Jane needed a plain-wrap motel offering anonymity but minus cockroaches, where she could say she didn’t have a credit card and could pay cash without raising suspicion.
The entire San Fernando Valley was too hot for her after the business with the security guard. She avoided freeways flooded with traffic seeping around uncounted rain-related accidents. She drove west to Woodland Hills and took State Highway 27 south through the Santa Monica Mountains to the Coast Highway.
Will Rogers State Beach was closed. A chain between stanchions restricted access to the parking lot. The terrain lay inhospitable to both sides of the access lanes, but she piloted the Escape around the blockade. She turned off the headlights and drove slowly into the parking lot, through whirling skirts of coastal mist.
The shape of a structure gathered out of the fog, the public restrooms. She backed up to the building’s overhang and got out in the rain with her tote. At the tailgate, she retrieved one of two suitcases and the bag of wigs.
She could hear the ocean spending itself repeatedly on the shore, but she could not see the breaking surf through the fog.
There would be cameras at the entrance or outside this comfort station, or in both places. They weren’t likely to get a clear image in this weather. Anyway, she wouldn’t damage anything, so there was no reason for them to review later the video from this lonely hour.
The LockAid lock-release gun defeated the deadbolt guarding the women’s facility. Inside, she switched on only the bank of lights above the row of sinks. The air smelled of disinfectant underlaid with a urinous odor.
She opened the suitcase on the counter between two sinks and took from it a thirteen-gallon trash bag that she used when wardrobe changes were necessary en route. She put aside the baseball cap, took off her sport coat and the shoulder rig with pistol. Stripped out of her sweater and jeans and stuffed them into the bag with the sodden coat. She stepped out of the Rockports but didn’t take off her wet socks, wanting a barrier between her and a floor that needed a hard scrubbing. After donning dry jeans, a dry sweater, her rig, and a fresh sport coat, she tied on the wet shoes.
The auburn hair would be known to the police now. The rain had washed the curl out of it, but she would have to dye it soon.
From the bag of wigs supplied by the faux Syrian refugees in Reseda, Jane chose a chopped-everywhichway jet-black number, a high-style Vogue version of a punk do. In spite of having been in that gnome-guarded house where cigarettes were worshipped, the lush hair smelled clean, because Lois, she of the pink sweat suit, kept the wigs in a refrigerator set aside for that purpose.
Jane pinned up her own hair, fitted the wig, quickly brushed it, studied herself in the mirror, and believed the new her. Now a little eye shadow with a subtle blue tint and lipstick to match. The horn-rimmed glasses and baseball cap would have to be put away for a future incarnation. She fixed a fake nose ring to the nare of her right nostril, a silver serpent with one tiny ruby eye.
Of the six forged driver’s licenses, she chose the one with a photo that matched her hairstyle—she was now Elizabeth Bennet of Del Mar, California—and put it in her wallet.
Among the contents of her pockets that she’d put on the counter before changing, a cameo carved in soapstone was the last one she retrieved. It was half of a broken locket, found by her son, Travis, where he was being hidden by dear friends. He thought that the shapen profile resembled his mother, that it must have been good luck to find it among the smoothed stones at a stream’s edge. The resemblance eluded her. Nevertheless, she accepted the gift and promised always to keep it with her, that it might protect her and ensure that she returned to him. She kissed the cameo now, as one might kiss a religious medal or the cross dangling from a rosary, kissed it again, and held it tight in her fist for a moment before stowing it in a pocket of her jeans.
Because the Ford’s tailgate was under the building overhang, she loaded everything into the back without getting wet, and she dashed to the driver’s door. Ten minutes from arrival to departure.
After a harrowing day, she felt somewhat confident about making it safely through the night. As the most wanted criminal in America, however, she would find tomorrow challenging, especially considering what she had planned for Randall Larkin.