The Escape Artist (43 page)

Kim had come to the hospital by ambulance, Linc had told her, but she had no memory of the trip, nor did she remember the doctor stitching the cut above her eye. She’d been in shock, Linc said. As far as she was concerned, she was still in shock. She couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together in her head.

“I still don’t get it,” she said to Linc. “How did you know where I was?”

Linc explained, for the third or fourth time, how he had learned about the connection between the victims through the librarian at the Naval Academy, how he’d figured out that “the artist,” whose family had been killed by a drunk driver, was probably behind the deadly explosions. “So, I knew that Adam would not have taken the information to the police, as he’d told you he would. I had the addresses on the list you’d left with me, and I thought I could try to intercept Adam myself, or at least to provide some warning to the residents in the house.”

“And why didn’t you just call the police?”

“Why do you think?” he asked. “I was afraid I’d be leading them straight to you.”

Another police officer, a dark-haired woman, came to the door of the waiting room.

“We’ve finished taking Mr. Soria’s statement,” she said to Kim. “He’d like to talk to you now.”

“I’ll keep Cody here,” Linc said. He reached for him, but Kim held tight.

“No.” She pictured the social worker arriving at the hospital while she was in with Adam, marching into the room, snatching Cody from Linc’s arms, and spiriting him away to some undisclosed location.

“I won’t let anyone take him without talking to you first,” Linc said. “You don’t need to worry.”

Reluctantly, she shifted Cody to Linc’s arms, grateful that the little boy had slept through the entire adventure. The thought of him being taken from her while he was still asleep was intolerable to her, though. She couldn’t imagine him waking up surrounded by strangers.

She followed the policewoman down the hall to one of the treatment rooms. The room was cold and sterile and made her shiver the second she walked inside. Adam was propped up in a hospital bed, a bandage around his head and a smear of blood on the shoulder of the blue hospital gown. He looked pale and sick, and her heart went out to him. She pulled away from the policewoman to take his hand.

“I’m so sorry about Jessie, Adam,” she said, sitting down in the chair next to his bed. “I’m sorry for everything.”

Adam squeezed her hand and shut his eyes. “I need to tell you…to try to explain things to you,” he said slowly. His voice was hoarse, and she had to lean close to hear him. From the corner of her eye, she saw the policewoman sit down in the chair by the door.

“Are you all right?” Kim asked. “Is it just your head?”

“Ribs.” Adam opened his eyes, squinting against the light in the room. “Two of them broken. That boyfriend of yours packs a wallop.” He tried to smile, but didn’t come close to succeeding.

“Adam, I’m—”

“Listen to me,” he interrupted her. “I want you to know some things.”

“I think I know everything,” she said. “I know Jessie was targeting drunk drivers. The people on the list—the ‘one adult’ or ‘elderly couple’—they were the people who were killed in those accidents, right?”

“There’s more.”

She couldn’t imagine what more there could be, but she leaned even closer to the bed. “I’m listening,” she said.

Adam closed his eyes again, a deep line in his forehead below the bandage, and it was a few seconds before he seemed able to speak.

“Molly was Jessie’s daughter,” he said finally.

His words didn’t register right away. “Molly was what?” she asked.

He looked directly at her. “Jessie got pregnant when she was fifteen. She knew she couldn’t raise a child, and our parents were not very supportive. But since Dana and I were already married, we decided to adopt her baby so that Jessie could always be close to her.”

“Oh, my God,” Kim said. “No wonder Jessie felt such a bond with your children.”

“Molly was everything to Jessie,” Adam said. “She and I were both nearly insane with fury when that driver got off so easily after the accident. Actually, I guess we were insane. Neither of us cared if we lived or died. Then we started thinking about all the other families who had suffered the way we were suffering, all the drunk drivers who were still out there, free to kill again. Jessie joked about taking those drivers out, one by one. At least, I thought she was joking.” Adam gingerly touched the bandage wrapped around his head. “I realized after the break-in at your apartment, when you told me about the information on the computer, that Jessie had actually gone through with it. I didn’t want to believe it, but I—”

“I still don’t understand,” she interrupted. “I thought
you
owned the computer before me.”

