The Escape Artist

by Diane Chamberlain

  Jim, arms folded, was leaning against the wall by the window. Peggy stood up from the sofa, the look on her face so frightened and worried that he could not help but feel an instant of sympathy for her.

  "There's no sign of her," he said. "The apartment looks perfectly normal. I don't see Tyler's diaper bag or his monkey, but otherwise, everything seems to be in place."

  "I told you we should have gotten him last night," Jim said to his wife.

  "You were right," Peggy said. "I just thought she should have one last night with him. I never thought she'd—"

  "Is she at your place?" Jim looked at Linc with what had to be hatred.

  "Sure," he said. "She's at my place and I'm snooping around here for my health."

  Jim scowled at him. "I want to look around myself, and then I'm getting the police on the phone," he said. He walked into the kitchen, calling back over his shoulder. "And you don't go anywhere."

  Linc could barely tolerate Jim's pomposity. The man was a walking ego. But he managed to swallowed his annoyance as he sat down next to Peggy to wait for Jim's return.

  "When did you talk to her last?" Peggy asked. "Did you see her this morning?"

  "I spoke to her last night." He had tried to call her several times today. He hadn't really been worried, though. She was often out walking Tyler or running errands. He was still stunned by the realization that she'd taken off without telling him. He hadn't thought she was that gutsy.

  "When was the last time you talked to her?" Jim asked as he walked back into the room.

  "Last night," Peggy answered for him. "What did the police say?"

  "They're sending someone over here." He turned to Linc again. "Did she say anything about going away?"

  "Not a word."

  Jim raised his eyebrows as if he didn't believe him, and Linc could easily picture him in a courtroom, grilling a witness.

  "No hint?" Jim asked. "Nothing? What sort of mood was she in?"

  "Oh, she was in a great mood. She couldn't wait to give her baby away."

  "Cut the sarcasm, all right?" Jim said. "You'd better get used to answering questions because I have the feeling you're going to be getting plenty of them."

  "She was down," Linc said. "Quiet. Exactly what you'd expect from a mother who'd been told she has to give up the child she loves."

  "Linc," Peggy pleaded. "The judge made the right decision. I'm sorry you don't see it that way but it was the only sane decision anyone could possibly make."

  "Spare me." Linc stood up and walked to the window. As soon as he was out of here, he was buying a pack of cigarettes.

  He saw the police car pull up outside and let out a long sigh. Jim was probably right; he was going to have to face a torrent of questions. He was suddenly glad that Susanna had left him none of the answers.

  There was just one officer, which seemed to distress Peggy and Jim no end. He was middle-aged, gray-haired, well-seasoned, and unexcitable, and he doubted that Susanna was really missing.

  "In cases like this," he said, standing in the middle of Susanna's living room, "where someone's been gone just a few hours, they usually turn up visiting their sister down the street."

  "She has no sister down the street," Jim said in annoyance. "She has no family, period."

  Linc tried to play along with the officers casual demeanor. "Sure, Susanna probably bumped into a friend at the grocery store and they got to talking and she forgot she was supposed to give her baby away today." But he knew better. Susanna had a long history of running away. Even as a child, she'd escape to the little room above his family's garage. He knew that was her hiding place and he'd find her there, give her a little lecture about not running away from her problems, and take her home. This time was different, though. She was no longer a child, and his family no longer owned that garage. He didn't have a clue where to look for her, and he knew she'd planned it that way.

  The police officer told them to contact him again when—and if—Susanna remained missing for twenty-four hours. Linc let Jim and Peggy out of the apartment the same time the policeman left, but he remained behind. He looked through the rooms one last time, deciding to take Susanna's photograph albums home with him. If Susanna did indeed remain missing, he didn't want all those pictures of Tyler to end up with Jim.

  It wasn't until he was driving home that the hurt and betrayal overwhelmed him.

  Why didn't you tell me, Suze? He pounded the steering wheel with his fist. How could you just walk out like that? Where did she go? Would he ever see her again?

  He felt numb that night as he walked Sam down the winding street in his neighborhood, numb as he smoked a Marlboro and stared out at Boulder from the glass wall of his living room. But when he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready for bed, he saw the scrap of paper he'd taped to his mirror.

  Susanna wants to hear me play "Suzanne" for her Sunday night.

  Suddenly, he understood her words. His show was nationally syndicated. It reached listeners across the United States every Sunday night. No matter where Susanna was, she would be able to hear him.

  He read the words again and shook his head, not certain if he should laugh or cry.

  –6–

  The bus smelled like the inside of a locker room by the time it reached St. Louis. People were sleeping in their cramped seats, some of them snoring, but Kim Stratton was wide awake. She had dozed off only once or twice during the night, and Cody had slept fitfully, sometimes on the seat next to her, sometimes in her lap. He was awake now but understandably cranky, confused by the upset in his routine and the strangeness of the hour. It was not quite five in the morning.

  Her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had grown mushy and inedible sometime the evening before, the white bread purple where the jelly had seeped through. Her stomach was growling, and poor Cody was entirely off his schedule despite her attempts to keep him on track. Yet she was not anxious to leave the safety of the bus. She perched on the edge of her seat, looking out the window, hunting in the darkness for a police officer who might be awaiting her arrival. There were a couple of men in uniform out there, but she thought they were bus drivers. From where she sat, it was difficult to separate one uniform from another.

