Twisted Justice (16 page)

At noon, Rob left for police headquarters in search of any new evidence files, and Chuck took Laura in his custom Chevy van to Steve's empty apartment to reconstruct the murder scene. Steve had moved back into their Davis Island house, and the police tape had been taken down around the house on Oregon. The front door was locked, different from that night when Laura had just let herself in. She tried hard to focus on other details: Which rooms she had walked into. What she had seen. How she had stumbled upon the body. The feeling of the gun as her hand touched it. How the police found her standing there. How she had reacted.

“Did she see anybody? Could anybody have seen her?” Chuck kept asking.

Something kept trying to play in the back of her mind, but she couldn't get it into focus. Somebody she'd noticed that night, but she couldn't remember and just wanted to get away from there. Finally, Chuck drove her back to the law office.

Sandwiches and salads had been ordered in and they ate as they waited for Rob to return. They reviewed the crime scene report and the preliminary police notes, and when Rob arrived, the autopsy findings. Then the trio of lawyers and Chuck peppered Laura with questions. What did she know about Kim? Who could have killed her and why? What was Steve's part in all this? Laura had no answers, and at five Carrie suggested that they break until morning.

As Laura turned the shiny brass handle of her front door, still struggling to find the right words to make her children understand everything that had happened, a deathly quiet and a sickening sense of dread confronted her. The children were gone, she knew it. Flinging down her purse, she ran upstairs, just like the first time, frantically searching through each bedroom. This time there were
signs of hasty packing, items of clothing strewn on the floor, dresser drawers open and half empty.

And they were gone.

Blind with panic, she flew down the steps looking for any sign as to where they might be. This time she'd follow them. But how? To where?

She saw the white envelope. It had been placed conspicuously on the kitchen table anchored by Marcy's favorite coffee mug, the one with the butterflies Patrick had made in art class. With shaking hands and a plunging heart, Laura tore open the envelope. She immediately recognized the handwriting on the notepaper as Marcy Whitman's neat block lettering.

Dearest Laura,

Please try to understand. Right after you left this morning, Steve told me he was taking the kids to his father's in Traverse City. He already had the plane tickets, including one for me. I told him there was no way I'd go, that I was not going to pick sides, that I was loyal to you both. He said that if I went with him the kids would have someone to watch out for them because his father's not well. Please trust that the reason I'm going is so I can be with the children and help them understand that you love them and that there's absolutely no way you would ever harm anyone, no matter what. That you have spent your whole life helping and healing people. Please believe me when I tell you that I am completely dedicated to you and I believe in your innocence.

All my love, Marcy

P.S. When I asked Steve if he was going to tell you where he was taking us, he said I could. Also, the police were here to question me about that night. I had
to tell them what you said. About where you were going. An emergency at the hospital. I hope that's okay.

Laura sat at the table, tears falling freely as she struggled to think. Did she have any options? It was slightly past six. She picked up the phone.

“Hello.”

“Oh, Greg, thank God,” Laura said.

“I'm just on the way out. What's happening?”

“My husband took off with my children.”

“What?”

“I went directly home from your office,” she sobbed, “and they were gone.”

“Do you know where —”

“Steve's taking them to his father's in Traverse City. The housekeeper left a note.”

“Bastard,” Greg breathed. Did Steve have the right to remove the kids to Michigan? His alibi at the time of the murder had been confirmed by the police. He had left Tampa well in advance of the murder. All confirmed by the kids. So he was not a suspect and, yes, he probably did have the right under these circumstances.

“Okay, Laura, if they left this morning they're already out of state and there's nothing we can do.”

“Nothing we can do? My children are my life. I've barely had the chance to talk to them about what's happened. I need to go —”

“There's nothing we can do tonight, Laura. Tomorrow we'll get a custody expert and develop our options.”

“We're still married. That means we share custody equally, right? I was supposed to see a divorce attorney yesterday. Obviously, I never made it.”

