The Escape Artist (37 page)

She closed the file containing Noel’s book and opened a new document.

Dear Mr. Sebastian,
she typed.

Thanks for playing my favorites for me, but you don’t have to worry about that other list I sent you. The artist has taken care of it. Still, I do hope you’ll play something special for me from time to time.

S.T.U. Downe

LINC WAS READING A PAPER
written by one of his students when the fax arrived. He studied the brief message, his eyes instantly drawn to the middle two lines—
you don’t have to worry about that other list I sent you. The artist has taken care of it
.

He knew he should be pleased and relieved, but he was not. The artist was taking care of too much, it seemed.

He had not been able to shake this heavy, dejected feeling since leaving Philadelphia the day before. Maybe it had been a mistake to see her. He wanted to be glad that she and Cody were well, that she was making friends and had so efficiently begun her life again. It had taken him by surprise, though. He thought she needed him more than she apparently did. So what did he want? Did he want her to be miserable? To have no one?

Let her go, he told himself. Let her and Cody go
.

He remembered what she’d told him about the artist’s family: they’d been killed by a drunk driver, wiped out in an instant. He should pretend that’s what had happened to her. Then he could grieve, assign her and Cody to a warmly remembered part of his past, and move on. He would send her no messages in this week’s show. He would not even play “Suzanne” for her. What was the point?

The list of names and addresses and dates she’d given him was tacked on the bulletin board above his desk. He removed it from the board and carried it into the kitchen, where he poured himself a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. Then he sat down to eat, both the list and Susanna’s fax lying on the table in front of him. Very bizarre, that list. Halfway through his breakfast, he reached for the phone and dialed Grace’s number at the university library.

“Have a minute?” he asked when he’d gotten her on the line.

“For you,” she answered.

“I have a situation I want to discuss with you,” he said. “If I had a list of people who all had something terrible happen to them, and I suspected that they all had something terrible happen to them because they all had something in common, how could I find out what that something is?”

Grace was silent, and he knew he had not explained himself well.

“Could you run that by me again?” she asked.

He laughed. “Okay. Let’s say you knew of a bunch of people who had been killed. Murdered. On the surface, they seem to have nothing in common, but you suspect that there must be something that unites them. Some reason they’ve been singled out for murder. Assuming they
did
have something in common, how would you find out what it is?”

“Linc, what have you gotten yourself mixed up with now?”

“This is hypothetical, Grace.”

“Oh, right. If you say so. Hold on. I’ve got to take another call.”

He used her absence from the line to light up a cigarette. In a moment, she was back.

“Okay, so you think something unites these people. Do you have addresses for them? Do they all live in the same neighborhood, or work in the same office, or go to the same university?”

He felt instantly overwhelmed. It could be any of those things and there was no way he could possibly know. “I have no idea,” he said.

“Well, you know what I would do? I would start by looking at the news coverage of their murders to see if you can tie them together that way. Or you could check the newspaper abstracts using the names of the victims to see if there might be other articles on them that could tell you something about them.”

“How do I…how does one check the newspaper abstracts?”

“In the library, Linc. Remember that big building with all the books?”

“But what if the people live far away?”

“You’d want to check the local papers in the area where they live.”

“Could I check local papers from here?”

“Depends on what we mean by local. What city are you talking about?”

“Annapolis, Maryland.” He blew a stream of smoke away from the phone, hoping Grace couldn’t hear him.

“Hmm,” Grace said, “they might have too small a paper to be indexed. And no, you couldn’t check from here. You’d have to…look, I know a reference librarian who works at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. I met him at a conference. If you call him and use my name, he’d probably help you with it, as long as he’s got the time. Hypothetically, of course.”

“Thanks, Grace.”

She left the line for a few minutes, and when she returned, she gave him the name and number of the librarian.

“Linc, just promise me you’re not doing something stupid.”