  For the past hour, Cody had been making his screaming, yelping sounds of annoyance, those sounds he made when he wanted her to get him out of his crib and get him started on the day. Plus, he was in dire need of a change. She turned around to look apologetically at the couple riding behind them.

  "Sorry he's been so noisy this morning," she said.

  The woman smiled at her. "Too long a trip for a baby," she said.

  Kim knew the woman meant the comment sympathetically, yet she heard criticism in the words.

  Her body was stiff as she worked her way down the tight aisle of the bus carrying Cody and the diaper bag. The rest of her belongings were in the belly of the bus, and once on the sidewalk, she looked anxiously over her shoulder as she waited for them to be unloaded. When she had everything she owned with her, she moved into the terminal. The lights seemed far too bright inside and her eyes hurt for a second as they adjusted. Cody, back in his stroller once again, began to howl.

  "I know, baby," she said to him. Looking around the nearly empty terminal, she spotted the ladies' room a few yards to her right. A police officer stood in front of a takeout vendor near the room's entrance and Kim hesitated, but the cop seemed oblivious to her. He was laughing with the woman pouring him coffee and Kim walked past him without incident.

  She changed Cody in the not-too-clean rest room, then washed her face and brushed her teeth, staring in amazement at the copper-haired stranger in the mirror.

  It was not even five-thirty—still dark enough to put the next part of her plan into action. She left the rest room and shoved her bags in one of the terminal's lockers, then pushed Cody outside. The street was well-lit, but there was one dark patch near the rear of the terminal, and she headed toward the cars parked at its core. She selected
one at random, pulled a small wrench from her pocket, and knelt down by the car's front bumper to remove its license plate. Her hands trembled. She could not quite shake her guilt over what she was doing.

  When she had removed both plates and slipped them behind the seat of Cody's stroller, she walked back into the terminal. The police officer had disappeared, so she bought a cup of coffee and a stale doughnut for herself and mixed some formula for Cody. Then she bought a newspaper and sat down in the corner, relieved to see that more people were filling the terminal. She and Cody would not stand out quite so much.

  Cody drank a little of the formula, but he seemed more interested in sleep now that he was back in the familiar confines of his stroller, Kim opened the paper to the used car ads. She was allotting fifteen hundred dollars to a car, and she'd decided it was safest to buy from an individual to avoid having to fill out a lot of paperwork. There were several cars that fell into that price range, and she circled two of them. An '85 Toyota Corolla. "Runs great," the ad read. It was exactly fifteen hundred. The second, an '85 Toyota Celica was sixteen-fifty "firm," but she liked its description: "very well-kept; a gem to drive." Plus, it had a sunroof.

  She worked the crossword puzzle and read about most of the news in St. Louis to try to keep herself awake until eight o'clock, when she thought it would be late enough to call on the cars. She would get as much information as she could over the phone, because she wanted to be sure the car would do before she went to look at it. She would have to take a taxi to the car, and she didn't want to have to call another taxi to cart her away again.

  She fed Cody some oatmeal and a banana, then made her calls from a pay phone in the terminal at exactly eight o'clock. The Corolla sounded good, but it was red. A red car would stand out too much. She told the owner she would call back if she was still interested.

  The Celica's owner was a woman with a deep, rich voice. "It is a stupendous car," she reassured Kim. "Only has seventy-five thousand miles on it. You're going to love it."

  "What color is it?" Kim asked.

  "Dark blue. Really pretty."

  "Do you think I could make a long trip in it?"

  "Oh, sure. You've got to try it out. Come over and you'll see what I mean."

  "All right." Kim wrote down the woman's address on the edge of the newspaper. She collected her bags from the locker, then walked outside and approached a waiting taxi. The driver was a burly black man who didn't bother to hide his scowl when he saw the mishmash of baggage she was lugging around with her. He helped her load the stroller and duffel bag into the trunk before she settled into the back seat with Cody. No car seat, of course. That made her nervous.

  The driver had to look up the address on a map. It was ten miles away, he told her.

  "Would you mind taking back streets?" she said. "So you could go slowly? There's no car seat for my baby, and—"

  "Geesh!" The driver turned away from her with a shake of his head and she slunk down into the seat, Cody in her arms.

  The taxi snaked through residential streets, and Cody whined and rocked against Kim like someone who'd been trapped inside too long and was about to give up hope of ever being free again. She held him tightly, pressing her lips to the soft hair on his head.

  The cab finally pulled into the driveway of a small brick house on a quiet street. The driver helped her unload her belongings, piling them on the sidewalk, and Kim paid him before settling Cody in the stroller. Her duffel bag slung over her shoulder, she pushed the stroller up to the front door of the house.

  She rang the bell, hoping she didn't look as desperate as she felt. How could she appear to be anything else? She obviously had no car to take her away from this house. Either she had to buy the car or start walking.

  A woman about her own age opened the door and smiled.

  "Are you one of the people who called about the car?" she asked.

