Shadow Woman (29 page)

She dozed off for a few seconds
and began to slip into a dream. The vague image of a man appeared and
began to resolve and clarify – bare legs, arms, then the
features of the face began to establish themselves. She was startled
and her body jerked and woke her, pulling her out of it in time to
keep the man from being recognizable. But it was too late to keep her
from knowing that the sight her mind had been preparing for her had
not been Carey.

Linda
Thompson spent all of her time studying Dr. Carey McKinnon. He was
attractive, with a lean body and gangling walk and big hands that
made her wonder if he had made his way through college playing
basketball. He always looked as though he was late, ducking out of
the driver’s seat of the BMW, unfolding those long legs, then
taking two steps toward the hospital building before the door that he
had flicked with his hand slammed shut. Then he would step along
toward the entrance without looking to either side or slowing down as
visitors did to be sure the automatic door would open in time, and
then disappear inside.

When his shift ended, he would
come out alone at the same speed, slip into the BMW, and drive off.
She watched him travel the same route each time, back to his big old
house in Amherst. After a few minutes she would see him moving around
in the kitchen. Later there would be the glowing bluish light in a
room on the upper floor from a television set. When it went off, he
would sleep.

It took Linda two days to grow
accustomed to his hours. He was at the hospital for surgery by seven
and usually walked across the street to the medical building where he
had his office at around one. Some time in the late afternoon he
would walk back to the hospital and stalk the hallways, talking to
patients in their rooms until at least seven, and sometimes nine.

After she became used to his
movements and had adjusted her internal clock to his, she had long
stretches of time when she could let him out of her sight. The
mornings were good, because she knew that he wasn’t going to
leave in the middle of an operation. She spent some mornings with
realtors. His neighborhood was wrong for her purposes. The houses
were all big and expensive, sitting well back on vast lots. The
nearest one that was for sale was two long blocks away, and the view
of his house was obscured by a row of old maple trees along the
sidewalk. The zoning apparently didn’t permit apartment
buildings, because there was not one on any of the surrounding
streets.

She considered getting a job in
the hospital, but only for a moment. Hospitals checked credentials to
avoid lawsuits, and she could never create any that would get her a
job that placed her in his path frequently enough. At best she would
find herself emptying bedpans three floors away from him, with no
excuse to leave and follow him.

Linda had an expert eye for
bodies and could tell he was in reasonably good condition. He didn’t
jog or work out at home, so it was possible that he belonged to some
local club. She looked up all of the ones in the telephone book, made
some calls, and learned nothing.

His entry in the A.M.A.
directory told her he had gone to Cornell and then to the University
of Chicago Medical School. She opened an account at the bank listed
on his credit report and shopped at the supermarkets closest to his
house, but never saw him.

She visited the main library in
downtown Buffalo and read old issues of the Cornell alumni magazine
until she found the right obituary. A woman named Susan Preston had
died six years ago in a plane crash. Susan Preston would have been
five years younger than McKinnon, so they weren’t in school
together. She had been survived by various Prestons in San Francisco,
so it was unlikely that McKinnon had known her family. Linda took the
catalog off the shelf and studied the maps and photographs of the
Cornell University campus, then memorized the names of professors and
courses. If the university was going to be an entree to anything, she
might need to be able to talk about it.

Linda called her house and
reached Lenny. She told him to punch the name Susan Preston Haynes
onto some blank credit cards, make her a California driver’s
license, and send them by overnight mail. It was a gamble to use a
real name, but it would put her on the right lists, and adding a
husband’s surname gave her the option of being Haynes any time
Preston seemed too risky.

After
six days of stalking Carey McKinnon, Linda found an article in the
Buffalo News
about a benefit dinner to be held by the
auxiliary of Buffalo Memorial Hospital. She called the number in the
article and bought a ticket for a hundred dollars. Carey McKinnon
seemed to do nothing but work and sleep, but maybe he would consider
a benefit for the hospital a part of his work. She had just taken out
the good dress she had brought from California in case she needed it
in Las Vegas and begun her preparations when the telephone rang.

