'Stay there or I'll kill you,' but half turning his head to say it made him a microsecond slower. Jane had time to take a running step and deliver a hard kick to the driver's door.
The door caught the driver's leg just above the ankle. He winced at the pain, pivoted with his hip against the door to keep it from coming back at him, and rolled out onto the ground. He scrambled toward the rear of the car to lure Jane into an attack. All he had to do was get his hands on any part of her and swing her onto the freeway.
As she advanced a step, he did his best to look as though he were hurt and vulnerable. He got her to take three quick steps toward him while he hobbled backward, preparing to grasp her and roll back to add momentum as he propelled her into traffic. Jane took one more step, slipped into the car, slammed the door, and hammered down the lock buttons.
The man heard the engine start as he dashed toward her. Just as his fingers brushed the door handle, the rear wheels spun, bits of loose gravel shot out behind, and he had to step back to keep from being dragged out into the traffic as the car shot past him.
23
'Fasten your seat belt, Timmy, and don't be scared,' I said Jane. She drove as fast as she dared, threading her way between slower vehicles and accelerating into the clear stretches. Even half an hour before sunrise there were beginning to be places where knots of cars jammed all the lanes at once. She turned off the freeway at White-oak, then shot under the overpass and up the eastbound ramp. The traffic was heavier heading into the center of the city. She had intended this as an advantage for Mary, because the slow, close-spaced stream would make it hard for even a superior driver to catch up with her. Now Jane was fighting the inertia herself.
She glanced down at the dashboard. The gas tank was full. Of course it would be. The car didn't seem to have a radio, but there was a black box about the size of one mounted in front of the shifter on the hump for the drive-shaft. 'Tell me what happened,' she said. 'How you got here.'
Timmy shrugged. 'They brought some of my stuff. You know, from the apartment where Mona and I lived in Chicago. There were things they wanted me to identify that belonged to Mona. Then there was another box with some of my clothes and things. The next day I tried to put on my good shoes, but I couldn't get one of them on because your note was crumpled up in the toe.'
'My note?' Once again Barraclough had been thinking faster than she had. Timmy's location had been kept secret, but the Chicago apartment had not. Barraclough had known that the F.B.I, or the Chicago police would search it. Because he had been a cop, he had also known that after they had preserved and labeled everything that could be considered evidence, there would be a lot left. They would release some of Timmy's belongings. Barraclough had even known that if nothing else got to Timmy, his best shoes would. He was going to have to look presentable in court.
'Yeah. So I called the phone number on your note, and the lady told me you weren't home but to call again when I could. And she asked me what the address was. I thought that was kind of odd, but she said you forgot to tell her. So last night when I called, she told me you wanted me to meet you.'
Jane held herself in check. It wasn't Timmy's fault. For over two years he had been surviving by following whatever incomprehensible directions some adult - Morgan or Mona or Jane - had given him. 'What else did she tell you?''
'That you told her if I could make it to the door by the garden, I could crawl along between the bushes and the house and slip right through the hedge to the next yard without anybody seeing me. You were right about all of it. Nobody saw me go. Then I walked over two streets, found this car right where she said it would be, climbed in the back seat, and lay down to wait. After a long time that man got in and we drove off. He said we were going to meet you.'
Jane groped under the seat and beneath the dashboard, and then realized it was a waste of time. If there had been a gun in the car it couldn't be anyplace where the driver could have reached it or she and Timmy would be dead. Barraclough had made sure the assignment had stayed specific. Probably what he had feared most was not that Jane would see a gun and call the meeting off. He would be more afraid that his court-certified violence-prone trainee would show his initiative by using a gun where Mary might get hit.
She studied the inside of the car. 'Did you see the driver use this black box?'
'Oh, yeah,' said Timmy. 'He said it was how he knew where we were going to meet you. See?' He pointed at a dial on the top that looked like the face of a compass. Jane was on a long, straight stretch of freeway, and she could see the needle was moving.
'Timmy,' said Jane. 'I didn't send the note. If I ever come for you again, I won't send a note or make a telephone call either. I'll make sure you see me. Don't go to some woman with dark hair who waves from a hundred feet away. I'll be up close, so you can tell.'
He looked alarmed. 'You're taking me back?'
'I can't drive you to a policeman's house in a stolen car,' said Jane. 'I'll have to drop you off in a safe place.'
Jane leaned forward a little to glance at the black box. The needle was moving again. They had swung around to the east, just as she had. She had only the vaguest idea how direction finders worked. There was some kind of transmitter in Barraclough's car, and the black box received the signal and pointed out the direction it was coming from. But what could the range possibly be? A mile? Five miles? As though the machine had read her thoughts, the needle wavered, then swung to a straight vertical position and stayed there. It had already lost touch with Barraclough.
Jane maneuvered through the crush of vehicles. At any minute Barraclough or one of his lieutenants would know that she had the car, and they would take the necessary steps to find it. Probably they would report it stolen and let the police catch her for them. She had only one way to avoid the police. She drove to the parking structure at the Burbank airport.
She parked beside the gray Toyota and took the car keys from under the bumper. For a moment she considered ripping the black box out of the red car and trying to install it in her own car. But by now Barraclough certainly knew she had it. If she got the direction finder to work, eventually she would find that it was following a transmitter Barraclough had placed where she could be ambushed. She ushered Timmy into the gray Toyota and drove out of the parking ramp.
Ten minutes later Jane dialed a pay telephone and listened to Judge Kramer's voice. 'Hello?'
She said, 'Judge, it's me. Do you know for sure that your phone is not tapped?'
'I have it swept every day. No bugs so far. What's going on? How did you get this number?'
'Listen carefully. I'm with Timmy. They found him and lured him out. They know I've got him back and they're about to start looking for us, if they aren't already. I'm leaving him in the waiting area of the emergency room at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Burbank. He's faking a stomachache, so they'll have to keep him at least long enough for a doctor to be sure it's not his appendix.
The guard inside thinks I'm calling his father to say we got here. Say that's who you are when you come for him.'
'But what - '
'He'll tell you. Bye.' She hung up and looked in through the glass doors of the emergency room at Timmy for a heartbeat, then hurried to her car.
As Jane got back on the freeway she had to struggle against the feeling that Barraclough was simply too smart for her. Every time she tried anything, he seemed to have anticipated it and brought it back to bear on her. She pulled off the freeway and made her way to the quiet side street in Sherman Oaks. She climbed the fence with a growing dread. She made her way up the little hill and crouched beside the freeway. The rented car was still where Mary had left it, and across the freeway she could see hers too. She moved to Mary's car, looked in the windows, then under the seats and mats and in the glove compartment. Barraclough had won again. When he had produced Timmy, Mary had gone to him with the tapes still in her purse.
Jane forced herself to move. She slipped away from the freeway, leaving the camera, microphone, and recorders in the brush. She climbed the fence and drove out to Riverside Drive. Everything depended on her ability to use time efficiently now.
She glanced at her watch. It was six-thirty a.m. and the sun glinted on the windows ahead as she drove west. She tried to think of all of the facts that carried with them some bit of hope. Timmy was alive. Barraclough would never have kidnapped him if he had not expected the driver to take him somewhere and kill him quietly as soon as Barraclough had Mary. Mary was also alive, and would stay alive as long as she was able to keep from
