The Woman (22 page)

“You may be right. But we can’t chance it. I’ve told Charlie to keep Darby in sight but take no action until I ok it, and that won’t be until after you’ve finished your assignment.”

“Charlie should be able to keep tabs on a woman for a few days.”

“I don’t like it,” Webster said with a snarl. “Too much can go wrong. Tomorrow she could walk in the FBI office in Seattle.”

“If she was going to do that she would’ve done so in Portland, Oregon, not driven through to Seattle. Isn’t that where you just said she was?” Testler asked, to give Webster the impression he had no idea where Linda Darby was located. When, in fact, Testler had just parked around the corner from the Best Western where Darby had just entered a ground floor room.

“Yeah, in Seattle, she’s down for the night,” Webster said. “Where are you now?”

“In Sea Crest, I’m taking pictures by day and watching the chief by night. If he goes off the edge on this, I can take him almost immediately.”

“Do it then. I’ll give Charlie the green light on Darby and we’ll be clear on both ends in a few hours.”

“Not a good idea.”

“And just why the hell not?” Webster asked.

“We’ve killed seven people in a tiny coastal town that never before had a single murder. You’ve always preferred our work be kept quiet. Nothing we’ve done in Sea Crest has been quiet. Now you’re giving me another target, and not just any target, the chief of police. If he dies in an obvious murder, the town will be left without law enforcement. That means at least the state, if not the Feds will step in.”

“Why would the Feds come in?”

“Cynthia Leclair did contract work for the CIA and Defense Department. That alone will put the Feds on alert.”

“You’ve got a point.”

“Tuesday,” Testler repeated, “the chief can have a simple, explainable boating tragedy. Given the options available, that’s the one we should go with.”

“You’re right. Damn it, you’re right. But we may not have the time. Darby is on the run. I’ve got to know what Cynthia Leclair told her, maybe even gave her.”

“Where does that leave us?”

“Charlie has orders to take out Darby if she tries to enter a police department or an FBI office. You tell me you have the same kind of watch on McIlhenny. I guess that will have to do for now.”

Webster hung up, praying he would get to Tuesday without any further complications.

Chapter 34

The morning light woke Linda around nine. She got up and showered, then dressed and worked her hair into the Carol Benson look while mentally reviewing her concocted Benson family history. Then she got on the road. It was a bright and clear day, something not all that common in this area of the country during this time of the year. She loved the affection of the sun. Its warmth repeatedly kissed her face through the driver’s side window.

By mid-afternoon she had driven south to Tacoma and rented a safe deposit box at Union Bank under the name Carol Benson. She left fifty-thousand in cash and approximately a third of the diamonds which she had first secured into two paper coin sleeves she had obtained from a teller before opening the deposit box. At this bank, like the others, she had given a false address.

Between the banks in Portland and Tacoma she had now deposited one-hundred thousand dollars in cash. She still had another one-hundred-twenty-five on her person, including the original twenty-five thousand Cynthia had left for her in Sea Crest. Two more banks each with fifty-thousand would leave her twenty-five thousand to carry with her.

She had felt less pressure, less fear, acting out being Carol Benson than she had felt being Nora Larick at the Portland bank. The difference was not the name, but the poise she had developed. The confidence that she could project herself however she wished.

In total, she had six sets of false identifications. She had used Larick and Benson and planned to use two more with other banks. Her plan had been to travel as Nora Larick, keeping her other false identities in reserve. That way she could get comfortable being Nora Jean Larick, and do a bone-up study session before playing her other personas.

She spent the rest of the afternoon shopping to expand her wardrobe for the various women she could become, and having a professional rinse put on her hair to recapture Nora’s color. Carol Benson’s hair had been a little darker, and Carol wore hers up rather than the longer look that Nora preferred. She had also stopped in a drug store and bought a new pair of dark-rimmed glasses for Carol. She had previously bought a pair which she had worn to the bank in Tacoma, but the prescription strength was not close enough and she had difficulty seeing clearly. Fortunately, the glasses Cynthia had morphed onto her picture as Nora Larick were similar enough in style to allow Linda, as Nora, to wear her own glasses.

The entire day had gone rather smoothly. As far as she could tell, she had not been followed or watched. She decided to quietly celebrate her good fortune by going to a movie and getting a late snack.

For the length of the movie, she forgot she was a woman on the run, a woman upon whom this Webster person had issued his own kind of fatwa. But as she walked out of the darkness of the screening room, the night brought back the fear.

By eleven, she had driven south nearly to the Oregon border where she took a room on the Washington side of the Columbia River.

* * *

The next morning Linda slept until eleven, had a room service breakfast and set about deciding the cities where she would choose her remaining two banks. The first two had been in the Pacific Northwest so she wanted the last two to be a good distance away. By two-thirty in the afternoon she had chosen Las Vegas, Nevada, and Sedona, Arizona, both tourist towns used to seeing strangers. By three she was in her car heading south. She had also picked a city to reach before stopping for the night, Weed, California, the first town south of the Oregon border.

* * *

“Chief McIlhenny?”

“This is McIlhenny.”

“It’s me,” Testler said as he eased his car onto interstate five heading south. He kept back about a half mile so he could watch the pattern of movements made by the cars between him and Linda Darby.

“Me who?”

“You joined me for coffee in O’Malley’s the other night.”

“Oh, yeah,” McIlhenny cleared his throat, “you didn’t give me a name.”

“You told me to skip it. Are you a place where you can talk?”

“I’m in my office. I just shut the door. If you’re going with me, I leave in two days.”

“Haven’t decided, but I’m strongly leaning that way.”

“What’s holding you back?”

