“But that would be the same thing,” the doctor told him. “I’m safe because nobody’s looking at me, that’s what you said. I just had the one patient who was in the robbery with you, that’s all. But if you tell them about me, they’ll look at me.” Dr. Madchen leaned earnestly forward. “Mr. Dalesia,” he said, “this has all been an emotional nightmare for me. I’ll let you stay, but when you go, steal someone else’s car.”
Dalesia nodded at him. “I could just kill you, you know.”
Humbly, the doctor said, “I know you could.”
Dalesia shook his head, as though angry with himself. “I’m not a nutcase,” he said. “I’m not gonna hurt you unless I don’t have any choice.”
“I know that,” the doctor said. “You can stay. Use Estrella’s room. But please don’t take my car.”
“We’ll see,” Dalesia said.
The next week was harrowing, Dr. Madchen lived his normal life by day, doing his office hours in downtown Rutherford, seeing his patients, but always aware of that lurking demon waiting for him at home. If only he could just stay all night in the office, sleep on an examination table, eat at the luncheonette up at the corner.
But he didn’t dare do anything outside his normal routine. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast with Estrella’s closed door seeming to shimmer with what lay behind it, then go off to his office and return as late as possible at the end of the day.
He took Isabelle out to dinner twice that week, but the strain of this new secret was just too much for him. He couldn’t possibly tell her what had happened. All he could do was wait for this horror to end.
At least the man Dalesia didn’t intrude too much into the doctor’s life. Estrella had her own television set and Dalesia seemed to spend most of his time in there watching it. From the sound, it was mostly the news channels. The doctor bought bread and cold cuts and cans of soup, and steadily they were consumed, but not in his presence.
The few times he did see Dalesia that week were unsettling, because it soon became clear that Dalesia was becoming more and more disturbed by the fix he was in. He’d gotten this far, to this temporary safety, but it couldn’t last, and where could he go next? He had killed a US marshal, and every policeman in the Northeast was looking for him. The doctor began to fear that the man would eventually snap under the strain, that he would do something irrational that would destroy them both.
But it never quite happened, and on Friday evening, when Dr. Madchen got home and knocked on Estrella’s door, Dalesia appeared in the doorway more haggard than tense, as though now the strain were robbing him of strength. “Estrella’s coming back tomorrow,” the doctor said. “I’m picking her up at the bus depot at three. You’ve been here almost a week. You really have to go.”
“I know,” Dalesia said, and half turned as though to look at the television set still running in the room behind him. “They’re not letting up,” he said.
“I’ve been stopped at roadblocks three times this week,” the doctor told him.
Dalesia rubbed a weary hand over his face. “I gotta get away from here.”
“Please don’t take my car. It won’t do you any good, and it can only—”
“I know, I know.” Dalesia’s anger was also tired. “I need a car, but I can’t use one all the cops are looking for.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay,” Dalesia said. “Tomorrow, when you go get this Estrella, you’re gonna drive me somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’ll show you tomorrow,” Dalesia said, and went back into Estrella’s room, and closed the door.
2
Captain Robert Modale of the New York State Police was a calm man and a patient man, but he knew a whopping waste of time when it was dumped in his lap, and he’d been given a doozy this time. Irritation, which is what Captain Modale had to admit to himself he was feeling right now, had the effect of making him even quieter and more self-contained than ever. As a result, he had ridden in the passenger seat of the unmarked state pool car, next to Trooper Oskott at the wheel, all the way across half of New York State and probably a third of Massachusetts with barely a word out of his mouth.
Trooper Oskott, looking awkward and uncomfortable in civvies instead of his usual snappy gray fitted uniform, had tried to make conversation a few times, but the responses were so minimal that he soon gave up, and the interstates merely rolled silently by outside the vehicle’s glass while Captain Modale contemplated this whopping waste of time he had to deal with.
Which was going to be a two-day waste of time, at that. The captain had to travel these hundreds of miles on a Friday, but he would reach Rutherford too late to meet with his Massachusetts counterparts until Saturday morning. In the meantime, the plan was that he and Trooper Oskott would bunk in a motel somewhere.
At first, though, it had looked as though no accommodation would be available, since it was the height of the fall foliage season over there in New England, and most inns of any kind were full. Captain Modale had been counting on that, the whopping waste of time called off for lack of housing, but then somebody made an early departure from a bed and breakfast with the disgusting name of Bosky Rounds, so the trip was on after all.
Bosky Rounds was not as repulsive as its name, though it was still not at all to the captain’s taste. Nevertheless, the proprietor, Mrs. Bartlett, did maintain a neat and cozy atmosphere, steered the captain and the trooper to a fine New England seafood dinner on Friday night, and furnished such mountains of breakfast Saturday morning that the captain, indulging himself far beyond his normal pattern, decided not to mention the breakfast to his wife.
Mrs. Bartlett, in a side desk drawer in her neat office, seemed to keep an unlimited supply of local maps, on one of which she drew a narrow red pen line from where they were to the temporary unified police headquarters in the Rutherford Combined Bank building, that being the rightful owner of the money stolen last week.
When they went out to the car, they were preceded by another guest here, a brassy-looking blonde in black, who got into a black Honda Accord festooned with antennas. With just a quick glimpse of her profile, the captain found himself wondering, have I seen her before? Possibly in here last night, or at the restaurant. Or it could be she’s just a kind of type of tough-looking blonde, striking enough to make you notice her, but also with a little warning sign in view.
Whatever the case, she was none of the captain’s concern. He got into the pool car, and Trooper Oskott drove him over to the meeting.
What was normally a loan officer’s space, a fairly roomy office with neutral gray carpet and furniture and walls, had been turned into the combined police headquarters, crammed with electronic equipment, extra tables and chairs, and easels mounted with photos, chain-of-command charts, progress reports, and particularly irritating examples of press coverage.
While Trooper Oskott waited at an easy parade rest out in the main banking area, still shut down since the robbery with all necessary bank transactions handled at another branch twenty-some miles away, Captain Modale went into the HQ room to be met by several of his opposite numbers, brought here at this hour specifically to meet with him.
What the captain read from those solemn faces and strong handshakes was a frustration even deeper than his own, and he decided to give up his bad temper at having his time wasted like this, because he knew these men and women were clutching at straws.
Three strangers had come into their territory, armed with antitank weapons illegal to be imported into the United States, and they’d made off with just about an entire bank’s cash assets. One day later, the law had managed to lay its hands on one of the felons, but the very next day they lost him again, and lost one of their own as well. Now, in the nearly a week since, there had been no progress, no breaks, no further clues as to where any of the three men had gone.