Authors: Thomas Perry
The car that brought Chelsea Schnell home at noon was a new Range Rover. As it turned
off the highway onto the long gravel drive to the house, Jane studied what she could
see of the driver. He was a man in his early forties. He drove up to the front porch
and got out to let Chelsea out of the passenger side. She was wearing a fancy black
dress and high heels that seemed wrong for this time of day. She took a set of keys
from her purse and unlocked the door, and the man followed her in.
Jane moved in closer until she could read the license plate, then moved in close enough
to take a picture with her phone. She put it away, and then moved to the side of the
house, where she couldn’t be as easily seen from the street, and then to the back.
As she ducked to cross under one of the rear windows, she heard voices. She stopped
to keep from making noise or having one of them look out the window and see her. The
voices stopped, and then she heard something else. There was a squeaky sound, slow
at first, and then a bit louder. Could it be?
She moved her body close to the wall, slowly raised herself, put one eye to the corner
of the window then away almost instantly, and ducked down. She had seen enough to
know that it was time to go. Neither of the people inside the bedroom would be looking
out the window very soon, because they were on the bed having sex.
Jane made her way to the back, where there were trees and bushes to hide her. She
walked a course parallel to the road, and didn’t alter it until she came to her car.
As she left, she looked at her watch. It was half past noon.
Jane drove to Interstate 390, took it north to the Rochester Inner Loop and got off
on Main, then drove to her hotel and parked in the underground garage. She put the
lanyard that held her badge for the medical records management convention around her
neck, carried her folder under her arm, and took the elevator upstairs to the lobby,
where there were dozens of other men and women with convention badges coming in or
out of the hotel restaurants and the business center. She took a second elevator to
her floor, went into her room, hung the
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the door latch, closed the door, and bolted it.
It was strange to be in this room. All of this time she had been within seventy miles
of her home and her husband, but she was in hiding. She couldn’t do the things she
needed to and then go home and sleep in her own bed. She couldn’t risk leading someone
back to the McKinnon house. Those things had all been clear from the beginning. But
what bothered her at that moment was that she couldn’t be there because Carey would
ask her questions, and she would have to lie to him, have to avoid letting him see
her come and go, and argue with him about what she was doing. If she argued this time
she couldn’t say that what she’d been doing was legal, or that it was safe, or that
it was nearly over. It was none of those things.
She took off her clothes, showered, and then went to bed. She slept from two o’clock
until nine in the evening, and got up still thinking about what she had learned during
the night and morning. She wondered how Jimmy was doing, and whether he was still
safely hidden. She knew she had to trust him, to assume that he had the sense to follow
her instructions long enough for her to find out what was going on.
At ten she was dressed in a black shirt and black jeans and ready to go out in the
dark again. She went down to the garage, retrieved her car, and drove to the Tonawanda
Reservation. She pulled over to the side of the road near Ellen Dickerson’s house
and walked along the shoulder. She listened to the sound of her feet crunching the
first sycamore leaves to fall to the ground. It was still summer, but the sycamores
always seemed to drop a few green leaves bigger than the spread of a big man’s hand
about now, reminders that summer was not permanent, and someday winter would come
back. Jane felt an increasing sense of reluctance and trepidation at dropping in like
this at the home of the clan mother of the Wolf clan. What she was doing felt presumptuous.
She stepped up the four steps to the wooden porch and the front door opened. Ellen
Dickerson was standing in the doorway wearing blue jeans and a loose shirt with the
light behind her and her face in shadow. “Hello, Jane.” There was no surprise in her
voice, no real emotion except patience.
Seeing her there already waiting made Jane pause for a second before she came forward
the rest of the way. Maybe it had been a coincidence. Maybe Ellen had seen the light
from Jane’s car and wondered who had come, or heard her walking on the crisp dry leaves.
Maybe she had heard her feet on the porch and already been near the door. “Hello,
Ellen,” she said. “I’m sorry to come without calling.”
“We’ve been waiting.” She came out onto the porch and closed her front door behind
her, leaving them both in shadow. She stood by the railing and stared up the road
into the darkness beyond Jane’s car, then in the other direction. When she was satisfied,
she said, “Come in. We’ll talk.”