“That's too bad. Starting the proceedings might have helped. Regardless, what you need to remember right now is that you're out
on bail. If you leave Hillsborough County, they'll put you right back in jail.”

Laura shuddered at the memory. “But what if Steve is telling the kids that I killed that woman?”

“Laura, we'll work this out tomorrow. It'll be complicated because they're with their father and grandfather and you have no special custody rights.”

“Custody rights? I'm their mother. I need to do something now. The last time he took them, I just waited around and didn't ask for help and look what happened.”

“You can't leave Tampa.”

“Then will you go?”

“We have to wait until morning. Now tell me that you're going to be okay. That you'll just stay home, get something to eat, and rest.”

But she couldn't. Instead, Laura just hung up the phone and began wandering through the empty house, lovingly touching the kids' things. There was Mike's baseball bat, Kevin's model planes, Natalie's menagerie of stuffed animals, Nicole's collection of Barbie's, Patrick's Tinkertoy constructions. Unable to eat, unable to sit, unable to even pray anymore, she paced and paced the house until she heard pounding on the front door.

Greg had called her parents.

Jim Nelson waited for Steve at the Cherry Capital Airport three miles from his home in Traverse City, Michigan, a charming, tourist town tucked in the crook of Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay. He held a copy of his son's itinerary — a United Airlines flight from Tampa to Chicago, then a two engine prop to Traverse City.

“Hey there, kids,” he called as soon as he spotted Steve, looking sporty in tailored tan slacks and a tangerine golf shirt. Following him were five kids, whom he hadn't seen in five years, along with a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a bun.

Jim shifted nervously, blowing his nose into a handkerchief, and running his fingers through his own thinning gray hair. Neatly pressed Bermuda shorts, a short-sleeved summer sports shirt open at the neck, and sneakers without socks made him look more like a tourist than a native. “Wow, you've all gotten so big, I wouldn't recognize you.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Steve said as slung an arm around his father's shoulder, “it's been too long.”

“Son, you look great.”

“And you look better than you sounded on the phone. That flu better?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to introduce Marcy, who stood grasping the hands of the twins. “Dad, this is Mrs. Whitman, my housekeeper.”

“Marcy,” she said as she extricated her right hand from Nicole's and offered it.

“Jim here. Glad to meet you,” he said. “Thanks for coming, be needing your help with all these young ones. I am feeling better, but still sniffling a bit.”

“Sorry you've not been well,” Marcy said.

The kids all offered awkward hello's.

It was Cherry Festival time and the airport was crowded with visitors, forcing the Nelson entourage to make their way slowly through the small airport to the baggage claim area. Jim and Steve walked together with Patrick trailing closely behind. Mike and Kevin followed, silently hoisting backpacks and looking glum. Marcy and the twins were last, their hair braided and dressed in matching candy-stripe pinafores, their usually bright faces downcast.

“How's Laura doing, son?”

“Like I told you on the phone, Dad, she's a wreck, meeting with her lawyers day and night. That's why I had to get the kids out of there. That, and the media's everywhere.”

Jim frowned. “I just hope they don't follow you here.”

“So do I. How're you doing?”

“Better. You know, I haven't seen you since your mother's passing almost —”

“It's five years ago. I know, Dad. You've never come to Florida.”

“I've got your mother's roses to care for. Last winter we had so much snow I couldn't have come anyway. But you —”

“I know. It's been hectic with my job and the kids and, of course, Laura's always on call. I know it's a lot, us landing on you like this, but I've got a plan. I'll take the boys camping in a few days, and Marcy can help with the girls. That's why she's here.”

His father frowned. “Steve, Laura called.”

“Not now, okay?” Glancing back at the kids, Steve picked up his pace.

