Poison Flower (17 page)

"If you don't know about him, let's talk about your wife."

"I met her in college. The University of Texas at Austin. She was beautiful. Long, honey-blond hair, a great smile, a body like a goddess."

"I have an unpleasant question. If I'm being insensitive, please forgive me. But your sister told me Susan cheated on you even then, right after you met her. Is it true"

Jane watched him shrug, and then stay silent for a few seconds. "At the time, I would have sworn she would never cheat. She could have just dropped me and had somebody she liked better. But in the light of what happened later, and what I think happened, I'm not so sure. An attractive woman always has men looking at her. Any day she's inclined to, she can bring the whole thing on and have it over with in an hour or two, including a bit of flirting ahead of time and putting on fresh makeup afterward. There were plenty of times when she could have, and catching her at it would have been the last thing I was thinking about."

"So you proposed and she accepted, and you married. What did you do for a living"

"I was a beginning executive at Cole and Castor, the office supply wholesaler. They started me as a trainee account manager and then moved me around a bit, so the departments and I got used to each other-sales, advertising, inventory, purchasing. Sue was in pharmaceutical sales at Megapharm, working mostly with hospitals and medical groups."

"And when did the problems start in the marriage"

"About two and a half years into it, I sensed that she wasn't quite right. First she was working late and tired all the time. I would get home around seven and she might show up at ten or eleven. She always dressed up with high heels and expensive clothes. She would come in and shed all that stuff on the way into the bathroom to wash off her makeup. When she came out she was in a pair of sweat pants and a big T-shirt. She would hardly talk to me while she had a snack and went to bed. Then we'd get up in the morning and start over."

Jane waited. He was talking steadily, moving in the direction of the crime, the moment when all of these details had made sense to him.

"Then she started having to go to medical conventions to lobby the doctors there to prescribe her company's products. This kept her away for three or four days at a time, with part of it being the whole weekend."

"When did you have time for each other" Jane asked.

"As she got busier, we were together less. Sex was practically nonexistent. She was gone so much, and then when she was home she was always too tired to even think about making love. I tried to be patient with all that. Then I thought I should say something, ask whether there was something I could change to make things better. She said no, the work would all pay off in the long run, and so I should be patient. I told myself she had a right to her career, and if working all those hours would get her somewhere, I should support her."

"So you dropped the subject"

"She said she loved me. We're all brought up to think we have to talk about everything, and that's all that matters. It isn't. What people do is the truth. If she doesn't have sex with you, she doesn't love you. If she isn't with you, it's because she doesn't want to be."

"How did it end"

"It took a while. I still thought that I was seeing things clearly. Then I happened to notice some new things. The first was while she was away at a weekend convention in Atlanta. She had left on Thursday morning. A notice came on her e-mail Friday that said her flight to Atlanta on Saturday morning was going to be delayed about fifteen minutes. I didn't see the e-mail until Saturday afternoon. The e-mail carried the six-digit confirmation number, so I looked up the reservation on the airline's site. Sure enough, the flight was Saturday morning, and the return flight was Sunday night. The flight wasn't charged to her company. It was charged to a credit card in her name, and it was a credit card I hadn't known about. The billing address was her mother's house. Naturally, I was wondering what she had been doing from Thursday morning until Saturday morning, and where she had spent the nights."

"What did you do"

"I called her, but everything went to voice mail. I went to visit her mother, to ask her if she'd heard from Sue. When I asked what she knew about the credit card, she seemed surprised. First it was `What card What do you mean' Then it was `Oh, that card. When you get married, plenty of things still come to you at your mother's house.' I could only pretend to shrug it off. I went home. When Susan came home on Sunday night I didn't say much about any of it. I just looked for signs. I noticed she didn't unpack that night. We both left for work the next morning, and I came back and opened her suitcase. She had a couple of tiny little bathing suits, but she loved to swim, and was at a big hotel, so it meant nothing. She also had business clothes and a cocktail dress, and jeans. Nothing conclusive."

"Did checking the suitcase help set your mind at rest"

"The opposite."

"Why"

"When I found myself sneaking around and searching my wife's suitcase for evidence, I felt I had come to a low point. I wanted to know once and for all. I also didn't want to know. Maybe it was a brief fling and it would end, and she'd learn she loved only me, and she'd be a great wife forever. I hated myself for having that thought, and for wishing I could be protected from the truth until the ugly part of the truth went away. I hated myself for suspecting her, and I felt self--loathing for ignoring the signs for so long. Some nights I was ready to confront her with the whole mess, and then I'd wake up in the morning and start wondering if I was just putting bad interpretations on innocent facts. It was horrible."

"So you did confront her"

"No. I came home from work as usual one night, and she didn't. That wasn't unusual. But I had a funny feeling. I noticed something was different in the living room. Things seemed to have been moved. No, I realized. They were -missing -a couple of pictures, a vase or two. I went into the bedroom and opened her closet. There was nothing left in it. Her dresser drawers were empty, and the drawers in the bathroom and the medicine cabinet. Usually the bathroom counter looked like a cosmetics store, but all the bottles and jars and tubes were gone. I went to the phone and called her cell number, but her phone was off. I called her private office number and it went to voice mail. I texted her-`Where are you' I figured if she was checking any e-mail it would be her office address, so I sent a careful e-mail, so I wouldn't embarrass her. I just said to please call me as soon as possible. And I waited up all night, but there was no response. At around five a.m. it occurred to me that I should check on some other things. I called the number for our bank, and punched in the account numbers for our accounts. The checking account had a hundred dollars, and the savings account balance was zero. She had moved away and cleaned us out. At seven I called in to work to take a sick day. At eight I called her mother."

