“You bet. Don’t misunderstand. There’s nothing illegal about him selling the weapon. The law only forbids manufacturing or importing magazines that hold more than ten rounds. But because my friend bought his before the law was enacted, it’s legal. That model doesn’t come on the market often, so I expect you’ll have to pay extra.”
“Naturally.”
“But after that …” The clerk looked uncomfortable.
“After that?”
“No offense. You’re obviously new to this. So you don’t shoot your foot off, you might want to take some lessons.”
In the darkness beyond my window, the first snowstorm of the season gusted, but I hardly paid attention, too busy using Internet addresses that Payne had given me: sites that he said the FBI favored for researching places. Next to my new laptop computer, I had dictionaries and thesauruses to help me find words associated with redemption. Most weren’t promising. I couldn’t imagine anyone calling a place Atonement, Propitiation, Mediation, Intercession, or Judgment, for example. As it turned out, a village in Utah
was
called Judgment.
On the wall to my right, I’d attached a large map of the United States. Periodically, I got up and stuck a labeled thumbtack where a place’s name had a religious connotation. After several hours, there were tacks all over the country, but no pattern. None was in Montana. I was beginning to understand why Gader hadn’t wanted to investigate my theory.
My discouragement increased when I suddenly realized how many places had been named after saints. More thumbtacks got added to the map. I soon didn’t have any more.
“How does a person create a false identity?”
Payne considered my question while tapping fish food into the tank. His chair creaked when he settled his weight into it. “The way it used to be done, first you pick a city where you’ve never lived.”
“Why?”
“To prevent your real identity and your assumed one from contaminating each other. If you were raised in Cleveland, you don’t want the character you’re creating to have come from there, too. Otherwise, someone investigating your new identity might go there, show your photograph around, and find someone who remembers you under your real name.”
I nodded.
“So you go to a different part of the country. But avoid small communities where everybody knows everybody else and can tell an investigator immediately whether someone who looks like you ever came from there. Pick a city; there’s less continuity; memories are shorter. Let’s say you choose Los Angeles or Seattle. Go to the public library there and read newspapers that came out a few years after you were born. You’re looking for disasters— house fires, car accidents, that sort of thing—in which entire families were killed. That detail’s important because you don’t want anyone left alive to be able to contradict your story. Study the obituaries of the victims. You’re looking for an ethnically compatible male child who, if he had lived, would be the same age you are now.”
“And then?”
“Let’s say the victim you choose to impersonate was named Robert Keegan. His obituary will probably tell you where he was born. You send away for a copy of his birth certificate. Not a big deal. People lose copies of their birth certificates all the time. Public—record offices are used to that kind of request.”
“But …” I frowned. “If Robert Keegan died, won’t there be a note about it on his birth certificate, some kind of cross—reference?”
“Not in the days before computers became an essential part of our society,” Payne said. “The year that you were born, information wasn’t exchanged efficiently. The authorities would send you the copy of Robert Keegan’s birth certificate without giving it another thought. Wait a while so that a further inquiry about Robert Keegan won’t attract attention. Then contact the hall of records for a copy of Robert Keegan’s
death
certificate. The reason I mentioned Los Angeles and Seattle earlier is that the states of California and Washington put Social Security numbers on their death certificates. Many parents apply to get a Social Security number for their children while they’re filling out birth certificate forms in the hospital, so the odds are Keegan had one, even though he died young. With his birth certificate and his Social Security number, you can get a driver’s license, a passport, and any other major identification that you need. You can get a job, pay taxes, and open a bank account. In short, you can assume his identity.” Payne gave me a long look. “But we’re not talking about you.”
“No, we’re talking about my brother. If Lester Dant were dead, could Petey have assumed his identity the way you just explained?”
Payne kept studying me. “Before your brother was first arrested, photographed, fingerprinted, and booked as Lester Dant? Theoretically.”