“Uh uh. It was Jessie’s. She used a loaner computer while hers was being repaired. One morning, she asked me if I could take it back to Computer Wizard for her and pick up her repaired computer. I said I would do it that night, but then my schedule changed, and I was able to take it that afternoon. I didn’t realize there was information on it that Jessie wanted to delete before it was returned. She was furious with me when I told her I’d taken it back.” He looked into space for a minute, as if he were remembering that scene. “I never understood why she was so angry—until the day someone broke into your apartment.” He returned his gaze to Kim. “When you told me what you’d found on your computer, I knew what had happened. Jessie had called Computer Wizard to see if she could get the computer back to take her file off it, and they told her it had already been sold, but that the person who bought it had called to tell them someone had left a file on the disk. They said you didn’t leave your phone number, but the salesman thought it would be okay to give Jessie your address, since you’d seemed concerned about getting the information to its rightful owner.”

“So she knew where I lived. Was it Jessie who sent me the invitation to your show, then?”

“Yes. She followed you around for a few days, I guess, and knew that you were interested in the murals.”

Kim remembered the feeling of being followed during her early days in Annapolis. She had not been imagining it after all.

“Those kids at the law firm,” Adam said. “I can’t tell you how upset I was when I realized Jessie was behind that…catastrophe. And I wanted to tell you. We were in your apartment and you were telling me all about your life and your running away and I was lying to you through my teeth.”

“You said you’d go to the police with the disc and—”

“What I did was go to Jessie’s house that night when she was asleep. I checked out her basement. She has a little workroom down there, and it looked like an explosives factory. Then I couldn’t deny it to myself anymore. But I couldn’t turn her in, Kim. She’s…she was my sister. She was all I had left, and she was obviously sick and needed help. So I talked to her instead of to the police. I told her I knew what she was doing, and she admitted everything. We argued and she cried a lot, but she finally promised me there’d be no more bombings. When I called her last night, though, and got no answer, I was afraid she was on her way to the next house on her list. I was hoping I was wrong. I thought I’d go to that address, and if she did show up, I could head her off.” His eyes filled with tears. “But it didn’t work out that way.”

“Maybe if I hadn’t been there, you could have stopped her,” Kim said. “But I thought you were the person behind—”

“I know, and I can’t blame you for that,” Adam said. “Or for any of this, Kim. You’re not responsible for what happened last night.”

She looked at their hands resting together on the bed. It would be a long time before she could shake her guilt over what had taken place the night before.

“What will happen to you and Cody?” Adam asked.

She kept her eyes on their hands. “Well, Cody will go to my ex-husband and his wife.” Her tears started again, and it was a minute before she could continue. “They love him. At least I know Peggy does. She’ll take good care of him.”

Adam stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “That’s not fair,” he said. “You couldn’t be a better mother.”

She tried to smile. “As for me, I don’t know exactly what will happen. I’ve been told I’m a felon. I suppose they lock felons up. Right now, I don’t really care.” She shrugged her shoulders. “When I think about my life without Cody, I just… I don’t see the point.”

“Don’t talk that way,” Adam said quickly. “You sound like Jessie.”

Kim tried to wipe her tears away with her fingers, but new ones quickly took their place. “I feel like it’s my fault,” she said. “If I hadn’t interfered last night…if I hadn’t tried to stop her, she’d be alive.”

“Yes, but someone else wouldn’t be,” Adam said. “There were five people in that house. You did what you had to do, Kim. You saved at least one life, probably more.”

Kim bit her lip. “And Jessie saved mine, you know.”

Adam nodded. “They told me. They said you were so close to the bomb that you would have been badly injured if she hadn’t…covered it with her body.”

Linc poked his head in the door, Cody still in his arms. “The social worker’s here, Susanna,” he said.

“I’ll be right there.” She turned back to Adam. “I have to go,” she said.

“I’m sorry you had to get mixed up in all of this, Kim,” he said. He ran the back of his hand lightly up her arm. “You and Cody mean a lot to me.”

