Run Away Baby (26 page)

And then finally the bus started moving. They were on their way. Heading someplace bigger than here. A city with a museum. It must be Tampa, she decided.

She opened her book and pretended she was reading. A woman several seats in front of Abby turned in her seat, eyeing her, blatantly curious. She wore a red, white, and blue jumper with stars on it. She looked to Abby like the kind of person who would be her undoing. Abby closed the book and rubbed her temples some more. The woman cocked her head to the left, to the right, watching. She scratched the spot on her head where a sparkly red barrette was holding back her wispy brown hair.

The bus hit a bump and the woman grabbed the seat in front of her, distracted back into focusing straight ahead for a moment. Another woman turned to her and started talking about her new part-time job. Somehow through the chatter and road noise Abby could single out snippets of their conversation: “Oh, it’s great working again… three days a week... Dave isn’t happy he’s got to cook his own dinner… I told him tough cookies… sure is nice having a little extra spending money.”

They rolled along for what felt to Abby like at least an hour. She tried to look sick enough to be avoided, but not sick enough to elicit concern. It didn’t take long for the bus riders to settle into talking to the people near them, and to forget about her.

As they came into Tampa, the sun that had been hiding behind clouds popped out, lighting up the interior of the bus like stage lights. Abby cringed against it and put her hand over her face.

They pulled up in front of the Tampa Museum of Art. When the bus was still the woman with the clipboard stood up and began yelling orders: “Herb here is going to let us out and he’s going to go park the bus. Be quick but careful getting off the bus, because we’re holding up traffic. Now, wait, wait. Sit down for a minute. Look to your left, look to your right. The seats all have numbers above the window. I need you to remember your seat number, remember who you are sitting by, and remember who is sitting in the seat across from you. Take a moment everybody. Write it down on something like the back of your hand if you need to. I’ll wait… Okay. When you come back here later today, you need to be sitting in the same formation as you are right now.”

The girl to Abby’s left was still staring out the window. Her mouth was hanging open a little and a tear was running down her cheek. She brushed it away. In the seat to Abby’s right were a boy and girl who were about twelve or thirteen and appeared to be massively in love. They were scrunched down with their knees against the seat in front of them, heads together, talking.

“Let’s hide here and skip the museum,” Abby heard the girl tell the boy.

“I think I’m going to have to call my husband and have him come get me,” Abby said to the crying girl beside her.

“Okay.” She nodded without looking up.

“I’m feeling
real
bad,” Abby added. “My head. It’s pounding.”

The girl nodded again. The bus was emptying out. Abby stood up and started moving along with the crowd. She’d considered darting away, but realized it would look suspicious, so as soon as her feet hit the pavement, while everyone else was still mingling about, waiting for directions, she made her way straight through the crowd to the museum. Several other buses had already dropped off their riders and the space in front of its main entrance was disorganized chaos. She went straight through it, and up to a man and woman who worked there. They were chatting, waiting for their day to begin.

“I’m with the school group. I’m feeling a little sick. Could I use your restroom?” Abby said.

“Oh, sure, Ma’am,” said the young woman, leading her to it.

To Abby’s displeasure, the restroom was staffed with an attendant. So much for her plan to hide out unnoticed in a stall. She nodded to the woman, who nodded back. Her sunglasses still in place, Abby made her way to the farthest stall. Once inside she waited a moment and then rustled in her bag.

“Hi Honey, it’s me,” she said. Her voice rang out clearly in the restroom. “Yeah... You’re going to have to come get me… Yeah, a migraine... I’m sorry but I’m
so
sick… Yeah, the Tampa Museum of Art… Yeah, it’s a big, modern building by the river… Use your GPS, Sweetie… I know... I know it is… Okay... Yeah, call me when you’re getting close… Thanks, Honey… Maybe I’ll take a little walk to get some fresh air… Okay. Love you too.”

The restroom suddenly filled with the sound of everyone from the bus piling in. Abby stayed locked in her stall, waiting for them to all clear back out. After about ten minutes, when it sounded like there were only a few people left washing their hands, she heard a voice she recognized. It was the nasal twang of Ms. Red, White, and Blue from the bus. “Kelsie.
Kelsie.”

“What?”

“Who was that lady sitting next to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, didn’t she
say
whose mother she was?”

“No.”

“Do you know her?”

“No.”

“Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know. She was sick. I think she was going to call her husband and have him get her.”

“Husband? I didn’t think she had a wedding ring on.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

Silence.

“Have you been
crying?”

“No.”

“You should wash your face. It
looks
like you have. If you were a little friendlier you might have more friends. You know what they say? Want a friend? Be a friend.”

Silence.

“That’s why Morgan didn’t invite you to her birthday party. I told her, are you
sure
you don’t want to invite Kelsie Bloy, and she said, ‘Mom, Kelsie isn’t
friendly.’
And I said, ‘Well, you’re turning twelve years old, I guess you’re old enough to make your own decisions now.’ But I stuck up for you.”

Silence.