“Then I’m not crazy.” I let out a long breath. “Petey and Dant
could
be the same person. Dant could be Petey’s alias.”
“But it didn’t happen,” Payne said.
“What?”
“Your brother didn’t assume Lester Dant’s identity.”
“How can you be so damned sure?”
“Because earlier this morning, I paid a visit to Gader. We knew each other when I was with the Bureau. For old times’ sake, I asked to be allowed to review Dant’s file.”
I felt uneasy about what Payne was leading up to.
“The file was very revealing,” Payne said. “You were so insistent that your brother and Dant were the same man, Gader had Dant’s background double—checked. There’s no death certificate anywhere. Moreover, Dant didn’t even apply for a Social Security number until he was a teenager. The signature on the application is consistent with the signatures Dant had to give at the various times he was arrested. Dant and your brother are two different people.”
“
No.
”
“It’s the truth,” Payne said.
“That means my wife and son are dead!”
“Not necessarily. Without evidence to the contrary, there’s always a reason to hope.”
“Without their corpses, you mean.”
Payne didn’t reply for a moment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Denning.”
I stared toward the fish tank. “You didn’t see the look in Petey’s eyes when he told me about the goldfish that he and I had buried in the backyard and how the neighbor’s cat dug it up. He didn’t say it as if he were remembering something he’d heard. His eyes had the clarity of someone who’d been there.
That was Petey talking to me.
”
“Perhaps. But I haven’t the faintest idea how you can prove it.”
“I will.” I stood. “Believe me, somehow I will.”
“Before you go, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
I stopped at the doorway and looked back at him.
“From my years with the Bureau, my nose is sensitive to the smell of cordite. That smell is on my right hand from when we shook hands when you came in. Have you been using firearms, Mr. Denning?”
“Ready on the firing line!” the female instructor barked.
We straightened.
“Ready on the right!”
We checked in that direction.
“Ready on the left!”
Through safety glasses, we checked in
that
direction, making sure that nobody was doing anything careless.
“
One,
” the instructor yelled, “grip your holstered weapon!
Two,
draw and aim from the waist!
Three,
raise your weapon to your line of sight!
Four,
press the trigger!”
Eight almost—simultaneous shots filled the long, narrow indoor shooting range. They echoed off the concrete walls, my protective earphones making the reports sound oddly distant.
Although the instructor was directly behind me, she too sounded muffled. “Aim to the right of the target! To the left!”
We obeyed, not firing, but checking for other targets, which she’d warned could pop up at any time.
“Weapon to your waist! Secure it!”
As one, the eight of us completed the sequence and took our hands from our holstered firearms.
The range became silent.
“Not bad,” she said. “Let’s see if anybody hit anything.”
Each of us stood in a slot, with a ledge in front for ammunition and spare magazines. A button to the left engaged a motorized pulley that brought in the targets.
The instructor studied the results. “Okay. Nobody hit the bull’s—eye, but I don’t expect you to at this point. At least none of you missed the target completely. Denning, you hit closest, but you’re still a little high and to the left. Practice more dry—firing at home. Stop twisting your wrist when you press the trigger.”
She went on to correct the other students. We put masking tape over the holes in our targets, touched a button that returned the targets to the end of the gallery, and straightened when she shouted, “Ready on the firing line!”
I went to a fitness center every day. I’d never been in top physical condition, but since Petey had taken Kate and Jason, I’d fallen apart. A junk—food diet in combination with too much alcohol and no activity had caused me to put on twenty pounds. No longer. I hired a trainer. Knowing that I had to start slowly, I was nonetheless impatient to get on with it. I progressed from thirty to sixty minutes a day on the machines. I started jogging, at first at the center’s indoor track and then outside in the cold. One mile. Two. Five. I lost the weight I’d put on. Fat became muscle.