“Yes?” she said into
it.

“It’s me.”
Earl sounded angry.

“Hi,” she said.
“Have you got anything yet?”

“Zero,” he said.
“I’ve watched his goddamn car for a week. If he’s
in Billings at all anymore, he doesn’t drive anywhere. He’s
also not visible in any hotel, motel, or park bench in the city. If
you don’t have anything for me soon, I think we might want to
begin considering our alternatives.”

“What alternatives?”

“Make some fake ID with
Hatcher’s picture on it that won’t fool even a Montana
cop, rent an apartment in that name. We salt the apartment with the
ID and the mail we found in Las Vegas, and anything from the car that
has Hatcher’s prints on it.”

“Then what?” She
knew he wasn’t serious. He was saying it because it sounded
desperate and risky, and the thought that he was contemplating such a
fraud would affect her.

“Pop some guy Hatcher’s
size and shape, put him in the car, and torch it. Once the police run
the prints we leave in the apartment and identify the photograph on
the fake ID, they won’t have any reason to strain themselves
with a lot of tests, and Seaver won’t be able to. If anybody’s
real curious they might go to the Denver apartment the car’s
registered to and find more of Hatcher’s prints there. We
collect the rest of the money from Seaver. End of story.”

“What happens if Pete
Hatcher shows up later?” She sounded as worried as she would
have been if she believed Earl would give up. Earl didn’t need
safety as much as he needed to win.

“Honey, if I can’t
find the bastard, you think anybody else is going to?”

“Of course not. Nobody’s
better than you, Earl. I’m just talking.”

“If we wait too long, we
might have to do it in reverse.”

“What do you mean?”
asked Linda.

“Cut and run before
Seaver’s bosses send somebody for us. Find a man and woman and
make it look like this specialist Hatcher hired set a trap and killed
us first.”

“Please don’t do
anything yet, Earl,” she said. “I won’t disappoint
you, I promise.” Her own voice, sounding breathy and
submissive, gave her an erotic shiver. She experimented with making
her voice break, not quite a sob. “I’ve been trying
really hard.” The effect was good. “I’ll have
something for you in a few days.”

“I sure hope so,” he
said. “I’ve got nothing. I’ve been running computer
checks on the two names he used so far, her name, car rentals,
everything. None of it leads anywhere in particular. So I’m
beginning to think she picked him up and they were long gone before I
got here.”

“I know it’s up to
me,” she said. “I won’t forget it for a second.”

Carey McKinnon stood in front of
the mirror in the bedroom and studied the man who stared back at him.
He had been aware long before tonight that he looked foolish in a
tuxedo, but he had consoled himself by renting a tuxedo to look
foolish in instead of owning one, and by picking out the plainest
model that Benjy’s Midnight Tux had to offer, with black
cummerbund and white plastic studs and cuff links. Probably the last
time this one had been out of Benjy’s, it had been taken to a
prom. The shoes were his, but only because Benjy’s selection of
shoes for big feet had the sturdy spit-shined look of military
footwear.

With resignation, he brushed his
hair into place one last time. The warring cowlicks would reassert
themselves in the car. Then he turned off the light, walked
downstairs, and stopped. He looked at the telephone before he opened
the door. He had been looking at telephones all over the house for
two hours, each time remembering that the way they looked had nothing
to do with ringing.

It was two hours earlier in
Montana, so it was still about five o’clock there. His mind
warned him that thinking about time was the first step into
treacherous territory. The second was to ask himself what she could
possibly be doing that made a telephone call to her husband such a
hard thing to accomplish at any hour of the day or night. That
brought a hundred contradictory answers into his mind together,
elbowing past one another to the front to be acknowledged.

