A.K.A. Jane Read online

  AKA JANE. Copyright © 1997 by Maureen Tan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1997 by Mysterious Press.

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  To Mom and Richard, who are always there for me.

  To Terri and Mary, the best sisters a writer ever had.

  To Morgana, Jessica, and Dick, my good friends and fellow travelers.

  To Mark, Marie, and Marguerite, who handle Mom’s obsession with tolerance and humor.

  And especially to Peter, for his unflagging faith and invaluable technical expertise.

  PROLOGUE

  Berkshire, England

  The damp odor of logs, newly stacked beside the fireplace, mixed with the smell that the Christmas tree spread through the Great Hall. Mulled cider simmered in a copper pot on the kitchen stove. Each time the cook and her helpers rushed by, they left the smell of apples, oranges, and cinnamon in their wake.

  I sat curled into a wing-backed chair near the fireplace, idly examining the contrast between my hands and the white woolen skirt I wore. I was almost seven. Three years in Greece had tanned my fair skin golden and streaked my brown hair with blonde.

  A shadow fell across my chair as my grandfather stepped between me and the fire. He leaned over, planted a brief kiss on the top of my head, then engulfed both my hands in one of his. He held his other hand behind his back.

  More questions, I thought.They gave up, so they sent me here. Now it’s his turn. I curled my hands into tight fists, shifted my eyes to the tapestry pattern woven into the fabric of my chair. I concentrated on the way the red and yellow threads took turns disappearing beneath the black ones.

  I was there, they kept saying. I had seen my parents and the driver killed. I was too small, they said, so I was left alive. They were sure I’d seen something important. If only I would answer their questions.

  I focused on a single red thread, followed it with my eyes, cast my mind back,tried to remember. I had been sitting in the front seat, next to our driver . . .

  * * *

  Stavros hauled on the steering wheel, but the car skidded out of control anyway. It crashed through the twisted branches of the olive trees bordering the road. I was thrown from the seat, slammed against the padded dashboard. The car stalled, rolled to a stop. I landed in a heap on the floor, my face just inches from Stavros’ polished black boots. His right foot moved frantically as he tried to restart the engine.

  Behind me, the door opened.

  I had forgotten to lock it.

  I glanced over my shoulder. A man leaned into the car, a stocking mask hiding his face. He held a gun, fired it. Stavros’ head exploded. Something warm and sticky hit my cheek and neck, my shoulders and arms. The man pointed the gun into the backseat.

  My father shouted, “No, not my—”

  The man fired twice. His second shot silenced my mother’s screams.

  I tried to get away, to claw my way past Stavros’ legs. But the man grabbed the back of my dress, dragged me from the car. He dropped me to the ground, aimed his gun.

  “Sorry, love. You weren’t supposed to be here.”

  * * *

  I yanked my hands from my grandfather’s grasp, tore my gaze from the red thread. That was all I had seen, all I could remember.

  Think! they kept saying. There must have been something. A crime against the Crown. Didn’t I want to help them catch the bad people? Then they would look angry and ask me more questions.

  My grandfather sighed and straightened. His eyes were hazel, like mine. Like my father’s. I bent my head, concentrated once again on the contrast between my hands and my skirt.

  “Merry Christmas, Janie.”

  “Merry Christmas, Grampa.”

  “I miss them, too. But you and I . . . We’ll manage, won’t we?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He was being nice now, but soonhe would be angry. Maybe if I just tried harder . . .

  “I’ve brought you a wee gift.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want the brightly wrapped packages that waited beneath the Christmas tree. I wanted to remember.

  He moved his left hand from behind his back, dropped a grey kitten into my lap.

  “Yours. Someone to talk to.”

  He walked away. No questions this time.

  I picked up the kitten, pressed my face into its soft fur.

  I would not cry.

  23

  The moon-faced, grey-haired policeman smiled when he saw me.

  “Hey, Miz Nichols.”