They went inside, and Jane followed her through the small, neat living room into the
kitchen. Ellen was as tall as Jane and a bit broader, with a face that had obviously
been striking and beautiful when it was young, and had aged without softening. Her
face had a way of making anyone in her presence try to read what she was feeling and
fail. Her expression was calm, dignified, attentive, motherly at the same time—but
not the doting sort of mother, the stern sort. Her piercing black eyes had a clarity
and intensity that must have made some people want to look away, but made Jane want
to look into them more deeply.
Ellen said, “Things aren’t going as well as you’d like.”
“No,” said Jane. “I still haven’t been able to do what you asked.”
“Tell me what you can.”
Jane said carefully, “Jimmy is living in a small town in another state. He has what
he needs to live comfortably for a while.”
“Thank you, Jane. That’s what we’d hoped you would do.”
“But it isn’t what you asked. It’s only a way of delaying what’s going to happen,
not preventing it. Jimmy is still in danger.”
“From whom?”
“That’s where the problem begins,” Jane said. “There are so many people involved in
this that I’m not sure yet what really happened.”
“We know about the men who are waiting for Jimmy in jail.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “They could be some of Nick Bauermeister’s friends or relatives.
But Jimmy and I were being hunted and chased in Cleveland by men who looked and acted
like something else. One of them fired a gun into the side of our car. The man who
lied about selling Jimmy the murder weapon has got at least a hundred thousand dollars’
worth of new toys—TV, car, and Jet Ski, at least.” Jane went on with her recitation.
She had seen the girl the newspapers referred to as the murder victim’s fiancée having
sex with an older man in the bed she must have shared with the victim. And the murdered
man had been a burglar, had probably been stealing from his partners, and hidden the
loot he’d kept from them in his basement. “These are all people who benefited from
the death of Nick Bauermeister or had motives not to want him around.”
Ellen Dickerson nodded slowly. “Greed, jealousy, revenge. Sometimes people are a disappointing
bunch.”
“Yes,” said Jane.
“We need to clear our minds.” Ellen stood and went to a kitchen cabinet, opened the
door, and took down a big coffee can. “Come on out in the back.”
She took Jane out onto the wooden deck in back of the house, which overlooked a path
into the woods. She opened the can and poured a pile of tobacco onto a small rustic
table that had been covered with a piece of sheet metal. Jane recognized it as
oyenkwa:onwe
, “the real tobacco,” which was greenish and dried to almost a powder. It didn’t look
much like the tobacco sold in stores.
Ellen whispered for about thirty seconds. Jane could tell that they were Seneca words,
but did not listen to them because she was aware that they were not addressed to her.
Ellen knew things that were the property of secret societies, so Jane kept her distance
and didn’t try to hear any of it. Ellen lit the tobacco with a match, and the smoke
began to rise straight up in the windless air. She said in Seneca loud enough for
Jane to hear, “We burn oyenkwa:onwe to give thanks for keeping both of our children
safe and out of the hands of enemies. We ask for clear minds to help us find a way
through this trouble.”
It was simple and clear and it reminded Jane of things she had always loved. Senecas
weren’t in the habit of praying to ask for gifts. They gave thanks. When they did
make a request, it was almost always to be better—more worthy, more able, braver,
wiser. She silently added the strength of her mind to the prayer, willing the fire
to send the stream of tobacco smoke upward to the sky.
After a few minutes the tobacco burned out and Jane followed Ellen to the door. She
felt almost reluctant to leave the quiet, private space, the platform surrounded by
tall, thick-trunked trees with the patch of deep, starlit sky above. It occurred to
Jane that there never seemed to be anywhere in Western New York where the sky was
as full of stars as over the reservation. She saw Ellen watching her.
Ellen said, “It was nice of you to come and fill us in.”
“It may be a while before I can do it again.”
“We’ll understand.”
Jane said, “I think I’m going to have to get a lawyer involved now. Jimmy won’t ever
be safe until the law is satisfied.”
Ellen said, “The clan mothers aren’t opposed to lawyers. Ely Parker learned to be
a lawyer to help save the reservation. He and Mr. Martindale are two of the reasons
that there is a reservation.”
Jane nodded. The Mr. Martindale Ellen was talking about was the attorney who had engineered
the clan mothers’ twenty-five-year strategy of delaying tactics and lawsuits that
had secured the reservation title in the 1850s. And the Tonawanda Seneca chief Ely
S. Parker was also the Union general who wrote the terms of the Confederate surrender
at Appomattox in 1865. A few generations were an eyeblink to the clan mothers. “This
lawyer is a friend of mine.”
“We trust your judgment.”
