Stealing Faces (22 page)

35

A mile from the motel,
 
 
Elizabeth
 
pulled onto a side street and parked at the curb, then sat for a long moment, shaking all over as fear and relief and anger throbbed through her in a sequence of vivid aftershocks.

Too much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. She couldn’t absorb it all, couldn’t make it real.

Obstacles and threats everywhere. Danger, pursuit, the walls of her life closing in.

If Cray or his henchmen didn’t get her, the police would. The police, who were there to protect and serve. Who were they protecting now? Cray? Who was served by that?

She raised a trembling hand to her throat and felt the memory of Walter’s fingers tightening like a vise.

Close call. Really close.

She’d faced death twice since yesterday evening. She’d risked arrest when she made her 911 call, and again this afternoon.

So far her luck had held, but she knew she could press it no further. Anyway, she couldn’t stay in
Tucson
. Everybody here was after her. She had to leave town. Leave
Arizona
entirely.

It was time to go to
Texas
, as she’d thought of doing before all this bad business began.
Dallas
had been her original destination, but the city seemed too big, too complicated. She could try
San Antonio
, maybe. It was supposed to be nice there. They had a
 
riverwalk
. She would like to see that.

In
San Antonio
she could obtain or forge a new I.D. Elizabeth Palmer would have to go. That was all right. Names didn’t matter. She’d had many names.

As soon as possible, she would ditch the
 
Chevette
, obtain another car. She had no idea how she would manage this, with no money and no credit history and no collateral, but she would find a way.

She had to. Because the police would search her things. They would find the documents that established her various false identities. They would run a motor-vehicles check on Elizabeth Palmer. The make and model and license plate number of her car would be known to them immediately. The information would go on a hot sheet, or whatever they called it, and she would be at perpetual risk of being spotted and pulled over.

In the short term, she might be able to steal somebody’s license plate, put it on the
 
Chevette
, buy some time.

All right. Get to
Texas
. Tonight.

In the glove compartment she kept a map of the western
U.S.
She unfolded it and checked the route she’d have to take. Interstate 10 would get her all the way there. A fifteen-hour drive, no problem.

She checked her purse, counting bills. Fifty-four dollars.

Most of that would be spent on food and fuel. And she had no luggage, no change of clothes, not even a toothbrush. Nothing to fall back on, nothing to pawn or barter.

In
San Antonio
she would need a job immediately. Well, she had
 
waitressing
 
experience, clerical skills. She could find something.

This was bad, so bad. She’d been down-and-out at other times during her twelve years on the run, but never had she felt so completely beaten, so lost.

Could be worse, though.

She could be in handcuffs.

She could be dead.

The thought lifted her, just a little. She would get through this. And after all, she was not entirely alone. There was Anson. She could reach him, calling collect, at any hour and hear his grave, slow voice. And though she hated asking him for money, she had done it before, and he’d wired it to her without hesitation.

Strange behavior for the father of the man she’d shot in the heart and left to die, but Anson had his reasons.

She checked the map again, steadying herself in the study of its clean, logical lines. Everything made sense in maps, it was all laid out for you, and you always knew just where you were going.

Driving the interstates was like that, too. A straight road, no surprises, the destination dead ahead.

“Okay,” she said aloud, “so get going.”

And forget about Cray.

It was her only option at this point. The police had boxed her in. She couldn’t pursue her quarry any further.

Anyway, damn it, she’d done all she could. She’d done everything that could have been asked of her.
 

San Antonio
.
 

A fr
esh start.

“Oh, hell,”
 
Elizabeth
said, and she crumpled the map and tossed it on the floor.

She wasn’t going to
Texas
. She knew that.

Whatever the risk, whatever the consequences, she had started this game of cat-and-mouse with Cray, and she would see it through.

She put the
 
Chevette
 
into gear and pulled away from the curb, heading east to Safford and the Hawk Ridge Institute, where she would make her stand.

36

Alvarez and the two beat cops entered the room slowly, taking in the damage.

“Looks like a goddamn tornado hit the place,” Leo
 
Galston
 
said.

“More like a hurricane.” Shepherd shrugged. “Hurricane Kaylie.”

“You think she’s cleared out for good?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah.”

“But she left her stuff.”

“She was in a hurry. She must’ve sprinted out of here. Left the door wide open.”

“Why would she trash the place and run?”

“Way I see it, she realized she’d made a lot of noise, and somebody might call the manager about it. She didn’t want a confrontation, so she panicked and fled.”

Alvarez frowned. “That doesn’t explain why she made all this mess in the first place.”

Shepherd didn’t answer. He was staring at an item he’d overlooked earlier, a crumpled newspaper on the floor near the bed.

Carefully he picked it up in a gloved hand. It was today’s edition of the Tucson
 
Citizen,
 
open to the
 
Tucson & Arizona
 
section.

The page had been partially shredded. It appeared Kaylie had made a furious effort to obliterate an offending article. But the headline, at least, was still intact.

“Here’s your answer,” he told Alvarez. “About why she trashed the room. She’s still upset about the
White Mountains
case. She went nuts—more nuts than usual—when she read this story.”

Galston
 
asked, “What story?”

“It’s got to be the retraction of the false lead that went out over the radio. She must have heard there was a breakthrough as a result of a nine-one tip. She got all excited. She thought we’d bought her story, arrested Cray. That’s what she wants. She hates him. Then she reads this, finds out it was all a mistake, Cray’s not under arrest, there are no breaks, no suspects, nothing—and she loses it.”