  I matched his drawl.

  “Hey, Randy. How’s it goin’?”

  The question was purely rhetorical. Randy was three months away from a much anticipated retirement and staffed the front desk during the relatively peaceful sevenA.M. to threeP.M. shift with enthusiastic good humor.

  His smile widened.

  “A couple weeks hangin’ around the station, and you’re startin’ to talk without an accent, Miz Nichols.”

  Two weeks, I thought, as I laughed at Randy’s joke. Two weeks since driving Alex and Tommy from the murder scene to the station and staying to share strong coffee and warm donuts with them. Two weeks since Tommy’s suggestion that the best way to understand cops was to observe them as they worked. Two weeks, and the faces populating each shift were now familiar. So were investigation techniques and patrol patterns.

  Bless Tommy Grayson. Thanks to him, I felt secure enough to kill Jim O’Neil. Not, as I’d originally thought, from the rooftop overlooking his riverfront warehouse. Savannah’s cops, I discovered as I rode around in the uniformly uncomfortable rear seats of their patrol cars, were solicitous of their town’s businesses. Frequent and overlapping patrol patterns in the area of the warehouse made O’Neil’s residence a better risk for escaping undetected.

  “Is the Chief in?”

  “Sure is.” Randy’s smile wavered. He jerked his head toward the doorway behind the desk. “He and Detective Sergeant Grayson are having a discussion.”

  I peered past him, saw the two men standing in Alex’s glass-enclosed office. The body language was unmistakable.

  “Who’s winning?”

  Randy’s grin reemerged. “Not worth my job to say, ma’am.”

  I grinned in return. Leaving a personal message with the desk sergeant was as effective as taking out an ad.

  “Well, I’d planned to invite them to join me for lunch before I drove down the coast to play tourist. But I think that, under the circumstances, I’ll just be on my way. If you wouldn’t mind, though, would you remind Alex that I’ll probably spend the night at a motel somewhere near Beaufort? I don’t want him worrying.”

  “I’ll tell him, Miz Nichols. Have a nice drive.”

  Actually, the drive took only minutes. It ended on West Liberty, in a crowded public parking lot adjoining the Savannah DeSoto Hilton. I parked in a middle row, walked several blocks. I planned on spending Saturday afternoon in Forsyth Park.

  I sat for hours with a drawing pad and an assortment of colored pencils in my lap. Azaleas splashed the park with color—an impressionist painting in hues of pink, crimson, orange, and white. I’d chosen the drawing pencils to match, then added a range of greens and browns for trees and foliage. The sunny afternoon had drawn crowds of tourists and picnickers to the gardens and central foun
tain.

  Nestled in one corner of the park was a playground—a child’s delight with climbable sculptures, a wading pool, sandboxes and swings, and brightly enameled slides. I sat on the wooden bench facing the largest slide.

  Over the hours, a parade of children climbed the tall ladder to the top of the slide and disappeared into its covered upper platform, only to be disgorged seconds later—dizzy and laughing—at the bottom of the enclosed, corkscrew-shaped chute. I drew, answered friendly inquiries about my artwork, and watched the elegant rowhouse across the street from the playground.

  The view through the upper half of the lenses I wore made nonsense of my sketches, but effectively closed the distance between the bench and the house. I was almost certain that O’Neil lived in the rowhouse, but by seven o’clock, I feared that belief wouldn’t be confirmed. Over the past hour, joggers had steadily replaced the families and tourists populating the park. Now, with dark clouds and a chilly breeze making rain imminent, even the joggers’ numbers were dwindling. I was in danger of becoming the park’s sole visitor, a situation inadvisable when maintaining a low profile. Fifteen minutes longer, I thought. Then I’d abandon my vigil.

  Five minutes later, a white BMW drove past and pulled into the carport adjoining the rowhouse. A large man in a business suit got out, glanced at the threatening sky, rushed to the rear of the car, took a sack of groceries from the boot. Even without my special lenses, his bright red hair was clearly visible. I watched, with hatred tightening my chest and making breathing difficult, until he went into the house.

