A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(14)

His simple preparations made Jane wary. He was not some fat, soft cop who spent his weeks in a patrol car and then went out on weekends to drink beer and pretend to fish. He poured water in a small pot, added some dry soup from a packet, and set it above his tiny fire to warm.

Jane considered leaving immediately, but staying might give her a chance to gain an advantage that she might not get again, so she waited. She watched the man make his dinner, and she watched him eat. He was a slow, thoughtful eater who looked at the trees and listened to the calls of birds and the chattering of squirrels in the limbs above. He was alert but at ease in the woods, and had soon finished his dinner, wiped the pot clean, and put it away. He stood up carrying a folding entrenching tool from his pack and a roll of toilet paper, and disappeared into the woods.

Jane waited a minute until she heard the entrenching tool digging into the ground fifty yards off. She kept the sound in her ears as she moved into his camp, quickly examining everything. She found a box of 9 mm pistol ammunition in his backpack, but he must have taken the pistol with him. Next she found a little black leather wallet. There was a badge that said NEW YORK STATE POLICE, and an identification card that said he was Isaac Lloyd, Technical Sergeant, Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He was based in Rochester.

When the state police had seen Jane visit Jimmy’s mother, this one must have decided to follow her. Jane thought about taking the bullets, badge, and ID, but dismissed the idea. She didn’t want to taunt this man, and alarming him would be the fastest way to turn one cop into fifty cops.

She heard the crunch of footsteps on leaves, ducked down, and moved off into the woods. When she descended again to the level of the long trail south it was already getting dark. Deep, gloomy shadows painted the east sides of the wooded hills. Jane plotted the route she would have to take to stay out of Isaac Lloyd’s sight. She thought about the name as she began to move south. Isaac was almost certainly “Ike.” Yes, he was definitely an Ike.

She reached a trail on the far side of the next hill with the sun sinking quickly, and then followed it to a north-south road. She moved along the sparsely traveled road at a strong pace for a time, and periodically stopped to verify she was still alone. She stayed on the shoulder of the road, and then began to trot. Jane let her eyes get used to the darkness and then picked up speed. She was glad she had checked his identity. She didn’t want harm to come to him, but she also didn’t want to answer the questions he might ask if he caught up with her.

At the first public trash can she took apart her cell phone and threw the battery in. At each spot where she could dispose of another part of the phone, she did. She didn’t think the police had followed her this far using her cell phone’s GPS, but she was certain they could if they knew her number, and they could get that if they knew her name. She was running for Jimmy’s life, and if they were going to overtake her, they would have to work harder than that.





6



Jane traveled for several hours that night. Once she had divested herself of her cell phone, she began to change her course. Until the rest stop she had followed the exact route that she and Jimmy had followed at fourteen. It had led them to the Juniata River in eastern Pennsylvania, because that was the place where archaeological finds had placed the Iroquoian speakers before most of them had migrated north to the land that became New York State. That had been an old place. But it had not been the oldest place. The one they’d called the oldest place, one of the oldest sites in North America, was the Meadowcroft Rockshelter near Avella, Pennsylvania, southwest of Pittsburgh. Carbon dating on baskets and animal remains in the shelter showed that people had been there sixteen thousand years ago.

The Meadowcroft shelter was an overhang in the side of a sandstone cliff where small groups of Paleo-Indians had stayed for short periods of time, probably following the caribou herds at first. But others in later millennia stopped to wait out a storm, rest from a journey, hunt for meat in the surrounding woods, or fish in Cross Creek. Many groups had stopped at Meadowcroft, including Senecas, who regularly traveled though the upper Ohio valley until at least the 1780s.

To reach the shelter Jane headed south. All night long as she alternately ran and walked, she thought about her husband, Carey. They had known each other since sophomore year at college. She had not been a guide in those days, had never taken a person away from his troubles—never even thought of it until she was a junior and a friend needed that kind of help. But years later when Carey had reappeared in her life and they’d fallen in love, she had told him all about her past before she’d agreed to marry him. In fact, at first she had told him to explain why she wouldn’t marry him, but he had kept after her until she had agreed. When they married, she stopped taking on runners and their troubles, and concentrated on being a good wife, a doctor’s wife. But people still came sometimes. Runners she had made to disappear and who were living new lives met other people in the same kinds of trouble, and sent them to Jane. Usually she had resisted and found other ways to help, but now and again she’d made exceptions and gone on the road again. This was one of the exceptions. She had discussed the reasons with Carey, and she had thought about them over and over while she’d been traveling on foot down deserted Pennsylvania roads. Now Carey was angry, and disappointed, and acted as though he’d been betrayed.

She reached into the pocket of her jeans and took out the ote-ko-a, running her thumb along the strand, feeling each of the polished shell beads in the dark. Two white, two purple, two white, two purple, and on down to the end. The string of shell beads was one of the things Carey couldn’t possibly understand. The string of beads was an appointment to act as the agent of her people. It was a license, an assignment, a contract, a physical symbol of an agreement. It was all of these and none of them, but having it gave her a responsibility she couldn’t duck or amend. She put it back in the pocket where she had been carrying it since she’d started her journey. A small part of her brain reminded her that she had never shown it to Carey, never tried to explain to him what it meant. The ote-ko-a was a burden, but at the same time, it was a proof of her acceptance by the women, people whose opinions mattered. The time had come when the tribe needed the specialized kind of help that she could give. How could she have refused?