The Escape Artist (13 page)

Did he know she was listening? There was no way to tell. At least not until the very end of his show, when he once again played “Suzanne.”

Oh, Linc.

She listened to the song, her mind suddenly drifting back to the couple by the post office. She raised her own hand slowly up her side, wanting to know exactly how that woman had felt, but as she neared her breast, she dropped her hand to the bed. What was the point? It would be better not to know.

OTHER THAN THE RECEPTIONIST
, there was only one woman in the small, square waiting room at Legal Aid, and Peggy glanced at the next name on her list.

“Bonnie Higgins?” she asked from the doorway.

The woman looked up from the stack of papers in her lap. She had the swollen features and red eyes of someone who’d been crying a great deal, and she gave a slight nod at the mention of her name.

“Please come in,” Peggy said. She led the woman down the hallway to her office, and once there, took a seat behind her desk. “I’m Peggy Miller,” she said.

The woman did not speak, although she did try to smile, and Peggy wondered if either of them had the energy for this appointment. It was her first day at work since Tyler’s disappearance. If things had gone according to plan, she would have been off for another two months. But there seemed little point in sitting at home. She could at least work part time to keep herself busy.

Her concentration, though, was worse than she’d expected. Finding Tyler had become her consuming passion, and it was difficult to put that search out of her mind even when she had a client sitting in front of her. Between appointments, she found herself staring at his picture, framed in silver on her desk. He was only eight months old in that photograph, and she tried to remember how he had changed between the taking of the picture and his disappearance. Already, she had forgotten his smell and the feel of him in her arms. She could not quite hear the sound of his laughter, although she did remember how easy it was to elicit his mirth.

The receptionist had given Bonnie the lengthy Legal Aid questionnaire to fill out. Peggy took it from her and began leafing through the pages.

“You’re interested in a divorce?” She glanced at her client.

“Well, no, not really.” Bonnie’s eyes quickly filled with tears. “But my husband is.”

“Does he say why?”

“Just that he’s not happy anymore.” Bonnie looked helpless, and Peggy felt sorry for her. “He says he feels trapped and wants to be free.”

Peggy figured there was a whole lot more to the story, but for now she kept her mouth shut and continued reading the questionnaire. Some attorneys were quick to make the opposing spouse into an ugly, manipulative adversary. She tried to avoid doing so, even when the truth begged for that sort of assessment. Divorce was hard enough without turning two people into enemies for life, especially when there were children involved. As there were in Bonnie Higgins’s case.

“Your children are four and five,” she said, reading from the form. “Has your husband said anything about custody?”

“He hasn’t said a word about the kids,” Bonnie said, then added bitterly, “He wants to be free, remember?”

“Do you think he’s seeing someone else?”

Bonnie looked out the window, the tears thick above her lower lashes. “He says no. I can’t imagine it. I don’t want to imagine it.” She shuddered. “I don’t know when he’d have time. He’s pretty much always working.”

Peggy looked over the rest of the form and began questioning Bonnie about the family’s financial situation. She spent the next half hour talking about what Bonnie needed to do to protect her assets. She would help her fight for fifty percent of everything, she promised.

“But he says I don’t deserve half of everything because he’s the one who’s been bringing home the money all these years.”

“While you’ve been raising the children and managing the household, right?”

Bonnie nodded, a small, hopeful smile on her lips. “Right.”

Peggy was a firm believer in a fifty-fifty split. She’d even managed to talk Jim into making that sort of settlement with Susanna. He’d been resistant at first, but she’d helped him see that if it had not been for Susanna’s working, he would not have been able to attend school and get his law degree. It was true that Jim got the house, but Susanna would eventually receive half its value. Jim had already given her a fair amount of cash. Susanna had left a big chunk of that money in the bank, though, obviously fearful that withdrawing too much at one time would attract unwanted attention to her account. She’d acted very foolishly, Peggy thought. Not only had she left that cash behind, but she’d cut herself off from the money Jim was paying her for the house each month, as well as from child support and health insurance and an eventual share of his retirement.

She walked Bonnie to the door at the interview’s end. “Call me if anything comes up before our next meeting,” she said, shaking the woman’s hand.

