Escape (16 page)

Jessica Campbell glanced quickly around the dayroom and sat down next to her lawyer. She gave a slight trembling smile to her parents but then turned away and sat with her head bowed.

Lewis leaned over and whispered, "Charlie's here."

"I don't care about him."

"That's okay today, honey," Lewis replied, patting her arm. "But remember to smile at him during the trial. He's going to testify that it was all his fault, and we want the jury to sympathize with the two of you in your grief."

"I don't care."

In fact, she didn't care about much of anything now that the voice of God had abandoned her. Just like the voice had warned her—the mood stabilizers and anti-depressants had silenced the Divine in her.

Unfortunately, the drugs also helped her remember things she had tried to forget. Like how baby Benjamin had struggled as she held him under water. She was surprised that an infant was so strong and had not just gone meekly to meet his Maker, as she'd expected. But at last he stopped kicking, his whole body going rigid, his little fists clenched tight, and stayed that way.

He was as stiff as a plastic doll when she dressed him in the little white suit she'd bought for him. But she did the best she could, smoothed his fine fluffy hair to the side, and tried to close his wide, staring eyes. That she could still see a glint beneath the lids bothered her, but she was on a mission from God.

"Time
for Chelsea."
The voice coaxed her back to her feet. She drifted back to her middle child's bedroom, picked up the sleeping child, and brought her back to the bathroom.

Rubbing her eyes as her mother undressed her, Chelsea saw her little brother lying on the towel. "Is Benny sleeping?"

"He's
with God,"
the voice said.

"He's with God now," Jessica told her daughter. "God will take care of him. Now get in the tub."

She washed the girl with lots of soap and shampooed her hair. She wanted her children to look their best when they arrived in heaven.

Chelsea looked up at her and smiled. Such trust. "
This is wrong,"
shouted the other voice. Jessica started to pick Chelsea up to remove her from the tub.

"It's the only way,"
God replied.

Jessica's heart broke. She gently shoved Chelsea down in the water.
"Hineini,"
she whispered tearfully as the child thrashed and scratched at her arms. Again, the struggle seemed to last an eternity before her daughter's body went limp. She held the child under a minute longer just to be sure.

She was just lifting Chelsea out of the water to place her on her own special white towel, and then dress her in her special white dress, when a voice interrupted. But this one came from behind her.

"What are you doing, Mommy?"
Hillary was standing in the doorway in her nightgown. The child's sleepy eyes took in the scene and clicked from puzzlement to fear.

"Your brother and sister have gone to be with God,"
Jessica said.
"Would you like to be with
Him, too?
"

"Yes,"
said the voice of God,
"send her to me."

"No,"
said the other voice.
"There's still time. Stop this madness!"

"Don't listen to her,"
said God.
"Obey me!"

Hillary looked at her mother, her eyes growing wide in terror. "No!" she screamed, and she ran down the hallway.

"Catch her,"
warned the voice of God.
"If she gets away, she'll tell someone; her soul won't be saved, and you'll be caught and punished."

Jessica followed her daughter to her room, but Hillary had locked the door.

"Silly girl,"
Jessica chided when she tried the knob. She removed a bobby pin from her hair and inserted it into the little hold in the knob. There was a satisfying click and the knob turned.

Hillary screamed when her wet and wild-eyed mother hopped into the room.
"Peek-a-boo!"

"No, Mommy! No, Mommy!"
Hillary pleaded.

Jessica lunged for her but the girl dodged to the side and tried to run past. Her mother caught one of her arms and began dragging Hillary toward the bathroom. The desperate child bit her on the arm.

Surprised by the sudden pain, Jessica let go of her daughter, who raced for the front door. She almost made it, but her mother caught her by the hair and pulled her back from the handle.

"Now you're being bad,"
Jessica snarled.
"Now you're being like your father, and he's the Devil. If you don't behave you'll go to hell and be with him instead of God."

Hillary screamed and tried to bite her again. In a rage, Jessica picked her daughter up and slammed her down into the tub, banging her head on the porcelain rim. The girl went limp, and it was easy to push her beneath the waters. The voice exulted inside her head.
"Now I know you fear me, since you have not withheld even your children from me."

"God's will be done,"
Jessica said.

When she felt enough time had passed, Jessica leaned over to lift Hillary out of the tub to lay her next to her siblings. But suddenly the child gasped and her frightened eyes flew open. Those eyes bored into Jessica, but she made no more attempts to get away. She just floated there, sucking in air ... staring.

Jessica looked over at the bathroom vanity. There it was. The knife she had bought from the man at the sporting goods store, who told her it could cut through steel. She'd thought originally that she might have to use it as Abraham had intended with Isaac. But then she'd thought of drowning them ... less messy. So much for that plan, she thought as she picked up the knife.

Hillary watched her raise it above her, and her eyes darted from her mother's face to the shining blade and back again. Then the fear faded; she just looked sad.

That was the memory that had really stuck with her, even before the drugs made her remember the rest.
Hineini. I am here,
she thought as she sat in the dayroom at Bellevue. But God didn't answer. She heard only the voice that she supposed was that of her conscience, the one that reminded her that she'd murdered her children and even suggested that she'd done it to get even with her husband.

The day before, when she had met with Dr. Nickles and her attorney, Linda, she'd thought about pleading guilty and taking her punishment. But the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison terrified her. It was much easier to believe Linda and Dr. Nickles when they told her it wasn't her fault. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know it was wrong. She'd been crazy when she killed her kids.

