“Broke it?”
“Like it was glass. I don’t know how the hell they pulled that off.”
She thought of the cold stream hissing from the canister’s nozzle. Cold enough to freeze a padlock solid and render it vulnerable to a shattering blow.
“Me neither,” she said. “You call the police?”
“Cops?” The clerk pantomimed spitting. “All them assholes do is hassle me. You know?”
“I know. Well, good luck.”
She was glad the crime would go unreported. She didn’t want the police somehow connecting the break-in with Cray, then tying him to her.
The police. She really was going to contact them. The thought seemed strange, unreal, after so many years of evading every patrol car, every blue uniform.
Although it was only a few minutes past seven o’clock, already the morning was warm. The Chevette, unprotected from the sun, baked her as she cranked the engine. The car was equipped with air-conditioning, but that particular feature had never worked. She rolled down the window and tried to breathe.
Pulling out of the lot, she anxiously checked the frontage road, looking for a black Lexus. It was doubtful Cray could get here this fast, but she wasn’t taking anything for granted.
The road was clear. She took the 22nd Street on-ramp to Interstate 10 and let it carry her north.
Cray rolled into the motel parking lot at 7:10. The Chevette was gone. Kaylie had left.
He had expected as much. Driving here, he had pieced together her most plausible plan of action.
She would call the police. It was her best move, the one he would have made had their positions been reversed. She would call from a pay phone and identify him as the killer, offering the satchel as proof of his guilt.
Or she might simply leave the satchel outside a police substation with an unsigned note. But he didn’t think so. He expected her to call, because only by talking to another person could she be certain her message got through. And, high on the adrenaline rush of survival, she would do it as soon as possible.
From a public phone. She wouldn’t call from the motel. She still didn’t want to be identified, didn’t want to get directly involved.
Having made the call, she would need to make a quick getaway before the police responded. The fastest escape route was the interstate. Cray was betting she would stay close to I-10, either a few miles north or south of the motel.
Which direction?
South, the city turned mean. Barrio streets, crime, danger. More police cars cruising. More cops on the beat.
She wanted to be in a less populous, less heavily patrolled area.
North, then. She would go north. Past downtown Tucson, into the near suburbs.
Of course, she might have made the call already. By now it might be too late.
Perhaps he ought to run. Race for the border. He knew enough Spanish to get by. He could live in the mountains if he had to, at least for a month or two, until the urgency of the search abated.
No.
He would not permit himself to lose. It was bad enough that he had let her get away. To allow her this ultimate victory was unthinkable.
Cray found I-10’s entrance ramp and sped into the northbound lanes. The time was 7:15.
Elizabeth drove three miles on the freeway, until the crowded part of town was behind her. She considered taking the Speedway Boulevard exit, but decided to go a little farther.
At Grant Road, a mile north of Speedway, she exited, heading east. Within two blocks she found a Circle K convenience store. Two phone kiosks were stationed at the side of the building, away from the main entrance.
Perfect.
She wondered if she was reckless to try this. It would be safer to simply mail the satchel to the police.
But mailing it would take more time. She was determined to have Cray arrested as soon as possible. Today, even.
He was a monster, and she wanted him caged.
She parked a block away from the convenience mart — close enough so she could run to her car after making the call, but not so close that somebody loitering near the phones might happen to see the Chevette and link it to her.
Her luggage was in the hatchback compartment.
She opened the larger suitcase and found her winter gloves, pulling them on.
No fingerprints on the phone handset.
She was thinking of everything. This would be an error-free performance. It had to be.
She shouldered her purse and picked up the satchel. Her heart was drumming fast, and the air seemed very hot, but she was all right. She was going to do this and do it perfectly, no mistakes.
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.