Assumed Identity

Blood pooled around him.

Buchanan hurried toward the fallen man, aimed his pistol toward the man’s head, kicked his gun away, and checked for life signs.

The man’s eyes were open. The pupils were dilated. They didn’t respond when Buchanan shoved his fingers toward them.

Quickly, Buchanan searched the man’s clothes. All he found were a comb, coins, a handkerchief, and a wallet. He set the wallet on the table and hurried to get a small area rug that he’d seen in the living room. After rolling the body onto the rug, he pulled the rug along the hallway, through the living room, and toward a back door in the kitchen.

The oppressive night concealed him. Shivering, his skin prickling from the river’s dampness, Buchanan tugged the body across a screened porch, down three steps, and toward this deserted section of the river. He eased down the bank, found a log, hunched the body over it, shoved the log into the current, and watched as the body slipped off as soon as the current grabbed the log. The two objects drifted away, at once out of sight in the darkness. Buchanan threw the area rug as far as he could into the river. He took out the man’s gun, which he’d put beneath his belt, and threw it out into the river as well, obeying the rule of never keeping a weapon whose history you don’t know. Finally, he took out the killer’s cellular phone along with the three empty shell casings from his own semiautomatic-he’d picked them up as he left the house-and threw them toward where the gun had splashed. He stared toward nothing, took several deep breaths to calm himself, and hurried back to the house.

16

His ears rang from the roar of the gunshots. His nostrils widened from the stench of cordite and blood. Drawing his weapon had pulled the stitches in his side and strained the muscles in his injured shoulder. Tugging the body had further strained his side and shoulder. His head continued to feel as if a spike had been driven through it.

He locked the back door behind him, found another area rug, took it into the computer room, and set it over the pool of blood. Then he opened a window to clear the smells of violence. Next, he searched the man’s wallet, found close to three hundred dollars in various denominations, a driver’s license for Charles Duffy of Philadelphia, and a credit card for that name. Charles Duffy might be an alias. It probably was. It didn’t matter. If these credentials had been good enough for the killer, they were good enough for Buchanan. He shoved the wallet into his pocket. He now had a new identity. On the unlikely chance that anybody in this remote area had heard the shots and came to investigate, everything looked normal, except for the finger-sized hole in the hallway ceiling, which by itself wouldn’t arouse suspicion, although the pieces of plaster on the floor would. Buchanan picked them up and shoved them into a pocket.

With haste, he sat before the computer, glanced at the file directory on the screen-A B C D. .-moved the flashing cursor from A to D, and pressed RETURN.

The disk drive made a clicking sound. A new list of files appeared on the screen, a subdirectory for all the headings under D.

DARNELL

3k

DARNELL.BAK

3k

DAYTON

2k

DAYTON.BAK

2k

DIAZ

4k

DIAZ.BAK

4k

DIEGO

5k

DIEGO.BAK

5k

DOMINGUEZ

4k

DOMINGUEZ.BAK

4k

DRUMMER

5k

DRUMMOND.BAK

5k

DURAN

3k

DURAN.BAK

3k

DURANGO

5k

DURANGO.BAK

5k

Quickly Buchanan opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and took out the printed documents for D. The only way he could think of to learn whether someone had removed any of the files was to compare the names on the files with those in the computer’s subdirectory. Even so, he didn’t have much hope. The man who’d been hiding here to kill Juana had said that he’d erased some files in the computer, presumably to stop an investigator from doing what Buchanan was trying to do. Almost certainly, the computer’s list would match the names on the printed files. He wouldn’t be able to tell which documents were missing.

Each computer file had a companion file marked BAK, the short term for BACKUP, signifying that the computer’s memory retained the previous version of a newly updated file. DARNELL. DARNELL.BAK. Comparing, Buchanan found a printed file for that name.

He continued. DAYTON. DAYTON.BAK. Check. DIAZ. DIAZ. BAK. Check. DIEGO. DIEGO.BAK. Check. He was finding printed files for every name on the computer screen. DOMINGUEZ. DOMINGUEZ.BAK. DRUMMER. DRUMMER.BAK. DURAN. DURAN.BAK. DURANGO. DURANGO.BAK. Every name was accounted for.

He leaned back, exhausted. He’d wasted his time. There’d been no point in risking his life to come here. All he’d learned was that someone was determined to kill Juana, which he’d known already.

And for that, he himself had nearly been killed.

He rubbed his swollen eyelids, glanced at the computer screen, reached to turn off the computer, but, at the final instant, stopped his trembling hand, telling himself that no matter how hopeless, he had to keep trying. Even though the subdirectory for the files that began with T would probably be as uninformative as the subdirectory for D, he couldn’t ignore it.

He shifted his hand from the OFF button to the keyboard, about to switch subdirectories, when something about the image on the screen made him feel cold. He’d been aware that a detail had been troubling the edge of his consciousness, but he’d attributed his unease to apprehension and the disturbing aftermath of violence.

Now he realized what had been troubling him. His eyes had played a trick on him. DRUMMER. DRUMMER.BAK. Like hell. Drummer didn’t have a backup file. The backup file was for DRUMMOND. Buchanan was certain that he hadn’t seen a file for Drummond, but by now exhaustion so controlled him that he couldn’t trust what he thought he was sure of. His hands shook as he sorted through the printed files. DRUMMER. DURAN.