She saw two more clients that morning, her concentration worsening with each interview, and at noon she left the office. She was anxious to get home. She planned to call the Center for Missing Children again. Prod them a little.

When she turned onto her street in Wonderland, she saw several cars in front of her house. Ron’s car was there, and she thought the blue one belonged to Bill Anderson. Jim’s car was in the driveway.

She was filled with cautious optimism as she pulled her own car behind Jim’s and rushed into the house.

The three men were sitting at the kitchen table, laughing, drinking beer. It was odd to see her brother drinking in the middle of a workday. Then she remembered that Mondays were his day off.

“Is this a celebration?” she asked. “Did something happen?”

Jim looked immediately contrite. He stood up and walked over to her, kissing her cheek. “No, hon,” he said. “At least, not what you’re hoping for. But Bill does have some news.”

The private investigator leaned back in his chair. “I wanted to meet with all of you so we could talk about what I’ve found out,” he said, “but I didn’t realize you’d gone back to work, Peggy. So I hope you don’t mind that I’ve already told your—”

“What?” Peggy pulled away from Jim and sat down next to Ron, across from the PI. “What did you find out?”

Bill ran a hand over his small, smooth chin. “Well, to begin with, I’m certain Susanna Miller was on a bus to St. Louis, Missouri, the morning of the day she disappeared.”

Peggy leaned toward the man. “Tell me everything. How do you know that? Tyler was with her, wasn’t he?”

“I’ve been talking to the ticket people and to some of the drivers at the bus terminal in Denver, as well as to the drivers who serve the routes nearest Susanna’s apartment. I told them there’s a good chance she altered her looks. A wig, maybe. Or dyed hair. The bus driver for one of the routes near her house recognized her and the baby from a picture. He said the woman looked very different, but they stood out anyhow. Usually he just picks up the same people on that route, day after day. People commuting to Denver for work. He picked her up around five-thirty in the morning and let her off at the terminal in Denver at six-thirty.”

“Oh, my God.” Peggy squeezed her brother’s hand, and Ron gave her a smile in return. “Then what?”

Bill shifted in his seat and took a swallow of beer. It was obvious that he enjoyed giving her the information bit by bit, keeping her in suspense. He liked the power, and in any other setting Peggy might have called him on it. Right now, though, she didn’t want to do anything that would alienate him.

“The driver wasn’t the greatest at descriptions,” he said, “but he did say that her hair was a lot darker and a lot shorter. He didn’t think it was a wig, but some of those wigs can look pretty natural, so who knows? Anyhow,” he reached into the folder on the table in front of him, “I had a computer-generated picture made up of what she might look like now.”

He pulled the picture from the folder and turned it around so Peggy could see it.

“Oh, no,” she said, dismayed. She doubted she would ever recognize the woman in the picture as Susanna. The short dark hair changed her features dramatically. “No wonder we haven’t gotten any calls from the photographs we’ve been showing on TV,” she said. “She looks like a totally different person.”

“Bill said we can get this altered picture on the news, though.” Jim stood behind her, rubbing her shoulders. “And we can show it in St. Louis, too.”

“What were you saying about St. Louis?” she looked at Bill.

“Right,” Bill said. “Quite a few people at the bus terminal remembered this woman and her baby. She was not too smart, picking that time of day, when she and Tyler were the only mother and child out there with all the commuters. But anyhow, the ticket agent was one of the people who saw her. He couldn’t remember specifically where she was going. So I got a schedule of the buses leaving the station that morning. Then I spoke with those drivers. One of them said she and the baby had definitely been on his bus. They rode all the way to St. Louis. Said the baby was really good. Hardly cried at all.”

“Maybe he was sick,” Peggy said.

“He’s not fragile, Peggy,” Ron said. “He’s not going to break.”

“But she’s carting him all over the country,” she said. “Who knows what she’s doing with him?”

“Look, Peg.” Ron sounded impatient. “He’s fixed, all right? He needs good follow-up. Just checkups. Maybe an echo every now and again, just to know everything’s working as it should be. That’s all. You won’t be doing him any good if you get to be his mother and you coddle him like he’s some delicate little flower.”