"What did she say"

"That Sue wasn't with her, and her leaving town was my fault. She couldn't even go home to her mother, because I was too close by and wouldn't have left her alone. She had left Texas entirely."

"Did that make you think about backing off"

"No. I was frantic. I just wanted to know what went wrong. Was she in love with somebody else Was I just too repulsive to stay with for another minute Was she mad about something I looked for her. I finally went to see a lawyer, and while I was telling him the story I mentioned the whole money issue, because I couldn't pay him a lot of money until after payday. Right away he told me I didn't have a prayer of ever seeing the money again, but it was an adequate pretext for finding her and asking her for an explanation. He hired a skip-tracing company, and they found her new address, which was in California."

In the back seat, Iris stirred and sat up. "Hi," she said. "Where are we"

"We're still on the interstate, getting ready to make a stop for gas," Jane said. "It's a good time to use the restrooms and get a cup of coffee."

"Great idea," said Iris. "You two can just head for the restrooms and come back to the car. I'll be the one to show my face and buy the coffee."

Jane said, "Good idea," and looked at Shelby.

Shelby got the hint. "Thanks, Iris," he said. "It'll make stopping a whole lot safer for us."

Jane pulled off the interstate at a large gas station and bought gas, and they all used the restrooms. When Iris returned to the car with the coffee, Shelby was asleep.

10.

Jane still drove with her left foot so she could rest the muscles of her right thigh and help it heal. She had been trying for all of this time to keep her mind on Jim Shelby's troubles and off her own. But as she drove through the last dark stretch of night on the interstate, the thoughts and feelings came back to her.

She had been shot, captured, and tortured. She had not allowed herself to think about the horror and the brutality of the torture right away, because the memories and images might weaken her. She'd had work to do to get herself away from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and on to Salt Lake City, and then to get Shelby back in motion. But the darkness and the solitude brought her own experiences back.

The three men had done her terrible harm. She was afraid that she wasn't healing quickly enough, and that she and Shelby-and now Iris-would be killed because she couldn't run and couldn't fight, and her limping would make them stand out.

Now that she was beginning to heal, and the car made her injuries undetectable, she had a new concern. Now she was feeling the loss of the beautiful, strong, smooth body she'd had. She had always been a runner, a member of the track team at Deganawida High School and then at Cornell. Over the years she had kept running, and also done tai chi and practiced aikido each day, but she hadn't thought much about how it made her look. Now she knew that beauty had been more important to her than she had ever admitted to herself. What would Carey think when he saw her.

Her mind moved deeper into the experience. The captors had not raped her. She supposed that since she had been shot right away, rape would not have happened until she had recovered. And then their priority had been to find out where Jim Shelby was, so they weakened and marked her further. But she had expected that sometime soon she would be raped. If they'd had the chance to complete their auction, then she would have been at the mercy of men who had been hunting her for years, hating her for outsmarting and outrunning them, but most of all for freeing their prey. She would have suffered everything they had been wishing they could do to her. Rape would have been only the beginning.

Jane checked her rearview mirrors, as she did every minute or two. There was a set of headlights that had been behind them for a few minutes. When she went faster, the other car sped up, too. When she slowed down, the other car didn't pass. Instead, the car slowed down, too, hanging back just far enough so she couldn't get a look at what was behind the headlights. She accelerated sharply.

Shelby sat up. "What's going on"

"I'm just trying to figure that out," she said. "There's a set of headlights behind us that's been there too long."

He turned in his seat and stared out the rear window. "Could it be cops"

"I can't say no to anything, but usually if cops get curious, they speed up and take a closer look at you. They run your plates on their computer. If they're still curious they pull you over."

Suddenly the car behind them pulled out into the left lane. Jane caught a clear silhouette of the approaching car in the headlights of cars behind it. "It's a cop," she said. "I can see the light bar on the roof. He's going to pass us. Sit tight." She slowed down.

The car moved steadily up to their left, accelerating all the time. It slid past them, and the cop in the passenger seat glanced at them but then let his eyes focus on the next car ahead. The police car was moving fast now, and its red taillights gradually diminished into the distance. "I guess we're not the ones he wants."

"That's a relief," said Shelby. "Want me to drive for a while"

"Not yet. Feel like talking some more"

"About what"

"When I've taken people out of the world in the past, all of them had somebody chasing them. But I can't recall any who were already serving a life sentence in jail and still had enemies trying to get at them. Why do you"

"I don't know. They sent me to prison for life. They should have been satisfied."

"I keep thinking it has to be something about the murder. If we can figure out what happened to your wife, maybe we'll know what these people are so afraid of."

"My sister told you the essentials, and I've told you most of what went on between Susan and me."

"You said she moved to California. What was there"

"Supposedly it was to be able to start a new life without interference from me."

"`Supposedly'"

"Her mother said that. After I found out where Sue was, I called her mother to ask if I could come over and talk. She said she thought that might be a good idea. She said to come over to her house at seven, and we could have a real conversation."

"Did you tell her you knew where Susan was"

"No, I didn't," he said. "I didn't feel as though she had ever been on my side, and I certainly didn't that night."

"And nothing new happened the weekend Susan went away No argument, no big fight stands out in your memory"

"No fights. The only thing that stands out is that I'd found out she had concealed a lot about her business trips, and I had asked her mother about the credit card. The next thing that happened was that she was gone."

"About the money-"

"I didn't care about the money."

"I believe you weren't motivated in any of this by money. The victim often isn't. The thief is. Otherwise she wouldn't steal. How much was in the account she emptied"

"About two hundred thousand. What I'm saying is that she didn't decide to leave me to get my part of the money."

"Why do you think she left"