A Wrongful Death (15 page)

She stood again and this time she began to move aimlessly about the room, touching a table, the back of a chair, the window drape. "I was sick at first, but suddenly I seemed to turn to ice, like in a dream, just watching myself, not really there. I looked at her again and I thought, that should be me. They thought it was me. If they realized I was still alive, they would try again, and again until..."

She stopped her aimless movements and pressed her forehead against the outside door. "I became Leonora. I took her purse, got some money from mine and left it there. I had to call my mother. She was expecting us by Monday and I had to tell her. I drove until I saw a pay phone and I called her. I lost the ice, lost all control while we were talking. It hit me that someone had shot Leonora, that I had sent her there. I hadn't warned her that it was dangerous, that people were trying to kill me. I didn't tell her and she must have left the apartment unlocked so I could get in while she was in the shower. It was my fault."

Her voice thickened and she began to shake, as if weeping. Drawing long shuddering breaths she continued. "I should have told her. It was as if for the first time, while I was on the phone, it hit me that she was dead and it was my fault. Mother said she would come on the first flight, and I kept saying I'm Leonora now. She said let them think that, so I'd be safe until she got there. I ran out of change while we were talking and I didn't know what she was saying, except that she would come. Then I dialed 9-1-1 but I couldn't stop crying and I didn't know where I was. They said to stay right there. I waited in the car and they came and got me and took me back. And you were there."

Barbara regarded her with mounting fury and frustration. "Jesus," she muttered again. "I'm going to make some coffee and we're going to talk." Elizabeth didn't move from the door, shaking.

Her fury unabated, Barbara strode to the small kitchen, yanked the coffeemaker and coffee forward on the counter and spooned in the grinds. As the coffee dripped through she found mugs in the cabinet, banged them down on the table and added a sugar bowl and a container of half-and-half. She put it down hard enough to cause some to spill, and she cursed, then ignored it.

Count to ten, count to ten, she kept telling herself, but she was too furious to follow the advice, and instead she glared at the coffeemaker and willed it to finish. As soon as it was ready, she poured coffee, then went back to the other room, where Elizabeth had not moved. She still stood with her forehead pressed against the door, her shoulders sagging, both hands loose at her sides. Barbara took her arm and pulled her around.

"Come in and sit down," she said. She kept her hold on Elizabeth's arm and half pulled, half led her to the kitchen and seated her, then put a few tissues in her hand. She waited until Elizabeth blew her nose and wiped her cheeks and eyes. "Now tell me about it, starting with page one."

Elizabeth started with the day Terry had gone to her office and they had gone to his parents' condo. Disjointed, often nearly incoherent, she told it all.

After she realized what she had found in the files, she knew she had to get away, to read through it, see if it meant what she thought it did. She drove to Philadelphia that evening, and the next day she sold the BMW, a wedding present from his parents. She bought a used Hyundai, paid cash and headed west.

"I didn't have any place in mind, just far away. I knew I couldn't use a credit card, or my cell phone, and I had to have money. I'd need a printer and a scanner, motels, meals. I couldn't drive far any one day. Jason would get restless, and I stopped a lot for him to run around and play, or we'd go to a movie or something. And at night, as soon as he was asleep, I read the material, and did some research on the Internet. I couldn't do much, too tired, and we got up so early. It took a long time to get to Las Vegas, but eventually we did, and I rented an apartment for a few days just to have time to scan material, copy it to a disk, so there would be a record. I put all the original material in a locker at the airport and kept the copies and a copy of the disk."

"Then what?"

"I didn't know what to do," Elizabeth said. "They had cheated Jefferson Knowlton, and I had proof, but I didn't know what to do with it, or even if I should do anything. I kept thinking of Terry's grandfather. I liked him. We, Terry and I, came out here soon after we married and we stayed at the big house for a week or so, and I liked the old man. He was so happy that I could speak French. He's into ham radio, and there was a Frenchman he really wanted to talk to, but language problems made it hard. I translated for him several times. That pleased him. He's partly paralyzed, and he's blind, but he's sharp, and even funny. I couldn't believe he knew what had been going on, but if I went public, he'd be in the thick of it along with Sarah Kurtz, Joe and all of them. I just didn't know what to do, and I was so tired by then, driving, taking care of Jason, worrying, afraid all the time, watching over my shoulder.

