The plane began its descent just west of Rochester, and in ten minutes it was gliding up the runway at Buffalo International. Jane hurried past the car rental desks and went outside to flag a cab. The woman had been here for two weeks, and it was likely that she had rented a car at the airport. If she had, then she would have come out and seen the three or four fleets of nearly identical cars lined up behind the terminal. When she saw one of those four models in the right color, it was possible she would know the person in it had just come from the airport, and begin to wonder.
Jane had the taxi driver take her to an agency close to the center of the city, where she rented a Dodge minivan with tinted side and rear windows. If she was going to use it to watch for the woman, then she had to be able to look without having her head visible in the driver’s seat.
Jane drove up the street toward Carey’s office, her gloved hands clutching the wheel, the collar of her new jacket up, her hair tucked under her hat and a pair of sunglasses over her eyes. She circled the block, trying to take in all of the sights at once. There was nothing out of place. The cars behind the building belonged to Carey’s receptionist and three nurses. As she came up the next street, she noticed that the lights were off in the examining rooms and in the little office where Carey talked to patients. He was gone.
Jane glanced at her watch. It was five forty-five, and Carey had undoubtedly gone back to the hospital. As she drove past the big white building she admitted to herself that it was getting dark. She would have to take off the sunglasses before she went inside. She had hoped not to need to go inside at all. She didn’t know most of the people who worked in the hospital, so the woman would have a fair chance of picking Jane out of the crowd before Jane noticed her. The few people Jane did know were all old buddies of Carey’s. If she walked in and one of them called, “Jane!” ugly things could start to happen.
Jane parked her van. She was on the same side of the street as the hospital’s front entrance, so she wouldn’t have to hustle Carey across the open, empty pavement, but the distance was greater than she would have liked. She glanced at her watch again and tried to steady her nerves. This was just like taking a runner out of the world. She had done this before. It should be easy. The doctors always went in and out of the rear entrance, where their reserved parking spaces were. If the woman was watching the car, she would be in the back. Jane would find Carey, push him into an elevator, and lead him to the front door. She would do it about ten minutes before he usually left, get him into the van, and whisk him off to a place where he would be safe.
Jane walked to the doors with a group who seemed to be relatives of someone who’d had a baby. There were a white-haired couple wearing the benevolent grandparent expression and a young dark-haired man who carried a bouquet of roses in a florist’s vase so that water dripped on his coat. He seemed to be looking through objects rather than at them, while his mind made a rare visit to the realm of philosophy.
Jane judged that they would make a good camouflage. She opened the door for the parents before the man could transfer the roses to his other hand. He grinned apologetically and she grinned back at him in understanding. She said softly, “Are you a new daddy?” and he nodded proudly. “Congratulations,” she said. She pushed the roses up. “Carry them this way, so the water doesn’t leak out.”
The little family group kept Jane surrounded all the way to the elevator, while Jane scanned the lobby for anyone who could possibly be the woman—blond hair, five foot six to five foot eight, size eight. But the lobby was only beginning to fill up with the early evening visitors now, and none of the women were the right age or size. She slipped away from the family and into the stairwell.
Jane hurried up the steps to the second floor, then the third. Carey’s recovering patients were always on the third floor or the fourth. She stepped out of the stairwell and walked purposefully along the third-floor corridor. She turned the corner and stared down the next hallway at the nurses’ station to be sure Carey wasn’t there, reading charts or talking to someone. She went back the way she had come, then turned the other three corners, looking in each open door until she could see the nurses’ station from the other side. She caught a glimpse of Nancy Prelsky hurrying across the hallway and into a patient’s room. Jane waited a few seconds to be sure Nancy was occupied in there, then stepped across the hallway and into the other stairwell.
Jane repeated her tour on the fourth floor, but she saw no sign of Carey. There were three orderlies pushing head-high carts loaded with trays full of covered plates along the corridor, then stopping at each room to make a delivery. She looked at her watch: six twenty. Carey wouldn’t come in to examine anybody during dinner.
She waited until the orderlies had moved around the corner to the rooms on the other side of the nurses’ station, then stepped to a door. There was a chart with notes on it, and she recognized Carey’s scrawl. She hesitated, then decided. If the person in here was eating dinner alone, then he wasn’t too sick and he wasn’t asleep. She knocked and heard a muffled response. She took off her hat and opened the door just enough to stick her head in.
The man was in his thirties, and his leg had a cast on it that went from a metal stirrup at the ankle nearly to his hip. He had a fork in his right hand and a television remote control in his left. When he looked down from the television at her, he seemed pleased.
“Excuse me,” said Jane.
“Sure,” he said.
“I’m just checking to see if Dr. McKinnon has been in to see you yet.”
The man nodded and let his eyes be drawn back up toward the television screen above the bed. “Yeah. About … a half hour ago.”
“Thanks,” said Jane. But this time she did not smile. She was looking past the man on the bed. The windows on this side of the building looked out on the parking lot. Through his, she could see Carey’s empty parking space. She closed the door, slipped into the stairwell, and began to run down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairwell, she paused, put her cap on her head, then stepped out and stared at the floor as she hurried across the lobby and out the front door. She trotted to the van, climbed in, and started it. She spent five seconds checking the mirrors before she threw the van into gear and drove off.
It took twenty minutes to get to Amherst, and while she was driving the last glow of the sunset disappeared and late afternoon turned into evening. As she made the turn onto the street where she and Carey lived, she studied the parked cars, noted the houses that had lights on and the ones that didn’t, searching for anything that seemed wrong or out of place.
Jane parked a few doors away from the house and moved to the back of the van to look at it. Carey’s car was not visible in the driveway, and there were no lights turned on. Then she saw Carey’s BMW make the turn at the corner and come along the street. She moved back from the tinted window and watched it glide past her.
Jane forced her attention away from him. Her eyes devoured the sights of the neighborhood, scrutinizing them for the tiniest change. Had a shadow passed behind the set of blinds in the window across the street? Had a curtain moved? She pivoted to stare up the street, then down it to see if a new car had come around the corner after his. His arrival had not prompted any visible response.
The sky was black now—as dark as it would get tonight—and it was still early enough so that the normal activity in the neighborhood would keep her from standing out. It was time to move. She switched off the dome light in the van, slipped to the passenger side and out the door. She kept her body in the deep shadow of the van and studied the street again. When she was sure that there were no headlights approaching, she drifted quickly across the open pavement and up the driveway along the tall hedge that hid even her silhouette.