“The lawyer is—”
“We trust your judgment.” Her voice was still soft, still patient.
“Thanks. I’d better be going,” Jane said.
Ellen enveloped her in a hug that reminded her of the hugs she had received as a child,
a strong and protective embrace that seemed to cover her entirely for a moment. Ellen
released her, reached into the pocket of her jeans, and pulled out two soft deer-leather
pouches. “Take this tobacco. One is for Jimmy, and the other for you. It wouldn’t
hurt to toss a little on the road before you go.”
“Thank you,” said Jane. She took them, went out the door and into the night. Somehow
the night felt a little different from the way it had before. Now the darkness was
a covering, a thing that had protected her in the past, and was protecting her again.
She reached Ray Snow’s Volkswagen Passat and remembered what Ellen had said. She sprinkled
a pinch on each of the car’s tires, and then tossed another into the air above the
road in front of the Passat. “It’s me,” she said. “Onyo:ah. You know what I’m trying
to do. Thanks for letting Jimmy and me get this far alive.”
17
T
he next morning Jane drove to a shopping mall in Batavia and parked near the street
far from the stores, where mall security cameras might pick her up. She dialed the
cell phone number of her old college friend Allison.
“Hello?” Jane could hear the familiar melodious voice, almost see the blond hair and
the long, graceful neck. Allison didn’t look or sound like a trial lawyer.
“Hi, Allison. It’s me.”
“I didn’t expect to hear your voice. I see you have another new number.”
“Nearly every week.”
“I suppose that makes sense. If this is your phone call to your attorney, tell me
where they’re holding you. They don’t have to let these calls go on and—”
“It’s not,” Jane interrupted. “I’m not the one in trouble.”
“That’s a relief,” said Allison. “Who is?”
“A guy I grew up with. He’s an Indian like me.”
“If he got caught, he’s not much like you. What’s his name?”
“James Sanders. Goes by Jimmy. About two months ago a drunk took a swing at him in
a bar in Akron, New York. He dropped the drunk and went home. The police got a complaint
from the drunk, whose name was Nick Bauermeister, and arrested Jimmy. No big deal,
until about a month later, when Bauermeister was murdered. He was shot with a rifle
through the front window of his house.”
“What’s the evidence against your friend?”
“A man came forward to tell the police he’d had a garage sale and sold Jimmy a rifle
of the right caliber and some ammo before the murder.”
“A selfless act, since he was admitting to an illegal transaction. He sold it to Jimmy,
not just to some guy who looked a bit like him?”
“He supposedly picked Jimmy’s picture out of a stack and said he was the one. I went
to see who this witness was last night and noticed he has a brand-new Porsche, a new
Jet Ski, and a giant new television set. His house is a teardown, but he seems to
have had a shot of money recently.”
“What’s the victim’s name again?”
“Nick Bauermeister. I guess that’s probably Nicholas.”
“Got it. And where are they holding your friend Jimmy?”
“They’re not. They’re hunting for him.”
“Here we go again. You’re hiding him. I’ll need to talk to him before he turns himself
in.”
“I’ll arrange that when I can. Should I keep using this number?”
“Yes. Can’t you bring him to see me, or take me to him?”
“I’m sorry, Allison. The problem is that he can’t turn himself in just yet. There
are people trying to kill him. I don’t know who they are yet, but I’ve actually seen
some of them. And I have reliable information that there are also some who have gotten
themselves sent to jail to wait for him.”
Allison sighed. “I knew this couldn’t be a simple case of getting a false charge dismissed.”
“No,” Jane said. “And this time it’s not me just asking for a quick favor. It’s a
real case, and I expect to pay your exorbitant fees, including the billable time for
this call. If I know you, it’ll be the best money I ever spent.”
“We’ll talk money later,” said Allison.
“As long as you don’t try to weasel out of your paycheck when the time comes.”
“Can I get Karen Alvarez involved in this? She’s great on murder.”
“I’d love to have her. She knows how to keep a secret.”
“That and obfuscate. It’s what we do all day. Let me start nosing around this case
without letting anybody know I’ve been retained and see what I can find out, and what
ideas Karen has. Did you say the murder was in Akron? Is that Monroe County?”
“The murder was in Avon. That’s in Erie County.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Thanks, Allison. And give my regards to Karen.”
“I’m about to go down to her office now. Go do whatever it is you need to do. If anything
goes wrong, call me and I’ll be there as soon as I can to bail you out.”