  I stood, tucked pad, pencils, and glasses into my shoulder bag and walked toward O’Neil’s house. I intended only to memorize the BMW’s license number. But as I approached, he pulled open the drapes that covered the tall, narrow front windows. He stood for a moment, gazing out at the park, with a well-lit room behind him.

  Weeks of deadly intention crystallized into a workable plan. I’ve got you, you bastard. I’ve got you.

  I reached the car only moments ahead of the rain. Mac had provided the slim canvas bag that was in the boot. It contained a pair of thin cotton gloves and a sniper’s rifle. With its optical sight, the 7.62 mm Dragunov had a range of thirteen hundred meters. The distance from the playground to O’Neil’s living room was not nearly that great.

  I took the canvas bag and a long, hooded raincoat from the boot, then locked myself into the car. I needed full darkness for my plan to work. Full darkness, open curtains, and a cool head. I kept my hatred under control as, shielded by the steady flow of water down the windshield, I transferred the Walther from my shoulder bag to the raincoat’s right pocket. Then I moved the car closer to the park.

  At nine o’clock, I slipped into the raincoat and unzipped the canvas bag. I put on the cotton gloves before removing the rifle and its magazine from the bag. If need be, I could abandon the rifle. It was of Russian manufacture and was clean—no fingerprints, no identifying marks. Nothing to connect it to me or the organization.

  I slipped the Dragunov’s rectangular magazine into my left pocket. Then, leaving the rifle’s hollow butt folded, I hid it inside the raincoat, beneath my left arm. I pulled my hood down so that it concealed much of my face, got out of the car, and walked back towards the park in the rain.

  Half a block later, I spotted a squad car cruising slowly down Barnard. Although I knew it was a routine patrol, I sought shelter in the shadows of a tall hedge. The officers in the car—Merle and Dave, if I wasn’t mistaken—would feel compelled to warn a woman walking alone that she was in jeopardy. Like most of the cops I’d talked with in the past weeks, they had expressed the hope—but not any real belief—that vigilance would prevent the next murder.

  Inconvenient if they recognized me. Also bloody inconvenient if the strangler were to turn up in the park tonight. I’d have to delay killing O’Neil.

  * * *

  Not unexpectedly, the playground was deserted. I walked back to the place where I’d been sitting and noted, with relief, that rectangular patches of light still glowed from the house on Whitaker.

  The ladder to the top of the slide was slick with rain. I climbed it carefully, then crawled, feet first, into its covered platform. Inside the cramped interior, I lay on my side with my legs dangling down into the chute. I pulled the Dragunov from my coat, unfolded its butt, and snapped in the magazine, which held a standard ten rounds. I loaded one round into the chamber.

  I doubted I’d need more than one shot to kill O’Neil.

  I rolled so that my belly was pressed against the wet metal, steadied the rifle with my left hand and elbow. Ignoring the water dripping steadily onto my back, I put my right eye to the scope, let the crosshairs drift until they were centered on the rowhouse’s front windows. I settled in to wait. After a few minutes, the wind-driven rain brought thoughts of another wet night.

  * * *

  Brian Hurst was late, and I was tired of waiting.

  I stood in the darkness of an alley in Manchester, in the icy rain, with my back pressed into the questionable concealment of a very damp brick wall, and cursed the man. I’d been waiting for a long time. Long enough that the bricks had leached every bit of warmth from my body. Long enough that my violent, uncontrollable shivering threatened to betray my position to anyone who happened by.

  Why send me as a messenger? I wondered bitterly. Certainly Mac knew that, where Brian Hurst was concerned, I was the wrong choice. Although training with the man had improved my survival skills dramatically, those weeks did little to endear us to each other. And if Mac thought that assigning us to the same team would force us to reach some kind of accord—well, six months had more than demonstrated that we didn’t work well together. Even Mac had finally grown tired of our constant bickering. Certainly I’d felt nothing but relief when Hurst left London to work undercover. And now . . .

