The Escape Artist

by Brad Meltzer

  “You treat every steak like a prom date,” Royall told her during the first week after she moved in. “You take care of it, it’ll take care of you.”

  It made no sense to Nola, but really, neither did Royall. Why’d he even agree to take her in?

  “I heard you can cook. Can you cook?” Royall had said on that night they left the LaPointes. It was the first thing he asked her when she got in the car. Actually, it was the second thing. The first was: “You part nigger?”

  Nola stayed silent, confused.

  “You know, part nigger…part dark…black,” he explained, pointing to her honey-colored skin.

  Nola shook her head. She didn’t think so, though she didn’t have many memories before the group home. What happened to her birth mom? Why did she leave? Was she dead? On Nola’s sixth birthday, a caseworker said that her mom had been murdered, but Nola knew that wasn’t true. You’d feel such a thing.

  “Too bad. I heard niggers cook better,” Royall said, then quickly added, “Your seat belt on?”

  It took three hours to reach Royall’s house in Oklahoma. He showed Nola the kitchen first, then her bedroom, which had a mattress with pale blue sheets, a knotty pine dresser covered in major league baseball stickers, and bare walls. There were a few toys—G.I. Joes, a crusty Nerf football, even a half-dressed Barbie—scattered across the tan carpet, like children had lived here before, though there were no signs of them now.

  Nola was too young to ask where the social workers were, but even if she had, no one was coming. This was a “rehoming.”

  To adopt a child requires thousands of dollars, stacks of paperwork, and countless home visits by caseworkers. If something goes wrong and the child isn’t a good fit for the family, well, kids aren’t like used cars. They don’t come with warranties; you can’t return them. Indeed, if a family tries to bring a child back to the adoption agency, the state will label them unfit parents and force them to pay child support until the child is eighteen. The LaPointes certainly couldn’t afford that.

  But to simply hand off a child to someone else? All it takes is a signed letter, assigning temporary guardianship. It happened every day. If someone’s going through hard financial times or a personal crisis, the government wants to make it easy for them to give the child to a relative or other responsible person until they get back on their feet.

  But rehoming wasn’t always temporary—and it created the perfect opportunity for people like Royall Barker, who would never make it through the adoption screening process, to get a child. The LaPointes listed Nola on an adoption website called Brand New Chance. Royall picked her the first night her picture went up.

  “Maybe you’re just a spic. Spics can cook too,” Royall said when she came downstairs that first morning. From the refrigerator, he took out a wrapper with a raw steak in it. Rib eye. Bone in. “I like ’em medium rare,” he said. “Only way. Medium rare. Got it?”

  Nola got it.

  When she burned her first steak, Royall pounded the counter, but otherwise did his best to stay calm. Told her she could do better. When she undercooked the next one, he pushed her aside, knocking the wind from her chest, and cooked it himself.

  Nola had been here three weeks now. In any adoption, honeymoons don’t last long. They’re even shorter when Child Services has no idea what’s going on. Nola put great care into this morning’s steak and eggs.

  “Okay. Smells promising for once,” Royall said, taking a long sniff of the plate as Nola put it down in front of him. He had a fork in one fist, a knife in the other, like a hungry husband in an old comic strip.

  Royall didn’t just grip his fork with a closed fist. Nola noticed that, good mood or bad, he always talked with a closed fist too.

  “By the way, your teacher called. Said you were fighting again,” Royall said, cutting into the steak, its juices seeping toward the eggs, turning everything bloody and red. “That true? You fighting?”

  It was true. Being the new kid always came with a price, especially when a sixth-grade boy found out about Nola’s rehoming and spit in her hair, calling her a throwaway.

  Yet right now, as Nola stood at the sink pretending to wash dishes, she didn’t care about a schoolyard fight or the punishment that might come with it. No. As Royall raised the steak to his lips, her only concern was whether this sizzling piece of meat was a perfect medium rare.

  Hot steam rose off the steak as Royall took the first bite into his mouth.

