funnel shape of the fireplace probably acted to amplify sounds. The one in the table lamp had not just been stuck there. The base had been taken off and the wire split, spliced, and reconnected so the house current powered the microphone.
That was ominous, because it meant the technicians had been warned of the possibility that the surveillance might continue beyond the life of a battery. The kitchen had been bugged the same way, under the ventilation hood, with a little rewiring.
Jane had not bothered to try to find the bugs in the master bedroom. She had instead devoted her energy to the least likely guest bedroom, at the end of the hall, and taken it apart. The lamps were clean, the bed was clean, the bathroom was clean. She had taken all of the drawers out of the dresser because the backs and undersides of drawers were a favorite location. She had unscrewed the heat registers and the hollow rails of the towel racks. Since the F.B.I. was probably involved, she had unplugged the telephone. Devices existed for picking up and amplifying the faint signals that still came down the wire when the receiver was in its cradle.
That night she and Carey had slept in the master bedroom as usual, with a tape recorder running. The next night she and Carey had undressed in the master bedroom and turned off the lights. Then Jane had turned on the tape recorder and led Carey down the hall.
On her seventh day at home, Jane wrote Carey a note. It said, “I need Cipro, tape, dressings, etc. Can you get them?” Carey scrawled “Yes,” and reached to crumple the paper, but Jane held his hand and shook her head. The noise would be recognizable. Later she lit it at a stove burner, dropped it in the sink, and ran the ashes through the garbage disposal.
On the eighth day, before Carey came home from the hospital, she prepared him a written list marked “August”:
She randomly assigned dates to the August gatherings without regard to the real calendar. Then, to complicate everything, she added, “Remember, August is the month of the Green Corn celebration for all of us Hodenosaunee. I might make it to Cattaraugus, Tonawanda, Six Nations, Oneida, Onondaga, Akwesasne, Allegany, or Tuscarora near the end (30th or 31st). I’ll try to call.” She smiled. Just that list would give the F.B.I. plenty to sort out, and if they decided to keep an eye on her, they would have plenty of women with long black hair to look at. She stopped for a moment, and repeated the thought to herself: plenty of black-haired women.
She spent most of her time studying the police. Each morning the policewoman would put on her running suit and jog past the house at the same hour. The shift changed right after that, so no doubt she went home for her shower. The new shift included two men who followed Carey to work at 6:30, and two men to putter around the Water Department truck and monitor the bugs. Jane began to experiment with these two to see what happened when she left the house.
The answer was not unexpected. If Carey was already at work, then one man followed and the other stayed in the van to monitor the bugs. If she drove to the market, or drove to the river and jogged five miles, or went out, drove around the block, and came back, as though she had forgotten something, one man followed and the other stayed in the van.
She had been half-expecting that when she left, the man in the truck would head for the house to read their mail, but if they worked for the F.B.I., she supposed they would have read it before it was delivered. And the men obviously felt that hearing a live call from Dahlman instead of listening to it on tape ten minutes later was critical, but searching the house periodically to get evidence on Carey was not. That was a good sign.
Jane began to introduce variations on the routine in order to get them bored and overconfident. Sometimes she was in a big hurry, heading straight for the Thruway just above the speed limit. Once she drove to the airport, but that didn’t seem to make the follower nervous. Once she left late at night, and still the chase car kept its distance. The only way she could get them to add a second car was to pick up Carey and drag his follower along with hers.
On the ninth day she opened the newspaper and read the headlines: LAWMAKERS CAUGHT IN F.B.I. STING. There had been yet another patient, quiet effort to offer bribes to a group of congressmen, but judging from the article, the F.B.I. had become more sophisticated in the past few years, and played the game the way it was normally played. They had not dressed up like visiting Middle Eastern potentates. They had not had sleazy bagmen hand over briefcases full of cash in motel rooms. Instead they had gotten the cooperation of four genuine lobbyists, who had gone to congressional offices during business hours and offered checks made out to congressmen’s campaign funds in exchange for their explicit promises to sell their votes. The F.B.I. had then waited until a bogus law had been introduced and the congressmen’s votes recorded. It was good, but it wasn’t good for Jane. The old stings had been more vivid, and drawn more attention.
She looked down the page. There was a train crash near Boise, Idaho, the murders of three policemen in New Jersey. On the second page there were a few hot local issues, including a chemical company caught dumping waste in Lake Erie at night. Pages three and four ran the international stories that were probably important but didn’t sell newspapers. The second section of the paper had human-interest stories and what amounted to free publicity for various events arranged by public-spirited groups. She kept turning the pages and searching, but there was not a word about Richard Dahlman.
That afternoon she went to the public library on Main Street in Deganawida. A few minutes after she had gone to the corner to search the newspapers of other cities, Amy the librarian appeared at her shoulder. “Jane …”
Jane looked up and smiled. “Hi, Amy.”
Amy took off the silver spectacles that she wore only when she was working. “I know this is going to sound crazy …”
“Really?” asked Jane. “Then I’d love to hear it.”
Amy’s eyebrows tilted apologetically. “There’s this man who pulled up across the street just after you came in.”
Jane said, “Tall, kind of cute, like a young prizefighter with dark, curly hair?”
Amy put on her glasses again and looked over them at Jane. “I thought he was a little creepy.”
Jane shrugged and looked back down at her
“But you are, you bad thing.”
“I was offering him to you. It’s not social. He’s got me under surveillance.”
Amy was shocked. “Why?”
“It’s nothing, really. Carey operated on that man a couple of weeks ago. You know, the one who was supposed to be a murderer?”
“Well, of course I knew that. But why are the police …” Then her eyes widened. “It was a woman he killed. Did he threaten you or something?”
