The Face-Changers (13 page)

“Those two men didn’t show up because you had escaped from the hospital. We only saw them because they and I happened to know the last few minutes when the police would leave you alone, and which would be the safest hallway in the building. If you’ll remember, we were on our way out, but they were on their way in.” She added, “Carrying guns,” to settle the matter.

“I sort of missed the implication,” he admitted. “There’s no way they could have known I wasn’t still in the operating room, is there?”

“No.”

“It’s still not a very good plan.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “Let’s hear yours.” Dahlman was silent. Jane looked behind her at the sidewalk. Their clothes were no longer leaving drips on the pavement. The moisture evaporating from her clothes into the night air seemed to be taking most of her body heat with it and leaving her shaking, but a casual observer would not glance at her or Dahlman in the light of a street lamp and know that they had been in the water. At this hour she had little to fear from casual observers anyway. They were getting close to the creek again, because she could detect the familiar scent of it.

She kept scanning the street ahead for the shapes of men on foot. At each intersection she lingered in the shadows of the big old trees and looked up and down to detect any movement, then hurried Dahlman across and into the darkness again.

When they reached the street where she had left the car, she ushered Dahlman into the shadow beside the corner of a house and whispered, “Wait here for me.” She slipped across the street and down the frontage road, staying close to the buildings. She came first upon the white car that had been following. It was parked three spaces back from hers. She saw no heads in the windows, but she approached it cautiously from behind the right side until her angle gave her a clear view of the interior. It was empty.

She hurried ahead to her rental car, clutching the keys. She went to her knees, examined the tires, then sighted along the top of the hood to be sure there were no spots where fingers had displaced the dust of the road. She lay on her back and stared up at the undercarriage. There seemed to be no booby traps.

Jane stood up, hurried back to the white car, took out her pocket knife, knelt in front of the hood, and reached under the grille. She felt around until she found die bottom radiator hose, then sliced it. She found the fan belt and cut that too. She stabbed the wall of the left front tire, then the right.

She ran to her rental car, started it, and swung it around to go back up the street. When she got there, Dahlman was already emerging from the shadows with a stiff, tottering gait.

She got out and helped him into the back seat.

“Thank you,” he said.

Far off, in approximately the direction they had come from, there came sounds:
Pop! Pop-pop-pop-pop! Pop!

Dahlman was alarmed. “What was that?”

“Sounds like they’ve found the tire floating down the creek. They just killed it.”

The sky was still dark when Jane crossed the line from Pennsylvania into Ohio, but by the time she was on the outskirts of Youngstown, whole blocks of street lamps were turning themselves off. Jane pulled into a gas station, filled the tank, and walked to the little building to pay for the gas. When she returned, Dahlman was still asleep.

She found a motel, checked in, then came back to the car and shook Dahlman. “Wake up, open your eyes, but don’t sit up just yet.”

Dahlman blinked up at the ceiling of the car. “Where are we?”

“Youngstown, Ohio. A motel. I’m going to take you inside in a second, when I’m sure there’s nobody watching.” She took a long look in each direction, then said, “Now.” She quickly walked him into the building and down the hall to their room. She hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob outside and closed the door. “Make yourself comfortable.

Don’t answer the door, don’t answer the phone, don’t open the curtains. I’ll be back.”

Jane drove out of the lot, along Bridge Street to Cottsville Center Road, north to King Graves Road, and west to the airport. She turned in the car she had rented in Buffalo and went to a second agency to get a new one under the name Kathy Sirini. On the way back to the motel she stopped at a big discount chain store and took a shopping cart.

She bought pairs of sunglasses for men and women, two kinds of hair dye, makeup, baseball caps, a big roll of gauze, a bag of sterile cotton balls, a roll of adhesive tape. She bought a bottle of peroxide, some Mercurochrome, Neosporin ointment, a bottle of alcohol. Before she returned to the motel she stopped on Route 224 at a take-out restaurant and bought four breakfast specials that came in foot-wide Styrofoam boxes.

She entered the room and looked around. Dahlman was invisible. “Anybody home?”

“I’m in here.”