  In the back pocket of Nola’s jeans was a folded greeting card that the LaPointes had hidden in her luggage the night she left. A handwritten note inside read: This will make you stronger. She carried the note with her everywhere, like a totem, thinking of its promise of strength when she needed it most. Like right now.

  The steak sat on Royall’s tongue, and he still hadn’t taken a bite. He was sucking on it, savoring the juices. Then, slowly…chew…chew…chew.

  How is it? Nola wanted to ask, though she knew better.

  She noticed the shift in his posture. Shoulders back. Elbows off the table.

  Royall cut himself another piece, then another. He was rocking slightly now, like his whole body was nodding.

  Mmm. Mmmmm.

  Nola flashed a smile—a real smile—and took a deep breath, thinking she was happy. She was too young to realize she was just relieved.

  This was good. I did good, she told herself.

  Then Royall took a bite of his eggs.

  There was a small crunch.

  Royall stopped, mid-chew, his long eyelashes blinking. His jaw shifted as his tongue probed for—

  Pttt.

  He spit it into his palm: a tiny jagged shard of eggshell, no bigger than a sunflower seed. Without a word, Royall wiped it on the corner of the kitchen table. His fists tightened, his whole body reclenched. The knife was still in his hand.

  Nola took a half step back, bumping into the sink.

  Royall squeezed the knife tighter, slowly looking over his shoulder and shooting Nola a dark, brutal glare.

  It was in that frozen moment—here in this kitchen that smelled of grease and meat—that Nola, the girl who noticed things, noticed something she’d never seen before.

  “I-I can make new eggs,” Nola promised.

  Royall didn’t answer. He turned back to his steak.

  For weeks now, Royall had appeared to be a man of strength. A man of forcefulness. But now, to see this man so bothered, so physically enraged by…what? A stray shard of eggshell? Right there, it made sense. Nola Brown understood.

  It was no different than speaking with a closed fist.

  Or gripping a knife to scare a young girl.

  Those weren’t signs of strength. They were signs of weakness.

  That’s what Nola noticed, better than anyone. She thought about Barbara LaPointe checking her reflection in a kitchen faucet, and Walter moving his lips when he read. Nola Brown was the girl who could spot weakness.

  One day, it would save her life. And end seven others.

  6

  Dover Port Mortuary

  Today

  They called it the AttaBoy wall. It was a chalkboard really, with curvy edges to make it look playful, like something from kindergarten. In the upper right-hand corner, a big sign read:

  Thanks From The Families

  On the chalkboard were dozens of handwritten notes:

  We saw our son in a pristine uniform, looking cared for and respected. I have always been grateful that he looked handsome and at peace.

  AttaBoy, you did it again.

  Zig knew why the wall existed. When you’re surrounded by death, you have to make sure you don’t get swallowed by it. Over the years, Zig had taken great comfort from the letters here. But right now, at 5:15 a.m., he was really just standing at the blackboard, pretending to read, and scanning the hallway to make sure he was alone.

  All clear. Zig darted ahead, eyeing the door on his—

  They collided just as she turned the corner. Zig was moving so fa
st, he barely saw her before they hit.

  She was a full head shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, but Colonel Agatha Hsu—Dover’s wing commander—barely stepped back at the impact. Hsu hadn’t gotten to be the first Asian American woman to run Dover by being a pushover.

  “Apologies, ma’am. I was trying t—”

  She raised a hand. Keep quiet. As a young Air Force lieutenant, Hsu had been shot down while flying supplies into Kirkuk, Iraq. Even the best pilots would’ve panicked, but Hsu, following protocol, destroyed her own aircraft, along with her supplies and computer equipment, so they wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. All the while, she didn’t even notice the six-inch gash in her leg. So in the question of Heart or no heart? she definitely had heart.

  She also had ego. After the crash, she took a short leave from active duty and ran for Congress. When she lost, she signed up for the job here. Hsu didn’t care about Dover’s mission; she took the job because every colonel who’d ever run the place (except for one) had gone on to become a general. That made her a politician first, and one with a temper. Zig braced himself, but to his surprise, he got…

  “I didn’t realize you were such an early bird, Zig.”

