“How did you see that from the trunk?”
“I didn’t, but when I got out, there he was.”
“How did you get out of the trunk?”
“She opened it, fired four shots at me, and slammed it again. I’m lying there and after a minute, I realize I’m not dead. She actually missed. On most cars there’s a latch inside the trunk. You pull it, and the trunk opens. I was alone except for the dead cop. I don’t know anything else.”
“That’s about all we need to know,” said Jane. “They managed to find you. I assume you walked to the same store by the same route regularly?”
He nodded.
“They knew that, and they knew you weren’t the sort of man who could walk past a woman with car trouble. Not everybody would stop. They knew you were carrying a pistol, because otherwise she wouldn’t have grabbed it before she showed you hers. The fact that she didn’t pull the trigger means they must have been planning to drive you out of town where they could shoot you without having anybody hear and bury you without having anybody find you.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘they’?”
“Did this woman look as though she could carry your body by herself?”
“No.”
“Then there was someone else who could. There’s also the dead policeman. Denver has serious criminals, and a serious police department. Any cop who stops his car is going to be sure he’s able to control whoever he sees. So probably he was shot by somebody he didn’t see. Not for sure, but probably.”
Pete Hatcher looked out the window and watched the display windows of businesses slipping past as the car moved west toward the interstate. “Then the one I didn’t see could have shot me the way he shot the cop—while I was alone on the street. Why didn’t he?”
“That’s one of those bits of good news that’s not quite as good if you take a second look at it,” Jane said. “Your former friends from Pleasure, Inc., aren’t hunting you themselves; they’ve hired professionals. The problems that raises should be getting obvious by now. Professionals know how to hunt. They know which ways to kill you are smart, and which ways are stupid. Taking you to a quiet, private place where nothing will be seen or heard is smart; blasting away in the middle of a city is not.”
“But that’s just what they did. They shot the policeman, and then—”
“They didn’t plan to, and that’s another side to it. When something unexpectedly goes wrong, professionals don’t get emotional. Killing you is just a job, and anybody else who happens along is nothing but a little extra work. They know in advance that they might have to get rid of witnesses, so they’re primed for it. They react quickly, and don’t spend time asking themselves philosophical questions first.”
She glanced at Pete Hatcher to see if he was listening. When she saw his face, her breath caught in her throat. His eyes were watering. Could he be crying? She pretended to pay attention to the road behind her for a few seconds. She glanced at him again. His big brown eyes were welling with tears. When he sensed that she was looking, he turned away and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. She waited.
“That policeman,” he said. “He lost his life, and I got mine. It was a bad trade. You should have seen him. His head was half gone. I couldn’t even tell what he looked like. The world lost him just to get a little more of me.”
Jane blew out a breath slowly. “I don’t think that’s a train of thought you want to follow too far.” She stared ahead at the entrance to the interstate, slipped her car into the center of the tight stream of traffic, and found herself silently talking to Paula. You didn’t have a way to say it, did you? In all the talk about his pleasant disposition and nice manners you never told me why you called me.
In all her years of snatching rabbits out of the fangs of the wolves, she had almost never heard a rabbit so much as wonder out loud what had happened to the other rabbits. They weren’t selfish. It always seemed to her to be physical, the body overpowering the mind to save itself. They never thought of looking back until they had run far enough. That was why a sensible nurse who had seen a lot of men would intercede for this one. The fact that he didn’t have a fine and complicated intellect was about the same as saying he didn’t have a twelve-cylinder Italian sportscar. He was a decent human being who was just trying to drive what he had.
When she looked at him again, she had an urge to give him something. “Okay,” she said, “let’s think practically. What do we do with what we know? You got a good look at the woman, right?”
“Right.”
“And she got a good look at you. Wherever we go, keep looking for her in the distance. She won’t be up close again, but she may be in a crowd, or in a window, or in a car that goes by. If you see her again, you go. No hesitation, no wondering if she saw you or not, no decisions. You go that minute. If you’re in the middle of a date in a restaurant a year from now, you go to the men’s room and never come back.” She watched him to see if he understood, and he seemed to. “Only this time, you’re going to know in advance where you’re going and how to get there.”
“Where are we going now?”
“First, we’ll drop out of sight completely for a few days, to let the trail get cold. Then we’ll start all over again, and do this right. I’ll hide you somewhere, but I’ll stick around this time until I’m sure we’ve lost them for good. I’ll give you a few lessons I should have given you the first time. I’ll help you get used to the next new name, new place, new life. Then I’ll leave for good.”
“You said the first thing is dropping out of sight. How do you do that?”
“The best way is to do nothing.” She smiled. “Missoula looks like a good place to start doing it. We’ll buy you a new suitcase, check into a motel, and see if you got lucky and lost them. In fact, that’s the good part about what I was saying, and I almost forgot to tell you. They’re pros, and from what I can tell, they’re near the upper end of the scale of people who could be called that. That means we avoid them or we’re dead: there isn’t any mystery about the outcome. But the nice thing about pros is that they’re in it for the money.”
“So?”
“They get paid in two ways. One is that they get all of it when they’ve killed you. The other is that the client gives them some money up front for expenses, and the rest when they’ve got you. Either way, your best friend is time. They’ve just wasted three months for nothing, and spent a lot of money traveling. People like that could have made a lot in three months. Hardly anybody is very difficult to kill. If the client is paying for all this, then by now he’s going to be wondering what he’s getting for his money.”
“I still don’t get it. How does this help me?”
“If you wait long enough, pros go away.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. They don’t hate you. They’re in a business. At the moment when they calculate that the job is a waste of effort, they quit. If they’re getting paid for expenses, the time comes when the client makes the same calculation and stops paying.”
“Then I’ll be safe?”
She cocked her head and pursed her lips, then said reluctantly, “Not exactly. At least not yet.”
“Why not?”
“The client in your case can afford to replace them. But the replacement would have to start all over again at Las Vegas. Pros aren’t likely to turn over their information to competitors.” She shrugged. “I’m not saying you’re in the best position possible, but there are worse.”
“What’s worse than being chased by professional killers?”
She thought for a moment. “I guess the worst is if you’ve committed some really awful crime and people know it.”
“What would you do for a person like that?”
“Nothing,” she said.
16
