Shadow Woman (18 page)

He shrugged. “I’m
not sure. Yes, I guess so. I just don’t know what.”

She smiled like an aging
dance-hall girl in a Western movie. “Let’s narrow it
down. You want to buy a handgun.”

He smiled back at her. “That’s
right.”

“Are you an old shooter?”

“No. I’ve never even
fired one of these.”

“What do you want it for?
Target range or protection?”

“Protection. You know,
burglars and so on.”

She stared at him for a moment
as though she were estimating his hat size. “Well, okay. You
know, of course, that if somebody comes into your house, what he
really doesn’t want to see is one of these.” She pointed
to a short-barreled pump shotgun on me rack behind her.

“I suppose not,” he
said. “But I’d rather have something small.”

She nodded. “And you’ve
never fired a pistol. Are you mechanically inclined? Fix your own
car?”

Keller shook his head. “Never.”

She
opened the case thoughtfully with a key on her belt, selected four
pistols, and set them side by side. “There’s this,”
she said. “It’s a Beretta 92. A
good, reliable nine-millimeter semi-automatic. A lot of police forces
use it, and there’s a similar model that the army uses. This is
the kind of gun that you have to take apart to clean and oil, and put
back together right. I don’t recommend that for a novice.”

“What do you recommend?”

She showed him a revolver with a
short barrel. “This is a Ruger SP 101. It’s a .38 Special
and it’s small and lightweight. It doesn’t pop up and hit
you in the face from the recoil when you fire it It’s easy to
care for, and won’t let you down.” She leaned close to
him and spoke from the side of her mouth. “It’s the model
we usually recommend for women who don’t know anything about
guns.” She watched him for a reaction.

He smiled. “That sounds
like just the thing. I’ll take two.”

“Really?”

“Is that a bad idea?”

“No,” she said. “I’d
be delighted to sell two.” She pulled a set of forms from a
tray behind the counter. “Fill these two out, and after the
waiting period is up, you can come get your guns.” She put away
the row of pistols, then stopped, holding the one he had picked out.
“As you know, it would be illegal for you to carry a concealed
weapon. This is a model you have to be very careful with in that
regard. It would be possible to put one of these in your coat pocket
and go out without noticing it. Your friends wouldn’t see the
bulge. Of course, when you reached in and discovered your mistake,
the compact size would be a great advantage because you could take it
back home without embarrassment.” She winked and locked the gun
in the case.

Linda
Thompson sat at the edge of her chair in the dark and watched the
front door of Pete Hatcher’s apartment building. She liked
looking through the night-vision binoculars, liked the way everything
showed up green and glowing. She even liked the fact that Earl had
spent nearly nine hundred dollars on them. His aching need for the
best toys and gadgets gave her a lever to keep him a little bit off
balance. Any time he felt the urge to say something about what she
spent, she had been able to point to a gizmo that cost twice as much.
She was careful not to let Earl notice how much she liked looking
through the binoculars. They made her feel as though she had the
senses of some sleek, beautiful animal lying in wait in the jungle,
its eyes bright and yellow, able to see its dim-sighted, clumsy,
hoofed enemy stumbling through the underbrush toward her.

Tonight she could feel her heart
beating in her chest, the blood carrying more oxygen to her fingers
and toes than it had since they had arrived in Denver. The air was
clear and thin here, and she had hated that until her body had
adjusted to the altitude.

Linda was feeding on Pete
Hatcher’s fear and indecision. Five nights ago she had seen him
walk down the street at about nine, and come back at nine thirty
carrying a single big grocery bag back to his apartment. He had done
the same thing three nights ago. Tonight, she knew he was thinking it
was time to go get some more food. She was sure he wanted to get into
his car and drive somewhere – to a giant supermarket in some
other part of town, or to a good restaurant. He had not done it
because he was afraid. He was afraid to go where there were bright
lights and a lot of people, even though his craving for them was
almost physical. Those moments in crowded public places must be
precious to him because they felt like safety, but he seemed to know
they were not good for him. People would see his face. His car
represented the same kind of problem. He had probably bought it
because it kept him from feeling helpless and trapped, but he sensed
that he needed to keep away from it.

