A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(108)

“Oh, my God,” she said. “What are you doing?”

Jane said, “Don’t worry. They’re just a precaution, like having a fire extinguisher or a lifeboat. A lot of really bad things would have to happen before we needed these.”

“I thought you just helped people run away. That’s what you said.”

“True,” Jane said.

“Then what’s changed?”

Jane spoke quietly. “When this started, we thought that we were just hiding Jimmy so he wouldn’t be arrested. I didn’t want any guns because we would never use one on a policeman. Now there are other people looking for us. The main thing we’re doing is still trying to avoid them, and staying out of sight.”

“So why do you have guns?”

Jane sighed. “Because what these people want is to kill us. Jimmy and you in particular.”

Chelsea stared at her for two breaths, and then turned away. She almost bumped into Jimmy and Mattie, who had come to the doorway when they’d heard the distress in her voice. She slipped past them, went to the bedroom she’d been sharing with Jane, and closed the door.

Jimmy followed her. After a few minutes, he reappeared. “She’ll be okay.”

Jane said, “Do you know how to use one of these?”

Jimmy said, “I’ve fired a semiauto sort of like those. I fired a Beretta M90 a few times when I was in the army.”

“Good. Mattie?”

“No.”

“Okay. Let me teach you. Any of these three handguns works about the same. You pull back the slide to let the first round up out of the magazine into the chamber, and release it. You push the safety off, and you can pull the trigger until the magazine is empty. These .45s hold seven rounds. If you want to reload, you press the magazine release right here, drop the magazine out, and push the bullets into it from the top. Then you push the magazine back in like this until it clicks. You cycle in the first round again. The man I got them from didn’t have extra magazines, but I’ll try to get some.” She turned the gun around and handed it to Mattie. “It’s empty.”

Mattie picked it up gingerly and examined it.

Jane said, “Hold it in both hands and aim it. Get comfortable. Line things up with the sights.”

Mattie and Jimmy both followed the instructions, getting as familiar as they could with the two pistols while Jane finished cleaning the compact .380.

That night after the others went to bed, Jane began her watch. She knew that if the killers found them, they would come at night.

Over the next three days Jane altered her routines. She took a nap after dinner that lasted from around eight until midnight or one. When Chelsea came in to go to bed, Jane got up. She would sit in the darkened apartment waiting and watching. Each night she took out the computer and checked the sites of the Western New York newspapers and television stations to see if anything had changed. In the tablet’s dim blue light she sat and read the news. She kept the window open, listening through the screen for any sound that was out of the ordinary. Sometimes she heard owls calling to one another as they hunted above the deserted streets, or a dog bark in the distance, but otherwise the night was quiet. It wasn’t until the fourth night that she found the article on the Buffalo News site.

COUNTY INMATE FOUND DEAD IN CELL. She scanned the text until she came to the name Walter Slawicky.

“The Erie County Sheriff’s Department issued a statement today concerning the death of a Caledonia man in Erie County jail on Thursday night. Walter Slawicky, age 46, had been held in custody on suspicion of giving false evidence in a murder case, pending a bail hearing scheduled for Monday. He was found dead in his cell by guards on Friday morning.

“Slawicky had told police he had sold a rifle like the one that had killed Nicholas Bauermeister of Avon, to James Sanders of Basom, New York, shortly before the murder. Three days ago, police found the weapon buried in Mr. Slawicky’s yard. Ballistic tests matched the weapon and the ammunition found with it to the bullet that killed Bauermeister. The Sheriff’s Department spokesman would not speculate at this time whether the cause of Slawicky’s death was suicide or homicide.”

Jane found herself standing. She had to stifle the impulse to wake the others. They would want to get into the cars right away and drive toward home, but she needed time to think about the implications of Slawicky’s death.

Slawicky was gone, and his claims about Jimmy discredited. That meant that the main reason the police had thought Jimmy was involved had disappeared. But he was still the one who had been in a fight with Nick Bauermeister, and he was still the one who hadn’t shown up in court for the assault and battery hearing. There was almost certainly a warrant out for his arrest. If he was caught, he would probably be locked up in that same jail, if only temporarily. There was no sign yet that the men in jail waiting for him had gone anywhere. And there was no reason to believe that Daniel Crane, or the men protecting Daniel Crane, had stopped looking for him. And they were certainly still looking for Chelsea.

Jane read every version of the story on the laptop, and then clicked on every link to articles that might give her more details.

Hours later, when the others were all awake, Jane said, “I have news.” She explained Slawicky’s death to them, and set the computer on the table where they could read the story.

“Can we go home?” asked Mattie.