  “With six bodies coming, I like to be ready.”

  “Today’s definitely a big day.”

  “Every day’s a big day,” Zig countered with a grin.

  “Agreed,” Colonel Hsu said, glancing down at her phone, then looking up. Even from here, Zig could tell she was checking the Board. She wasn’t tracking the plane bringing the bodies. She was tracking Marine One. Zig mentally rolled his eyes. Politician.

  “Zig, have you seen Dr. Sinclair?”

  Zig made a mental note. Last night, before Zig got the body, Sinclair was the one who had done the autopsy—he had to sign off on Nola’s faked fingerprints and all the other nonsense they hoped no one would notice.

  “He’s not in his office?” Zig asked, gesturing over his shoulder to the medical examiner’s suite. He waited for Hsu to head there. She stayed where she was, planted like a tree.

  “I’ll look. Oh, and Zig—they said you did a beautiful job with the girl who came in yesterday. The sergeant…”

  “Nola Brown.”

  “Exactly. Sergeant Brown. She was burned pretty badly, but I heard you worked until almost midnight. I checked the schedule this morning and saw you didn’t put in for overtime.”

  Zig gave her a small grin.

  “When I first started here, they warned me you all were morticians, not magicians. You might be the exception. We’re lucky to have you, Zig,” the colonel added, heading for the suite without looking back. “And so is Sergeant Brown.”

  As the swinging metal doors closed behind her, Zig tried to tell himself that was true. But for all he knew, Nola was the one who caused all this. Maybe Master Guns had it right. Maybe Nola had crashed the plane, survived the ordeal—a parachute?—then planted a different body so she could get away. But as Zig thought about that night at the campfire— He stopped himself. Just because Nola did something good a decade ago didn’t mean she’s a saint. Still, as Zig pictured those burns last night, as he thought about that note—Nola, you were right. Keep running—he knew that whoever that body really belonged to, the woman who swallowed the note… She wasn’t Nola’s enemy.

  Checking the hallway, Zig headed for his own destination, the one place he hoped would fill in a few new puzzle pieces. Room 115.

  Personal Effects

  At the door scanner, he swiped an ID card with a muscular black man on it. Zig didn’t have this kind of clearance. Fortunately, Master Guns did. Once Zig had told him the President was coming, Guns wanted to know what was going on too.

  Zig waited for the thunk of the lock, but it never came. The door was already unlocked. As he pushed, it slowly slid open.

  7

  Hello…? It’s your favorite mortician…” Zig called out, elbowing the door and craning his neck so he could see into the long, narrow room that smelled like fresh dirt, wet hair, and his cousin’s basement.

  The only answer came from the glow of a swivel lamp that was on the desk in the corner. The lamp was on.

  “Moke, it’s Zig,” he added, calling the name of the muscular Hawaiian Marine who regularly staffed this place.

  Still no response.

  Glancing around, he checked the wooden storage shelves that jutted out from the walls like bunk beds stacked five high. The deeper Zig went into the room, the more he felt the old lump in his throat—like a stuck pill—that he’d felt for nearly a full year after his daughter died and everything fell apart. During meals, all through those months, Zig could barely swallow. Going to bed, he couldn’t breathe. The doctors had a name for it: a globus. Someone else called it a “grief lump.” They saw it in those who suffered wrenching heartache. After a year, the lump faded, but in this room, it always came back.

  “Moke, if you’re here—”

  There was a ping—new email arrived—from the computer on the desk.

  Zig didn’t believe in ghosts. Or an afterlife. To him, a body was a shell. He worked with those shells on a daily basis. He didn’t do it for the dead; he did it for those left behind. This room was the same: It preserved what remained.