“What could go wrong?”
“Just make sure he has my number and knows enough to tell the police he won’t talk
until I get there.”
“I will. And thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it. And I really mean don’t. Bye.”
Jane thought about Allison. She had been one of Jane’s friends at Cornell nearly twenty
years ago. She was beautiful in the conventional ways—very blond, very white complexion,
with blue eyes. Those qualities had made it easy to dismiss her at first. But she
had also been quick-witted, with a ferocious critical intelligence that made her one
of Jane’s favorites. She had been one of the inner circle at the party on the night
when Jane realized that a male friend of theirs who was about to go to prison had
another option.
Years later, Allison had become a lawyer in New York City, and she had called Jane.
She said, “Remember the night when you helped John?”
“Yes,” Jane said.
“I have a client who’s in the same position. He’s innocent. He’s out on bail during
the trial. Sometime tomorrow when the jury comes in, he’s going to jail, and I think
this judge will give him a life sentence. Do you think you can still do what you did
that time?”
“Are you sure that’s what he needs?” Jane asked.
“He needs to be left alone, and given a chance to live a life. That’s not what’s going
to happen if he’s still here when the verdict comes in.”
“I’ll be there tonight,” Jane said.
“What time?” Allison said. “I’ll meet your plane.”
“Don’t,” said Jane. “Be somewhere far from the airport, and be sure there are lots
of other people who will remember they were with you. Just give me his address and
phone number.”
Allison’s client had been gone for fifteen years now. Jane heard from him by mail
about once a year, but he’d never tried to get in touch with Allison again. There
was a chance that even now some law enforcement agency might be waiting for him to
make that mistake. Their friend John, the first one Jane had taken out, had been gone
for nearly twenty.
Karen Alvarez was a partner in Allison’s firm. A year ago when Jane had needed to
pretend to be a lawyer in order to sneak James Shelby out of the Clara Shortridge
Foltz criminal courthouse in Los Angeles, Karen Alvarez had let her use her identity.
Both women were tall and thin, with long black hair and olive skin, and Jane had impersonated
her easily. Jane had succeeded in getting Shelby out and into a car, but Jane had
not made it far from the courthouse. The memory of it made Jane’s thigh hurt again
where the bullet had passed near the bone.
Jane took out the pages she had copied in the business center, and took another look.
This time what caught her eye was the name of the man who owned Box Farm Personal
Storage—Daniel Crane. She took out her phone, went to Google, and typed in the name
with her thumb. She found one in Williamsville, New York, then used her corporation’s
subscription service to run a quick background check on him. It took her several minutes
of staring at a little wheel spinning at the top of her phone’s screen before things
began to appear. She read the new information, turned off the phone, plugged it into
the car’s electrical outlet to recharge, and drove.
The house was technically in Williamsville, but the distinctions were a bit vague.
Williamsville was surrounded by Amherst, and that was where she and Carey lived, but
their house was not near his. She found the proper number on the rural mailbox, drove
on, and parked about a quarter mile farther down the road, then walked back.
When she returned to the address, she avoided the curving cobbled driveway and took
a shortcut through the brush and trees that hid the house from the road. When she
reached the edge of the stand of trees she saw that the garage beside the house was
open. One of the cars inside was a black Corvette. The other was a Range Rover.
Jane moved closer and compared the Range Rover’s license plate with the picture on
her cell phone. They were the same. Daniel Crane had to be the man she had seen at
Chelsea Schnell’s house. The man this girl had been sleeping with was her dead boyfriend’s
boss. Jane thought about the revelation without drawing any conclusion yet. People
who weren’t supposed to fall in love often did.
Jane walked around outside of the house, staying in the trees, away from the margin
of light that spilled outward from the big windows. The house was big and modern,
and everything she could see through the glass looked expensive. It made sense that
a man who was collecting hundreds of dollars a month for each empty ten-by-fifteen-foot
space of a large complex would have plenty of money. He didn’t have to be much of
a salesman—the real salesmen had been the ones who had sold the customers more stuff
than they had room for.
Jane watched the house all night, and then returned the next day and the next. The
neighborhood was an easy one for watching because the houses were so far apart. Down
the road was a small, modern commercial district. She found that she could park at
any of three medical and dental buildings where each doctor’s staff would assume she
had an appointment with another doctor, in the lots of two nearby golf courses where
she could approach Crane’s house without crossing a road, or at a mini-mall that contained
a supermarket and a couple of restaurants.
