the car was missing.”
“Where was Vaughn?”
“Supposedly some servants said he was in Europe, some said they didn’t know. Anyway, the stories didn’t exactly match.”
“Did he have a family?”
“Sure did. His parents were really old—living in Florida. They said he had mentioned some time before that he was going to Europe. Anyway, you get the idea. Nobody knew which country he was in or when he left, but everybody was sure it was at least a week before this girl shows up dead in his car. Nobody can get in touch with him. Only suddenly, he’s got a lawyer.”
“How did the lawyer explain that?”
“The usual. He’s a family friend, he wonders if he can be of help to the police, and so on.” He looked at her nervously. “What time is it?”
“One forty-three. Do you know the lawyer’s name?”
“I never asked. It wouldn’t mean anything to me.”
“What happened next?”
“The police look closer. It seems Vaughn has a record.”
“What kind?”
“On paper, it’s spoiled-kid stuff. Driving fast and parking wherever, then not paying until the car gets impounded. But they also turn up a few people who hate Brian Vaughn, and one of them gives them the names of a couple of young ladies who were given large amounts of money years before. Sure enough, they’re real. Both decline to say what the money was for. The money came from Vaughn’s parents.”
“Go on.”
“The police are drooling. Now they want this guy bad. They don’t have enough to charge him with anything, and there’s no way they can go public and treat him like a fleeing suspect.”
“The car wasn’t enough?”
“They can’t shake the alibi until they find out what it is. They figure if they give him a DNA test, he is almost certainly going to be the missing player in the sex scene. He is also going to have to prove how and when he went to Europe, how his stolen car got to Boston without being hot-wired, and numerous other things too time- consuming to mention when my fucking house is about to burn down.” He sat up.
“You’ve got time,” she said as she raised the pistol. “Why do you know all this?”
“Who hasn’t been heard from?”
“The girl’s family. Who was she?”
“She was from New York. Vaughn definitely knew her. But everybody thought she was in New York that night, and there’s no proof Vaughn was around. Her family had a little money, and they hired a guy—a detective—to unravel all this stuff, and this is what he found out.”
“Was any of this in the papers?”
“Sure. ‘Amanda Barnes found dead in stolen car. Owner could not be reached for comment by press time.’ ”
“How did Vaughn manage that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the lawyer was working overtime. And maybe the police helped. They don’t usually want it all over the news that a guy like this is their only suspect until they’ve got their hands on him. He had the money and the sort of history that would make them think he could stay in Europe forever. They asked Interpol to watch for him and let him know they wanted to talk. Big silence on the other end.”
“You still haven’t exactly said how you heard. Did you know the detective?”
“Not personally.”
“Then how?”
“Word got around.”
“How much is the girl’s family offering?”
“A hundred grand. I added him to my list when I heard about it. I figured if he was in Europe, his smartest move wouldn’t be to fly into Logan Airport or Kennedy. It would be to stay in Europe until somebody gets around to losing some physical evidence or they arrest somebody else for something similar. But if he got homesick, he’d fly in at L.A., where nobody’s expecting him.”
Jane nodded. “We only have about five minutes left. The police haven’t charged him. If you saw him, you couldn’t grab him and drag him to a station. You couldn’t handcuff him and take him on a plane to Boston. Just what were you supposed to do for a hundred thousand?”
“Detain him.”
“Detain him for whom?”
“For whoever is willing to pay me the hundred thousand.” He fidgeted. “Now, can I go?”
“Which was it? Were you supposed to do it yourself, or tie him up and call somebody?”
His eyes shifted wildly. He looked at the door, he looked at her, then at the door again. “The hundred was for killing him. If I could keep him alive long enough for the girl’s father to fly out here and blow his brains out, that was two hundred.”
Jane sighed. She glanced at her watch and stood up. “All right,” she said. “You’ve got thirty-three minutes to go save your house and your spotless reputation.”
She held the gun on him as she walked close to the bed and used her pocketknife to slice the wrist restraint.
Jardine stood up. In the back of his mind was a reckless urge. He had insurance on the house, and his equity in it was less than forty thousand anyway. Having her in his hands would be like having millions. What was in the house, anyway? Cheap clothes, furniture that was ten years old and had stains on it from things that had gotten spilled, and … oh, yes. Heroin.
He took a step toward the door, then went back to the bed and picked up the picture of his mother, and his eyes met hers. “I won’t forget this.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I mean next time I see you I might just kill you.”
Jane shook her head. “No,” she said. “You wouldn’t take the chance that I might be worth money.”
Jardine stared at her and heard his breath hiss in and out through his teeth. He half-formed a plan to stop at a phone booth and call someone to break into his house while he waited for her outside. His friends and colleagues paraded through his mind, but each face had something hidden behind it—maybe greed, maybe the suspicion of unspoken malice. He turned, rushed out, and ran across the little parking lot toward his car. As he flung the door open he heard distant sirens. He muttered, “Don’t let that be a ten-car pileup on the freeway.” To whose ear he had spoken, or why he had taken three precious seconds to say it, he had no idea.
Jane waited until she had seen Jardine drive as far as the freeway entrance, then walked out of the building and down the street to her car. When she had started the engine and was almost to the same freeway entrance, she allowed herself to feel relief. For some reason, the part she felt most relieved about was a tiny detail. She was glad that he had chosen to move in when she had wanted him to—when she was walking up to a car she had never seen before in the middle of a deserted parking lot and pretending it was hers. Once he was standing in front of her, she had been too busy to feel afraid.
As she drove north toward Santa Barbara, her thoughts turned to Brian Vaughn. Jardine had insinuated that the family had been supplying him with money since he had disappeared. Certainly he had spent more than he could have carried with him. The face-changers had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep protecting him afterward. They would only do that if they thought the money was going to keep on coming and they couldn’t get their hands on it all at once.
Other little details made Jardine’s story seem right. If the police were playing Vaughn carefully, trying to lure him home, they might behave as Jardine had said. Vaughn had been in a very difficult position. The police had not charged him, but they would certainly keep quietly looking for him until they found him, so he couldn’t go anyplace where people would recognize him. He also had to worry about how many people like Jardine might be looking for him. The only solution had been to stop calling himself Brian Vaughn, and stop looking like Brian Vaughn.
What had not struck Jane as right was the story Jardine had told her about the crime, but she had to take into account that it had probably been of little interest to Jardine. The dead girl had been found in Brian Vaughn’s