She walked into the bathroom to find Dahlman lying in the bathtub naked. “Oh. Sorry,” she mumbled, and stepped out.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Dahlman. “Come in here.” Jane entered again. Dahlman glared at her. “You are a grown woman. You have definitely seen enough by now so that the sight of an aged person of the opposite sex can bring no surprises.”

“I was being considerate,” said Jane.

“Thank you,” said Dahlman. “Now look at this wound, and you can be more considerate.” He pointed to the hole in his left shoulder. “This is the entrance wound. Very neat and clean. A high-velocity bullet passed through intact. It was sutured expertly by a fine young surgeon. Come around to the back.” He leaned forward. “What do you see?” It was big and angry looking, and the white of his skin had a redness around the sutures. “Not so neat,” she said. “The stitches haven’t completely come apart, but they look… like they’re unraveling. It doesn’t seem to be bleeding.”

“That’s the lesion I’m most concerned about. When a bullet enters the body, it’s still only nine millimeters wide with a rounded tip. After it’s hit bone and burrowed through muscle tissue, it mushrooms and splays out, and the exit wound is worse. This one was closed as it should be. But last night’s violent fall off the car seat undid that, and the swim in polluted water will have introduced contamination. What color is the tissue around it?”

“Red. I’m sorry.”

He brushed her words away with his hand. “That was your job, and this is my job. If I get a raging infection, your job will have been a waste of time.”

“What do we do?”

“Well, I think we should start by washing the wound with antiseptic. Any drugstore should have what we need.”

“I bought peroxide, alcohol, Mercurochrome, and Neosporin.”

He stared at her a moment, but she couldn’t tell whether he was considering praise or a reprimand. “Yes. Well, help me dry off and we can get started.”

Jane took his arm over her shoulder and let him lean his weight on her while he stepped out of the tub. Jane worked to dry his bony legs and feet while he dried the places he could reach. She finished with his back.

“Now let’s lay out what you’ve got,” he said. She brought in the shopping bag and he arranged the bottles and wound dressings. He looked at her again and conceded, “Very thoughtful of you.”

“I had noticed that you had a hole in you,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Well. You can wash up and we’ll get started.” Jane scrubbed her hands until he said, “Let’s start by washing the surface area around the wound with alcohol.” Jane took some cotton balls, soaked them with alcohol, and gently dabbed around the front of his shoulder. He watched her and frowned. “Here.” He took a few cotton balls, soaked them, and roughly sloshed alcohol on the wound at the back of his shoulder.

Jane waited. It was only a couple of seconds before the pain clawed him. Every muscle in his body tensed, then quivered. His eyes squeezed tight, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. His breaths were shaky hisses moving in and out through clenched teeth.

He leaned forward, gripping the counter for a moment, as though he were about to faint. When the wave had passed, his voice was rough and croaky. “Now, let’s use the peroxide the same way.”

“I’d like it if we could do this someplace where if you faint you won’t crack your skull.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I was being foolish.” He walked into the bedroom and sat on the bed. “The alcohol is dry. Now the peroxide.”

Jane slopped the peroxide on the entrance wound and watched him suffer. “That’s better,” he gasped. “It hurts like hell, but it ends. An infection would feel like that until I died.

Just remember that. You’re not causing someone pain. It’s not you.”

“What next?”

“Neosporin, then tape a sterile gauze pad over it.” Jane did as he directed. He looked down at her work, nodded, then lay on the bed on his stomach. “Now comes the hard part,” he said. “This wound, the exit wound, is open. I can tell by the feel that infection has begun. It needs a bit more attention. Are you a good seamstress?”

“No,” said Jane. She shook her head slowly as he looked up at her.

“Do you mean, ‘No, I’m not a good seamstress,’ or ‘No, I won’t do any sewing’?”

“A little bit of each,” she said.

“Will you do it, or not?” He glared at her from the pillow.

“If you think it’s necessary, I’ll do it. But I don’t have anything to sew with. I’ll have to get something.”

“There’s a kit in the bathroom for sewing buttons on.

Compliments of the inn. These are battlefield conditions, so you use what you’ve got.”