  Damn him, I thought, peering down the darkened street as a gust of icy wind whipped the rain almost vertically against me. No bloody Brian Hurst.

  For a few minutes, just for distraction, I worked on being philosophical. I tried to convince myself that there were advantages to being thoroughly drenched and nearly hypothermic. Impossible to tell, for instance, how much of the liquid soaking my clothing was water and how much was blood. Comforting, that. And the gash inflicted by a switchblade skittering along my ribs—unchecked by the wholly inadequate windbreaker I wore—bothered me less now that I was thoroughly cold.

  The kid had come up behind me on rubber soles. I’d heard him almost in time. Nothing more than a murderous little thief, I thought disgustedly. My bad luck to be chosen as his victim. His bad luck that I’d broken his arm taking his knife away. Thinking about how I would explain the incident in my report provided another few minutes of distraction from my thoroughly miserable state.

  Then I thought of Brian Hurst again. I’d just begun another heartfelt mental recitation of every rude word I knew when the object of my ire appeared. He emerged from a nearby alley, lingered there for a moment, then walked slowly down the street. The fleece-lined collar of his leather jacket was pulled up against the bite of the rain. I hated him all the more because he looked warm.

  He passed the place where I stood.

  “I have a message,” I said.

  Without breaking stride or looking in my direction, he nodded.

  I stayed where I was until I was sure he wasn’t followed. Then, avoiding the headlights of passing cars and detouring around the weak illumination of the area’s few unbroken streetlights, I joined him at the prearranged place, in the shelter of a storefront several blocks away.

  I huddled into the relative warmth of the recessed doorway. Brian stood opposite me. He was within arm’s reach but, in the darkness, was little more than a murky figure.

  “Mac says abort.”

  “No.” His resolve was unmistakable even in that single, quietly spoken word. “I’m too close to quit now. You tell him that.”

  I loaded as much antipathy into my voice as I could
muster.

  “Mac says, and I quote, ‘Tell Hurst that he may not do personal penance at the organization’s expense. His situation has deteriorated dangerously, and I will not condone suicide. Tell that young bastard that I want him back. Now. ’”

  I wondered if my voice sounded as odd to Brian as it did to me. I was beginning to feel truly ill, but I’d be damned if I’d let him know that.

  Brian spaced out his words for emphasis.

  “I am not coming back.”

  “Mac directed me to bring you in forcibly if necessary.”

  His laughter carried from the darkness where he stood.

  “You? How exactly did he expect you to manage that, M’lady?”

  The last word was delivered in the same offensive drawl he’d used so often in the past. This time, I was beyond caring.

  “I don’t fucking know. But hedoes expect it, and I’ll fucking do it.”

  My voice cracked as a violent shudder caught me unprepared. Suddenly, I was hurting terribly in spite of the cold. Damn it, Mac, I thought wearily, if this fuckwit wants to die, let him.

  I left the shelter of the storefront. The icy wind hit me full force. Shuddering uncontrollably, I staggered another step forward, into the wash of headlights from a turning car. Cursing my carelessness, I turned so that the driver would catch only a glimpse of my back, stepped back into the recessed doorway as the car swept past.

  I found myself face-to-face with Brian.

  “My God, woman, you’re hurt! Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

  He stripped off his jacket, wrapped it around my shoulders. I tried to shrug it away.

  “I don’t want your help. And I won’t have you blaming me for ruining your jacket.”

  “Sod the jacket.” He put an arm around my shoulders, pulled me into the shelter of his body. “Be grateful you’re so incompetent. You’ve blundered yourself into the only situation that could make me return to London.”

  * * *

  I pressed my eyes shut for a moment, resting them as I forced the memory away. I refocused on the room beyond the windows.