“I need another week.”

“Too long,” the chief said. “I won’t wait. Where are you now?”

“Not important. Listen, Chief, you’ve been thinking on this for a good while. Me, I’ve had a day. Bottom line, by next Monday I can get my hands on some documents that will add a great deal of credibility to what you tell your state attorney general. With those documents you’ll get your immunity. Your story will be supported by irrefutable evidence.”

“I won’t wait.”

“That’s your decision. But if you go alone, you’ve got no corroboration and you don’t have the identity of the man behind it all. Not much to offer in return for immunity. If I throw in with you, it’ll be a cinch. I know you’re fed up and are ready to act. But don’t blow the case by being impatient. Together, we’ll get immunity and bring the bastard down. Alone, you’ll likely not get the deal you want and the man you’re really after will go on as before. And, as for Linda Darby, you’ll have done nothing to remove her from danger. In fact, you’ll likely increase her danger as the man will want to close off any threats.”

After a long pause, Chief McIlhenny exhaled, and then said, “Monday. Not a day longer. We’ll leave Tuesday morning.”

“Tell O’Malley and a few others you’re going fishing on Tuesday.”

“Good idea, I’ve got a boat and the halibut are hot right now.”

“Best we’re not seen together on Tuesday.”

“I can take out the boat and put in around Lincoln City. You can join me there.”

“I’ll bring the car.”

“Call me Monday night. By then I’ll have picked a quiet spot to put in to pick you up. I’ve got one in mind, just north of Lincoln. I’ll check it out in the next couple of days.”

“Talk to you Monday.”

* * *

By mid-afternoon Ryan Testler had identified two cars he knew had to be involved in tailing Linda Darby: a black Pontiac two-door and a gray Chevy Impala. The Pontiac had settled in two or three cars behind Linda, with the Impala holding a position about five car lengths behind the Pontiac. Ryan had rented a car which got better gas mileage than either of the two cars he followed, and he had gassed up the night before. He used his binoculars to recognize the driver in the front car as Charlie Ashburn, a nail hard package of humanity with the intelligence to have been anything, mismatched with the meanness of a thug. That meant the driver in the Impala would be Bobby Vargas, a dim fellow who worked directly for Charlie. Webster preferred working with only a few men and letting those men choose helpers when they were necessary. That way, the helpers did not know Webster’s identity. It would have been Charlie’s idea that he and Bobby take separate cars, making it harder for them to lose the tail on Darby. For another reason, Charlie liked classical music while Bobby dug rap. In separate cars they could each indulge their respective tastes without objections from the other, all at Webster’s expense. Charlie and Bobby were like John Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
except that these two were physically similar in size.

Testler largely ignored Linda’s car, keeping his focus on Charlie and Bobby. He would not lose Linda Darby because he had put a radio-frequency transmitter on the car Cynthia Leclair had left in the storage garage for Linda. He also knew that he needed to get Charlie and Bobby off Linda’s tail. Until he did that, he would not be able to have direct contact with her, which he needed in order to decide whether or not to kill Linda Darby.

* * *

Linda drove into a steady rain falling in the mountains of southern Oregon. Later, she crossed the border into California where it had recently stopped raining. But the road was wet and the air still heavy with moisture. She toggled her wiper control to make intermittent passes to cut down the glare from the headlights of oncoming cars. After a while she left the wiper on low even though the window was more dotted with mountain mist than rain.

At a few minutes before one-thirty in the early morning, she pulled off I-5 and glided down into the small mountain town of Weed, California. She had never been to Weed, but quickly found a motel with both a vacancy sign and a clean-looking coffee shop out front facing the street. At this hour, the coffee shop was closed.

* * *

Charlie and Bobby pulled up behind each other along the curb, and spoke on their cell phones while using their binoculars to watch Linda walk into, then out of the motel office. Next, she moved her car to park head in and entered a room directly in front of her parked car. Her unit was near the corner of an L-turn in the building tucked in behind the stairs next to what the sign said was a coin-operated laundry. They could easily take her here. If they did, they would not even need to get a room for themselves.

But Charlie said they could not do so without the boss’s approval, and Charlie didn’t want to awaken the boss who lived in the east where it was nearly five in the morning. But he also didn’t want to incur Webster’s wrath for having let a perfect setup pass without having taken Darby. They could knock on her door, representing themselves to be motel personnel needing to replace her pillow as the maids had run out of clean pillowcases, or whatever. They could question her, kill her, and be gone without being seen.

Charlie told Bobby to sit tight while he called the boss.

Chapter 35

“You know what the hell time it is, Charles?”

When pissed, Webster always called him Charles.

“But boss, this set up’s perfect.”

“Listen, dunderhead. I told you to stay with her until I got back to you. Which part of that didn’t you understand?”

“Well none of it, boss. But . . . this’d be clean as a whistle. I just thought—”

“Don’t think. Just do what you’re told until I get back to you. Got it?”

Before Charlie could say yes, his phone went dead. Webster had not waited for Charlie’s confirmation.

* * *

Charlie called Bobby and told him to check into the same motel. “Get a room close, but not too close, to Darby’s room. Insist on the ground floor. Insist on two beds. Pay cash. I’ll park on the side street and then join you in the room.”

* * *

Five minutes later, Testler pulled into Weed and found the motel where Linda’s car was parked. He also saw the gray Impala parked facing in about six rooms from what he was guessing was Linda’s room. The motel had clustered its few guests in one tight strip of rooms, likely to make the morning maid service easier. The six cars were also crowded together, all nosed into the host building like unweaned puppies. The occupied rooms were dark except for the two directly facing Bobby’s Impala and Linda’s car.