A String of Beads

“He would call me if they did.”

 

“You’re not going to say exactly where he is?”

 

Jane said, “I want you to be able to take a lie detector test and say you don’t know. And the time may come when somebody asks you under oath.”

 

Mattie smiled sadly, and her beautiful brown skin seemed to tighten. “And if I get tempted to go see my son, I can’t lead anybody to him.”

 

Jane frowned. “I’m sorry. But there are easy ways for anybody to track your car, or use the GPS on your cell phone, or half a dozen other things to track you. I can’t even be sure I know all the ways, so I can’t warn you about them.”

 

“I found a little gadget stuck to the bottom of my gas tank with a magnet two days ago.”

 

“What did you do with it?”

 

“I left it there,” said Mattie. “If I threw it away, I figure they’ll do something else next time that I don’t know about. And I don’t care if they track me to the market. If I want to sneak off, I’ll get rid of it then.”

 

“That’s right,” said Jane. “Maybe we should wait a few days until the battery gets weak and watch your car to see who comes to replace it. To tell you the truth, one of the reasons I came by was to see who was watching you these days.”

 

They walked along for a few more paces, and then Jane took Mattie’s hand and put a stack of bills into it. “Another reason was to give you this.”

 

“What’s the money for?”

 

“We needed to be sure you’re provided for.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“It’s important that I be able to tell Jimmy that I saw you and made sure. What he’s doing isn’t easy, and it helps if he’s not trying to check on you himself.”

 

“That phone call.”

 

“Yes,” said Jane. “He didn’t know what a bad idea it was. I’m hoping he won’t make a mistake like that again. Somebody was monitoring your phone, so they got his number and the cell tower where his signal was picked up and transmitted.”

 

“The police?”

 

“I think they were something else. They shot at us, and police wouldn’t do that at first sight.” The two women walked for a time, and then Jane said, “We should probably get back to your house. My nights are kind of busy right now. It’s when I can see people, but they can’t see me.”

 

“All right,” said Mattie. “It was really sweet of you to check on me and let me know what’s happening—that he’s all right.”

 

“I wish—” She stopped and stood perfectly still. “Hear it?”

 

Mattie was still too. “Cars.”

 

“They sound like they’re heading up your road.”

 

“Police?”

 

“I don’t think they’d come to ask questions at night without calling, and this sounds like two or three cars.”

 

“Who, then?”

 

“I’m wondering if the people who have been trying to kill Jimmy got tired of waiting for him to come to them,” Jane said. “Where’s your car?”

 

“It’s beside the house. Didn’t you see it?”

 

“I came through the woods from the cemetery by the council house.”

 

“The car’s on the other side, up the driveway.”

 

“You have the keys with you?”

 

Mattie held them up. “My house key is on the same ring.”

 

“This is going to be tricky. Give them to me, and you take these.” She handed Mattie her keys and took Mattie’s. “Stay in the woods off the trail for a few minutes, until you hear the cars leaving. Then go through the woods to the council house cemetery. You’ll find a blue VW Passat parked there. Take it. Drive to Rochester. There’s a big Hyatt Hotel on East Main Street by the Convention Center. Drive into the underground garage, take a ticket from the machine, and park. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

 

“But what if it’s only the police?”

 

“If it is the police, I’ll see them and come back here for you. If I don’t come back right away, go. Do you have your cell phone with you?”

 

“No. It’s in the kitchen.”

 

“Good. Leave it.”

 

Jane took a step off the path, but Mattie stopped her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

 

“Yes,” said Jane. “Positive. Listen for the cars, and I’ll see you later in Rochester.”

 

“See you.”

 

Jane melted into the woods. She moved swiftly at first, gliding between the tall trees toward the house. When she reached a thicket of saplings growing beside a stand of oaks, she crouched in the thicket and watched.

 

There were three cars, all of them big and dark, two of them SUVs with tinted side windows. A black sedan stopped just ahead of the intersection of Mattie’s road and Council House Road, where it could guard the crossroads without drawing much attention. The other two stopped at the Sanders house, one across the driveway, and the other in front of Mattie’s front door.

 

The doors of the two vehicles opened and six men poured out, moving quickly onto the porch. All were wearing street clothes, and none displayed badges or identification. They didn’t call out or knock, just kicked in Mattie’s front door and stormed into the house, spreading immediately from room to room as they filled the building from bottom to top like a flood. The first man through each doorway had a pistol drawn.