  When a soldier died in the field, the body came to Dover. All the things found with the fallen came to this room. The dog tags, medical bracelets, sunglasses, wallets, medals, caps, military coins, cell phones, and especially the “sentimental effects,” the first things sent back to a family—wedding rings, crosses or religious items worn around necks, photos of kids that were in pockets, and the most heartbreaking to Zig, half-written letters that would never get finished. Zig knew all too well: We all have unfinished business.

  Slowly, he took another step into the room. On a nearby shelf, a light blue prep mat held a digital watch, a gold pinkie ring, barely worn boots, a scratch-off lottery ticket, an engraved money clip, and the pocket diary of a middle-aged major who’d had a heart attack last week and was still waiting to be buried at Arlington. Fallen #2,352.

  There was another shelf below that one for a nineteen-year-old sailor who’d died racing his motorcycle on a base in Germany three days ago. His helmet sat there, scraped raw, like a museum piece. Next to it was a photo of his one-year-old son’s Elmo birthday cake. Fallen #2,355.

  The knot in Zig’s throat swelled. He spent nearly every day embalming corpses, but as his favorite professor had taught him at mortuary school: “Gore you get used to. Shattered lives you don’t.” The professor was right. During 9/11, Zig held it together as the first dozen bodies were wheeled in. He stood there strong when they followed with a box of unsorted human arms and another of unsorted legs. But nothing undid him like seeing, in the midst of all the carnage, a boy’s single sneaker that had somehow flown free from the blast. At just the sight of it, the tears finally came.

  Which led Zig to the lowest tray on the shelf, labeled 14-2678—the physical equivalent of her last will and testament—the personal effects of Sergeant First Class Nola Brown.

  8

  Knollesville, South Carolina

  Eighteen years ago

  This was Nola when she was eight.

  “Why’re you—?” She was in pain; he was hurting her. “I-I thought it was trash.”

  “Trash?” Royall shouted. “THIS. IS. NOT. TRASH!” He was gripping her under her armpits, tugging so hard she was up on her toes, which scraped across the kitchen linoleum.

  Tonight was supposed to be a special night, to celebrate their move to the new and nicer house. Nola had made fish—fresh bass, prepared it perfectly, lemons and everything—even cleaned it up ahead of time.

  But when she’d tipped Royall’s plate into the trash, he spotted the head of the fish, eyes staring up at them. That was it.

  Royall licked the corner of his mouth. He did it two other times during dinner. Nola knew that sign. Drunk.

  “You think I’m made of frikkin’ money!?” he exploded.

&nb
sp; Nola shook her head, confused.

  “That head…the tail too…you can use it for soup! Use it to make broth!” He started cursing at her. “I bust my ass every day! I bust my ass, and you throw it away!?”

  And now, here she was, up on her toes, being dragged by her armpits.

  Kicking the back door open, Royall gave her a final shove, practically tossing her into the backyard, a balding patch of browned grass littered with an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, an upside-down plastic kiddie pool, and some brand-new wicker patio furniture that Royall had bid on at a local foreclosure sale and sold to furniture stores in three nearby states.

  Royall didn’t say a word. Nola knew what the punishment was.

  At the center of the yard was a hole in the lawn.

  Nola grabbed a nearby shovel and stabbed it into the earth.

  It was a tradition from Royall’s own father. When you dig yourself into a hole, you gotta dig yourself out. Otherwise, you dig your own grave. For Nola, this punishment had started on that night she’d stayed late at a new friend’s house, eating dinner there without calling home. Royall burst through the friend’s front door screaming, pulling her out of there and making a scene that would keep future friends away. That night, Royall handed her a shovel and told her, “Fifteen minutes. No stopping.”

  He did it again when Nola accidentally knocked the cable box from the top of the TV. And when she sneezed during dinner without covering her mouth. And even when she laughed too loudly at a stupid insurance commercial.

  She expected the punishment when she mixed a red shirt in with the whites and turned half their laundry pink. But lately, it was the randomness of Royall, the arbitrariness of his explosions, that had her so on edge. It was like Royall had no rules to live by. Indeed, there were few things Nola could do where she knew how he’d react.