“You’ve meant a lot to us, too.”

He smiled at her. “Susanna, huh?”

She nodded.

“So, how is Susanna different from Kim?”

She sighed. “Kim is brave and independent and gutsy. Susanna is weak and needy. But right now, they’re both the same person.” She glanced at the door leading to the hallway. “Both of them are terrified of walking out that door,” she said.

“They’ve both been the same person all along, Kim,” Adam said. “And don’t you forget it.”

SUSANNA AND LINC ARRIVED
at the hotel close to two in the morning, after they’d finished talking with the police at the hospital. Susanna was exhausted and sick to her stomach. She felt as if she’d been riding a roller coaster all night. She’d been nervously waiting to be driven to police headquarters when she was told that charges against her had been dropped.

At first she hadn’t understood. She was standing in the hallway of the emergency room, numbly waiting to be handcuffed or whatever they would have to do to her to take her to the police station, when the policewoman brought her the news.

“You’re free,” the policewoman said. Susanna stared at her blankly, and the woman continued. “It happens a lot once a child’s been located and taken into custody. The custodial parent is really only interested in getting his or her child back.”

Susanna never would have figured Jim for one of those parents who would drop charges. Somewhere deep inside her, she knew she should be elated by that news, yet she had no room in her for joy just then.

“And Cody?” she’d whispered.

The social worker who’d questioned her earlier appeared next to the policewoman. “Tyler will be in protective custody overnight,” she said. “Colorado’s sending a child protection worker out here in the morning, and she’ll take Tyler back with her. You can be on the same plane, if you like,” she added. “We know you have a good relationship with your son, and it would probably help if you were with him for the flight.”

She was sick most of the night. Linc sat up with her in the hotel room, holding her, talking quietly with her, between her miserable bouts in the bathroom. Each time she thought of Cody—he would always be Cody to her now—alone and confused in some stranger’s home, she was overcome by a wrenching pain that felt as if it were turning her inside out.

“Why couldn’t he have stayed with me overnight?” she said to Linc. “This is cruel. He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’ll wake up in the morning surrounded by strangers.”

Linc didn’t have to answer for her to know the reason she was not with Cody tonight: they were afraid she’d take off with him again. And the truth was, she might have tried.

IN THE MORNING, SHE
visited Adam in the hospital. She brought him a sketchbook and some pencils, but she knew it would be a while before he felt like using them. He was understandably subdued, and she was not much better.

“Jessie said I was using you to hide from my grief,” he said. He looked worse than he had the night before. He was paler, and his face was tight with pain. “She was right in a way. It was easier to be with you than to be with people who’d known Dana, who kept reminding me of Dana and the kids.” He gave her a half smile. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy our time together, Kim. I truly did.”

“I’m worried about you,” Susanna said. She was wobbly after the long and sleepless night, and she was living for five o’clock when she’d be able to see Cody. “I’d like to stay in touch with you, if that’s all right.”

“I hope you will,” he said.

She rested her hand on his, aware of an emotional distance between them that she knew was her doing. It was not safe for her to get too close to Adam right now. If she were to feel his loss on top of her own, it would be more than she could bear.

“You have a lot of friends here,” she said. “People who care about you. I know they remind you of all you’ve lost, but you need them now. Don’t cut yourself off from them, Adam.”

He motioned her closer to him. “I want you to remember something,” he said hoarsely. “Remember that, even if Cody is living with his father and stepmother, at least he’s alive and healthy. You can always have a future with him.”

She began weeping then, not for herself and Cody, but for Adam and the emptiness that awaited him once he left the hospital.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

Adam gave her a weak smile. “You’ll be Boulder, Colorado’s dream artist,” he said. “Every town should have one.”

CODY LOOKED PALE AND
sleepy when Mary Michaels, the social worker, handed him to Susanna as they waited for the plane. Susanna held him close to her, drawing in gulps of air through her mouth as she tried not to cry. Her crying would only upset her son, and he seemed upset enough as it was. His confusing day away from her in the midst of strangers had been too much even for this resilient little boy. She could tell.