She studied Crane’s routines. Every morning, Crane drove off in the Range Rover around
eight. Every afternoon around four he returned, showered and changed, and went to
take Chelsea Schnell somewhere for dinner. One night he returned alone, and the others
he brought her home with him. Chelsea Schnell was always dressed up in the evening,
but beginning the second night she brought with her a small overnight bag and changed
into jeans in the morning for the trip home. Her clothes made Jane think the girl
might be attracted to the man rather than his money. The clothes, both the dress-up
outfits and the casual ones, were items Jane had seen hanging in Chelsea Schnell’s
closet on her first visit. That meant Chelsea wasn’t taking money from Daniel Crane
and buying things for herself.
Crane’s clothes were more extravagant, but he seemed to buy them on websites. In the
three days Jane watched the house, she saw the UPS truck deliver four packages and
leave them on his porch. She opened all of them, found they contained clothes he had
ordered online, rewrapped them, and left them on the porch.
Each day a woman about fifty years old drove up at ten and went inside to clean the
house, do laundry, and sometimes drive out to perform some light grocery shopping.
She spent about half her time washing the huge windows, doing a couple each day until
she had done them all, then starting the next ones, in a continuous rotation. Each
day she raked the small Japanese garden in the courtyard. She was always gone before
Crane came home at four. Jane timed her and chose the moment when she was busy with
the windows on the back wall of the house to open her car door and read the registration
in her glove compartment. The car’s owners were Wilfred and Verna Machak.
Jane visited the inside of the house on the second and third mornings at eight after
Crane had driven off. On those mornings Chelsea Schnell left with him, having stayed
the night. Jane found little in the house that surprised her. She confirmed that the
two had slept together by the state of the bed in the master bedroom, the only one
that had been touched. She could see that they had been drinking, at least moderately,
from the champagne flutes left in the bedroom one morning and cognac snifters the
next. She noticed that although Chelsea Schnell had now slept in the house at least
three times in a short period, she had not left any of her belongings anywhere in
the house. It was possible that she was very well organized, or that she was being
careful not to scare Crane off. It was also possible that Chelsea wasn’t yet sure
she really wanted Crane, and was trying to avoid having to gather toothbrushes and
panties when she left for the last time.
On the fourth evening at sunset Jane drove to the reservation to visit Mattie Sanders,
Jimmy’s mother. Jane parked at the old cemetery by the council house and walked. It
was a windless evening and Jane could hear the chirps of sparrows and the warbling
of robins competing with the crickets as she walked. She was aware of the sounds her
feet made as she went, and found herself treading carefully along the shoulder of
the road to avoid frightening the animals into silence. She turned off the road onto
a trail through the woods to the smaller road that led to Mattie’s house, but stopped
to watch the road through the trees and to study every building, every parked car.
She was searching for the presence of strangers—anyone who might be watching the Sanders
house or the approaches to it.
All the way to Mattie’s house she watched and studied, and when she arrived she had
still seen nothing. It was almost as disturbing as it would have been to see something.
It would have been reassuring to see signs that the state police were watching Mattie,
but if they had been, they weren’t tonight. Someone must have been monitoring Mattie’s
telephone, or the false cops would have had no way to find her and Jimmy in Cleveland.
As Jane walked, the birds went to their nests and night fell.
When Jane stepped onto the front porch and knocked, Mattie opened the front door a
few inches. “Janie,” she said. “Come on in.”
Jane entered and Mattie closed the door and then hugged her. “I’m so pleased to see
you’re back,” she said.
Mattie was being scrupulously patient, but Jane knew she must be going mad with worry.
“He’s fine,” she whispered in Mattie’s ear. Then she added, “Let’s go out for a walk.”
Mattie nodded and led her to the back door through the small, neat kitchen. She looked
out for a few seconds, stepped out, locked the door, and headed into the woods. They
moved along in silence for a few minutes, hearing only the crickets raising the volume
now that it was fully dark. Jane remembered this path from her childhood, but it was
the first time she’d been in this section of woods since the fall when she’d left
for college. She stopped for a few seconds and listened, but heard no change in the
frequency of the crickets. She said softly, “Jimmy is well and safe. I left him with
new clothes, plenty of cash, and a reliable used car in a nice small town a long way
from here. He knows what he has to do to stay hidden while I look into things here.”