 

Jane advanced to the rear of the house and then slipped around the corner to the garage side just before two men opened the back door and stepped onto the back porch. Jane dropped to her hands and knees to cross under the side windows and crawled to the front of Mattie’s brown Toyota Camry. She stayed low to slide into the driver’s seat with the keys already in her hand. She started the engine and slammed the door as she swung backward onto the front lawn.

 

The SUV in front of the driveway moved to block her in, but she drove across the lawn into the small garden Mattie kept, cutting through a row of squash and beans and onto the road.

 

The sound of her engine drew the attention of the men in the house, and she heard two shots, then one more, but didn’t hear or feel anything hit the car. Jane accelerated toward the intersection where she could see the big black car waiting. The driver started his engine and turned his headlights on, throwing a glare into Jane’s eyes as she approached.

 

Jane switched on her high beams as the other driver pulled his car away from the shoulder and tried to block the road. She kept speeding toward it, and she could see both men in the car duck down to prepare for the collision that was coming. She took that moment to veer to the left and off the road into a weedy field. As she bounced along she heard and felt the drag of the tall weeds against the undercarriage of the car, then accelerated up and over the shoulder onto the road again. She switched off her lights just as she heard two more shots.

 

Jane knew that on this dark road she would see the glow of headlights in the intersection ahead if a car were coming to the other road, and she saw nothing, so she went into the turn without hitting her brakes. She accelerated out of the turn to keep control, and pushed Mattie’s Camry to higher speeds as she hurtled along in the dark. She had walked every one of these roads in childhood summers, so she drove them tonight by memory and feel and moonlight.

 

She knew the drivers of the two SUVs would have to wait for the six men in the house to pile into the vehicles before they attempted to pursue her. The lookout car’s headlights were beginning to light up the intersection far behind her now, so she spun into the next right turn blind, then took the next left and turned her lights on. At last she had a chance to look at the dashboard, which had lit up too. Mattie’s Camry had over a half tank of gas. Jane sent a silent thank-you to her. That would be enough.

 

At ninety miles an hour, Jane reached the Pembroke entrance to the New York State Thruway in a few minutes. She slowed, drove onto the westbound side, and stopped at the Pembroke rest stop. She coasted into the parking lot and parked between a tall pickup truck and a camper, got out, hurried to the back of the car, and went down on her side. She reached up under Mattie’s car, pulled the small black box off the gas tank, and examined it. The black plastic part of the box said FASTTRACK TRANSPONDER in raised letters. Jane walked briskly toward the building, scanning the lot.

 

She selected a tour bus with Ontario plates at the side of the rest stop building, reloading a line of tourists, most of them elderly and all of them speaking German. She went to the left side of the bus away from the doors and stared into the bus’s left side mirror. The driver wasn’t in his seat.

 

It took less than a second to squat, attach the little black transponder to a clean spot under the bus’s chassis so its magnet held it there, stand, and keep walking. She stepped into the building and stopped in the ladies’ room. When she came outside, the bus had already moved down the entrance ramp. She could see it far ahead, diminishing into the distance, probably toward a hotel so the tourists could go to sleep and get up early to visit Niagara Falls.

 

Jane returned to Mattie’s Camry, pulled out onto the thruway and took the exit at Depew, went on the cloverleaf over the thruway to the eastbound side, and drove toward Rochester. She took exit 46, I-390 to Rochester. All the time while she was driving she watched to be sure she had not been followed. She got off I-390 at the Greater Rochester International Airport, parked Mattie’s Camry in the long-term lot, walked to the terminal, and took a cab to the Hyatt Hotel on Main Street in Rochester.

 

At the hotel Jane went to her room, retrieved her small suitcase, wiped everything for prints, and stopped at the front desk to check out. Then she walked across the lobby to the elevator, took it to the first level of the underground garage, and found the Volkswagen Passat with Mattie sitting behind the wheel looking uncomfortable. When Mattie saw Jane walking toward her she smiled, opened the door, and got out. “You’d better drive. I don’t even know where we’re going.”

 

“Happy to,” Jane said. She reached inside, popped the trunk open, put her suitcase inside, and then closed the trunk and sat behind the wheel. She backed out, drove to I-390, and turned south.

 

“They weren’t police, huh?” Mattie said.

 

“No,” said Jane. “I’m pretty sure they were men who wanted to kidnap you to force Jimmy to come back.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Hanover, New Hampshire.”

 

“What’s there?”

 

“Jimmy.”

 

 

 

 

 

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