Pretend You Don't See Her (11 page)

 
          
He
paused. “Have you ever heard of the witness protection program?”

 
          
IN
THE QUIET OF HIS LOCKED OFFICE, HE STUDIED HEATHER’S journal again. It was in
there, all right. But he had taken care of the problem. The cops were following
up all the names they had. Good luck to them. They were on a wild goose chase.

 
          
Finally
he turned the pages over. The blood on them had dried a long time ago, probably
just minutes after it had been shed. Even so, his hands felt sticky. He wiped
them with his handkerchief, dampened by water from the always-present pitcher.
Then he sat completely still, the only movement the opening and closing of his
fingers, a sure sign of his agitation.

 
          
Lacey
Farrell had not been seen for three months. They were either holding her as a
material witness, or she had disappeared into the witness protection program.
She supposedly had made one copy of the journal, for Jimmy Landi, but what
would have stopped her from making another copy for
herself
?

 
          
Nothing.

 
          
Wherever
she was, she would have figured out that if the journal was worth killing for,
it had to have something of value in it. Isabelle had talked her head off to
Farrell. God knows what she had said.

 
          
Sandy
Savarano was back in hiding. He had seemed to be the perfect one to send to
retrieve the journal and to take care of Isabelle Waring, but he had been
careless.
Stupidly careless.
Twice.
He had let Farrell see him at Waring’s apartment at the time of the murder, and
now she could identify him. (And if the Feds catch him, he told himself, she
will.) Then he had left a fingerprint at Farrell’s apartment that tied him to
the burglary. Sandy would give everything up in a minute rather than go to
prison, he reflected.

 
          
Farrell
had to be tracked down, and Savarano sent to eliminate her.

 
          
Then,
just maybe, he would be safe at last …

 
          
THE
NAME ON THE BELL AT THE SMALL APARTMENT BUILDING on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis
was “Alice Carroll.” To the neighbors, she was an attractive young woman in her
late twenties who didn’t have a job and kept pretty much to herself.

 
          
Lacey
knew that was the way they described her. And they’re right about keeping to
myself
, she thought. After three months, the sensation of
sleepwalking was ending and an intense sense of isolation setting in.

 
          
I
didn’t have a choice, she reminded herself, when at night she lay awake
remembering how she had been told to pack suitcases with heavy clothing but
bring neither family pictures, nor items with her name or initials.

 
          
Kit
and her mother had come to help her pack and to say good-bye. We all thought of
it as temporary, a kind of forced vacation.

 
          
At
the last minute her mother had tried to come with her. “You can’t go off alone,
Lacey,” she had argued. “Kit and Jay have each other and the children.”

 
          
“You’d
be lost without the kids,” Lacey had reminded her, “so don’t even think that
way, Mom.”

 
          
“Lacey,
Jay is going to keep paying the maintenance on your apartment,” Kit had
promised.

 
          
Her
knee-jerk response—“I can handle it for a while”— had been an empty boast. She
had realized immediately that once she moved and took on her new identity, she
could have no involvement with anyone or any part of her life in New York. Even
a maintenance check signed with an assumed name could be traced.

 
          
It
had happened quickly and efficiently. Two uniformed cops had taken her out in a
squad car as though she were going to the precinct for questioning. Her bags
were brought down to the garage, where an unmarked van was parked. Then she was
transferred to an armored van that took her to what they called “a safe site”
and orientation center in the Washington, D.C., area.

 
          
Alice
in Wonderland, Lacey would think as she passed the time in that
enclosure, watching her identity disappear
. In those weeks
she worked with an instructor to create a new background for herself. All the
things she had been were gone. They existed in her memory, of course, but after
a time she began to question even that reality. Now there were only weekly
phone calls from safe hookups, letters mailed through safe channels—otherwise
there was no contact.
None.
Nothing.
Only the overwhelming loneliness.

 
          
Her
only reality became her new identity. Her instructor had walked her to a
mirror. “Look in there, Lacey. You see that young woman? Everything you think
you know about her isn’t so. Just forget her. Forget all about her. It’ll be
rough for a while—you’ll feel like you are playing some kind of game,
pretending. There’s an old Jerry Vale song that says it all. I can’t sing, but
I do know the lyrics; they go like this:

 
          
Pretend
you don’t see her at all … it’s too late for running … look somewhere above

 
          
her
… pretend you don’t see her at all …

 
          
That
was when Lacey had chosen her new name, Alice Carroll, after Alice in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll.

 
          
It
fit her situation perfectly.

 
          
THE
RACKET FROM THE RENOVATION GOING ON IN THE apartment next to the one that had
belonged to Heather Landi assaulted the ears of Rick Parker as soon as he
stepped off the elevator in the building at Fifth Avenue and Seventieth Street.
Who the hell was the contractor, he wondered, fuming with irritation.
A demolition expert?

 
          
Outside,
the sky was heavy with snow clouds. Flurries were predicted by evening. But
even the vague, gray light coming through the windows revealed the general look
of neglect that permeated the foyer and living room of Heather Landi’s apartment.

