Thomas Perry - Poison Flower

"What did you do"

"I went back to the living room. I sat by the coffee table and looked at the mailing label on the corner of the magazine to see what his name was. The label said `Megapharm,' which was the name of her company, but the address was on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. I started looking in drawers and things to find something-bills or other mail that would at least give me the name of the guy she was living with. But after a while it occurred to me that I was being stupid. I was in a place I had no legal right to enter. The marriage was over. So I took a sheet of paper from a notepad by the phone and wrote her a note. I said, `When you're ready for the divorce, get in touch. You know the address and phone number. Jim.'"

"After all that, you just wrote a note and left"

"I turned in my rental car at the airport, then waited about three hours for my flight. I remember wondering if I should go back to try again, but I couldn't think of anything that would accomplish. I had my cell phone on all that time, but she hadn't called. I even checked the voice mail at home in case she left a message for when I got home. When I boarded my plane I turned off the phone and that was that."

"That was that"

"As far as I was concerned, she was out of my life. I went home and went to work for a month or so. I did my best to stop thinking about her. I started to date a woman I knew from work. I suppose it was nothing serious. We had known each other for years and both kind of wondered what it would be like. She'd been divorced for a year and a half, and now I was separated from my wife, so we found out, and it was pleasant. Then, about three weeks later, Sue was killed. The day after they found her body there was a knock on my door. The California police had asked the Texas police to find out just where her husband was."

"Standard procedure."

"Well, they woke me up, and with me was the woman I'd been dating. That went into the record-that I wasn't a grieving husband, but a guy who had already replaced his wife. Then there was the domestic violence arrest at her mother's. At that point I learned that both of them-Sue and her mother-had gotten restraining orders against me in both states, saying I represented a danger to them. Sue's death was settling on me just about the time the police started telling me why I was a great suspect and trying to get a reaction on tape."

"Did they tell you the details of the murder"

"She was found in the apartment by the building manager, who wanted to talk to her about why her rent check had bounced. He couldn't get her to answer the door, so he opened it, and there she was. She had been hit with a heavy metal object several times, and then stabbed. They didn't have a time of death, and it was impossible for me to provide an alibi to account for every possible time."

"Did the cops give you any useful information"

"I learned pretty quick that I was the only suspect. What I didn't know yet was that the man who shared the apartment in Los Angeles with her was gone. He had moved every single thing of his out of there. Then he had given the place a careful cleaning. My prints were on a few things, but his weren't. The apartment lease was in her name. The note I'd left proved I'd been there. I hadn't put a date on it, and so the guy who framed me left it on the counter as though I'd been there in the past few days."

"Tell me about the trial. At least some of the men who have been after us were there. Did you see them"

"I was in Los Angeles County Jail for ten months before my case came up on the docket. My sister told me there were men going around in Austin scaring off people who might testify for me, but I never saw them. Once the trial got going, I got the rest of my education. I was a man with a history of domestic violence, a person who broke a restraining order to get to his ex-wife. Everything the prosecutor could say I'd done was against me. But he also brought out everything bad Sue had ever done to me, and that was against me, too. The fact that she'd cheated on me and stolen our savings didn't make anybody sorry for me, but it was a convincing motive for murder. They brought her mother, uncle, and cousins to testify I was crazy with anger. Sue had supposedly even said something to some woman at work about how, if she was murdered, it would be me. I'm sure the woman was paid to say that."

"How long did it take the jury to convict you"

"They had a verdict in three and a half hours. They put the cuffs back on me as soon as the verdict was read, and took me back to the county jail. A week or so later they got me out to hear my life sentence."

The voice from the back seat startled him. "You poor thing."

He turned his head to look at Iris. "I thought you were asleep."

"I woke up. I hope you don't mind that I heard." She put her hand on his shoulder.

He shook his head. "There aren't any secrets. It was all in the papers and on TV at the time. It probably is again right now, so everybody knows what kind of man escaped."

"Nobody escaped," Jane said. She glanced at Iris in the rearview mirror. "Neither of you escaped. Those people don't exist anymore."

11.

They stayed on the road as long as they could, and stopped only to change drivers and buy necessities. They paid in cash for everything they bought. The long, straight highways in the middle of the country gave Jane time to begin teaching the others how to stay difficult to find. "Every time you deal with anybody, there is information to protect, and misinformation to plant. Even here on the road."

"On the road" said Iris. "You mean we lie just for the sake of lying"

"We hide the truth, or anything that could lead anybody to the truth. The fewer people who see Jim, the smaller the chance he'll be recognized. I was photographed at the courthouse, so I'm a potential problem, too. So we have you do most of our talking, and if only one person needs to show her face, it will always be your job. We want to protect the car, and have as few people as possible associate it with us. That's why I try to park it where it's not easy to see, and there are no cameras to leave a record of the license number. If we talk to anyone in a station or restaurant, always lie. If we're going north, say south. Any misdirection might save your life."

When it was Jane's turn she drove hard, staying at or slightly above the speed limit for each three-hour shift, pushing it when the rest of the traffic was fast, and then keeping the needle glued to the speed limit when the rest slowed down. She didn't accelerate or touch the brakes for long stretches of road, because keeping a car moving at the same speed used the least gas and put the least strain on the car's parts.

They drove for almost three days, over nineteen hundred miles from Salt Lake City to Delaware Avenue at Gates Circle in Buffalo, and they arrived at one forty-five p.m. When Shelby began the arc that would take them halfway around the circle, Jane said, "Keep going north for a few blocks, then pull over wherever you can do it safely and we'll change places."

He pulled over a few blocks farther on, and Jane took the wheel. She went around the first block, then came back south on Delaware and into the center of the city.

Shelby said, "Where are we going"

"To a place where you'll be safe while I pick up your sister and bring her back."

"She's my sister. I should be with you."

"She and I have met, remember" Jane said. "This is the best way."

Iris said, "But what's the point in splitting up"

"Anybody who knows where Sarah is will be waiting near her, trying to get Jim. When I was in Los Angeles, one of the men who held me there told me they knew about her and that she'd be the next one if I didn't tell where Jim was. She'll be a priority for the police, too. They always expect fugitives to turn to a relative, and most of them do. The reason we've been tearing across the country is to get to her before anyone can figure out where she is."