could see him use the toe of his shoe to push the doormat an inch to cover the hole.
That night at 11:15 the guard at the front gate of Senior Rancho in Carlsbad recorded the entry of Julia Kieler to visit her father, Alan Weems. She had called him from Los Angeles, and when she pulled into the parking space assigned to his unit, he was standing at the door.
Jane walked immediately up to him and gave him a hug so she could place her body in front of his while she pulled him inside and locked the door. “I know this is probably as safe a place as any, but standing in lighted doorways is not a great habit for you.”
“I know, I know,” Dahlman muttered. “It’s the first occasion when I’ve felt the impulse, and it’ll probably be the last.”
“How have you been?”
He scowled. “If you have something to tell me, then out with it. If you don’t, we can go back to inquiring about each other’s health.”
“I have something I want you to look at.” She held up the videocassette. “Do you have a VCR?”
“No,” said Dahlman. “There’s one in the rec room, but the old ladies are probably in there now watching some old movie that they can recite by heart.”
“It’s okay,” said Jane. “It’ll just take a few minutes to hook up the camera to the television set and play it back. You do have one of those?”
“Over here,” said Dahlman. He pointed into the living room. “I don’t use it much.”
“No?” She plugged the line into the camera, then unplugged the lamp to plug in the camera’s AC adapter.
“No. The first couple of weeks I watched all the news, waiting for them to talk about me. Once or twice, they did. After that, it was pretty much what you said would happen. I’m old news.”
“You sound disappointed.”
Dahlman shook his head. “I was working up to thanking you, so I guess I should just grit my teeth and say it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The television set was crackling with snow and emitting an annoying buzz.
“Now what?”
Jane switched the channel. “Nothing. You just have to put it on an empty channel.” The buzzing stopped, then started again. “I’m rewinding it.”
He scowled. “I knew that.”
“Now be quiet and come closer and look.”
He stood where he was and watched. The picture flipped once, then settled to reveal the interior of C. Langer’s house: the bathroom, the living room, then closer and closer to the piano. “Somebody’s house?” said Dahlman. “Am I supposed to have been there or something?”
“Just watch.” Jane kept her eyes on Dahlman’s face.
The camera moved close to the first of the framed photographs on the piano. The sight of the woman and two children on the ski slope meant nothing. The picture of the man on the sailboat went by, and Dahlman’s arm shot out at it. “Stop!” he said. “Can’t you stop this thing?”
“We’ll go back to it,” said Jane. “Watch the rest.”
The camera moved into the kitchen. She watched Dahlman out of the corner of her eye when the camera zoomed in on the false driver’s license she had taken from the milk carton and laid on the counter. He straightened, then knelt on the rug to get closer. “How did you find him?” he murmured.
“So this is the one?”
Dahlman’s head turned sharply and the little gray eyes glared at her. “Of course it’s him. It’s the man who called himself James Hardiston. I operated on him.”
“Let me ask you this,” Jane began.
“But—”
“Wait. Could the man you operated on have graduated from college in 1965?”
“1965?” Dahlman was distracted by the image on the screen. “That would make him—”
“Mid-fifties.”
Dahlman squinted, then nodded. “Yes. He could easily be in his fifties. Go back to the beginning.”
Jane stopped the tape, rewound it, and started it again.
“Get ready to stop it.”
When the tape reached the figure of the man in the sailboat, Dahlman snapped, “Now.”
Jane stopped the tape. The image quivered and lines of static rolled upward across the man’s face like passing shadows.
“That’s him too,” said Dahlman. He was so excited that he stood and sidestepped back and forth. “You thought it was someone else, didn’t you?”
Jane let the tape run again. “I thought it was supposed to be his father,” said Jane. “I thought Sid Freeman cooked it up.”
“What’s that?” asked Dahlman as the image of the first pistol zoomed upward into focus.
“His gun. I wanted the serial number, and it’s better than writing it down.”
The second gun came on, and the tape reverted to snow and static. Dahlman looked disappointed, but Jane said, “Keep watching.”
The camera was on the front of the house. The door opened and C. Langer walked out to his car. Dahlman frowned. “It’s so hard to see from that picture.”
Dahlman clenched his jaw and watched. Each time the man with the dark glasses would come in or go out, there seemed to be less of him to see. He looked at Jane in confusion. “I think that’s the man, but he’s moving so fast, and he turns away, and those glasses—”
“Keep your eyes on the screen.”
There were a few seconds of darkness, then the printed letters of the newspaper, so close to the lens that they were difficult to make out. “What in the world is that?”
Jane had no time to answer. There was the flash of light, and then the man standing up holding the newspaper.
Dahlman waited impatiently until the moment when C. Langer bent over to pick up the coin and took off his sunglasses. “There!” Dahlman shouted. “That’s him!”
Jane stopped the tape and pressed the rewind button. Dahlman grinned at her expectantly. “Where is he?”
“At the moment he’s living in Santa Barbara. That may not be where he intends to end up, but it looked to me as though he was planning to stay put for a while. The house is pretty well chosen, and he’s put a lot into making it right. I don’t mean it’s expensive, although it is. I mean everything is consistent. He’s building an identity, a personality.”
“Fine,” he said impatiently. “So how do we do this—give the tape to the police?”
Jane looked at him apologetically. “I know you would like this to end. But I think that even if we could get the Santa Barbara police to hold this man and run his fingerprints—something I can’t imagine them doing—it probably wouldn’t solve your problem.”
“It proves I told the truth. I said I performed surgery on a man claiming to be James Hardiston. Any physician could examine this man and verify the plastic surgery. They might not be able to accurately describe every procedure we used, but there would be no argument about the fact of surgery. And I think the fellow’s fingerprints will prove he’s some kind of criminal living under a false name.”
“Yes,” said Jane. “But what kind?”
“That’s the job of the police—finding that out.”
Jane sighed. “He’s a runner. He spent a lot of money to get a new face and a solid identity and a lot of first- class treatment. Maybe his fingerprints will show that he’s done terrible things. Will they show he killed Sarah Hoffman?”
“Of course they don’t prove he did it personally. When she was killed he was still recovering from his last surgery.”
“Then what good are they to us?”
