Shadow Woman (25 page)

Seaver was satisfied that he was
going about this in the right way. The three partners had ultimately
left the strategy up to him. Earl and Linda were probably getting
close to payday by now, so whatever he did, he had to avoid getting
in their way. He might have left a message on their answering
machine, asking them to get in touch with him. But leaving a message
like that on the answering machine of two professional killers
required an absolute belief that they could not get caught,
recognized, or traced on this job. The world didn’t always work
that way. Anybody who had worked in Las Vegas for ten years had seen
the ball stop on the double zero a few times.

He had considered tracing their
movements and trying to catch up with them. But Earl would not look
upon his sudden, uninvited appearance as a favor. It was, in the way
these people looked at things, a terrible insult and a violation of
their agreement.

Seaver suddenly showing up would
mean that there were three people for bystanders to notice, instead
of just two. And he would have traveled there by a separate route.
That doubled the number of trails that later might be traced to
Hatcher’s body. He was not at all sure that he wanted to place
himself in some distant city with those two at the precise moment
when he convinced them that he was so unprofessional and unreliable
as to be an actual danger to them.

No, what he was doing made more
sense. Earl and Linda were looking for Hatcher. He was looking for
the woman. After he found her would be the time to think about
meeting them. Then he would have something to bring to the party.

He had assigned five men just to
talk to people who were in the chase-and-find business – skip
tracers, retrievers who worked for bail-bond outfits, freelance
bounty hunters – to see if any of them had ever come across a
woman like this. A few of them had heard vague stories, but none of
them knew anything that could lead to an actual living woman. It was
then that he had realized that he was going about solving the problem
backward.

The people most likely to know
about her would be the ones in the run-and-hide business. He had
called an old friend from the police department who had quit at about
the same time he had and had gone to work in the California prison
system. Seaver had not described his problem but had described the
sort of prisoner he wanted to talk to. He needed one who had been in
lots of jails in different parts of the country and who had drawn a
long sentence the last time out. But most important, it had to be one
who had a history of trading information for favors.

Seaver saw the low, drab
buildings, the fence, and the watch-towers undulating in the heat
waves across a barren field far back from the highway. He turned up
the long, narrow drive that led to the small parking lot outside the
gate and glanced at his watch. The drive out here had taken longer
than he had expected, but he supposed it wouldn’t much matter.
In order to miss this guy, Seaver would have to be about twenty years
late.

As he turned off his car engine,
he stopped to glance in the rearview mirror. Then he got out and put
on his coat. He had chosen his clothes carefully. He wore a dark-gray
summer-weight suit that cost more than his first new car. His white
shirt was marine-pressed with the front and collar starched stiff,
and the cuffs showed only a glimpse of his Rolex Oyster watch. A
naive observer would have interpreted the bow tie as a whimsical
touch, but Seaver didn’t expect to meet any naive observers. He
was going into a maximum-security prison, where it was well known
that nobody with a functioning brain wore anything tied around his
neck with a slip-knot.

He walked to the gate, handed
his driver’s license to the guard, watched him compare it to
the list on his clipboard, then obeyed the invitation to step inside.
He held up his arms and stood with his legs apart as the second guard
ran a metal detector up and down his body, then ran a hand through
several of his pockets. He submitted to the preliminaries patiently.
Security was his business, and he knew that each stage of the process
had two purposes. Scanning the human body for chunks of metal or
contraband was the easy part. The hard part was studying the visitor
to see if he had something hidden in his head. Each of these
meaningless little steps was a test. A normal person would gradually
get used to following the unfamiliar rules that applied in a place
like this. The person hiding some rash and violent scheme would
either feel his nerve draining out of him or get frustrated to the
point of blind, undirected rage. Security was mainly a question of
finding out whom you were letting breach your perimeter.