"I was so tired. I read in the newspaper that Joe Kurtz had died and the family had gone to Portland for the funeral, and that made me think of the cabin. Isolated, private, safe. When Terry showed it to me years ago, he said no one ever used it, but his grandfather refused to sell it. He wanted it ready if he ever decided to go there. It seemed ideal, a place where Jason could run around on the beach and I could relax for a few days and think."

She gazed past Barbara and shook her head slightly. "It seemed so simple there. I knew they were looking for me. Early on I called Leonora and she said they were, and I thought they would stay in Portland for a few days, maybe a week, and then go back to New York, and I'd just wait in the cabin and rest. Then I thought I'd go to Portland myself and talk to Grandfather Diedricks and let him make the decision. If he said to leave it alone, I would. It seemed so simple.

"I went out to get firewood that day," she said after a moment. "Jason was taking a nap, and I went out for firewood but I didn't have anything to carry it in, and I turned to go back for a paper bag or something, so I wouldn't have to go out in the rain again later. I didn't really hear anyone, but I started to look behind me. Maybe I sensed someone was here. I don't know. It was raining. My hood was over my head, and I got hit when I started to turn to look. I didn't even get a glimpse of him. And you came and I began to wake up while you were moving me, but I was so groggy, I just wanted to sleep. I heard you say your name and something about getting help, then Jason was with me and he said are we going to sleep here now? That's when I really woke up. The computer was gone, the envelope with all the papers, everything. I was afraid he would open the envelope and see that they were copies, not the original drawings and notes, and he would come back. I gathered everything and threw it in the car. I was staggering and blundering into the wall, the door frame, but I had to get out, get Jason out, and we left."

She had pulled into a dirt road, she continued, and they stayed there overnight, slept in the car and in the morning she started to drive again, but she didn't know where to go. She was dizzy, disoriented.

"I must have been weaving back and forth on the highway. A truck driver was blasting his air horn at me, and I knew I had to get off the road, stop driving."

She had pulled off at a rest stop and had taken Jason into the restroom, where two women were ready to leave. They skirted around her, no doubt thinking she was stoned, or drunk, but one of them stopped and took a closer look.

"She wanted to call the police and I said, 'No, no police,' and she said I needed a doctor. They thought my old man had beaten me," Elizabeth said with a shrug. "Anyway, they talked a minute or two, then one of them said she knew this place in Salem that took care of battered women. She told me the address, but when I started to leave, I nearly fell down, and one of them grabbed my arm and held me. She went to my car with us, put Jason in his car seat and drove to the shelter. The other woman followed in her car. They made sure I got to the door, and they left. I don't even know their names."

She didn't know how many days she remained at the shelter, but she knew she had to leave, had to get Jason to safety. She left before dawn, and drove to Tacoma that day, and there she took Jason to a multiplex theater, bought popcorn and juice for him, and parked him with a few hundred other children at a movie. Mothers all around were doing the same thing, leaving the children in order to shop. She found a telephone and called her own mother in Spain.

"I told her everything. I was desperate to get Jason someplace safe, and I didn't dare go anywhere near Grandfather. They might all still be there. I didn't know another soul in the northwest. I couldn't just fly out with him to Spain. Our passports were back in New York. My head was bandaged, my face bruised..."

Her mother had told her to check her watch, and give her an hour to come up with a plan, and she would call back at that number. The plan she devised was simple enough. Her mother had a cousin in Vancouver, B.C., who had several grandchildren, one about Jason's age. Her mother flew into Vancouver, met the cousin and the two women drove to Tacoma together. The cousin removed the stitches. "Mother couldn't bear to do it, and we couldn't go to a doctor. I'd been keeping my hood down low when I went out, but that wouldn't keep working, so they cut my hair and gave me a perm." She ran her hand through her curls. "And they trimmed my eyelashes."

They cut Jason's hair short — almost a burr — trimmed his eyelashes, and the day they took him back to Vancouver, they painted his face. "You know how they paint children's faces," she said.

