He walked into his entryway and climbed the stairs for the last time. He knew that the madwoman almost certainly believed he was dead. Even if she had any doubts and knew where he lived, she would have had a difficult time getting here before he had. He opened the apartment door, slipped inside, and locked it behind him.
He had no difficulty working out the order of tasks. He made the telephone call first. She wasn’t home, but he left a message. Then he collected the cash from its hiding places in the apartment, packed his clothes quickly, and wiped his fingerprints off all the surfaces he usually touched. He took all of the food jars and bottles out of the refrigerator, put them into the sink, and ran water over them until he was sure they carried no fingerprints, then put them all into a big plastic trash bag with his groceries.
He went out, locked the door, wiped the doorknob, walked quietly down the hall, and carried his suitcase and his trash down the back staircase. He put his trash in the Dumpster. Then he walked around the corner to where his car was parked, set his suitcase in the trunk, and began to drive.
Earl and Linda sat in a cowboy bar in Golden, a half hour into the mountains west of Denver, and watched the eleven o’clock news on the television set on the wall above them. The newswoman was reporting “the senseless, execution-style killing of a young police officer.”
Earl knitted his eyebrows. “Now, that’s typical, isn’t it? They haven’t found out why it happened, so they say it was senseless. They read the words on the prompter, but they don’t seem to know what they’re saying.”
Linda could see the newswoman standing about twenty yards away from the Lexus, and behind her the police crew was dusting it for prints. The car trunk was open. “The police are urging anyone who has information about the incident to contact them. They have no solid leads as to why anyone would have shot the officer. One theory I’ve heard is that even though the new Lexus sedan had not yet been reported missing, the officer might have seen something suspicious and pulled it over.”
Linda held her breath, waiting for Earl to notice what had not been said. Finally she knew that he already had. He swallowed the last of the beer in his glass, set it on the table, and said, “Well, we’d better go see if we can figure out where he’s gotten to now.”
“I’m sorry, Earl,” she said. She wanted to waste some time in the bar, where there were people, before she blithely stepped into the dark with Earl. He was perfectly capable of hiding his anger until they were somewhere along a deserted road. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know how I could have—”
“I did it,” he said. “I stopped you before you could do him right.” He added, “1 keep thinking, ‘So she might have put a round into the gas tank. If we’d been back a few yards it wouldn’t have been so bad.’ ” He pulled her up by the arm. “Better than this, anyway. This is a joke.”
When they reached the neighborhood where Hatcher had been living as David Keller, they drove past the place where he had parked the used Saturn that evening. For an instant Linda felt the thrill of surprise and anticipation: the space was not empty. But when Earl drove closer she could see that the car in the space was a Thunderbird.
Earl left their car a block from the rear of Hatcher’s building and they climbed the back stairs. Earl opened the lock effortlessly and they stepped inside, put on their gloves, and began the search. As soon as Linda opened the refrigerator, she knew what the rest of the small apartment would be like.
After fifteen minutes, Earl sat down on the couch. “He’s getting better at this.”
“He doesn’t have as much stuff to worry about,” said Linda. “She made him travel light.”
“Let’s see,” muttered Earl. “He’s in the trunk of the car. You put four shots in there. You would think with four rounds rattling around in there and bouncing off things, one of them would have clipped him, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. I did. But it didn’t happen. There’s no blood anyplace.”
“He knows he’s a lucky man, but he’s scared to death. He hears us leave, he pops out and runs like hell— probably through back yards, or the police would have picked him up. He’s too stupid to do the wrong thing and run across town. He comes right back here. What does he do?”
“It looks like he spent some time cleaning up.”
“Right. He couldn’t have done that for us. We know who he is already. He must think the cops are going to come here looking for him. What else did he do?”
“He took his car.”
“That’s last. What’s first?”
“He packed his stuff. Probably some money, the other gun he bought.”
Earl nodded. “He did that. Put yourself in his mind. You’re scared. You’re so scared you just ran home as fast as you could. You clean up, throw everything in a suitcase. You’re about to go out the door and drive until you run out of gas. Where are you going to go?”
Linda’s eyes narrowed, and she bit her lower lip, then released it to reveal a little smile. She looked across Earl at the telephone on the table. “Does it have a redial button?”
Earl opened his briefcase and found the little microcassette recorder. “Testing,” he said. “You’d better work.” He clicked two buttons. “Testing. You’d better work,” it said. Earl pressed two more buttons, then looked at Linda. He lifted the receiver, clamped the tape recorder to the earpiece with one hand, pressed the redial button with the other, and recorded the series of quick musical tones.
Linda counted the tones. “Eleven numbers. Long distance. An area code and a number.”
Earl hung up before the phone on the other end could ring. Then he played back the recording of eleven tones and handed the recorder to Linda. “Get the numbers.” He stood up, took a penlight, and began to shine it on the surfaces of the furniture.
Linda lifted the receiver and said into the recorder, “One,” then pressed the one button and recorded the tone. She said, “Two,” pressed the two button, and recorded the tone. When she reached six, she hung up to avoid completing a call, then got the last four numbers on tape.
It took Linda another ten minutes to decipher the recorded tones of the woman’s telephone number. “I think I have it. Should I test it?”
Earl said, “Give it a try.”
Linda said aloud, “One. Area code seven one six,” then dialed the rest of it. After four rings she heard a woman’s voice. “Leave a message when you hear a beep.” Linda hung up. “It’s the woman. She has her answering machine on.”
Earl took his penlight and opened David Keller’s telephone book. “Seven one six.… That’s New York … Buffalo, New York.” He closed the book and looked at Linda. “Maybe this time we got lucky, not him, and not her. She’s got her answering machine on. He called her no more than an hour or two ago. Maybe it’s on because she’s already talked to him and gone off to meet him. But it just could be that he got her machine too, and left a message.”
Linda looked at the phone as though she could see down the wire to the other end. “Most machines will play back a message if you’re away. Ours will do it if you push a two-digit code. Some use codes with three or four, but it might be worth a try.”
“There are only a hundred possible combinations. And we aren’t paying the phone bill.”
It was two o’clock when Linda heard a change. “Leave a message when—” and the recording stopped. There was a click, and she could hear the answering machine rewinding, then another click. Linda held Earl’s tape recorder beside the earpiece of the telephone.
“Jane? Jane? It’s me. I’m in trouble. Somehow they found me. A woman tried to kill me tonight. I’ve got to get out. I’m going to head north, to Cheyenne. No, too close. Billings. I’ll try to make it to Billings, Montana. I’ll call again when I get there.”
She was laughing with delight when she played the recording for Earl, but he was staring at the wall, and he wasn’t smiling.
When it ended, he sat in silence for a moment, then glanced at his watch. “We’d better get going. I’ve got to put you on a plane, and then head up north.”
“Put me on a plane?”
He spoke so gently that she was afraid of him. “He saw your face, honey. Having you around isn’t going to do me any good in Billings.”
“You’re sending me home?”
“Home?” His grin came like a sudden snarl. “No. You’ve got to go do something about her.”