Seaver was directed into a small
anteroom where he could be kept isolated until they were sure that he
wasn’t carrying anything that would make him a match for more
than one man and that the identification he had given them was real.
After ten minutes he was admitted to a room with a desk, where he
could be observed while he signed in and had time to check off his
compliance with each of the regulations listed on a form and acquaint
the guards with the purpose of his visit on another form. It was only
after his forms had been completed, read, and determined to be
satisfactory that the next door was opened and his escort beckoned to
him.

When he walked through the
doorway, he noted with approval that there were two guards, the first
to lead the way and serve as turnkey and the second to follow a half
step behind and to his right, either to protect Seaver’s weak
side or take advantage of it, as events dictated.

They took him on a long trek
down hallways broken at intervals by steel grates that had to be
opened with a key and an electronic code. They walked under
surveillance cameras recessed in wall niches that one prisoner
standing on another’s shoulders could not reach and covered
with plastic plates that would probably stop a bullet. He admired the
premeditation of the system and felt a tiny twinge of envy at its
blatancy. Here it was an advantage to be obvious – to convince
inmates that escape was ludicrous, that movements inside the complex
were monitored, and that disturbances could be isolated instantly.
Seaver had to work under more difficult circumstances. The few
devices and precautions he could use legally had to be subtle and
decorative.

The two escorts led him into a
windowless room with a bare wooden table and two chairs. He sat down
in the chair facing the door and waited. He had sat for twenty
minutes before the two guards reappeared with Stillman, Ray Q. He was
a little above middle height, but he slouched the way violence-prone
convicts often did, the hips forward and the back hunched in a
question mark stance that invited an approaching stranger to take the
first swing.

When Stillman turned to hold his
wrists out for the guards to unlock his manacles, his back looked
like the hood of a cobra, spreading wide as it rose from the thin
waist, and then rounding inward at the top because of the slouch that
kept the hands and knees forward and the gut pulled back.

The guard wordlessly declined to
unlock the manacles. He simply glared at Stillman and left.
Stillman’s predatory eyes focused on Seaver as he sat down, his
thin lips coming up at the corners a little to convey his
interpretation of the demonstration: I’m too dangerous for you.

Seaver reached into his shirt
pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes, pulled the strip to remove
the cellophane, tore off the foil, and thumped the pack to raise a
cigarette. He lit one with a match, then held it out. Stillman
reached across the table with both hands, stuck it in the corner of
his mouth, rested his hands in his lap, and waited.

Seaver looked at him for a few
seconds, then said, “I’m Seaver. I can’t get you
out of here. I can’t get you a new trial. If you ever get a
parole hearing, I won’t be there to tell them you cooperated in
an investigation. I won’t be there at all.”

Stillman looked at him
expectantly, and Seaver knew he had begun well. They were all experts
in the ways that the system could be manipulated, and the ways that
it couldn’t. After about two convictions they also knew that
false hope worked on them like poison, and they hated anyone who
tried to force it on them. “Here’s what I can do. Captain
Michnik is an old friend of mine. If you have the answers to my
questions, he will help you right now, starting today. You don’t
have to wait six months for an official letter that’s never
going to come.”

“What kind of help are you
offering?”

“A little slack. You’ll
get a better job, if what you want won’t be so obvious it’ll
get you killed. If a guard is down on you, he’ll be rotated to
another block. If you’ve done anything recently that you need
to skate on, he’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“What does that cost me?”

“I heard something, and I
want to know more about it.”

“What did you hear?”

“I heard there’s a
woman who hides people.”

Stillman blew out a quick puff
of smoke. “A lot of women hide people.”

Seaver slowly shook his head.
“This one is a professional. If you’re in trouble, you
hire her to get you out of it. She comes and whisks you away –
makes you disappear. I guess she must get you a new name and new
papers, maybe a job.”

“Which are you?”

“What?” snapped
Seaver.

“You thinking of
disappearing, or are you looking for somebody?” His head was
cocked to the side, and his eyes squinted through the smoke.

Seaver gave a half smile and a
snort. “Do I look like somebody who has that kind of problem?”
He shot the cuffs of his immaculate white shirt so he could be sure
Stillman saw his watch and the perfect fit of his tailored suit.