“And
 
we
 
lose
 
her,”
 
Galston
 
said grimly.

“Looks that way.”

“How about her car?” Alvarez asked. “Did the manager see it?”

“Not that I know, but we can run it down easily enough. It’s registered to Elizabeth Palmer.” He found the birth certificate in the sheaf of papers. “That’s one of her three fake
 
I.D.’s
—the current one, I think.”

Bane, the rookie, asked how Shepherd knew it was current.

“Because the documentation she kept on the other two includes her driver’s license and Social Security card. Those items are missing for the Elizabeth Palmer alias.” Bane still looked puzzled, so Shepherd spelled it out. “She’s carrying them in her purse.”

“If we know what I.D. she’s using, and we know what she’s driving,” Alvarez said, “then she won’t get far.”

Shepherd sighed. “Sure she will, Hector. It’s a big country. Plenty of places to hide. And she’s been on the run for years. She’s damn good at it. She can run and
 
hide ...
 
if she wants to.”

“But you don’t think she does.”

“No.”

“What else would she do?”

“I don’t know. But she’s gone over the edge, that’s for sure. Cray said psychotics go through cycles, phases. He said Kaylie was in the acute phase now. Maybe it’s been building for the last twelve years. Like a volcano—more and more pressure—then
 
bang.
 
Eruption.”

“You sound worried,” Alvarez said.

“I am.”

Galston
 
tried to shrug it off. “She was just a little bit of a thing. She didn’t look so dangerous.”

“Tim Fries didn’t look so dangerous, either,” Shepherd snapped, not quite realizing the words were spoken aloud until he heard their echo in the room.

Bane asked who Tim Fries was. Alvarez and
 
Galston
 
both knew, and they both shushed him,
 
Galston
 
with a clamp on his arm, Alvarez with a look.

Then there was silence. Shepherd was thinking.

“She’ll go after Cray,” he said.

Alvarez said she already had. But that wasn’t what Shepherd meant.

“I’m not saying she’ll stalk him or wreck his car. She’ll go after him personally.”

“Try to take him out, you think?”

Shepherd’s shoulders lifted. “She shot her husband. Why not Cray? She seems to think he’s a serial killer. In her mind, she’ll be performing a public service.”

“Graham County Sheriff’s will have to handle it,” Alvarez said. “Patrol the area near the hospital. Get Cray to lie low for a few days. Maybe he’ll even leave town.”

“I doubt it. He’s stubborn.”

“Well, it’s their problem, not ours.”

Shepherd didn’t respond directly. He scanned the mess in the room—the scatter of clothes, the broken TV, the shards of glass in the bathroom, the blood spots on the floor. He thought of the frantic voice on the 911 tape, accusing Cray of murder, saying he entrapped his victims and hunted them like animals in the moonlit wilderness.

He couldn’t walk away from this.
 
Ginnie’s
 
ghost would never forgive him.

“So,” Alvarez said, “you’re
 
gonna
 
call
Graham
County
. Right?”

Slowly Shepherd nodded. “I’ll call that guy
 
Kroft
 
knows—Chuck
 
Wheelihan
—the one who was promoted to
 
undersheriff
.”

“I don’t think you need to talk to the
 
undersheriff
.”

“Oh, yeah.” Shepherd smiled, a secret smile that puzzled the two patrol cops and worried Alvarez. “Yeah, I think I do. But first I need to get in touch with somebody else.”

“Who?”

“Cray.”

The phone in the room might have Kaylie’s prints on it, so Shepherd used his cell phone instead. He stood outside for a clearer transmission and found the number he needed in his memo pad.

There were four rings at the other end of the line, and then a receptionist—no doubt the woman in the lobby who’d been bent over her computer keyboard, the woman who’d reminded him briefly of Ginnie at her desk—answered. “Hawk Ridge Institute.”

He identified himself. His call was transferred to Cray’s secretary, then to Cray himself.

“Yes, Detective?” The man sounded harried and tired. “How may I help you?”

“We just had a close encounter with your former patient.”

“With Kaylie?” Instantly the weariness was gone from Cray’s voice. “Is she under arrest?”

“I’m afraid not. She eluded us, but just barely. Before she left, she did a lot of damage to her motel room.”

“Damage?”

Cray seemed surprised by the news. Distantly Shepherd found this odd. The man knew what Kaylie had done to his Lexus, after all.

“She messed up the place pretty badly,” he said. “Apparently she’s still in a violent frame of mind.”

“I see.” Peculiar hesitation there. “Well, I suppose you intend to warn me again that I need to watch out for her. I do appreciate your concern—”

“Actually, I’m calling for a slightly different reason.” It was Shepherd’s turn to hesitate. “I want to ask you for help.”

“Help?”

“In apprehending this woman. Tonight.”

“You want my assistance ... in catching her. I see.”

There was something new in Cray’s tone, something Shepherd could not quite define. Under other circumstances, he might have thought it was a note of sly amusement. But the cell phone’s reception was muddy, and he was sure he’d misinterpreted what he heard.

“It may entail some risk,” Shepherd said, choosing his words with care. “And I haven’t contacted the sheriff’s department to work things out with them. But if I can get their cooperation, can I count on yours, as well?”

He waited. On the other end of the line, Cray exhaled a long, slow breath.

“Detective,” Cray said, “when it comes to putting Kaylie safely in custody where she belongs, I assure you I’ll do everything I can.”