11
Jane drove from Minneapolis to O'Hare International Airport to return the rental car. There was little chance the four hunters could know that the car existed, let alone trace it from the Buffalo airport to O'Hare. If they managed to trace it, they would only conclude that she and Christine had driven to Chicago and gotten on a plane.
She was at the airport before dawn, took the car rental agency shuttle to the terminal, and arrived at five-thirty A.M. when the crowds were thin for her flight to Austin, Texas. She had not been to Austin in several years, but she remembered it as the right kind of place for a few months from now, the time when Christine had the baby and stopped being Linda Welles. Austin was warm most of the time, and it had a lively atmosphere. Austin was the state capital and the home of the University of Texas. Big universities created whole communities around them like ripples spreading outward from a splash. There were large groups of unattached, interesting people, lots of nightlife, music. There was no better place for providing cover for a woman of college age, particularly one who would arrive in the early fall, like thousands of others.
The airport required caution. O'Hare held dangers for Jane that had nothing to do with Christine Monahan. It was one of the biggest airline hubs in the country, placed right in the center, and so it had always attracted lots of hunters—cops and bounty hunters watching for fugitives, criminals watching for victims, an array of professional searchers trying to spot particular travelers. There might be men in the terminal who would remember her face if they saw it. As Jane moved through the lines waiting to get through security, she kept scanning the places where people could stand and watch the passengers. When Jane was through the security checks, she walked past her gate, sat in the waiting area two gates farther down the concourse with her back to the big window overlooking the flight line so the morning glare would be behind her, and studied the faces that came near enough to see. She saw nobody who struck her as a threat, so when her flight began boarding she walked slowly to her gate and stepped through the door into the short tunnel to the plane.
When the plane landed in Austin, she rented a car, checked into a hotel near the airport, and went out apartment hunting. This was a good time for doing it, when much of the campus population had left for the summer, and not all of the apartments had been rented for the fall. Jane's story was that she was planning to enter a graduate program at the university in the fall, but would be in Europe for most of the summer. She wanted to rent an apartment right away for herself and a roommate with a baby. She was willing to pay the rent for the rest of June, July, August, and September in advance so she could store her books and furniture until university classes began. The simplest arrangement, she said, was to put the apartment only in the name Cecilia Randazzo—her name—and she would sign the lease and be responsible for the cost.
Cecilia Randazzo didn't want to live in the sort of building that housed a lot of undergraduate students. They would be too noisy, stay up too late, have too many parties. She wanted an apartment in a complex that catered to married students in their late twenties and thirties, or families, if they were quiet and well behaved.
She found a very desirable three-bedroom apartment not far from the university. The manager was a native-born Texan in her fifties with perfect silver hair named Mrs. McGowan. She said, "Of course we'll try to be sure you're happy, dear. But every single one of our tenants is an imperfect, living human being, so once in a while they do make a peep or two." But Jane's feigned fussiness made her appear to be the ideal tenant, so Mrs. McGowan was eager to get her to sign a lease. The building was occupied, Mrs. McGowan assured her, almost entirely by junior faculty members, joined by a few very quiet graduate students. As Mrs. McGowan showed her the crown molding along the ceilings and the tiles in the bathrooms, Jane was looking at other features that mattered more—the thickness and solidity of the doors, the quality of the locks, the view of the front door from above, the line of sight that would allow a tenant to see who was in a car parked on the street in front of the building. There was a garage under the building with a steel grate that closed after a tenant's car entered, so nobody ever had to walk from a lot to the door in the dark. Jane was pleased, so she said she would consider the apartment.
She walked around the complex, then drove back once in the evening, once late at night, and once in the morning to see what the neighborhood was like. The area had none of the signs that would have worried her. There were no groups of young men on the street with nothing to do. There were no loud parties in the nearby buildings, no abandoned cars or unoccupied houses on the surrounding streets. The nearest stores were big supermarkets—t here was a Winn-Dixie just a few blocks away—banks, or the sort of stores that attracted students—Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic, Urban Outfitters. Another half mile on and there were a Target and a couple of office supply stores. And there were lots of women in evidence from early morning until fairly late in the evening. That was always an important sign. If a neighborhood wasn't safe, women were always the first ones to disappear.
Jane signed a lease as Cecilia Randazzo, and stayed a few more days in Austin. She had a fairly clear idea of the styles and colors that Christine liked, based on their shopping trips in Minneapolis, so she bought a few necessities. She hung curtains that would ensure Christine's privacy and make the apartment look occupied, then bought many of the same items she'd bought for the apartment in Minneapolis: a bed, a dresser, a crib and changing table, a dining table with four chairs, pots, pans, and silverware. She spent a day buying small appliances and a television set. Another day she went out and bought a couch, a couple of matching chairs, some bookcases and lamps. She didn't want Christine to arrive exhausted with a baby in her arms and find a place that was empty and inhospitable, but she didn't want to deny Christine the chance to personalize her apartment, so as soon as the place seemed comfortable, she stopped shopping.
She slept in the apartment for the next three nights to be sure she had not missed something, and ran in the early mornings to become familiar with the neighborhood, as she had in Minneapolis. She spent the rest of each day learning about the city—where Christine might find a job, places to take the baby, ways of getting around, and places to avoid. At the university she picked up brochures about admission and university employment. At the Chamber of Commerce she picked up more leaflets on local businesses and attractions. She stored everything in a box for Christine.
On each of the three evenings, Jane went out looking for trouble. She walked alone to restaurants and bars, movie theaters and clubs, trying to find the places where bad things happened to people. And at the end of each excursion she made a point of walking back to the apartment late at night, using herself as bait to bring out any danger she had not detected. When Jane had satisfied herself that she had done everything she could, she confirmed her return ticket from Austin to Chicago, and bought a new ticket for the trip from Chicago to New York City. It was time to make her way home.
Jane traveled carefully. She arrived at the Austin airport an hour before the flight with only a carry-on shoulder bag, went through the security checkpoint, found her gate, and waited in the nearest ladies' room until she heard an announcement that her flight to Chicago was boarding. Then she stepped across the concourse diagonally and onto the plane. She had chosen the identity of Rebecca Silver-man for flying home, because it was one of the solid old identities she had grown herself, and she had not used it during her travels this year. The driver's license had been renewed twice, and the credit cards were nearly as old. She had been submerged and invisible for a month, but she was rising close to the surface again, where being noticed was dangerous.