  One of the people? It suddenly occurred to her that the car might already be sold and the thought made her tighten her grip on the stroller. "Yes," she said. "Do you still have it?"

  "Uh huh." The woman reached behind her to pick up the keys from a table, then walked out the door and led Kim around the side of the house. "You're the first one to come look at it," she said.

  The car sat at the end of the driveway next to a garage, and Kim understood what the woman had meant by the words "very well-kept." At least on the outside, the car was in great shape. No dents. The finish on the dark blue paint still had a little shine to it. Through the windows, she could see that the upholstery was torn in a couple of places, but who cared? She could make covers for the seats.

  "I've kept it in the garage," the woman said. "It was my first car and I was determined to do everything right with it. Want to take it for a drive?"

  "Yes, I'd like that." She wondered if she should open the hood and act as though she knew what she was looking at, but she opted for driving it instead.

  "I'll come with you," the woman said. "You can leave the stroller and your bags here." She opened the side door of the garage, and Kim wheeled the stroller inside. She lifted Cody into her arms and carried him back to the car.

  She hated driving without a car seat for Cody. That would have to be her first purchase.

  "How would you feel about holding my son on your lap?" she asked the woman. "I don't have a car seat with me."

  "Love to." The woman smiled as she took Cody on her lap, and for once Kim was grateful her child was so easygoing with strangers.

  "Where's your car?" the woman asked as Kim carefully backed out of the driveway.

  "My cousin dropped me off," Kim said. "She's running some errands and then—" Then what? "I'll call her if I decide not to take the car, and she'll come get me. I've got the plates from my old car, though, in case I decide to buy this one."

  This seemed to satisfy the woman. She pointed out a route for Kim to take around the neighborhood. The car drove well, at least as well as her car back in Boulder. She knew she should see how it handled on the highway, but she didn't want to go that fast with Cody sitting untethered on the woman's lap.

  "I'd like to buy it," she said, as she pulled back into the driveway.

  "Great! It's sixteen-fifty, firm."

  "That's fine." Kim didn't want to haggle with her. She stepped out of the car, then got her wallet from her duffel bag and counted out sixteen hundred-dollar bills and a fifty. Her hands were shaking, not because she was handing over so much of her precious money, but because she knew she must seem like a suspicious sort of character to the car's owner. Here she'd shown up early in the morning, alone, with luggage and a baby in tow. What if her face and Cody's had been splashed across the country on TV? Would a mother taking her own child merit that sort of attention?

  But the woman seemed concerned only with selling her car. She pulled the certificate of title from the glove compartment, took a pen from her shirt pocket, and asked Kim for her address.

  Kim had thought this through, but for a moment her mind went blank. She rattled off a fictitious St. Louis address, and was relieved when the woman offered the first three numbers of the zip code. Kim picked a couple of random numbers to finish the code, and the woman jotted them down on the form without batting an eye. Then she helped Kim replace the license plates on the Celica with the stolen ones.

  When they had finished, Kim stood up from the bumper, her knees creaking. "Where's the nearest store where I could buy a car seat?" she asked, then added, "Not expensive."

  "There's a K-Mart close by. Just turn here, then go about a mile. It's on your left."

  She thanked the woman, then got back into the car—her car—and pulled out of the driveway.

  At the K-Mart and the grocery store next to it, she bought more formula, juice, bananas, baby food, animal crackers, and a car seat. Before even setting up the car seat, though, she gave Cody his bottle. She sat with him in the back seat of the car, rocking him and talking to him, apologizing for uprooting him. He seemed soothed by the food and
her words and was soon sound asleep. She buckled him into the car seat, then looked up at the sky. The sun was to her left, so that had to be east. Pulling out of the parking lot, she headed in that direction.

  She stopped four times that first day on the road. She was not in a rush. There was nowhere she had to be. She and Cody enjoyed a long, welcome nap, parked in the shade in a church parking lot. They stopped to eat at a picnic table and to play in a playground. And each time she got back in the car, she headed east. She didn't need a map. Every intersection she came to, she took the road heading away from Colorado. She would go as far from Boulder as the highway could take her.

  At six o'clock, she decided to stop for the night. They were outside of Henderson, Kentucky, and she found a motel along the road. There was a restaurant next door, and after she'd registered and dumped her things in the room, she walked over to the restaurant with Cody in his stroller.

  The hostess sat them next to a window and brought over a high chair. "What's his name?" she asked, as Kim lowered Cody into the chair.

  "Cody," she said, and then added, "and I'm Kim." She wanted to get used to saying both their names out loud.

  "He's adorable." The hostess handed Kim a menu and told her a waitress would be right over.

  The waitress, a young blond woman with short curly hair, arrived at the table a few minutes later. She all but ignored Kim as she talked to Cody. "Hi, there, punkin'," she said. "What can I get for you tonight?"

  Kim ordered pasta to share with Cody and was pulling a bib from her purse when two policemen walked past her table. Her hand froze in mid-air. The two men sat down in a booth directly across the aisle from her. The youngest of the two was facing her and he caught her eye. She quickly looked away. She could barely get the bib tied around Cody's neck, her hands were shaking so hard.