anywhere. She’ll be just one more suspect who isn’t answering any questions.”
“You think she’ll hold out?”
“After what she’s done already, she doesn’t strike me as a person who panics under pressure,” said Marshall. “And the woman she used as a decoy started talking lawyers the second the door of her hotel room popped. These are not unsophisticated people. What her lawyer will tell her is to keep quiet.”
Grapelli sighed. At last he said, “All right. Let’s try this the easy way. Go take a look. The minute you’ve seen the place, you call me. But unless what you’ve seen is a good reason not to, what I’m going to tell you is to get a search warrant on the way to the police station, where you will pick up a few guys to kick down the door for you. Understood?”
“Understood.”
42
Jane packed all of her gear and her suitcase into her car, checked out of her two hotels, and then drove off. If Brian Vaughn got through the meeting, he would try to call her, and he would probably feel a moment of panic when she didn’t answer. But it would be only a moment, because within a few seconds she would be able to stand beside him and tell him there was nothing to worry about.
Jane glanced at her watch. She had timed this correctly. The sky was dark, but it was still two hours before the face-changers were supposed to arrive. She would have all the time she needed to get herself set and make sure she got a videotape of them walking under the street lamp and up to Vaughn’s door.
She parked her car two streets away, moved into the little back yard through the garden gate, then stole along the back of the driveway to hide behind the garbage cans. She looked into the eyepiece of the video camera to be sure that she could see enough of the street to pick them up. Then she set it down, turned on her intercom, and listened.
A voice that wasn’t Brian Vaughn’s said, “If it’s what you want, I guess we could arrange it.”
They were here already. Jane’s heart began to beat faster. She had come early, to see the house and hear what was going on inside before anyone could have expected her. They had come earlier. Since she had done it, she should have known that they would too. They knew what she knew.
The man said, “But we went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get you set up here. You put in months getting the locals used to you, so you’re part of the landscape. That’s a lot to throw away.” There was a brief pause. “And it’s expensive.”
“How expensive?” That was Brian Vaughn’s voice.
“Top-of-my-head figures? Let’s see,” said the man. “Suppose, just for example, it was Port Townsend, Washington, like you say. A pleasant little town, and a nice little house like this. That’s maybe three hundred. We can’t sell this one right away, so there’s no help there.”
“Why not?”
“We just bought it. If you’re not safe here with a new face, we can’t use it for somebody else, can we?”
“But I paid for it.” Jane began to feel tense. His tone was too argumentative.
“We’ll unload it in a year or two and you’ll get the money. Minus expenses and commissions. So figure three hundred for a new house and furnishings up there, you sign over this one, and another hundred on top, it’s going to cost you half a million to get moved.”
“What’s the extra hundred for?” Vaughn sounded angry. What was he doing? He was arguing over money he was never going to give them.
“Shipping and handling.”
There was a sharp laugh. A third voice. It must be a two-man team. Jane held her breath and listened. Just because there were two didn’t mean there weren’t more.
“What’s that?”
“That’s our time and trouble.”
There was a pause, and then Vaughn said, “All right.” Jane rose to a crouch. He had used the wrong tone. It wasn’t grudging and resentful enough. He couldn’t take the man through all that by arguing, and then simply agree.
The man seemed to have sensed it too. He said, “That okay with you?”
Vaughn said, “Sure.”
“You want to leave tonight or tomorrow?” That was the big question. The man was giving Vaughn a chance to salvage this, to save himself.
He gave the wrong answer. “I guess tomorrow. That would give me time to pack and make sure things look normal here.”
The man said, “Sounds good. You got any coffee?”
“I’ll go make some.”
She heard him walking off. Then she heard the man who had been quiet say, “What’s the best way?”
“We could cut his throat in the bathtub, so it won’t be such a big deal to clean it up.”
“I think we’ve got to get him out of here now, and do it on the way. We could drive him north of here, and pull off at one of those turnoffs for the beaches up there. Or maybe some campground.”
Jane set down the intercom and started moving toward the house. If she could get there before Vaughn finished making the coffee and left the kitchen, there was still a chance. She slipped around the corner of the house, up to the kitchen door, and tried to peer inside. The blinds were closed, and she could see only a narrow slice of empty tile floor through a crack at the corner.
She flung open the kitchen door, but she couldn’t see him. Where was he? She looked at the coffee maker on the counter. It wasn’t turned on yet, didn’t look as though he had even filled it. The voices were quiet now. Something must have happened in the brief time it had taken her to reach the house. They hadn’t even let him get started. But if they hadn’t killed him yet, she had to try. As she moved quietly toward the living room doorway, her breaths were shallow and quick, fighting the sick regret she knew she would not have time to feel.
She would have to read the pattern of sights in the room instantly while she was in motion—the positions of the men, where their hands were, what it would take to propel Vaughn out the door with her—and act before they’d had time to think. She stepped out of cover into the doorway, her eyes flicking about her wildly.
Brian Vaughn was alone, sitting on the couch, aiming a pistol at Jane. The three tape recorders he had watched her hide were lined up on the coffee table. From one of the them, the conversation resumed.
Vaughn’s voice said, “The coffee will be ready in a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” said the other man’s voice. “You know, Brian, we’ve been talking. We’d like to get you out of here tonight.”
Vaughn’s forehead was damp with a faint, sticky sweat. His skin seemed to have lost the suntan glow and bleached out to a pale gray. He looked terrified. His own voice came out of the recorder: “I’m a little bit worried about leaving without wiping this place for fingerprints and so on …” The sound seemed to distract him, irritate him, as though he was having trouble concentrating. He punched the button and the tape recorder stopped. He raised his head to yell, “She’s here!”
Jane hissed urgently, “You’ve still got a chance.”
He shook his head frantically, denying it as though he was trying to keep his ears from even hearing it.
“They were outside waiting for me to arrive, weren’t they?”
He seemed angry at her. “Of course they were.” Jane could see that he had lost his nerve hours ago, maybe blurted out the whole story the minute the face-changers had arrived. He hated her for not saving him, and for having tried. He hated her for his own collapse, and the longer he felt the danger that she had brought him, the more certain he seemed to be that she had caused it.
She stepped closer, whispering now. “You can still save us both.”
In reply, he jerked the gun up to point at her face, his arm muscles so tight that it looked as though he wanted to jab her with it. Jane saw a faint smirk playing about his lips, as though he were trying it on, testing the way it felt. She sensed that he was determined to show the face-changers how loyal he was: he was going to be
