was right. She had come to Jane Whitefield, and Jane Whitefield kept nagging her about who it was. She hadn't known. She couldn't have been working for Barraclough. At least a month ago she couldn't. 'I wanted you to help me,' said Mary. 'I only provide the arguments for what I want. You have to supply your own arguments against.'
'All right,' said Jane. 'Then let's take the whole issue off the table. I have decided to help you.'
'In spite of Barraclough?'
'Because of Barraclough.'
'Do you know him?'
'I've seen his work.' She looked at Mary closely. 'Has he ever seen you?'
The question didn't make any sense unless the way Jane Whitefield wanted to make money was to sell someone else to Barraclough and say she was Mary Perkins. 'I suppose he has lots of pictures of me.'
'Not pictures,' Jane said. 'Has he actually looked at you face-to-face?'
'Is that important?'
'Yes. Tell me.'
'We never met,' said Mary Perkins. 'When I got out of the federal prison eight months ago, he somehow heard about it. He knew where I was living. How he got that I don't know. They said it was going to be a secret to help in my rehab - you know, help me fit into the community, keep my old cronies away, and all that.'
'He used to be a cop. He knows how to use the system. He didn't come for you himself?'
'He sent two men,' said Mary Perkins. 'They explained to me about Barraclough.'
'What did they tell you?'