It was a lie. A lie she wanted to believe. She was never going to see her kids again. If there was a heaven, that meant there had to be a hell, and that's where she was going. But she didn't want eternal damnation to start with the rest of her life in prison.

At
least tell somebody where the children are,
suggested the voice of her conscience. But Lewis had not asked, and that had given the impression that she didn't want to know. So
no, I'm not going to tell anybody,
she thought,
especially not Charlie. I don't want to give him the satisfaction of ever knowing.
She'd refused to tell him that night when he came home from his whoring, and he'd have to live with knowing that they died while he was screwing ... but how?... where? That he'd never know.

Per the instructions of her attorney, she turned and gave Charlie a tiny smile.
Fornicator. Adulterer.
Jessica relaxed at the sound of the familiar voice. So God had not forsaken her after all; he was right there in her head.

Charlie Campbell acknowledged his wife's smile with his best tragic, yet supportive, smile of his own. Representatives of the press weren't allowed in the dayroom for the hearing, so it didn't count for anything, but he thought it would be good to practice for the trial.

There had been a brief chance to get a little ink and face time earlier. The press had been waiting outside the hospital when he arrived, clamoring like seals for a fish from the trainer. He pushed through them without a word and then paused, as if being reluctantly tugged back into their midst by an invisible beam.

"I'd just like to thank the people who have written or called to express their sympathy for this great tragedy that has befallen my family,"
he said, solemnly reading from a prepared statement he'd pulled from his breast pocket. "Before
you today is a man grieving for the loss of his children, whose bodies have still not been recovered, and for that matter, the
loss
of the woman he fell
in
love with and married. I do not blame my wife for what has happened. I blame myself for missing the
warning signs
of mental illness."

"What about the district attorney putting your wife on trial for murder?"
a shill asked.

Charlie hesitated, his handler placing a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
"I'd like to be able to say that I understand that Mr. Karp is just doing his job. But I don't understand it. It just shows that even in a great,
enlightened country
like ours, some people are still in the Dark
Ages
when it comes to understanding the ravages of mental illness. If he is watching this, I hope Mr. Karp will someday drop these charges so that my wife can get the medical help she needs."

Charlie spotted the man his handler had paid to ask the next question. "Yes
sir,
" he said, pointing.

"Mr.
Campbell, are you still planning to run for Congress next year?"

Charlie bowed his head.
"Believe me, that's something I've thought long and hard about. For the longest time, my heart was too shattered to even think about more than just getting through the next day. But thanks to good friends, and to be honest, the voters who had urged me to press on, I think the only way out of this nightmare is to dedicate myself to working for the people of the 8th Congressional District."
He paused to let the print reporters get the quote down accurately. "No
firm decision has been made. Right now, my number one priority is to support my wife and do everything in my power to get her the help she needs. I can assure you, though, that if I do run for Congress and am elected, one of the planks in my platform will be to make sure we as a nation are doing everything we can to understand and combat mental illness. Now thank you for respecting
my
privacy. I need to go inside."

Inside, his handler shook his hand.
"Well done,"
he said.
"They ate it up."
Charlie allowed himself a brief smile.
There might just be a way out of this,
he thought.

The media had been all over him since "that day" when he'd come home and found his wife in bed, hiding under the covers, and the children nowhere to be seen. He figured the nanny, Rebecca, had them until she called a half hour later to check in on the family.
"I talked to the missus this morning,"
the nanny said.
"And she sounded a little ... strange. She told me not to come today because she was taking care of them alone."

Charlie ran into the master bedroom and pulled the covers off his wife.
"Where are the kids, Jessica?"

Jessica tried to pull the covers back over her face, but when he wouldn't let her, she swore at him.
"Fornicator!
" she screamed.
"Adulterer! Because of you our children's souls were doomed. But
not
anymore, Charlie Campbell. I saved them. They're with God!"

As the implication of what she'd said took hold, Charlie stood in stunned silence. He shook his head, trying to clear the white noise that had suddenly become a roar between his ears, and then took off, running madly throughout the brownstone calling the kids' names, afraid that he was about to stumble onto their bodies. But there was no sign of them, or of what might have happened to them. No blood. No mess. In fact, the house was extraordinarily clean, everything in its place.

Charlie's search took him to the garage, where he discovered that the family's Volvo station wagon was gone. He ran back into the house and grabbed Jessica by the shoulders.
"Where are the kids1"
he screamed.
"What did you do with the car?"

"I told you,"
Jessica replied calmly.
"The children are with God."

"The car, Jessica, where's the car!"

She shrugged.
"That's between me and God."

Charlie sat down on the edge of the bed as Jessica wandered out of the room. He needed to collect his thoughts. This was going to be a disaster for his campaign. He called his lawyer, Bart Braxton, who told him he'd be right over.

"I'm going to call Diane,"
Charlie said.

"Don't you fucking dare,"
Braxton, a middle-weight partner with Newbury, Newbury and White, commanded.
"If they find out there's another woman involved, the press will crucify you. You're going to stay away from Diane until this blows over ... if it blows over. "

Braxton arrived and after a second search of the brownstone arranged to have an unresponsive Jessica transported to Bellevue Hospital. Only then did he notify the police that the Campbell children were missing. There was a chance, he added, that their mother, Jessica Campbell, was somehow involved, but as her husband's attorney, he was advising her not to speak unless he was present.

The police placed a criminal hold on Jessica, who'd been housed in a padded cell under suicide watch at the lawyer's insistence. The lawyer also prevented Jessica from talking to the police, so it didn't take long for them to complete the initial phase of their investigation and turn the case over to the District Attorney's Office.