Jude looked over at Skyler. "I'm not sure about your clothes. I don't think they're really you. We won't go back to the motel for our stuff — it's not safe."
Jude reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the Arizona licenses. He threw it across to Skyler.
"Here's your new identity."
Skyler looked at the picture. Not bad. It could pass for him. He read the name.
"Harold James?"
"Harry, for short. I'm Edward. You can call me Eddie."
"The James brothers?" said Tizzie. "Isn't that a bit thick?"
"Not at all."
"By the way," said Tizzie, as they roared past a sign for Pulliam that indicated an airport, "where are we going?"
The answer was soothing to her ears. "Far, far away."
They changed planes at Phoenix and stayed long enough to grab a quick bite. Jude bought the Arizona Republican and read it over a cup of coffee. Nothing in it of interest. Tizzie wandered off to buy some more toiletries — her second attempt of the day — and Skyler looked in a gift shop for some clothing but found nothing.
They bought the tickets using Tizzie's credit card. This dismayed Jude, but there was no other way to pay for them. Anyway, he told himself, her plane ticket was in her own name, too, so there was no way to cover her tracks. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
They killed a half hour wandering around the modern terminal, then headed for the check-in counter for American Airlines and stood in a long line. When their turn came, they were asked for identification and produced three driver's licenses.
"Luggage?" inquired the check-in clerk.
"We have none," said Jude.
The clerk registered surprise.
"We always travel light," Jude explained.
He was tempted to make a wisecrack, but thought better of it. No sense in drawing even more attention to themselves — they were conspicuous enough as it was.
They zipped through the X-ray line and headed for the departure gate waiting lounge, where they sat among all the other travelers. Anyone looking at them might have mistaken them for a modern typically atypical American family grouping — say, two identical brothers and a wife returning from a holiday in the sun. The only question that might conceivably be asked was: which one of the brothers was the husband?
Ten minutes later, the flight was called — nonstop to Washington, D.C.
Chapter 24
The taxi passed the Washington Monument, drove along the Ellipse to the Capitol and continued on into the southwest sector, where they found a cheap rooming house called Potomac View. The name was misleading; the only view of the river was a badly-done watercolor that hung in the hallway above a stack of tourist brochures.
In the morning, Tizzie decided to call her office in New York. It was a calculated risk. She had to surface sooner or later, she figured, and the longer she was out of touch, the more suspicious her behavior would seem. Besides, she couldn't remain out of contact for too long. What if her parents needed her?
As a concession to Jude's burgeoning worry streak, she took a cab downtown to place the call from the Hay Adams Hotel. That wouldn't make it any harder to trace, but it would lead their pursuers no closer than a busy hotel in the political hub of the nation's capital.
As for Jude, he decided at breakfast to meet Raymond. He needed him. The three of them were out of their depth in tackling the Lab, that much was clear. They needed the resources of the FBI to get to the bottom of the whole murky business. And, frankly, it would be a relief to hand the whole damn case over to someone else.
But would the FBI be responsive? What were they dealing with exactly? Murder? — undoubtedly. For openers, there was that dead body in New Paltz. But they were a long way from being able to pin it on anybody. What else was there? Some kind of conspiracy to engage in illegal medical research? Most probably. But was that the kind of thing the government's prime investigative agency worried about? Raymond had said there had once been an active file on the Lab, but indicated it was all but closed. Other priorities, he suggested. Then again Hartman had said that FBI agents had trailed them to Wisconsin. So at least somebody there was still interested.
Questions flitted through his mind. Would Raymond have enough pull to get the agency behind him? Maybe Jude would have to back him up in person in persuading his superiors. And come to think of it, how much could he trust Raymond? Raymond had warned him to be suspicious of everyone, no matter how close. In retrospect, that sounded like he had been talking about Tizzie. Did Raymond know about her? Or could the warning apply to Raymond himself? Don't forget, Jude told himself, from the beginning Raymond had been holding back information. But why would he warn Jude to be suspicious of himself? Would he say that if he was a part of it? On the other hand, what a perfect ruse — what better tactic to worm his way into Jude's trust? But then again, it was Raymond who'd provided him with the name of the judge that allowed him to take the first step on this whole long, crazy trail. That spoke well for him.
Jude decided to stop thinking so much. You just go round and round in circles and end up so spooked you're paralyzed. Take the bull by the horns. Just show up. Take Skyler. No advance warning, no time to spring a trap. And anyway, with these Orderlies and God knew who else after them, probably the safest place to be right now was the FBI Building.
Jude and Skyler grabbed a taxi.
"FBI headquarters."
The driver, a dark-skinned African wearing a bright print shirt, looked at them in the rearview mirror, first one, then the other. The bouncy rhythm of West African music came from a tape. Sounds like Sunny Ade, thought Jude, and he looked at the driver's name. Sure enough, he was Nigerian.
Tizzie was frantic. She left a note for Jude and Skyler — there was no time to wait for them — and took a taxi back to the airport. She pushed her way toward the front of the line and bought a ticket. A half hour later, she was in the air, en route to Milwaukee.
It sounded serious. She had tried to determine just how serious by gauging her secretary's intonation, but of course that hadn't revealed anything.
"They say you should come right away. She's doing poorly, and they don't know how long she'll last."
"When did they call?"
"Only a couple of hours ago."
Were they trying to spare her by giving her only half information? Would her mother be dead by the time she got there?
Strange, but she had always assumed that her father would be the first to go. He was the one who had always worked so hard, who had seemed so overburdened. Her mother had been secondary, someone who was there in the background. She was cleaning house or cooking meals while he was dealing with the world, seeing his patients or arranging trips or discussing weighty matters with Uncle Henry. Her mother always seemed to be expending less energy to be going through life more or less certain of what she should be doing, and doing it at her own pace.
Tizzie couldn't bear to face the hard truth. She'd probably thought her father would die first because she feared that the most. Her mother — she loved her deeply. Her mother was a stalwart support, a nourishing presence. But her father was her whole world. The moon, the stars and the sun rolled into one. She could imagine life without her mother, but not without her father.
Guilt came next, and typically she was up to her neck in it. It was irresistible to her, like probing a wound to see how much it hurts. She called up as many fond memories as she could. A flood of images came on parade: her mother tending her when she was sick, staying up late to make sure she got home safely during high school dates, bandaging her foot at the seashore when she had stepped on a razor shell.