He left the lamp by the door
burning and hurried out to his car. As soon as he had started the
engine, he noticed the fuel gauge again and cursed himself for
forgetting. He hated to stop at the full-serve side of the gas
station and wait by the pump helplessly until the attendant happened
to glance out the window and notice him, then get so lonely and bored
that helping a customer was all he could think of to do. But Carey
was determined not to pump gas in a tuxedo. The unwritten laws of
physics meant that the pump nozzle would backwash or the hose would
leak.

He backed out of the long
driveway quickly, drove up the street, and stopped at the light. He
hoped the needle of the fuel gauge was still just working its way
upward to its correct reading. The light changed, and he turned left
to drive the familiar route back to the hospital.

When he reached his reserved
parking space he found a big black Mercedes had been backed into it.
He paused for a moment with his foot on the brake, then drove on into
the visitors’ parking lot, took a parking ticket, and found a
space. As he walked toward the building, the argument the muscles of
his mouth and tongue were rehearsing was that taking a surgeon’s
space in a hospital parking lot could cost the driver’s child
the five minutes that might have saved his life some time. He clamped
the argument to the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He wasn’t
going to say it. He wasn’t going inside to save anybody’s
life. He was going in there to kiss that Mercedes owner’s rich
ass with enthusiasm and sincerity, and hope it bought the hospital a
new children’s wing.

It was probably somebody he had
met before. Around Buffalo, most big money was old money, handed down
from the days of the Erie Canal, or at least the days of Civil War
profiteering, enhanced by practices like buying up the tax liens on
family farms in the surrounding countryside during the Depression and
turning them into suburbs.

He walked into the foyer and
glanced into the garden. He could see a few fat penguins and their
bejeweled consorts loitering out there, flicking cigarette ashes into
the shrubbery and sipping drinks where their cardiologists couldn’t
catch them at it.

He caught a glimpse of Lily
Bortoni, the wife of his friend Leo, an orthopedic surgeon. She
looked as serene and elegant as she always did at these affairs,
every shining chestnut hair in place and with just enough makeup so
her skin looked like the smooth surface of a sculpture. She was
staring unperturbed through a cloud of cigar smoke at a potential
donor as though he were saying something important, so Carey couldn’t
catch her eye.

As he walked on, a series of
conflicting thoughts flashed through his mind. The sight of Lily made
him miss Jane and feel annoyed with her at the same time. He felt
sorry for himself for having to show up here alone, felt guilty that
Leo’s wife, Lily, had to work the crowd while Jane escaped it,
dreaded having to explain ten times in the next hour why Jane wasn’t
here. Then he remembered that she could be running for her life right
now. He forced the idea out of his mind: she was out finding a new
address for some moron. It was unfair to Carey and inconvenient for
her, but the danger was over. She was doing what she felt she had to
do, and he would just have to cover for her until it was over.

He stepped into the cafeteria,
and a hand patted his arm. He turned to look down at Marian Fleming.
She had managed to confine herself in a beige evening gown with
metallic filigree on the front that looked as though its purpose was
to protect her from body blows. Her blond hair was sprayed and
sculpted into a spun-sugar helmet, and her ice-blue eyes fixed him
with a stare that told him he was not about to be offered any
choices. “There’s somebody you’ve got to meet,”
she said.

Carey understood the words “got
to,” so he waited.

“Where’s Jane?”
Her eyes flicked around behind him.

“She’s out of town,”
he answered. “I’m on my own tonight.”

He did not miss the tiny twitch
above her eye as Marian’s mind punched Jane’s card. She
was already pivoting to push him along toward someone, still talking.
“Here’s the doctor I told you about.”

“You did?” asked
Carey.

“Susan Haynes, this is
Carey McKinnon. He went to Cornell too.” She gave Carey a
perfectly benign empty look. “So did his wife, but she’s
not with us tonight, so he’ll have to do.”

Carey looked at the woman and
smiled. Her blond hair beside Marian’s was the difference
between polished gold and yellow paint. Her eyes were big, a bright
green with flecks in them like malachite, and her lips were full,
with a natural upturn at the corners. She gave a reserved smile, as
though she were bestowing tiny portions of a powerful spice.