100: “Pull off there, to the side, Sarah. May I call you Sarah?”
Porter knew they shouldn’t be following this woman’s instructions blindly. He understood this was the wrong thing to do, yet that was exactly what they were doing.
They left the prison with her in the backseat, watching them, watching the outside world as it rushed past.
Sarah did as she was told, pulling the BMW not into one of the parking spaces at the front of the building but into the alley running along the side.
“Put the car in park and beep your horn twice.”
The horn echoed off the buildings on either side, a residual slap.
“You look a bit peaked, Detective. You should try breathing every few minutes. It does wonders for the circulatory system.”
Porter ignored her.
Someone had come out of the alley across the street. Porter recognized him, the same homeless man he had watched urinate on the sidewalk.
Was that really only twenty-four hours ago?
“May I have the key, Detective?”
Porter nearly asked her what key, then remembered the business card. He dug it out of his pocket and passed the card to her.
“I’d like to do something about these handcuffs and leg restraints as well.”
“They stay on.”
“We have a long ride ahead of us.”
“Life can be very cruel sometimes,” Porter muttered.
She smiled again, a slight curl at the base of her lip. “Yes, I suppose it can.”
He didn’t like that smile.
He didn’t like it one bit.
The homeless man knocked at the window, then turned, watching across the street.
Porter watched as she pulled the key from the back of the business card, bent down, and released the ankle monitor. The small box began beeping immediately.
“Won’t they know?” Sarah asked, watching in the rearview mirror.
Jane Doe rolled down the window and handed the monitor to the waiting man. He affixed it to his own ankle.
The beeping stopped.
The homeless man gave the roof of the car another tap and returned to the alley across the street, not a word between them.
Porter said, “Those ankle monitors aren’t as reliable as the general public might like to believe. They store data when they can’t reach a cell tower and upload the data as a batch when they make contact. The older ones, the ones in circulation for a while, regularly report false removal data. Too much jiggling over time of parts not meant to be jiggled. The monitoring center usually programs in a window—if the device reports a problem lasting longer than a minute, an alert goes off, less than a minute, and it’s ignored. They would have programmed a geo-fence before they released her. As long as she doesn’t leave the geo-fence, nobody will be the wiser. I saw that guy yesterday, and even my cab driver said he didn’t belong. I’m guessing he’s been waiting for us.”
Sarah took this all in, her eyes glancing nervously at the rearview mirror, then back to Sam.
Without turning in his seat: “Where exactly are we going?”
“Didn’t my boy tell you? Chicago, of course. I’ll give you the exact address when we’re closer to the city.”
That smile again.
That wicked little grin.
“I’d like to read Anson’s letter now. May I have it, please?”
Porter wanted to say no.
He wanted to tell her to fuck off, sit back, and shut up, but he didn’t. Instead he reached into the glove box, retrieved the crinkled yellow pages, and tossed them into the backseat.
He heard her scrambling to retrieve them but did not look.
He would not look.
“Wasn’t there a diary too? I do so miss his words.”
Porter closed the glove box on the knife and locket before she could glimpse them, then opened the black and white composition book where he had left off. “You can have it when I’m done.”
Jane looked to Sarah, their eyes meeting in the rearview mirror. “I believe Anson gave you until eight o’clock tonight. I suggest we get going. Wouldn’t want to keep him waiting. He has a temper, that one. I understand he has playthings. Chop, chop.”
Porter said, “Not another word out of you unless you’re spoken to. Do we understand each other?”
Jane raised her cuffed hand to her lips and turned an invisible key before returning to her letter.
Sarah took one last nervous look in the mirror at the woman behind her, backed out onto the road, and put the BMW in drive, speeding forward. “Chicago it is,” she said. “Nothing like a good road trip.”