She saw him at the window of his
apartment. He stood to the side in the darkened room and looked out,
first at the little park, then up and down the street. She raised the
magnification and studied his face. He was getting ready, and he was
anxious. She saw him move away from the window. “I think he’s
coming down,” she said.

She listened to Earl’s
voice behind her ear, but kept the binoculars trained on the front
entrance of the apartment building. “Everything’s ready,”
he said. “Don’t worry.” He was talking to her like
one of his dogs, low and soft. She liked it. “Just keep him in
sight. That’s all you need to do.”

She saw Hatcher stop inside the
lighted entry and pretend to check his pants for his wallet and keys,
just buying time while he studied the street outside for signs of
danger. He would do one last thing, and she waited for it, holding
her breath. He reached behind him and put his hand under his coat to
tuck in his shirt. She had known he would tell her. He was carrying
the gun, the cute Ruger SP 101 he had bought a week ago. He had
bought it because he was afraid, and now that he had it, he was
afraid of the gun. “He’s got the gun in his belt in the
small of his back, under his coat.”

“Fine,” said Earl.

“He’s out. He’s
walking straight down the street toward the store.”

“Time to go,” said
Earl.

Linda handed him the binoculars.
While he was putting them in their case, he checked his watch. “It’s
nine twelve.

Give him until nine twenty-two
to get there and get busy shopping. Be there at nine twenty-seven.”

“Right,” she said,
and went out the door without letting herself look at his eyes. Let
him wonder.

As she drove along the dark
street, she teased herself gently. It would have been much easier to
sit comfortably in the darkness of the hotel room and watch through
the night-vision binoculars while Earl popped him with the fancy
British sniper rifle through the window. The silencer on that thing
would have made the whole episode sound like a bird bumped against
the glass and broke its neck. But Earl could never feel satisfied
unless he made Linda get a taste of it too.

Earl couldn’t just crudely
cut him down with a rifle. Linda had to fool him first, make him into
an accessory to his own death. He wasn’t going to be a leaking
corpse lying on a kitchen floor. He was going to be one of those guys
who walked off toward the grocery store and simply never came back.
If the police got called in a week or two, they wouldn’t know
whether to look for a corpse or a rent jumper.

David Keller walked out of the
small grocery store trying to evaluate the odds. If he continued to
walk to Danny’s to buy his food, he could just go on buying a
little bit at a time and paying cash. If he went to a big supermarket
and bought everything he would need for a couple of weeks, he would
decrease the frequency of his trips. That would decrease his
vulnerability. But he would have to take the car, and he would be
seen by more people, and flash more cash, and that would increase his
vulnerability.

He hurried to cross the little
blacktop parking lot in front of the store where he was lit up by
neon beer logos in the window and the yellow sodium light over the
tall Danny’s Market sign. He moved quickly onto the sidewalk,
where he could stay out of the light. Jane had not had time to
explain everything to him, but she had told him he would do well
enough if he just maintained the right attitude. He reached behind
him to feel whether the revolver was riding up under his coat.

As he touched the lump he felt a
small twinge of anxiety.

She had implied that a gun was
not a good idea. She had said, “You’re out of Las Vegas,
trying to live a new life in, say, Chicago. You see the same car
outside your apartment for three nights in a row. On the fourth
night, at midnight, you see the car pull up again. Two men get out.
After a minute you hear a knock at your door. What do you do?”

“Do I have a gun?”

“Yes.”

“I get it ready, hold it
where they can’t see it, and open the door to see who they
are.”

“Right hand or left?”

“Right.”