 
          
Rick
sniffed. The air was stale, dry, and dusty. He turned on the light and saw that
a thick layer of powdery dust covered the tabletops, bookshelves, and cabinets.

 
          
He
swore silently. Damn superintendent, he thought. It was his job to see to it
that a contractor thoroughly sealed off the premises he was renovating.

 
          
He
yanked the intercom off the hook and shouted to the doorman, “Tell the
good-for-nothing super to get up here.
Now.”

 
          
Tim
Powers, large and by nature amiable, had been superintendent of 3 East
Seventieth for fifteen years. He knew full well that in the landlord-tenant
world, it was the super who was always caught in the middle, but as he would
tell his wife philosophically at the end of a bad day, “If you can’t stand the
heat, then get the hell out of the kitchen.” He had learned to sympathize with
irate co-op dwellers when they complained that the elevator was too slow, the
sink was dripping, the toilet running, or the heat uneven.

 
          
But
standing in the doorway as he listened to Rick Parker’s tirade, Tim decided
that in all these years of putting up with angry complaints, he had never
experienced the near manic fury that was being hurled at him now.

 
          
He
knew better than to tell Rick where to get off. He might be a young jerk riding
on his papa’s coattails, but that didn’t make him any the less a Parker, and
the Parkers owned one of the biggest real estate/building management companies
in Manhattan.

 
          
Rick’s
voice grew louder and his anger more pronounced. Finally, when he stopped for
breath, Tim seized the opportunity to say, “Let’s get the right person in here
to hear this.” He went back into the hall and pounded on the door of the next
apartment, shouting, “Charley, get out here.”

 
          
The
door was yanked open, and the sounds of hammering and banging grew louder.
Charley Quinn, a grizzled-faced man dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and
carrying a roll of blueprints, came out into the corridor. “I’m busy, Tim,” he
said.

 
          
“Not
busy enough,” Powers said. “I’ve talked to you before about sealing up that job
when you start ripping the walls out. Mr. Parker, maybe you’ll explain why
you’re so upset.”

 
          
“Now
that the police have finally released this apartment,” Rick shouted, “we are
responsible for selling it for the owner. But will you tell me how the hell we
can bring anyone in here with all the mess you’re causing? The answer is
,
we can’t.”

 
          
He
shoved Tim aside, stalked out into the hall, and rang for the elevator. When
the door closed behind him, the superintendent and the contractor looked at
each other.

 
          
“He’s
on something,” Powers said flatly. “What a jerk.”

 
          
“He
may be a jerk,” Quinn said quietly, “but he looks to me like the kind of guy
who could go off the deep end.” He sighed. “Offer to get a cleaning service in
here, Tim. We’ll pay for it.”

 
          
Rick
Parker knew better than to go directly to the office. He didn’t want to run
into his father. I shouldn’t have blown my stack like that, he told himself. He
was still shaking with anger.

 
          
January
was a lousy month in New York, he thought. As he turned in to Central Park and
walked rapidly along a jogging path, a runner brushed into him. “Watch out!”
Rick snapped.

 
          
The
jogger didn’t break pace. “Cool it, man,” he yelled back over his shoulder.

 
          
Cool
it! Sure, Rick thought. The old man’s finally letting me handle some sales
again, and that nosy detective has to show up this morning of all times.

 
          
Detective
Sloane had come by, asking the same questions, going over the same territory.
“When you got that call from the man who identified himself as Curtis Caldwell,
did it ever occur to you to check with the law firm he claimed was his
employer?” he had asked for the umpteenth time.

 
          
Rick
jammed his hands in his pockets, remembering how lame his response had sounded.
“We do a lot of business with Keller, Roland, and Smythe,” he had said. “Our
firm manages their building. There was no reason not to take the call on
faith.”

 
          
“Have
you any idea how the caller would have known his background wouldn’t be
checked? I understand that Parker and Parker
has
a
standing policy of screening all applicants, of being sure that the people you
take to look at upscale apartments are on the level.”

 
          
Rick
remembered the dread he had experienced when, without knocking, his father had
joined them.

 
          
“I
have told you before and I’ll tell you again, I have no idea how that caller
knew enough to use the law firm’s name,” Rick had said.

 
          
Now
he kicked at a ball of crusted, dirty snow that was lying in his path. Were the
police getting suspicious of the fact that he had been the one to set up the
meeting? Were they starting to suspect that there never had been a phone call?

 
          
I
should have figured out a better story, he thought, kicking savagely at the
frozen earth. But it was too late now. He was stuck with it, so he had to make
it stick.

 
          
THE
KEY WORD IN THIS PROGRAM IS “SECURITY,” LACEY thought as she started a letter
to her mother. What do you write about?
she
asked
herself. Not about the weather. If I
were
to mention
that its ten degrees below zero and there’s been a record twenty-six-inch
snowfall in one day, it would be a dead giveaway that I’m in Minnesota. That’s
the sort of information they warn you about.