82 Desire

it.”

Twenty-two
    THURSDAY MORNING SKIP woke up with a new lease on life—or at least on the case. She had a headful of new ideas, most of them, curiously enough, out of the mouths of babes.
    Things had been up and down on St. Philip after Steve and Kenny came back from their walk. (Naturally, Kenny had agreed to go—no way was he going to turn down an opportunity to be with Steve and Napoleon. In fact, Napoleon had once been his dog until Skip and Dee-Dee laid down the law—and now they were stuck with the big lug anyway.)
    The chicken was just getting done, Skip had had a shower, and Kenny and Steve were in terrific spirits when they returned. Dee-Dee and Layne were up for fun, but clearly on edge. And Sheila was sulking all the way through the meal, putting a damper on the whole event. At first they tried ignoring her, just nattering on about anything at all.
    But the girl was like a storm cloud, emitting black energy and random lightning bolts. So Skip did something she rarely did, except in extreme circumstances—turned the conversation to her work. Sometimes she told stories about past cases, a guaranteed icebreaker; but by now Kenny and Sheila had heard all the good ones. Sometimes—and she usually did this only with Steve—she’d postulate a problem. As it happened, she had one on her mind, a little thing that had niggled at her ever since Abasolo brought up the notion that Russell might have used a false ID to get out of the airport.
    The thing had merit, but she hadn’t yet had a chance to put her mind to it. “Listen,” she said, “can I run a police problem by y’all?”
    Five avid pairs of eyes turned to her, Sheila’s no less alert than anyone else’s. Kenny said, “Yeah! Yeah!” and Sheila gave him the requisite withering big-sis look, but it was only a glance, really. This stuff never failed.
    “Okay, yesterday I robbed a bank with a security camera trained right on me…”
    Sheila said, “Nobody would be that dumb.”
    “You’d be surprised. Say I’m a first offender—how’re they going to ID me?” Mouths popped open, but she put up both hands. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. That has nothing to do with reality, it’s just how criminals think—in the event they do think, which most of them don’t. And I’m no exception. But say I’ve smeared my license plate with mud, thinking that’s real professional, but then it rains—so there I am with naked plates. I’m making a getaway and I hear sirens. I get home and my house is surrounded by police cars.”
    “Oh, sure. They’re really going to send a whole fleet of cars…”
    Once more, she held up an open hand. “Oh, wait, I forgot to mention, I killed somebody in the course of the robbery. Let’s make it worst-case scenario.
    “So I can’t go home. All of a sudden I realize I’ve got to start thinking. I abandon my car because it’s no longer safe, quickly get some new clothes and a backpack for all my new money, some sunglasses, maybe—I do the best I can to look different. But I know what I really need to do is get out of town. So what do I do next?”
    Jimmy Dee said, “Take a taxi to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere.”
    But Sheila objected. “The cops would be watching the airport.”
    “You’d have to get there before they got around to it,” Jimmy Dee said.
    Kenny said, “Hey, I’ve got it. Just keep going. Take the taxi all the way to Baton Rouge and fly from there.”
    “Or,” said Sheila, “you could rent a car in Baton Rouge.” It was a thought. Skip hadn’t considered it.
    Dee-Dee said, “How about a boat? You take a taxi to some little fishing town and hire a fisherman to take you somewhere—maybe somewhere with an airport.”
    “Hey, wait a minute,” said Steve. “Why don’t you just steal a car?”
    “ ‘Cause the cops would put out a bulletin on it—right, Auntie?”
    Sheila said, “Hang on. You could also steal a license plate and switch it with the one on the car you stole.” Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright as pennies.
    “That would work,” said Skip. Anything to keep the good mood going.
    Layne, the puzzle-maker, finally spoke. “Greyhound bus is always good. I think you can buy an anonymous ticket—not like if you rent a car or fly.” He paused and thought a minute. “But what you really need’s a fake ID. Because you’ve changed your appearance, all they’ve got is your name. You’ve got to get rid of it.”
    This was going