7
Jane took another look at Jimmy’s head wound after the bus was on the thruway moving west. They sat at the back, where they had some privacy. The light was dim, but she could see Jimmy well enough. She had some alcohol-based hand sanitizer in her pack, and she used it to sterilize Jimmy’s wound. In her first aid kit she had Band-Aids and a large gauze pad, which she stuck over the wound. His knitted wool cap was soaked with blood so she put hers over his head to cover the bandages, and then went into the bathroom to wash his with the antibacterial soap in the dispenser over the little sink. She wrung out the cap and hooked it over the window latch so the moving air would dry it.
Jimmy fell asleep, and Jane watched him for a while. It was about two and a half hours from the East Syracuse station to Buffalo—about 150 miles of thruway. The flat, straight highway was monotonous in the dark, and Jane’s exertion in the fight made her welcome the sleep that finally took her.
She woke as the bus slowed a bit to drift through the tollbooth at exit 50. The lights of the little outpost shone through the windshield and the window beside her, and then she sat up. She studied Jimmy’s face as the bus passed through the dim light. He looked calm, relaxed, and untroubled. A terrible thought occurred to her, so she wetted her index finger and held it beneath his nostrils for a second to feel his breath. He was okay, just in a peaceful sleep. She looked at the highway signs. Even at almost midnight, the bus might take a while to get to the station, so she let him sleep. As she surveyed the bus, she and the driver seemed to be the only ones awake.
Riding with the sleeping Jimmy gave Jane a chance to consider what to do. There could be a cop or two in the Buffalo bus station. Sometimes police departments placed cops in airports and stations to watch for people who interested them—organized crime figures, parole violators, or fugitives. They were usually old-timers because experienced cops had long memories. She would have to watch for them. Where should he turn himself in? The trip to Akron or Batavia was too long and complicated to be practical unless they could find a taxi at the station.
There were several police stations in downtown Buffalo, and at least one sheriff’s station. They would probably put Jimmy in the Erie County Holding Center at the foot of Delaware Avenue, or if there was no room, put him in a station holding cell overnight and then take him to the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden. Any police station would transport him where he needed to go. The one near the lower end of Franklin might be the closest, and that would matter if she and Jimmy were on foot.
One of the things that had been bothering Jane for the past few days was that she always felt a step behind. She had spent years learning to do something risky and difficult, and what she knew should have made this easier than it was. Now she was about to do something she knew was wrong—walk her friend into a bus station, one of the most common places to find people who were running away from something. And instead of doing it during the day, when Jimmy would have been surrounded by hundreds of respectable travelers, she was going to take him in at midnight, when there would be no more than the dozen hollow-eyed, weary people who were on this bus, and maybe a few others waiting for the next one. And she was going in with both of them wearing clothes they’d worn to jump a train and fight off muggers in an alley.
Jane had survived so many trips with runners by keeping the odds in her favor. She’d taught them to look like everybody else, to change anything that was distinctive, to travel without being noticed. She’d told them to avoid confrontations, controversy, and even speech, if possible.
The bus turned onto Ellicott Street. She took a deep breath, let it out, and shook Jimmy gently. “We’re in Buffalo.”
He sat up straight, stretched, and looked around him. There were still some passengers asleep nearby, but others sat in the dark interior of the bus, their eyes now open and unblinking so they looked like wary night creatures.
Through the windshield Jane could see the low, lighted building, the roof beside it to shelter passengers from weather, and the buses in a row. Just beyond the station was an office building like a box with rows of lighted windows. The bus pulled into the entrance to the lot, came around the building, and slid into a space in front.
Jane waited for the first few passengers to file out the door at the front, then stood and picked up her backpack. She glanced out the window from her new, higher angle, and saw a sight that made her freeze where she stood.
Through the bus window she saw an elderly female figure wearing a light raincoat over a flowered dress, and high-heeled shoes. The woman stood, unmoving, with both hands in front of her holding the strap of her purse. She was facing Jane’s window, and her eyes seemed to bore into Jane, to demand her attention. A casual observer who saw the woman would have passed on to more interesting sights, but Jane recognized the woman. She was Alma Rivers, clan mother of the Snipe clan, Jane’s father’s clan. Alma’s expression was solemn and her gaze grew more intense. As Jane stood and looked down at her through the window, her head moved, slightly but perceptibly, from side to side: No.
Jane whispered to Jimmy, “Get down and stay on the bus.” He nodded and slumped down across the seat.
Jane moved to the open door of the bus, went down the steps, and watched Alma’s eyes as she walked toward the station. Alma moved her gaze toward the interior of the station.
As Jane walked to the station entrance, she could see through the glass what Alma had been trying to warn her about. Sitting in a row in the blue plastic molded seats were three men in their thirties, watching the line of people waiting beside the bus to retrieve their luggage from the compartment in the bus’s side.
