'What do they have to analyze?'
'If you wore perfume or cosmetics when you wore the clothes, they'll identify them and add them to your profile. If you love Thai food or going to the zoo, they'll know that too.'
'That's crazy.'
Jane shrugged. 'No crazier than having people meet us in airports all over the western half of the country. Intercontinental is an enormous detective agency, much bigger than most police departments. There isn't a city in the country that doesn't have a crime lab with a trace-analysis section. There's a machine called a gas chromatograph that vaporizes whatever substance they find and identifies it. There's no question Intercontinental has one, and probably an emission spectrometer and an electron microscope. If you're in the business of tracking people for money, that stuff pays for itself quickly.'
'You're making it sound hopeless.'
'Not hopeless. It just takes some thought.'
Mary protested. 'But there are thousands of people in this country nobody can find.'
'Millions,' said Jane.
'Well, who are they? You can't tell me they all get caught.'
'It depends on who's looking for them and how hard. A lot of them are divorce fugitives: the man who doesn't want to pay alimony or the parent who loses custody and takes the child out of state. Somebody else runs up a debt or embezzles a few bucks. Unless the person is foaming at the mouth and shooting people at freeway rest stops, the only ones who are very interested are the local police back home. Then there are a few million illegal aliens. There's not much reason to look for them because nobody gets any benefit from finding them. There are also personal cases: some woman breaks up with her boyfriend and he threatens her. There's practically no place where the police will do anything to help her, so she moves away and changes her name. There are millions of people hiding under assumed identities, and the reason most of them don't get found is that nobody's looking.'
'What you're saying is that if anybody tried, they would.'
'No,' said Jane. 'What I said is that it depends on who's looking and how hard.'
'You think I'm going to get caught, don't you?'
Jane hesitated. 'You can take that chance, or you can choose to take other chances.'
'What does that mean?'
'He's not going to give up. He has lots of trained people at his disposal in offices all over the country, and he can probably dream up a charge to get the police looking for you too, if he wants to. If you learn fast and never make a mistake, he might not find you.' Jane looked at her closely. 'Or you could make a mistake - intentionally.'
Mary's eyes widened and the color seemed to drain from her face. 'You want to use me for - '
'Bait. Yes. What he's doing isn't just evil; it's also illegal.'
'I can't. I don't have the money. You're wrong. He's wrong.'
'It doesn't matter. He thinks you do, and he wants it. That makes him predictable, and that can be turned into a weakness. Your chance of trapping him and getting him convicted might be better than your chance of hiding from him.'
'No. I won't do it.' Mary looked at Jane defiantly.
'Suit yourself.'
'Are you leaving this morning?'
'I said I'd help you get settled.'
'But I told you I wouldn't do it. You can't use me as bait.'
'I heard you.'
For the next six days, Jane Whitefield waited. When Mary woke up she would find the quilt folded neatly and stowed beside the couch. Jane would be in the middle of the only open space in the small living room going through the slow, floating movements of Tai Chi.
On the sixth day, Mary Perkins said, 'Why do you do that?'
'It keeps my waist thin and my ass from getting flabby.'
Mary repeated, 'Why do you do that?'
'It helps me feel good. It keeps me flexible. It helps me think clearly and concentrate.'
'Don't worry,' said Mary. 'I'll shut up.'
'You don't have to,' said Jane. 'Part of the idea is that after a while the body makes the movements flow into each other without consulting the conscious mind much.'
'What's that one?'
'What do you mean?'
'They all have names, right?'
'Oh. 'Cloud Hands.'' Then her body was in a radically different position without much apparent movement. ' 'Golden Cock Stands on Leg.'' Her body continued to drift into a changing pattern of positions.
Mary watched for a long time. 'Where did you learn to fight?'
'By fighting.'
'No,' said Mary. 'I mean fight like that.'
'This isn't exactly about fighting. It's about not fighting. Your opponent is fighting, but you're watching. He attacks, but you've already begun to yield the space. He strikes, but you're not really there. You only passed through there on your way to somewhere else. You bring his force around in a circle, add yours to it, and let him hurt himself.'
'The mystic wisdom of the mysterious East.'
'It's practical. I'm a very strong woman, but no matter what I do, I'm going to be smaller than any man who's likely to try to hurt me. If I fight him for the space between us, I'll get hammered. He's using one arm and maybe his back foot to throw the punch. I'm bringing my whole body into one motion to add force to his punch and alter its direction just a little. For that fraction of a second I have him outnumbered.'
Mary put on her coat, walked toward the door, opened it, turned, and said. 'You should have let your ass get flabby. It might have made you more human.' She went out and closed the door. That night she came home late and tiptoed past Jane on the couch.
Two hours later Jane opened her eyes and acknowledged that she had heard Mary come out of her room again. It was three a.m. and she was sitting in the big easy chair staring at Jane.
Mary said, 'You're trying to wear me down. You're staying in the corner of my room and not saying anything to convince me, just putting yourself in front of my eyes wherever I look so I'll have to think about it.'
Jane said, 'You've spent time with people who take what they want.'
'I was one of them.'
'Then you can predict what Barraclough is thinking as well as I can. You don't need any arguments from me.'
Mary sat back in the big chair with her hands resting on the arms. 'Why haven't you mentioned the little boy?'
'Why should I?'
'I've lived by convincing people to do stupid things they didn't want to do, so I know how it's done. The little boy is an overlooked resource. Here I am, unmarried and alone, and anybody who is alive can feel her biological clock ticking away. I've reached the age where women start getting too many cats. The little boy is alone and probably scared. Barraclough has already robbed him, and now he'll kill him.'
'Will he?'
'You know he will, and that's why you're here. If the kid's dead, the cops will run around bumping into each other for a couple of months and then forget him. If he's alive, there's always the chance that Barraclough will wind up sitting in a courtroom across the aisle from an innocent ten-year-old.'
'Not much chance.'
'But as long as the kid is alive, there's also the chance that he'll live another ten or fifteen years and find out who killed his four best friends and left him broke. Barraclough will be thinking he doesn't want to wake up some night and find a young man who looks vaguely familiar holding a gun against his head.' Mary waited a few seconds. 'So why didn't you mention him again?'
Jane sat up and stared at her. 'People are killed every day. Why would I imagine you would pick him out of all