Barbara didn't know, but she let it go. They had painted his face. He loved it, grinning like an imp at everyone.

"They had the passport belonging to the cousin's grandchild, and it was close enough if anyone had asked to see it. No one did." He became the cousin's grandchild as far as customs was concerned. Her mother used her return ticket, and the cousin booked the same flight for herself and her /grandchild/, and that was that. They all three went to Spain.

"It worked," Elizabeth said. "It seemed so far-fetched, so unlikely, but it worked. I waited in the motel until they reached Barcelona. Mother called the room from there so I would know. And then I headed back down to Eugene. I planned to get an apartment, call Leonora and have her bring our passports and take her on a vacation to Spain. I looked you up on the Internet in a cybercafe and read about your work and I thought you might be willing to help. I was going to ask you to take charge of the original file, and after we were gone, to decide the best way to handle the material — go to Knowlton, or to his attorney, or to the police, whatever you thought best. I wanted nothing more to do with any of it. I just wanted Jason to be safe, and to be with him."

"You thought as Leonora you'd just waltz away from it all? Leave the hunt for Jason up in the air, give a statement to the police and be on your way? God! There's an Amber Alert out for that child, his picture's plastered everywhere you look! And you're going to be charged with murder! Jesus!"

"It never occurred to either of us that they might think Leonora did it," Elizabeth said in a near whisper. "She was in New York when he attacked me the first time." She looked at her hands, twisting and retwisting, and put them in her lap. "We thought they'd check on that, that she was in New York and just flew in. We thought they'd have a lot of questions, maybe want a statement, but then say she could go back home. This is insane, for them to think she'd do that. There's no reason. We were best friends ever since preschool..."

She was weeping and seemed oblivious to the tears running down her cheeks. "I was going to go to Las Vegas when they said I could leave, and I was going to send all that material to you with a note. And go to Barcelona to live with Mother and Jason." Her voice faltered, and she jumped up. "Excuse me." She hurried from the room.

She returned with tissues and a washcloth. "I keep doing this," she said, wiping her eyes. "I keep thinking it was my fault."

"Why on earth didn't you tell them the truth? My God, did you really think you could keep up the charade forever?"

"I was afraid to tell them the truth. They wouldn't have kept him away if he knew I was alive. I knew they would kill me. First the cabin, then the apartment, I couldn't hide. And they couldn't keep him away."

"Who? Who's after you? Why? Stolen ideas? Is that it?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "That's just part of it. They're in negotiations with a Swiss pharmaceutical company, a big company that wants to buy out the Diedricks Corporation. It's not just stolen ideas and drawings. Millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars are at risk if it falls through." She sounded firmer as she said, "That deal will fall through because it's based on fraud, stolen patents, stolen ideas. There will be lawsuits, scandal. There won't be a deal when it comes out. They will hunt me down and kill me if they suspect I'm still alive."

"Who?" Barbara demanded. "You're talking about your ex-husband, his mother, someone connected to the Diedricks Corporation?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Someone in the company. I don't know who. It's a huge amount of money. Elizabeth Kurtz has to be dead until the fraud comes out in the open, until it's settled. I'll tell them when it's safe."

"So why didn't you tell the police about it, have them go get the stuff, just turn it over to the authorities?"

"You don't understand," Elizabeth said tiredly. "Joe Kurtz was using Knowlton's work, claiming it as his own, but he wasn't capable of it. I knew him. I studied science, and I've edited a lot of science books. I knew what I was seeing, but a nonscientist? They would see the initials on the drawings, the schematics, and even if some of the preliminary sketches and concepts had Jefferson Knowlton's full name, they would claim that he was simply executing Grandfather Diedricks's ideas. That's what they claimed before. Sarah Kurtz would swear it was Joe's original work, that I had stolen it. And I did. I took it from his files. That work needs to be authenticated by scientists who can understand what they're looking at and what it means. That's going to take expertise and time. The police might just hand it back to Sarah Kurtz and add robbery, possibly an extortion charge, against me. But they wouldn't protect me." She shuddered. "Maybe if they know they have the original documents in their possession again, they would forget about me, but I don't believe it. They couldn't be certain I hadn't made more copies and put them somewhere."