Peggy didn’t respond. She felt betrayed by her brother’s attitude. “And then what happened?” she asked Bill. “Is she still in St. Louis?”

“That I don’t know. None of the ticket agents there recognized her, but that’s a much bigger and busier bus terminal. I’m working on it, though. And I’ll want to get this doctored-up photograph spread around St. Louis.”

“Does she know anyone in St. Louis?” Peggy leaned back to look up at Jim, who shrugged. “What about Linc?” she asked. “Maybe he’d know—”

“Bill doesn’t think it’s a good idea to involve Linc in this just yet,” Jim said.

“That’s right.” Bill wore a serious expression. “I’m not so sure he’s not in on it. We don’t want him to be able to give her a heads up on what we’ve found out.”

Peggy supposed that made sense. She’d listened to Linc’s show the night before, wondering if he might use his program as a vehicle to send Susanna a message of some sort. She’d only heard his show once or twice before, and last night’s program had sounded the same to her, full of old and sometimes obscure folk-rock music. If he were sending a message to Susanna, he was being very subtle about it.

“So, this means the FBI can get involved now, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Bill said. “She’s a felon. They can get her for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.”

Ron made a sound of disapproval. “Sounds like overkill to me,” he said, almost under his breath.

“Now,” Bill sat back in his chair, “do you have any videos of Tyler?”

Peggy and Jim nodded in unison.

“Send them to me, along with whatever other pictures you have lying around that you haven’t already given me. I’m going to get them to Missing Persons, you know, that TV show?”

“I already called them myself,” Peggy said. “They told me it would be months before they’d be doing another show on parental kidnappings.”

“That’s true, but when they start planning that show and it comes down to them covering our case or someone else’s, they’ll choose the case they have the most readily available material for.”

“But
months
.” Peggy looked helplessly at Jim. “It seems silly to…this just can’t go on for months.”

“We certainly hope it won’t,” Bill said, “but we need to be ready in case it does, all right?”

She nodded, but without conviction. “All right,” she said. “I’ll make copies of the videos and get them to you in a few days.”

“Good.” Bill flipped through his notepad. “We’re keeping tabs on the health insurance company, too,” Bill said. “If Susanna tries to use her insurance, either for Tyler or herself, then we should be able to track her down. The insurance company flagged her file. They know to notify us if they get a claim from her or a change of address or anything.”

“That’s good.” Peggy said. “He’s due for his inoculations soon.” She had marked the date on her calendar so she’d be sure to make the appointment for him.

“Isn’t it likely, though, that she’d assume we’ve alerted the insurance carrier?” Jim asked.

“Yes, but maybe she’ll get desperate.”

“Or, God forbid, she might skip his inoculations,” Peggy said. “Or maybe she won’t even remember when it’s time for him to get them.”

Ron made that disapproving sound in his throat again. “There’s one other thing you should know, Peg,” he said. “I got a call from Delia in my office this morning. Bill had asked her to pull Tyler’s medical records, and she found a note in his file. Apparently Susanna had requested—and received—a copy of all of Tyler’s records a couple of weeks before she took off.”

“She’d been planning it that long?”

“Uh huh.” Ron nodded. “And I have to hand it to her. I’m not sure I would have had the presence of mind to remember those records before I split.”

“
Ron
,” she said. “Whose side are you on?”

“Tyler’s,” Ron answered quickly, and Peggy knew he’d given this whole matter a good deal of thought.

“If you’re on Tyler’s side, then you’d want him here,” she said. “You’d want him safe with Jim and me.”

“Whatever you say, Peg.” Ron drained his beer and stood up. “I’ve got to pick up the kids from day care.”

She stood up, too. She walked her brother to the door in silence, then turned to him. “You know, Ron, I don’t think you can relate to what’s going on with Tyler and Susanna and Jim and me. You have two beautiful healthy children at home. You know they’re safe. I have a stepson out there somewhere, and I have no idea what’s happening to him. I have no idea if I’ll ever get to see him again.” She didn’t want to cry. Much as she adored Ron, he’d always had a way of provoking her tears.