Jane sighed. “All right. Tell me what to do.” Dahlman waited while Jane went into the bathroom and returned with the little paper packet. He didn’t watch her, just began to talk. “We’ll use white thread, because it’s been bleached rather than dyed, and the dye is probably more poisonous. Soak the needle and thread in alcohol for a few minutes while we repeat the procedure we used on the entry wound to disinfect. When you’re finished, take as many stitches as you can fit with the thread we have. Work outside the sutures that are there, by at least a quarter inch on each side, in a pattern that looks like shoelaces.”

“How do I tie it off?”

“Take it in and out of the earlier laces a few times and then tie it in a square knot.”

Jane went about preparing the needle and thread. When she poured the alcohol on his wound, he gripped the mattress so hard that she heard a sound like the sheet ripping, then went limp. But in a few seconds she heard him say, “Next the peroxide, please.”

She used the peroxide, then waited until he said, “Now begin.”

Jane forced her mind to stop thinking of his back as living flesh. She told herself it was the soft, buttery leather they used for couches and car seats. She sewed it as she would have repaired a piece of furniture, except that it bled. She had to catch the blood with cotton. When she had finished, she tied off the thread as he had told her to.

“Next, douse the whole area with peroxide again,” said Dahlman. His voice was hoarse, all air and no vibration. “Then Neosporin and a full dressing of gauze and adhesive tape.” When Jane had finished she stepped back and waited.

Dahlman lay still. Finally she detected from the sound of his breathing that he was asleep, so she covered him with the blanket and went to the table by the window. She opened a Styrofoam container, looked at the food she had bought, then closed it and sat down in the chair with her hands over her eyes.

Dahlman awoke an hour later, sat up, threw off the blanket, and walked to the bathroom, still as unaware of his nakedness as ever. He used the shaving mirror in front of him to look over his shoulder into the big mirror. He lifted the gauze and studied the wound. “I don’t like the look of that. It’s inflamed.”

“What do we do?”

“An antibiotic. I’m afraid I can’t just write a prescription, can I?”

Jane shook her head. “We’ll have to do it another way.”

“I’ve heard there’s a black market for medicines,” he said.

“Is it true?”

“Of course it’s true. There’s a black market for everything.

But they’re not people we want to deal with right now.

They’re just like any other drug dealers. Antibiotics aren’t their usual merchandise, so they’d have to make a special trip.

That makes them curious. We’ll just cut out the middle man and get it ourselves.”

“How?”

“The way they do. What’s the antibiotic?”

“I’d prefer Cipro. It’s effective against the widest spectrum of bacteria, and I have no idea what was in that water.”

“Spell it.”

“C-I-P-R-O. But if that isn’t available, any of the penicillins or cephalosporins would be worth having.” She picked up her purse and walked toward the door. “Get some rest, and try to eat something. I won’t be back for a few hours.”

Jane selected a gynecologist by talking to a woman at the hotel desk, who had a list of doctors for sick guests. She called and made an appointment for that afternoon. When she reached the office she told the nurse that she was on vacation and had forgotten her birth-control pills. The doctor took her right away, checked her blood pressure and heart rate, and wrote her a prescription for Orthocept pills. As she left the office, she slipped his pen into her purse.

Jane drove up the street until she saw a mailbox-rental store that advertised “Self-Serve Copies, 100,” went inside, made a copy of nothing, then used the blank sheet to cover the doctor’s handwriting and make a blank prescription form.

Next she used the doctor’s pen to trace his signature and the genuine prescription, substituting the word “Cipro” for

“Orthocept.”

It took Jane a little longer to find the right pharmacy. She looked for one on the other side of the city so the druggist would not be too familiar with her doctor’s handwriting. She wanted one that was not part of a larger building, so all sides would be visible, and one that wasn’t part of a chain, because there was no way to know what might come up on the computer of a chain store. After she handed in her prescription, she sat in a coffee shop in the strip mall across the street and waited. No police cars arrived, no stranger showed up to hang around the building. After an hour she went in, picked up her prescription, and paid for it in cash.