“Promise,” he said. Then with a sigh, “By the way, I’d be willing to go out with your friend. Not as a date. But maybe dinner with you and Valerie.” He cringed in anticipation of her elated response.

“All
right
,” she said. “Maybe we could do it this weekend.”

“No rush,” Linc said.

When he got off the phone he called the librarian in Annapolis, hoping that no one scrutinizing his phone records would think a call to the library at the Naval Academy was suspicious. The librarian sounded dour and uncooperative until Linc mentioned Grace’s name. Then he perked up and was unabashedly friendly. Linc gave him the name of the woman who had been killed. He considered giving him the name of the law firm, but was worried the librarian might recognize it. Surely in a town that small the killings would have been big news, and he didn’t want the librarian to assume the connection was the bombings themselves. Instead, he gave him the names of a few other individuals on the list, along with the dates written next to their names.

“Do those dates refer to this year?” the librarian asked.

“I assume so.” Linc looked at the list. “Well, actually, I don’t know.”

“And how soon do you need the information?”

“Whenever you can get to it,” he said. “I’m curious, that’s all.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Linc hung up the phone and crushed out his cigarette. Sam sauntered into the room and rested his heavy dark head on Linc’s knee, and Linc scratched the dog behind his ears. He thought he detected a disapproving look in Sam’s big eyes.

“I know, I know,” Linc said. “I’m done with Susanna, okay? I’m just curious about that list, that’s all.”

His words did nothing to alter the look in Sam’s eyes, and with a sigh, Linc pushed back his chair and lit up another cigarette.

ON HER WAY TO
Adam’s house, Kim stopped at Noel’s to drop off one hundred pages and pick up another chunk of his manuscript—and a check. His apartment was smoky and chilly, but Noel himself was in a good mood.

“This looks really super,” he said as he leafed through the typed pages. “Helps me delude myself into thinking I’m writing a real book.”

“Oh, I think you are,” Kim answered. Noel’s protagonist was growing on her. “I really got into the part where they were hiding in the museum all night.” She reached down and scooped Cody into her arms. Now that the little boy had mastered walking, he was constantly on the go, and Noel’s apartment was not particularly child-safe.

“Did you?” Noel beamed, and his open need for approval made her like him more than she already did. “I wanted to add some accurate details about the museum, but I left my book on the Smithsonian at Jessie’s house. It describes the Natural History Museum, floor by floor.” Noel shook a cigarette from the pack on his desk. “Actually, I was wondering if you might be able to pick it up for me. I called Jess about it but she said she’d rather I didn’t stop by myself.”

“Sure,” Kim said. “I’ll ask her for it.”

Noel lit the cigarette, then picked up a check from his desk and handed it to her, his expression pensive. “Have you seen Jessie lately?” he asked. “She sounded so down on the phone.”

“Well, I think she goes into a funk every once in a while. She’s still very sad about the accident…and about you, I think.”

“I suppose she told you why we split up?”

Kim wondered if she should have kept her mouth shut. “She said she wasn’t comfortable with your drinking.” Cody struggled to get out of her arms, and she tightened her grip on him.

Noel made a sound of disgust. “She’s making a problem out of nothing,” he said. “She and Adam went on this no-alcohol kick after the accident. Like that’s going to bring Dana and the kids back, right?”

Kim shrugged uncomfortably. She had nothing against Noel, but she could only admire Jessie for her decision.

Cody intensified his wriggling and pouting, and she felt as if she were trying to hold on to a bag of jumping beans. “He’s getting restless,” she said, as she took a couple of steps toward the door. “I’ll try to get that book for you tonight.”

“That’d be great.” Noel carried the next installment of his manuscript down the metal stairs for her and said good-bye to her at her car.

She was anxious to get to Adam’s house. For the first time, she’d had a dream she could use. She’d gotten out of bed that morning and sketched quickly and quietly, listening to Cody as he babbled to himself in his crib.

