Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [37]
Halfway to the phone she stopped with a sudden thought. Slowly she opened the satchel, and inside she found her photo album, twenty-eight pictures of herself in various guises throughout the years, and alongside it, the manila envelope containing the false documentation she had purchased or created.
She’d nearly forgotten about those items. Nearly left the satchel for the police with her photos and her phony birth certificates inside.
“Oh, Christ, Elizabeth,” she whispered, feeling something worse than fear—a kind of disorienting embarrassment, a sense of humiliation so deep it was almost physical pain.
She hurried back to the car. In the driver’s seat she fumbled open the satchel and took out the damn photo album and the damn envelope, and then she searched it thoroughly with her gloved hands, checking to be sure nothing else of hers was in there.
When she was done, she checked again. She no longer trusted herself.
Wallace Zepeda had been right. This was too much, this burden she carried. It was making her—
—crazy—
—a nervous wreck, and she couldn’t bear up under it much longer.
* * *
Cray passed the exit for downtown without slowing. Kaylie wouldn’t go into the heart of the city. Too much traffic. Too great a risk of encountering a delay after she had made her call.
The next major street was Speedway. He got off there, heading west for six blocks, looking for the Chevette.
Nothing.
This was hopeless. He would never find her. She would call, and even though the police would surely be skeptical, a squad car would be dispatched to pick up the package she had left.
Squad car.
Of course.
Cray pulled onto the roadside and opened his glove compartment, hoping fervently that Kaylie McMillan, clever as she was, had not thought to look inside and clean out its contents.
She hadn’t. The police-band transceiver was still there.
Six of the channels were preset to Tucson PD frequencies. He activated the scan mode, dialing the volume high. Coded cross talk chattered over the speaker. If the patrol unit had not yet been dispatched, he might hear the call go out.
The scanner, roaming among the various frequencies, buzzed and chirruped with ten-codes and half-intelligible inquiries and responses. He listened for the particular assignment he was waiting for.
Obviously there was a chance Kaylie had gone outside city limits, in which case the call would be handled by a sheriff’s department cruiser. Cray wasn’t monitoring those bands; he couldn’t listen to a dozen channels at once.
Or, if she had called already, he might have missed the dispatcher’s signal. Or the assignment could have been conveyed electronically via the mobile computers installed in TPD cars. Perhaps even now the police had the satchel in their hands, and an evidence technician was examining each separate, incriminating item.
He pulled back into traffic and made a U-turn, then headed east on Speedway. He would travel it for a mile or two beyond the freeway. If he still hadn’t found her car, he would continue north.
Grant Road was the next exit. Maybe he would find her there.
* * *
Elizabeth almost got out of the car again, and then in an excess of self-doubt she opened the satchel and checked its contents one last time.
She was sure there was something she’d forgotten. But no, it was all here.
Chloroform. Duct tape. Smelling salts. Pocket flashlight. Locksmith tools. Glass cutter. Suction cup. Spare clip for the gun. And the knife in its sheath.
Okay. She was set. She was ready to go.
No, she wasn’t.
Cray’s ignition key. That was the item she’d overlooked.
The key to the Lexus was the one item that could be definitively connected to Cray. And it was still in the pocket of her blouse.
“You’re cracking up,” she told herself, and she wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not.
If she could overlook so many obvious details, what else was she failing to see? Maybe she ought to wait, have some breakfast. She