“You’re not going to wash those tear stains off your face?”

There was the sound of water running and a paper towel shooting out of its dispenser.

“That’s better. How’s your parents?”

“Fine.”

“Your dad still laid off?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Well, we’d better get back out there with the rest of ‘em. You excited to see some art today?”

“Well…” Abby detected the littlest bit of an uplift in the voice of Kelsie Bloy. The smallest twinge of happiness.

“Me neither!” A cackle from Nosy McBitch, followed by the swoosh of the door closing after them.

Abby came out of the stall and washed her hands. She tipped the attendant.

She was free.

From the moment she bought her bus ticket and started heading north, the tall woman with pale blue eyes was never Abby Greer again. She wasn’t Barbie either. Deciding a person could call herself anything and explain it however she wanted to explain it, she became Beth. According to her birth certificate, Elizabeth was Barabara’s middle name, so it was reasonable enough that she’d go by Beth.

Beth deposited her money in a bank in Dubuque, Iowa, and rented a little apartment there on a month-to month lease as she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. She stayed there for four months, not working, not spending much. She bought a Honda Civic for $4500. She dyed her hair red and gained twenty pounds. That change was accidental. It was hard to eat right in Dubuque. She took yoga classes to make up for the greasy food, and she sat in coffee shops with a laptop computer she’d picked up, creating a new Facebook profile for herself. She sent friend requests to artists and musicians who were mediocrely famous since they’d accept anyone. Pretty soon she had two hundred friends, including some real people she’d met at the coffee shop and yoga classes.

Beth tried not to check the Florida news much, but now and again she couldn’t help herself from seeing how things were playing out.

Abby’s hair had been found all over Charlie’s apartment, in his truck and mail truck, Rake’s white van, and on the bits of duct tape at her suspected murder site, just outside of Grove, Florida. This forced the police to come up with an elaborate kidnapping scheme that involved her getting carted around from place to place. They found her iPod in Rake’s possession and her DNA, (which Randall Greer had on file along with her fingerprints, for safety’s sake, he explained) on a can they pulled from the fire.

If Charlie and Rake had told the truth about their connection with Abby from the start, someone might have listened. But at first Charlie said he only knew her from work. Rake said he’d never even heard of her. Once evidence began piling up against them, Charlie changed his story to the truth, telling the police that he and Abby had been in a relationship. By that point no one believed him.

He couldn’t produce a single photo, or a love note, or a sappy card. There was no history of their phones ever calling or texting one another.

The police and reporters decided Charlie’s ridiculous story was drowned out by facts. Like the fact that Abby had been afraid of him and had written a letter to prove it. And the fact that the day before she went missing Rake had googled how long it took an alligator to eat a person. And the fact that her wedding and engagement ring were found at the bottom of that pond.

Adding to the general population’s lack of trust in Rake and Charlie, was the story of Sara May Chilton. She was the college student who’d been attacked. She passed away three weeks after Abby’s murder. Abby’s story reinvigorated the police’s interest in Rake. When they searched his home they found Sara Chilton’s DNA on the dirty little puff in a pressed powder compact he’d kept as a souvenir from that night. The police found it in a box in his closet alongside other mementos they took to be souvenirs of similar crimes. Cigarette lighters and roller-ball lip glosses. Pairs of dirty underwear. His penchant for assigning queens from decks of cards to his victims, a habit he started in high school, was particularly incriminating. Four queens were held together with a pink paperclip, not counting the ones back at the crime scene. He’d actually written names on a couple of them.
Erica Something
was written on a queen of hearts with the Grand Canyon on the other side.
Jenny Hooper
said another queen featuring Mount Rushmore. The article Abby was looking at showed a photo of the fronts and backs of the cards, along with close-ups of the artifacts from the shoebox, and asked readers to please contact them with information about Erica, Jenny, or anyone else who may have been one of Rake Shucks’ victims.

The police asked Meggie if she knew about this box and all she could say was, “Why would anyone look in an old boot box? That stuff don’t prove anything. It’s just stuff he found. Anyway, they might just be from prostitutes.”

Charlie continued to stick to his story that he and Abby had been in a relationship, telling anyone who would listen that she had wanted to escape from her abusive husband. He swore that she was still out there somewhere alive and well.

She couldn’t help but wonder what Randall thought about Charlie’s story. Some of the things Charlie had to say about Abby’s relationship with Randall were specific and accurate, whether or not the police knew it.

A jury found Charlie and Rake both guilty of her murder, despite that her body was never found.

Meggie wasn’t found guilty of anything, including the very questionable death of her son Tommy.

Beth Walters bought a little house in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The house was only $92,000, and with a down payment of $35,000, its monthly payments were pretty easy for poor, divorced Beth to afford.

Spring Green was a cute, artsy place. Its residents were liberal enough to allow this new young resident to be, without prying much into her past. Neighbors were pleased to see her fixing up what used to be an eyesore. When she tore out the dying shrubs in her front yard and planted hydrangeas in their place, some anonymous stranger even gave her a thank you note.