Turning off Noel’s street she came to a stop sign. She stepped on the brake, but her car gave no sign of slowing down. Panicked, she pressed harder, finally coming to an uncertain stop in the middle of the intersection. From the corner of her eye, she spotted a black station wagon speeding toward her from the right. She pressed on the gas pedal with all her strength, pulling out of the intersection just in time to avoid a collision, but not the horn-blaring wrath of the other driver.

Her heart racing, she carefully turned the car around and headed home, driving very slowly. Her brakes felt spongy and soft as she pulled to a stop in front of the house, and she swiveled in her seat to look at her son. “Are you all right, Cody?” she asked. She felt shaky and sick, but Cody smiled at her, unaware that he should be anything other than all right.

Her arms trembled as she carried him up the sidewalk to the house. There was no doubt in her mind that if she had stopped in that intersection one second later, she and Cody would be dead. If Cody had been with Jim and Peggy, however, riding around in their perfectly tuned BMW instead of in her second-hand bargain, he would never have been in danger.

And if she and Cody had been killed, how would Linc ever find out? That thought was so distressing that she had to blink back tears as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. It hurt every time she remembered that quiet, solemn ride with Linc to the airport, when she’d been longing to work out some way of communicating with him, while he’d been thinking of how untenable their relationship had become. Would he say anything to her through his choice of music on Sunday night? If he didn’t, she knew she would have to accept his decision to move on without her. She could hardly blame him.

She called Adam and told him she couldn’t come over because of the problem with her car, and she was pleased when he offered to pick her up. He was at her door within minutes.

“Is there some place I can take it where they won’t rip me off?” she asked on the drive to his house.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “You can let me fix it.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve always done the work on my car. Jessie’s too. If you can wait till the weekend, I can work on it then.”

“Really, Adam? That would be wonderful.” She would have to find some way to repay him. “I really appreciate you picking me up. I had a dream last night.”

He grinned at her. “I told you it would happen.”

“It took place in a park,” she said. “I think it was the park where I take Cody to play, but it had all these rays of sunlight coming through the trees. And there was this group of children playing in a circle on the ground.” The dream was still vivid in her mind. “I don’t know if I can paint the children, though.”

“Save them for last,” Adam said, as he turned into his driveway. “Although I have complete faith in your ability, especially when it comes to painting people.”

They ate Adam’s homemade minestrone soup for dinner, then Kim put Cody to bed and joined Adam in his studio. He was well into his painting—a tree-lined road leading to a lake dotted with sailboats—and she was inspired by his creation to get to work on her own. The minutes ticked by unnoticed as she transferred her dream of the night before from her mind to the canvas.

“The dream artists,” Adam said after a while, as he glanced over at her work. “You are getting damn good.”

“Thanks.” Kim took a step back to look at her canvas, and for the first time, she thought she truly deserved his compliment.

“You know why you suddenly had a great dream, don’t you?” Adam asked now, as he worked on one of the sailboats.

“Why?”

“Because you feel freer now that you’ve told me everything. You have nothing to hide anymore, at least not from me.”

“Maybe,” she said. It did help that Adam knew the truth about her. Adam seemed to have taken the news in and then tucked it away, where it could do her no harm. She knew it tied her to him, though, and every once in awhile that thought frightened her. She must never make an enemy of Adam. If at some point their relationship came to an end, she would have to be certain it did not end badly.

There was another reason she felt freer the past few days: the information from the computer was finally in the hands of the police. She had seen nothing about the police’s receipt of the list in the papers or on the news, however, and hoped they were keeping it quiet in order to catch the bomber before he could harm the next victim.

She wouldn’t have said she felt totally free, though. Anyone who, despite the presence of a deadbolt, slept with an end table in front of her door, who looked over her shoulder several times a day, wondering if the man keeping pace with her across the street might be the private investigator, or worse, the previous owner of her computer, and who kept her duffel bag still packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice, could not claim to be free.