Initially, Steve brightened when they arrived at his father's street. The neighborhood looked unchanged, homes all in good repair, plenty of beautiful shade trees. Neighbors sat on porches
enjoying the perfect summer temperatures, the sweet aroma of roses climbing on trellises, and rhododendrons in full bloom. Halfway down the block, now painted the color of celery with slate gray shutters, with the old wraparound front porch, was his parents' house, where he and his twin, Philip, had shared a large bedroom upstairs with full-size poster beds. They spent most of their playtime in the tree-playhouse Dad had built to match the big house. Stepping from the car, Steve looked from the tree stump up into the air where the tree house used to be.

He had been ten years old, the age of his own twins when it happened.

In those rare moments when Steve allowed himself to reminisce about growing up with his identical twin brother, he ruminated over the biggest difference between them. Philip was the aggressive one, making all the plans, pretty much telling Steve what to do. Much like the role of his daughter, Nicole, while Natalie was more like him, the follower. And how Nicole irritated him because of it. Even though he'd resented Philip's control, he still loved him, depended on him. Nobody would ever know the depth of his pain as a child and his lingering grief still. The day of the accident the boys had been arguing over which twin their Black Lab puppy, Lucky, liked best. Steve had angrily shoved Philip out of the tree house and he'd ended up dead. It was an accident.

An accident.

Once Marcy took over the kitchen to make lemonade and chocolate chip cookies, and the kids discovered the swing beyond the back porch, Steve and his father sat nearby under an oak tree. Jim Nelson brought up Laura again.

“Maybe you should call her and let the kids talk to her.”

“I don't want them mixed up in this. No calls to or from the kids. I'm trying to get them away from all her troubles.”

“But Steve, I told her I'd have you call. You know that I haven't always agreed with Laura. Your mother never did understand why she was hell-bent on going to medical school instead of
staying home with the kids. But over the years, I've come to believe she's a good mother. And you said yourself that this was all your fault. Because of — well, you and that dead woman — what you did.”

“Dad, I made a mistake. We all make mistakes, right?”

Jim Nelson nodded sadly.

“Before that Laura and I were very happy. Now we have to give her time to work with her attorney. She needs a break from the kids.”

“That's not what she said,” his father said shakily, “and I did tell her I'd make sure you called.”

Steve acquiesced. “I'll call her later, okay? Now let's not worry about Laura.”

“And Steve,” he continued, “how are we all going to manage in this small house?”

“I'll sleep with the boys in the spare bedroom and Marcy can stay with the girls in my old room. And like I said, I'm going to take the boys camping in a few days, so it's only a couple nights.”

“But we don't have enough beds.”

“Sleeping bags will be fine for the kids. Really, Dad, it'll be okay.”

It was a struggle to talk to his father now, because Steve had become irritated as well as preoccupied. Coming back home, he realized he saw Traverse City as a security blanket, one that was more than a thousand miles away from Frank Santiago. Though Steve had tried to avoid thinking about it, the reality was that Santiago was one violent — and dangerous — son of a bitch. The mob! It was everywhere, wasn't it? Were they looking for him right now, here in Michigan? A personal vendetta because he had screwed the woman Santiago wanted to marry? He sank deeper into his chair and stared up at the sky as he wondered why he hadn't thought more about all this when he agreed to do the goddamned TV interview.

Because he was in shock, that was why. Kim. That gun. Laura. That night was all too much.

Well, he'd lay low in northern Michigan. He'd be able to think
once he got to the Upper Peninsula. Not only did he need to calm down, he needed a plan. A long-term plan.

Late Sunday afternoon, Mike picked up the phone in his grandfather's kitchen on the first ring. As he'd so hoped, it was Laura. “Mom,” he breathed, not daring to talk too loudly. He'd heard his dad tell Grandpa Nelson when they'd arrived on Wednesday that the kids were not to talk to their mother.

“Mike, is that really you? Oh, honey, how I miss you all. How are you?”

“Not so great, Mom. We're supposed to go camping, but Dad doesn't want to take the girls. Dad's sending Mrs. Whitman home too.”

Laura paused. “Yes, Marcy just called to tell me.”