THE SHADOWY ROOM, THE LIGHT of the TV that illuminated nothing, the dark at the windows, the moral darkness of Sunday Magazine …
Clare’s chest felt tight, each breath constrained, as she stood watching a homicide detective, someone said to be a detective, a fortyish man who looked as clean-cut as any father on a family-friendly 1950s sitcom, but who must be dirtier than any drug dealer or pimp. He spoke of an exhumed body that didn’t exist, that had been ashes since the previous November, of toxicological tests that couldn’t have been conducted on ashes. He claimed to have evidence that Nick Hawk was murdered with his Marine-issue knife. It was known, he said, that Jane had been selling national-defense secrets to enemies of the country even then, and he speculated that Nick, a true American hero who had received the Navy Cross, might have grown suspicious of her, might have confronted her with his suspicions.
Ancel rose from his chair. By nature he wasn’t an angry soul. He gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, rarely raised his voice, and dealt with difficult people by avoiding them. Clare had never seen him so incensed, though his rage might have gone unnoticed by anyone but her, for it manifested only as a pulse in his temple, in the clenching of his jaws, in the set of his shoulders.
With the program near its end, they stood in silent sentinel to outrageous deceit, as Jane’s father, Martin Duroc, was interviewed in his home, with a piano in the background to remind everyone of his renown. “Jane was a sweet but emotionally fragile child. And so young when she found her mother after the suicide.” He seemed to choke with emotion. “I’m afraid something snapped in her then. She became withdrawn. No amount of counseling or therapy helped. I felt as if I’d lost a wife and a daughter. Yet I never imagined she would become … what she is now. I pray she’ll turn herself in.”
Jane knew that he’d killed her mother to marry another woman. He had supposedly been hundreds of miles from home that night, but in fact he’d been in the house, though she couldn’t prove his guilt.
Now the program ended as Duroc took a display handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit to dab at his eyes, and Clare said, “My God, what do we do? What can we do?”
“I intend to get fall-down drunk,” Ancel said. “No other way I’ll be able to sleep tonight. And there’s nothin’ we can do for Jane. Damn the whole crooked lot of them.”
Never in Clare’s experience had Ancel been drunk, and she doubted that he meant to lose himself in a bottle this time.
He confirmed her doubt by turning to her and fluttering the fingers of one hand as if they were the pinions of a bird’s wing, a prearranged signal that meant time to fly.
She couldn’t disagree. Jane had warned that the conspirators might become so frustrated by their inability to find her that they would come after her in-laws, hoping to use them to get her. Now that these vicious shits had pulled this stunt with Sunday Magazine, they would expect Clare and Ancel to make a statement to the press tomorrow. So they would come before dawn.
The telephone rang.
Ancel said, “It’s one friend or another, knows Jane, saw the show, wants to say they’re with us. Let it go to voicemail. It won’t be the last. I’m not in the mood tonight. Call ’em back tomorrow. I’m gettin’ that damn bottle of Scotch. What about you?”
“This … it sickens me,” Clare said. “I’m furious and scared for her and … and I feel so helpless.”
“What can I do, honey? What do you want to do?”
“Can’t do a damn thing. This is so rotten. I’m going to bed.”
“You won’t sleep. Not after this.”
“I’ll take an Ambien. I can’t handle whisky like you, I’d be throwing up all night.” She was amazed at how convincingly she delivered her lines. They had never practiced a scene like this.
They spoke no more as they prepared to leave before sunrise.
Clare loved this house, their first and only, where they’d begun their marriage, where they’d raised Nick, where they’d learned from Nick and Jane, during a visit, that she was pregnant with their first—and now only—grandchild. Clare wondered when they would be able to return. She wondered if.
7
BECAUSE THE REVOLUTION IS EVERYTHING to him, Ivan Petro works seven days a week, and on this first Sunday in April, he seems destined also to work around the clock.
He is based in Sacramento, where Techno Arcadians maintain a significant network in the state government, which is as corrupt as any, more so than most.
He’s having dinner in his favorite Italian restaurant when he, like thousands of other Arcadians, starts receiving text messages about the incident involving Jane Hawk in Lake Tahoe, including a photograph taken there, showing her current appearance.
No hit team has been dispatched to nail her, because a late-season blizzard in the Sierra Nevada has grounded all helicopters.
Although the highways in that territory are treacherous, they are passable. No one knows what she’s driving or in which direction she’s gone; but she probably will want to get out of the Tahoe area, all the way out of the storm, before going to ground for the night.
If she flees west on U.S. Highway 50, she’ll be coming straight toward Ivan Petro.
As he finishes a plate of saltimbocca, he checks the weather report and learns that snow is falling only as far as Riverton. In the twenty miles west of Riverton, there is no town of any size until Placerville, which has a population of maybe ten thousand.
Ivan finishes a second glass of Chianti. He doesn’t order the two servings of cannoli that he was anticipating with such pleasure.
An hour after nightfall, he’s in Placerville, stalking the so-called beautiful monster, on what is shaping up to be perhaps the most important night of his life.
Ivan Petro appears to have a molecular density greater than that of mere flesh and bone, as though the substance of which he’s constituted was first made molten in a coke-fired oven before being poured into a man shape. Teeth as blunt and white as those of a horse, face broad and flushed as if he has spent his entire life in a stinging wind that has left this permanent coloration. People have called him “Big Guy” since he was eleven years old.
Ivan is a hit team all by himself.
It has been assumed that Jane must be staying in motels, paying cash and using forged ID, remaining nowhere more than a night or two. The national chains in the hospitality industry will accept cash in advance from someone without a credit card, but it is far from a common practice. To avoid raising an eyebrow and attracting undue attention, she most likely prefers mom-and-pop operations, one-and two-star motels more accustomed to cash transactions.
Placerville is not so large that it offers scores of mom-and-pop motels. With his Department of Homeland Security credentials and his authoritative demeanor, using a description of Tahoe Jane but not her name, he receives cooperation from the clerks at the front desks of the establishments most likely to interest the fugitive.
In any endeavor like this, luck plays a role. If Jane chose to continue through Placerville to Sacramento and points beyond, Ivan is wasting his time. But luck strikes after his second stop. He is in his Range Rover, a third motel address entered in his navigator, stopped at a red traffic light, when he sees a woman of interest come out of a supermarket.
Carrying what appears to be a deli bag, she passes the Range Rover and crosses the street to the motel on the northwest corner. She resembles the photo of Jane incognita taken in Tahoe: stylish chopped-shaggy black hair, a little Goth makeup around the eyes.
He can’t see if she is wearing a nose ring or if her lipstick is blue, as in the photograph, but she’s a looker, wearing a sport coat that’s maybe cut for concealed-carry. And she has attitude, moves with grace and confidence that people often mention when talking about Jane Hawk.