Jane veered and moved along behind their row to avoid giving them an easy look at her, while giving herself a chance to study them. One was light blond with a fleshy face, and the other two were darker and leaner. None of them had baggage of any kind, none of them had the edges of tickets visible in any pockets, and none had anything in either hand. All of them were wearing thin, loose jackets that might have been chosen to hide weapons.
Jane reached the ticket window. “When does the bus out there leave for Erie?”
“About five more minutes.”
“Two tickets, please.” She handed him two fifty-dollar bills, and looked up at the glass over the window to study the three men in the reflection.
She took the tickets and change, and walked behind the three men to the doors. A line was forming at the door of the bus, and Jane joined it. She glanced over at the area near the doors where Alma Rivers stood. She was still there, unmoving, still watching Jane. When their eyes met, Alma nodded once, turned, and walked around the corner of the building—maybe to the parking lot, maybe to the street. All Jane knew was that she was gone.
The bus driver began taking tickets. “Thank you, welcome aboard,” he said as each person handed him a ticket. “Thank you, welcome aboard.”
Jane handed him her two tickets. “One is for my husband, asleep in the back of the bus.”
“Thank you, welcome aboard.”
Jane climbed the steps, made her way down the aisle to the seat where Jimmy waited, and sat down. In a very short time, the driver had admitted the line of passengers and come in to sit down behind the wheel. The bus backed up, then turned and drove out again. As it made the first turn toward the Niagara section of the thruway, she put her face close to Jimmy’s and whispered.
“Did you see her?”
“Yes,” he said. “At first I thought it must be a hallucination from getting bopped on the head, but I could tell you were seeing her too.”
“She was there to warn us to keep going.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. There were three guys sitting in the station watching for something—I think she thought they were there for you.”
“Police?”
“They didn’t look like police to me, and I don’t think Alma thought so either.”
“How did she even know we were coming in on a bus, or when?”
Jane shrugged. “I can’t guess what they know or how they know it. Maybe they’ve been waiting at the airport, the bus station, the train station, and your mother’s house for days, watching to be sure you make it back safely. Maybe they know people so well they can predict what we’re going to do.”
“What do you think we should do now?” he asked.
“We’re doing it,” she said. “We’ve got another three-hour ride. Sleep as much as you can to get your strength back.”
Jimmy sat back and closed his eyes, and the sound of the bus rolling through the night lulled him back to sleep.
When they reached Erie a little after three, Jane got off the bus, went to the ticket booth, and then returned. “We’ll have to wait for a few hours to catch the next bus to Cleveland. It leaves at eight.” They bought snacks and water from vending machines. Jane whispered, “We can relax a little bit. Just crossing a state line still makes your face a bit less familiar, unless you were a movie star before your troubles started. Just look normal.”
“How do I do that?”
“Make up a little story and live it. You and I are from Rochester. We live in an apartment on Maplewood Avenue, near the Genesee River. We’ve been married for, say, eight years. We’re comfortable together, but we’re past the stage where we have our hands all over each other in public. We took the bus because it’s a cheap, easy way to visit my mother in Cleveland. You also want to see the Indians play while we’re there.”
Jimmy sat for a few seconds. “You’re right. When I think about how that guy feels, I forget to be nervous, and I don’t wonder what to do, because I know what he’d do. Right now he’d go get a newspaper and read it while you take a turn sleeping.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open until you get back with your paper.”
When he came back from the newspaper vending machine, he sat down on one of the long, pew-like benches, and Jane fell asleep beside him with her head on her backpack. They stayed that way until it was time to catch their next bus.
They got off the bus in Cleveland at around nine thirty in the morning. The station was a 1930s futuristic building, all rounded corners with a tall vertical sign like the marquee on a theater. They walked along Chester Street for a couple of blocks and came to a street with a sign that had an arrow and the words ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME.
Jimmy looked at it, then looked at Jane.
She shrugged. “It gives us a destination. And it raises the odds that there will be food in the area.”
They followed the arrows and walked a few blocks before they saw it. There were rows of man-high guitars painted in bright colors, and then a plaza up a wide set of steps. The building itself was a glass pyramid with concrete boxlike structures beside and above it. But what caught Jane’s attention was a roofed area at the margin with a pay phone. “Wait for me,” she said, and walked to it.
She put in a coin and dialed Carey’s cell number, then put in more coins when the operator told her to.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Doctor McKinnon,” she said. “I love you.”
“Hold on.” She could hear him walking from a place where there were noises in the background to a smaller, quieter space, then closing the door. “Hi. I’ve been worried.”
“Sorry. You got my message about ditching my cell phone, right?”
“Yes.”