“I’m trying to tell you that it’s a mistake. All of it.”
“And I’m trying to tell you that it doesn’t matter. Don’t imagine that your credentials and accomplishments will convince people you’re innocent, or that you’re harmless. Deep in the back of your mind you seem to have the notion that those things will make this come out all right—that the truth will save you. Maybe it will. But right now it won’t, and right now is reality. The future is just a theory.”
Dahlman sat in silence for a full minute. A few times he looked as though some retort was on his tongue, but each time he decided not to speak. Finally, he said with exaggerated patience, “It’s just that you mentioned Pittsburgh. We could stop and see if we could get some help. I have friends there.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I just told you—”
“Listen carefully, because this is important. You haven’t told me who was chasing you hard enough to make you run to Buffalo. But I know who has been chasing you since then, and I think I know who will join in the hunt. You came through several states and committed crimes in two.”
“What crimes?” His voice was irate.
“Fleeing to evade prosecution in Illinois and New York. That’s if you didn’t do anything else, and nothing happened on the way—like breaking into your own office in the university to get things before you left.”
Dahlman was shocked. “That’s absurd.”
“That’s a federal crime. School break-ins are investigated by the F.B.I. Crossing a state line while you were running is enough for them, though.”
“I’m not some mad bomber. I’m a physician.”
Jane sighed. There it was again. “They don’t know what else you are, and waiting isn’t a good way for them to find out. In one sense, it would be good for you if the F.B.I. does come in. They would take a very close look at whatever evidence there is that you killed someone, and at every piece of paper you owned. If there’s anything that will clear you, they’re more likely to find it than anyone else is, and they have no reason to conceal it. But in the short term, they’re trouble, because they’re better at finding people than any local cops can be. They make stopping in with out-of-town friends and relatives a very bad idea, both for you and for the friends and relatives. Your friends can be charged as accessories if they so much as fail to turn you in. It’s hard to think of a friend you trust with your life but also don’t mind putting in that kind of fix.”
“I never intended to get anyone else in trouble. I was simply thinking of ways to make this easier.”
“What we want isn’t easier, it’s less predictable. There are experts chasing you now. They’re using this time to find out everything about you. You’re hurt, so where will you go? Probably to a friend who is a doctor. I’ll bet you know a dozen who would take care of you for a month without turning you in. Good for you. But twelve is a tiny number for the F.B.I. to check, and if they’ve already been called in they’re busy tonight compiling the list of names and addresses. If you had them written down someplace when you left Chicago, the F.B.I. already has a list. They don’t have to waste time flying around the country to find these people, they just have to phone the agents already in the cities where they live. I’m sure you had money—bank accounts and retirement accounts and stocks and bonds. Unless you kept it in cash a distance from home or in offshore banks under a false name, then forget it. The second you touch any of the accounts, bells and whistles will go off in the J. Edgar Hoover Building.”
Dahlman glared at her angrily. “You’re trying to get me to give up, aren’t you? To go into some police station and turn myself in, because I’m going to be caught.”
Jane looked into his eyes and held the gaze, unblinking, for a moment before she returned her eyes to the road. “No. I’m making sure you know at the outset what it costs when you decide to run. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t pleasant. And most of all, it isn’t a sure thing. If you want to survive, you have to change who you are. You don’t just get to run away from one bad incident in the past and keep the rest—the respect and gratitude you earned, the friends and family you love, the status you enjoyed. The past is what the police will use to find you. And I don’t know much about those two men at the hospital, but I wouldn’t want to make it too easy for them, either.”
Jane had managed to plant a few bits of the truth in his brain, and over the next few hours his mind would be working out the rest, whether he wanted it to or not. She hoped she had said enough to keep him scared, quiet, and docile for the next few hours, while the trail was still hot and any mistake could be fatal.
Adult males had always been the most difficult kind of runner to guide. All of that self-reliance and aggression that they had painfully developed as survival characteristics got in the way and made their impulses foolish. It was true: women stopped and asked for directions, and men didn’t. Even the way they looked was against them. Their hair was almost always too short to change much, the differences between the kinds of clothes they wore were minuscule. As she thought about Dahlman, what came to mind was a list of ways in which he was the worst ever. He was wounded and weak, and could easily get worse instead of better. If he did, she couldn’t even take him to a doctor, because apparently in that closed, limited world, he was famous. And he was older, more brittle, and attached to his own habits of mind.
It struck her as odd that she had used the comparative: “older.” Older than whom? Not just older than the usual male in trouble. Older than Carey. She admitted to herself that the worst mental habits that Dahlman had were familiar to her, because her husband had a milder, less irritating case of them. Dahlman never let a statement of fact go unquestioned and unexamined. Is it a fact? How do you know? Doesn’t that contradict this other fact?
That was Carey, and so was the casual, unconscious assumption he had picked up in medical school that he was one of the good guys, so nobody would wish to do him harm. It was one of the qualities that she had always loved about Carey. It made him cheerful, pleasant, and self-assured enough to look goofy once in a while without getting defensive. He moved through the world smoothly, telling people what was good for them and quietly smiling through their irrational protests and retaliations like a parent waiting for a tantrum to end. She loved it now, when he was thirty-four. Would she love it in thirty years, when he had earned the kind of adulation and status that Dahlman had, when more confidence was heaped on top of the conviction and it started to sound a whole lot like arrogance?
As she drove along the dark highway all she could think about was Carey. The questions she had been holding in the back of her mind for hours tumbled into view. Carey had been adamant that Jane must never again drive along a dark highway with a fugitive in the seat beside her. The reasons had been carefully assembled and calmly presented. But all of the arguments had been made on the assumption that runners were certain kinds of people. Some had caused their own problems, and others were victims. The victims were usually women and children. There were people besides Jane Whitefield who would be willing to take the risks to save them. All Jane had to do was keep a list of those quasi-illegal organizations who hid abuse victims and make a call or two, and the person would be picked up. The ones who weren’t exactly victims, just people who had acquired enemies but had not done anything bad enough to deserve to die just yet, could be handled differently. Carey had grudgingly conceded that if Jane felt it was justified, she could give a person like that a set of false papers left over from the old days, a handful of hundred-dollar bills, and a half hour of advice before she sent him on his way. Carey was very good at constructing fair, logical solutions to other people’s problems.
She glanced at Dahlman. He was staring ahead, motionless. She looked at him longer and harder, waiting for him to blink. Was it possible he had just …
He said, “Don’t worry. I’m not dead. I was just daydreaming.”
Jane pulled the car onto the shoulder of the dark road. “Get in the back and stretch out. Maybe you’ll be able to sleep a little.”
He climbed out and lay down in the back seat. “Might as well. Not that it will be easy, now that you’ve convinced me I’m homeless, penniless, and friendless.”
“Not friendless,” said Jane. “You’ve got me.” She didn’t like the way that sounded. Maybe some reassurance would help him sleep. “The police and the F.B.I. will be working hard on building a case against you, and it would be a very unusual frame that could stand up to that kind of attention. All they have to do is detect some flaw that proves one piece of evidence against you is faked. If it’s faked, the killer faked it, and that can’t be you.”
“Then all I’ll have to worry about is a pair of men I’ve never seen before coming in the night to kill me.”
“If the frame fails, killing you afterward won’t put it back together,” said Jane. “Those men will have other things to do—like making sure they’re not caught.” She forced a smile. “We just have to keep you out of sight a little while and let the police straighten it out.”
As she drove along the dark road in silence, she wished that she were as sure as she had sounded.