Beth got a job at a catalog company call center. A fulltime, bill-paying, set-the-alarm-clock-for-six-a.m. job.

On one of her first days handling calls on her own, she was stalling. Doing whatever she could to keep from Going Live, as they called it. She had used a rubbing alcohol pad to clean the headset she shared. Then she had adjusted the headset to fit just right, spending several minutes on that step. Her spiel was written out on an index card in front of her, propped up on her keyboard, so she could read it into the phone. When there was nothing left to adjust or tweak, she hit the green button on her phone that said Ready.

After a few nerve-wracking seconds of silence, there was a little click indicating she had a caller.

She cleared her throat and launched into it: “Thank you for calling Sun and Sand, your source for quality clothing at a great value, with something for everyone in your family. This is Beth. How may I help you today?”

“Hi Beth,” said a familiar voice.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Shit, you sound like someone I used to know,” the caller continued. “I need to buy some adjustable waist pants. Can you help me out with that?”

What was happening still hadn’t registered. She was too busy reading the back of her index card to the caller. “I sure can! Could you please read me the ten-digit number on the back of your catalog so I can pull up your account?”

“I don’t have a fucking catalog. Can’t you look me up by my phone number? I call here every fucking week. Why does everyone there always make me jump through hoops?”

“Um, I’m sorry but we don’t have caller ID…” she began in the cheerful work voice that three weeks of training had taught her was the most important attribute she could bring to this job. And then she knew who it was. Before he even started spit-spelling his name. She pressed the
Release
button on her phone to end the call and the
Away
button to keep more calls from coming. She took off her headset and went into the restroom. She locked herself in a stall and bawled until her team leader came in and found her.

“Don’t get nervous,” the team leader told her. “You’re doing a great job. And don’t worry about dropped calls. The caller was probably on a cell phone and driving through some place with bad reception. You can have a few of those each month before they count against you.”

“That’s a relief,” said Beth. She went back to her desk and somehow carried on.

Months later, in a moment of weakness, Beth googled Randall Greer. Instead of a news story about some business award he’d won, or some golfing competition he’d been in, his obituary came up.

Maybe he faked his death too
, she thought for a minute, afraid it was part of some plan to mislead her. He seemed too big and powerful to ever die. But that was crazy. He was a psycho, but he wasn’t desperate. Not like she had been.

The obituary was full of flowery language depicting him as a wonderful man. It mentioned her, and painted him as the savior of a young girl in need of rescuing. She couldn’t help wondering who wrote the obituary. Danna-Dee Lorbmeer was a likely bet. It had a woman’s touch.

In it she discovered that Randall had “never recovered from the tragic disappearance and untimely death of his beloved Abby.” However, his obituary noted, he was survived by his “special friend” Esmeralda Rios.

The irony of having once pitied for the housekeeper for having to drive a Honda Civic that was one year newer than the one she now drove made Beth a little sick to her stomach. Esmeralda was probably wearing her old bikini, sipping champagne while she floated on the inflatable rafts she used to have to patch on outside chore day.

Beth considered resurfacing with amnesia and collecting her due. She imagined herself showing up, shocking them all, and regaining the title she’d spent all those years earning. But in the end she decided to leave well enough alone.

There were mornings when she awoke and expected to be in her old bedroom, in her old life. When she opened her eyes and saw her own tiny home, free of Randall and fear, it was always a relief. She was still occasionally shocked that she had been able to do it. Despite the heaviness of trading in yachts and trips around the world for a little Midwestern house with wood paneling in the kitchen, this was undoubtedly a lighter, better life. A life for a woman who was almost thirty (despite that her driver’s license said twenty-five), after having been caught somewhere between being a girl and a rich old woman for her whole life.

She felt just about ready to start dating again. This wholesome little town gave her a brand new well of hope. She pictured meeting someone her age. Someone fun, who would run with her through the Wisconsin night, and sing and laugh. Maybe some guy who made his own furniture. They could get chickens like all the other cool people in town.

Going to concerts in the park, walking to the farmers’ market on a Saturday, doing a crossword puzzle at a coffee shop; those were the type of things Beth Walters enjoyed. She had simple tastes but great expectations: She wanted to have a family, and a little dog, and all the things that made life happy and rich.

But first, it was back to the call center. Because there were people out there who needed someone to help them shop, and to Beth Walters’ own surprise, she was incredibly good at it. In fact, she had just won the customer service provider of the month award and her own semi-enclosed cubicle. In her cubicle, alongside charts of the season’s new clothing colors and a list of polite ways to upsell products, were two photographs: One of her hydrangeas in bloom, the other of the stubby tailed squirrel that had taken up residence in her birdfeeder. She called him Fred, for the simple reason that she’d never met anyone named Fred in her life.

Beth didn’t bother with photos of herself; in fact, none existed. She was fine with that. She really wasn’t one to brag, despite that she was turning out to be kind of a success.

Seriously, you wouldn’t even recognize her.