Stillman shrugged. “You
look like somebody who might develop some problems if you got sent to
a place like this – or even if somebody in here got out. If you
know the captain, maybe you put some of them in.”

“Could be,” said
Seaver.

Stillman nodded with amusement.
“That’s it, isn’t it? Somebody you don’t want
to turn your back on dropped out of sight?”

“No,” Seaver said.
“I’m interested in this woman because she made somebody
scarce that I want, but the last person he wants to see is me. I’d
like to ask her about him.”

Stillman shifted in his chair
and lifted both hands to pluck the cigarette from his lips. He
stepped on it with deliberation. When he raised his face again his
blue eyes were opaque, but Seaver could tell he was taking the offer
seriously.

“I don’t know her.”
Stillman grinned and held up his chained wrists. “I bet you
could have guessed that.”

Seaver nodded. “But you’ve
heard of her.”

Stillman nodded too. “If
you’re in here long enough, you probably hear every way that
words can be pulled together. I’d like to get a few favors. But
there’s another side to this. If you can get me goodies, you
can also get my ass kicked or worse. What I know is just rumors:
thirdhand stuff. I send you off, you’re probably going to come
back and tell the captain I shined you on. I don’t know you,
but I know him.”

Seaver studied him. Something
else was on his mind, and the only way to hear it was to get through
the easy ones. “Okay, I’ve been warned. You tell me what
you heard, and I won’t hold a grudge, as long as you don’t
add anything of your own.” Then he added, as a precaution,
“Anyway, I know plenty about her already, so I can figure out
which parts you heard wrong.” He handed Stillman another
cigarette and struck a match, then held it out so Stillman could lean
into it and puff until the tip ignited.

Stillman leaned back and said,
“Say there really is a woman like this? There would be people
in the joint who know about her. Maybe they got helped by her once,
then fucked up again and couldn’t get to her in time. Maybe
they didn’t get to her even the first time, but they hope some
day they’ll make it.” He smiled and shook his head. “Even
though a germ couldn’t get out of here, about one in five of
these guys thinks he can.”

Seaver’s smile mirrored
Stillman’s. “A lot of sheets get tied together, but you
don’t see many of them hanging outside the walls of these
places.” He shrugged. “Anyway, this isn’t that kind
of situation. I’m not interested in charging her with anything,
or even putting her out of business. I want this guy, and I’ll
pay her for him. She’s nothing to me.” He caught a hint
of skepticism in Stillman’s stare, so he said quickly, “Of
course, if she draws down on me, I’ll have to kill her. But
even then, nobody would know you told me about her.”

Stillman put his tongue to his
lips and spat out a flake of loose tobacco. “Okay, then I know
some things.”

“Go on.”

“It’s probably none
of it true. People talk about things like that. There’s a pair
of Siamese twins in Vacaville they have to let out every other week,
because one of them didn’t get convicted. There’s a
four-fingered lawyer in San Diego who knows one thing they forget to
do in almost every trial, so he can get anybody off who will send him
a finger. One of the contractors who built this place was getting
kickbacks on the materials, so just in case they caught him, he put a
secret tunnel under the infirmary. There’s a woman who takes
people out of the world and gives them new lives.”

“A little bit past her
prime with blond hair, right?”

“Not in the version I
heard. It was black. She had long black hair, and she was nice
looking. I don’t vouch for that, because in stories the girl is
always that way. It wasn’t like you said before, either. I
heard the way it works is, you have to come to her. And you have to
clean yourself before you do. If you want to bring something you left
behind – maybe what you stole, maybe a girlfriend –
she’ll tell you you’re not ready for her. If what you
want is another chance to kill the one who set you up, she’ll
tell you to go do it and not come back. She’s in the running
business, not the fighting business. You don’t just give up
your name, you have to give up everything you ever were, ever saw or
did. You’re a new person, who doesn’t know any of that.”