I took self—defense classes. Angle. Force. Mass. Architect’s language. I no longer pretended to try to work. As far as I was concerned, I had only one job, so I disbanded my company, giving my employees a generous severance package. When I wasn’t preparing myself by shooting and physical training, I spent my time searching the Internet, using other Web addresses that Payne had given me.
In my former life, I’d always been too busy to explore the Internet. Now I was amazed at how much information I could obtain, provided that, thanks to Payne, I knew where to look. I found Lester Dant’s birth information, which was exactly as the FBI had indicated: He’d definitely been born in Brockton, Indiana, on April 24, a year before Petey had been born. I searched the databases for every state in the union but couldn’t find corresponding
death
information about Lester Dant. Without proof that Petey had assumed Dant’s identity, I grudgingly tested the FBI’s theory that Dant had assumed
Petey’s
identity, but no matter how far I spread my search, I couldn’t find any proof that Petey had died, and, if he had, whether he’d been murdered.
Thanksgiving (the holiday’s name made me bitter) had passed. Kate’s parents had asked me to spend it with them. I’d refused, hardly in a social mood. But then I’d thought that they were as desolate as I was and we might as well try to console one another. The three of us drank some wine and watched football in the kitchen while we made the dinner, but I never managed a holiday spirit, constantly worrying that the Denver police or Gader and Payne had mislaid the phone number I’d given them in case Kate and Jason were found while I was away.
For Christmas, Kate’s parents came to visit. But as soon as I saw Kate’s father, I wished that I’d saved them the trouble and gone to them. I could barely conceal my dismay at how this once tall, robust man had been so stooped by his heart condition, aggravated by worry. As hard as we tried to be festive, we kept remembering former, better Christmases, like when I’d been dating Kate in college and I’d realized I was making progress when she’d invited me to spend Christmas with her and her parents.
Of the many difficult things about the season, choosing the tree had been especially hard for me because Kate and Jason had always joined me—a big family event. As soon as we’d gotten home with it, we’d always begun putting on the decorations, often not finishing until after dark. This time, every bulb that I’d put on the tree racked me with greater loss. Normally, there’d have been plenty of presents under the tree, but this year, Kate’s parents and I had agreed not to exchange gifts. After all, there was only one thing we wanted, and it couldn’t be put under a tree. As usual, Kate’s mother made eggnog. It was as delicious as every other year, but I could hardly get it down. A few days later, they went back to Durango. Kate’s father felt so poorly that her mother had to drive.
Phil Barrow invited me next door for a New Year’s Eve party. I did my best to be sociable, but for me, the holiday was a wake. I went home an hour before the countdown at midnight. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember what Kate and Jason sounded like.
Spring came.
May.
June.
They’d been gone a year.
“I’m leaving town,” I told Payne.
“Yes, sometimes it’s a good idea to get away from bad memories,” he said.
“I was hoping that you wouldn’t mind if I had my mail forwarded to you.”
“Sure,” Payne said. “No problem.”
“I’ve asked the police and the FBI to leave messages with you in case they learn something new.”
Payne nodded. “I’ll phone you the second I hear anything. Just give me the number where you’ll be and—”
“At the moment, that’s a little uncertain. I’ll have to phone
you.
”
“You don’t know where you’re going?”
“Not exactly.”
“But you don’t just board a plane without having a reservation to someplace.”
“I’m not going on a plane. I thought I’d simply get in my car and drive. See the country. Go wherever the roads take me.”
Payne’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you kidding?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Go wherever the roads take you? Give me a break. You’re up to something. What is it?”
“I told you. I just need to get away.”
“You worry me.”
I avoided his gaze and looked at the fish tank.
“Don’t tell me—you’re going out there to try to find him,” Payne said.
I kept looking at the fish tank.
“How the hell do you figure to do it?” Payne demanded. “It’s impossible. You don’t have a chance.”
At last, I looked back at him. “I’ve done everything else I can think of.”
“Without any leads? It’s for damn sure you’ll be going where the roads take you. All you’ll do is wander.”