1947. Once he said it, everybody and his brother started seeing them. Maybe that’s the year when the U.F.O.’s got here. Maybe it’s just that once somebody makes something up, then it’s everybody’s. It gets to be another way to seem important, to have something to tell, because nothing that’s true about you is worth listening to. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, God, all that.”
“Do you think I could get to any of these guys—the old man, for instance?”
“The old man was here for a while, but he’s been dead a couple of years. The counterfeiter, name is Bill Ortega, I heard he was in federal prison back east someplace. I don’t know his girlfriend’s name. If you’ve got a lot of connections in the correctional system, maybe you can track him down.”
“What about the kid?” Seaver’s hands moved unseen from his lap to grip the support under the table.
Stillman squinted up into the air and smiled. “Now, him I don’t know about. I just don’t know. For years I’ve been wondering. Once in a while, I ask around with the guys who have been in a lot of joints all over. His name was Phil O’Meara. Nobody’s seen him, or seen his name on the count, or knows anybody who’s met him.” He smirked mysteriously. “Maybe he figured out to get the knot behind his ear and hung himself right.”
Seaver’s feet kicked out under the table and pushed Still-man’s chair over backward onto the floor. Seaver sprang up, used one arm to vault over the table, and came down with his knee on Stillman’s chest.
He spoke quietly, through clenched teeth. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? You think maybe, just maybe, they’ll forget who you are one day and let you unload the grocery truck so you can strangle the driver. Let me tell you something. It isn’t going to happen. And even if it did, and you got to her, she’d take one look at you and shut the door. You’re an evolutionary dead end, a throwback. She can smell it on you as well as I can. She can’t predict what you’re going to do next, because even you can’t. You’re a bad risk. Don’t hold out on me, because it’s nothing you’re ever going to use.”
Stillman seemed to be immune to surprise. His face seemed to slacken, to go blank in the prisoner’s stare. He looked past Seaver at the ceiling and said, “Two packs of cigarettes a week. A job in the library.”
“Done.”
“The box wasn’t in Los Angeles, it was in New York City. It’s Box 345, 7902 Elizabeth Street, in New York. There’s some fake name attached to it—a man’s name.”
Hours later, Seaver sat staring out through the scratched plastic pane of the window at the baggage carts and fuel trucks slipping past him backward as his airplane was pushed away from the terminal by a tractor with a tow bar. He thought about Earl and Linda again. When he had hired them, he had known a lot about Hatcher, but nothing about the woman. It was just as well, because this way he didn’t have to worry about bumping into them on this trip. With nothing to go on, they wouldn’t have seen her as the way to find Hatcher.
Now he had a few bits of information, and soon he would have enough. He stared at his watch for a moment, then carefully pulled the stem and set it three hours ahead. When he got to New York, he would still have time for some sleep. The hotel reservation was guaranteed, so the room would be waiting for him. The overnight package from Nevada would probably be there when he awoke. He could assemble the pieces of the gun after breakfast.
17
The telephone directory said that the 996 exchange meant that the telephone answering machine was in Deganawida. The road atlas said that the population of Deganawida was only 22,000 souls.
Linda Thompson sat at the desk in the little suite she had rented on the south side of Buffalo, her face illuminated by the computer screen. When Earl had initiated her ten years ago, tracking a person still meant going to counters in below-ground floors of old county office buildings and turning the pages of bound books of records while some sour-faced old clerk watched her out of the corner of her eye. Then she would fill out some form with a ballpoint pen with a chain on it, pay a fee in some strange number like three dollars, or six, but never five, and wait weeks for the copy to come in the mail.
Now all she had to do was put herself into a screen-trance, tap in the secret numbers and symbols, and then conjure what she wanted out of the air. She watched the lighted screen as she put in the mixture of upper- and lowercase letters, periods, slashes, pound signs in their correct order. The screen exploded into life with the company’s greeting, “Welcome to Probar Commercial Information Systems, Santa Ana, California.” There was a graphic of the front of a building with a big closed door like the vault of a bank. “User number?” said the screen.
Linda typed in the Northridge Detectives account number, the door appeared to swing open, and the doorway expanded beyond the borders of the screen as though she were stepping inside. The door was replaced by the menu. It was longer than it had been a month ago. PCIS had been collecting for seven or eight years now, and it had thousands of public records databases. She scrolled down the list quickly.
She moved her cursor to select “Tax Assessor’s Rolls.” She selected New York State. She selected Erie County. She selected City of Deganawida. The menu disappeared and the screen said, “Access charge five dollars. Do you wish to proceed? (Y/N).”
Linda tapped Y. She was guessing that this Jane woman did not live in an apartment building. The business of making people disappear did not lend itself to renting. It was almost inevitable that from time to time a client might show up in person, and renters on the same floor would wonder about it. Any clandestine business was best conducted from a free-standing building without a landlord who might drop in, and the address had to remain the same.
This Jane had apparently operated in Las Vegas as though she were good at it, and the people who needed to disappear badly enough to hire help doing it probably didn’t care what they paid. She could afford a house, especially in a backwater like Deganawida. Linda looked at the list that appeared on the screen. Now that she was in, she could manipulate the list. She asked it how many entries were on the list, and it said 5,864. Linda felt power begin to flow into her. The number was tiny. She ordered her computer to search for the word “Jane.”
The computer found sixteen Janes, a Janeway, and fifty-two houses on a Jane Street. She made a copy of each of the Janes. She was feeling more and more excitement as she went along. She had been in western New York for only a day, and already she had the list down to sixteen.
Linda relinquished her hold on the tax assessor’s rolls and returned to the main menu. She contemplated Jane. She was twenty-five to thirty-five years old, probably about thirty if Linda could trust Seaver’s description. She was tall, thin, dark-haired. She operated a very strange little business from one of these sixteen free-standing buildings in Deganawida. Would she have the office disguised as some kind of business? Linda could not decide. Was Jane one of the seven married women, someone like Ronald and Jane Schwartzkopf, Tenants in Common? Or was she one of the nine sole owners listed—Jane Hanlon, Jane Whitefield, Jane Carmen Rossi? Most of the women listed alone were probably widows or divorcees. Some would be too old.
Jane the woman who made people disappear would have a driver’s license. The driver’s license carried date of birth, height, weight, hair and eye color. Linda selected the Department of Motor Vehicles records: “Access fee ten dollars. Do you wish to proceed? (Y/N).” She began with the first of the sixteen names and scanned the information that had been printed on the license: Jane Anne Hanlon, DOB 08-09-29. Jane Pildrasky was HT 5-02, WT 160, HAIR BLD, EYES BLU. Jane Rossi’s license was RSTR: CORR LENS, DAYLIGHT ONLY. The Jane who had helped Pete Hatcher would never have picked a darkened room and a night escape if she could see only in bright light.
Before she relinquished the Department of Motor Vehicles records, Linda had eliminated all but four of the Janes who owned houses in Deganawida. All were HT 5-06 or better, HAIR BRN, DOB after 1960. She returned to the telephone directory and looked up the four names. She eliminated first Jane Sheridan and then Jane Whitefield because neither had the right telephone number. But then she discovered that none of the other Janes had it either. Of course. The Jane she wanted had to live a visible life in a small town. She would have a listed number in the book. It was the business phone that would be unlisted. Linda put Sheridan and Whitefield back in contention.
Linda stared at the main menu and let her reverie deepen. She picked up Jane and turned her around and around, looking at her closely, trying to feel her surfaces. Jane was a tall, lean, dark-haired, youngish woman who owned a house in Deganawida but was gone from it for periods of time. She probably operated much the way Linda