“They’re your new
neighbors, young single guys who go out every night, a lot of fun.
They noticed you watching them through the window, so they knew you
were up and decided to ask you over for a drink. One of them holds
out his right hand to shake. Or they’re cops. The good guys.
They’re watching the neighborhood because somebody has been
selling drugs. They came up to see who you are: maybe you’re a
witness, but maybe the reason they haven’t caught the dealer is
that there’s a lookout, and it’s you. At that hour
they’re going to ask if they can come in to talk to you. Or
maybe you were right, and they’re professional killers, come to
get you. You have the gun in your right hand. You open the door with
your left, so you’re ready. They know who you are, but you
don’t know them. They won’t hesitate. You will.”

“What was the right
answer?”

“What would you do if you
didn’t have a gun?”

He had shrugged. “I guess
I’d figure out who they were without answering the door. You
said it was after midnight.”

“Good,” she said.
“Now you know the main thing about guns.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“They make you act
differently. And they’re no good unless you’re positive.
You have to be so sure that you’re willing to kill the two men
at the door right away – not look closer, or ask them anything,
just pull the trigger.”

“If they come to my door,
intending to kill me, shouldn’t I do that?”

“That’s up to you.
What would you do after you killed them? There’s been a lot of
noise, and now there are two bodies bleeding in your doorway. Five
quarts of blood each.”

“Run, I suppose. Get away.
I couldn’t very well hang around to talk to the police.”

“Good. What if you didn’t
kill them, just ran instead? Do you get anything from killing them
first?”

“More time?”

“It’s after midnight
in an apartment building. You’ve fired at least two shots into
a hallway. Your neighbors are up dialing 911. The response time on
‘shots fired’ calls in a big city averages around three
minutes, and they usually redirect the helicopters at the same time.”

He had said, “I give up.
Forget the gun.” Maybe he had known even as he said it that he
had been lying. Now, while he walked down the dark, quiet street
lined with big, dark houses that had been segmented into apartments,
he felt a little better because of the gun.

He turned the corner and walked
down the darker side street, carrying his grocery bag in his left
arm. He saw the woman long before she saw him. She had the hood of
her car open, and she was standing in front of it, leaning over and
staring down into the engine with a little keychain flashlight.

Keller walked along the sidewalk
until he was within twenty feet of the car. She reached out
tentatively and touched something. It must have been hot, because she
instantly drew back her hand, gave a little “Ooohf” and
sucked her fingertips.

He could see her face in the dim
glow of the little flashlight, and it looked so perfect that the air
in front of him solidified and cut his speed by half. She had long,
shiny blond hair that was pulled tight along the sides of her head
and held back in an intricate braid, and skin that glowed. As she
drew her fingers out of her mouth he saw long pointed nails that
showed she had not spent much time staring into the engines of cars.
She wore tight blue jeans and a jacket of some fabric that looked
like canvas but couldn’t have been, and the engine she was
staring into belonged to a pearl-cream Lexus LS 400 that cost about
sixty thousand dollars. She walked around to the trunk and opened it
as Keller came abreast of the car. When the light came on and he
could see her eyes welling with tears, he stopped.

Whatever anyone thought of women
like her, none of them were in the business of ratting on fugitives.
As it happened, David Keller liked women like her very much. He
missed them. Instead of approaching and spooking her, he called to
her from the sidewalk.

“I see you’ve got
trouble. Can I call the auto club for you or something?”

She swung her head around,
startled. She didn’t seem to have remembered that she wasn’t
marooned alone on the surface of the moon. She studied him for a
second, seemed to be noting that he had clean pants and a respectable
sport coat on. But the fact that he was carrying a grocery bag seemed
to make the difference. Jane had been on the money once again. If
people could see that you were out on your own business, it was
better than a pile of testimonials.

She smiled, and he could see the
lush, ripe lips part to show perfect white teeth. She shrugged and
held her shoulders in an embarrassed cringe. “My membership
lapsed. I called them, and they ran me on the computer, and then I
noticed my card was expired.”

“I’m sorry,”
said Keller. He stepped a little closer to her car – not to
her, but to the open hood. He would let her do the approaching. “I
used to have one of these. They’re usually pretty dependable…”
The sentence died in his throat. He could not believe he had let that
slip out. It wasn’t like looking at a ten-year-old car and
saying, “I used to have one.” This one was new.