"A sixty-two-year-old male named Dexter Quinn," Friedman said. "You'll be interested to know that, according to the Office of Social Security, Mr. Dexter Quinn from 1970 to 1986 worked as a biologist for Darby Pharmaceuticals of Lexington, Massachusetts."
"Oh my."
On the evening of the sixth day the cell phone rang.
Brett was in the shower while Laura and Roger were going through attorney names from photocopies of the Boston directory Brett had made at the local library. It made sense to seek counsel at the epicenter of their case.
They looked at each other anxiously. Only two other people in the world knew that number. And Wally was dead. Roger picked up.
It was Jenny. Thankfully, she remembered to use a nontraceable phone they had bought her years ago.
"I've thought over your request to stay," she announced with odd formality, "And I think we can help you."
"Well, that's very nice of you, but are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"You know that the authorities are looking for us," Roger cautioned.
She must have bought a newspaper because she said, "I know that. But you'll be careful not to get caught driving down."
"We'll do our best."
"You have to," she said with forced solicitude. There was a long pause as she muttered something to herself. "It's just that I need a favor in return."
"What's that?"
No sooner were his words out, when like a half-glimpsed premonition he heard her say, "The orchid medicine. I want you to bring me some when you come."
Christ! She had reduced it to barter. "Jenny, we've been through this before. You know I can't do that." He tried to be gentle with her so as not to scare away her offer.
"You can do it if you want to."
"But I'm not going to."
"Then you can't stay here!"
"Then so be it."
He heard her voice change pitch. "Don't you hang up on me, Christopher!"
He didn't know if she had called him that out of hostility or if she was just out of it.
"If you don't bring me some, I'm going to call the police. And I know where you are."
Roger took a deep breath. They didn't need this. He looked over to Laura. "She's threatening to call the cops unless we bring her some Elixir."
"Shit!" Laura grabbed the phone from him. "Jennifer, what the hell is this all about?"
There was a long gaping silence. For a moment she thought Jenny had hung up, except she could hear some odd sound in the background. A tinkling, like broken glass. "Hello?"
Then in a strange girlish voice Jenny said, "Laura, I need my medicine. And I'm not taking no for an answer."
She sounded crazy. "Jenny, we've been through this-"
But Jenny cut her off. "I know where you are, and if you don't bring it, I'll have to tell them. I have their number right here. Minneapolis Police Department." And she rattled off the number.
"I don't believe you're doing this, Jen. I don't believe you'd betray us."
"It's you who's betraying me," she said in that weird singsongy voice.
Laura had never heard her sound so desperate. She had obsessed so much that she had pushed herself over the edge. "Jenny, listen to me, you haven't called them yet, have you?"
"No, but I will. So you better be here tomorrow with it. I'm not fooling."
"Please wait a moment, and don't hang up." Laura put her hand on the mouthpiece and glared at Roger. "We'll have to bring her some. She means it."
Roger nodded and threw his hands in the air to say "promise her anything."
"Okay, we'll be there," Laura said. "But, Jennifer, don't you dare call anybody, or we'll be arrested and you'll never get it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, but you better be here, or else I will." Then she gave her address. "It's a pink house with green shutters." And she hung up.
Laura dialed her number, but the power had been turned off. "What do we do? She sounds nuts."
"We don't have much of a choice."
All Roger could think was that Jenny would be the last person in the world to entrust with Brett.
Jenny lived five hundred miles from Minneapolis by Interstate. Under normal circumstances, the trip would take about ten hours.
But circumstances were anything but normal. Roger Glover alias Christopher Bacon was everybody's prime fugitive, which meant he'd have to take back roads and drive at night to play safe. The round trip would take days, and there was no way he would put that distance and time between him and Laura and Brett. They were in this as a family. They'd go together as a family.
The plan was to stay with Jenny for a night or two and give her a few ampules and a syringe.
Of course, they didn't know what a safe dosage was; nor would they know what to do should she have a toxic reaction. Too much could kill her; too little could cause her severe damage. And Jenny was damaged enough. Laura could not live with that. The only solution was to fake it.
So, before they left, she filled six ampules with saline solution. Jenny would never know, and when she caught on weeks later, they'd be working out their defense. Besides keeping her quiet for a few weeks, the visit would give Jenny the opportunity to meet Brett in the event their defense failed. They made no mention of this to Brett. It was too unthinkable.
After leaving Jenny's place, they would continue east and find the best lawyers they could buy.
"It's hard to believe anybody would take us on," Laura said when they were alone.
"Even Timothy McVeigh had a lawyer," Roger said. "Besides, we have a bargaining chip." He patted the emergency vial under his shirt.
"Going to try to bribe a judge like Wally?"
"Laura, I didn't bribe him, and you know it. He had the option not to go on it." Then he added, "Like you."
They explained to Brett that for a day or two they were going to visit Laura's sister Jenny who lived alone with her sixteen-year-old daughter. And that while they were being processed through the judicial system, he would stay with them. But that wouldn't be for a while. Maybe weeks.
They would take Laura's Subaru and another set of IDs-Peter, Ellen, and Larry Cohen.
"Dad, when it's all over, you going to go back to your old names again?"
"We've been Roger and Laura for so long, it might be kind of confusing. What do you think?"
"Yeah. I don't have to change to Adam, do I?"
"Of course not."
"No offense, but it sounds kind of dumb-you know, Adam and Eve. Running around naked and naming the animals. I'd rather stick with Brett."
"Besides, no one named Brett would be caught dead in a fig leaf, right?"
"I'm glad you see my point."
Laura wore a dark wig and tinted glasses, also tanning lotion which turned her a few shades darker. Meanwhile, Roger shaved off his beard and cut his hair to a whiffle. He looked eerily young. So much so that Brett commented, "You could be my older brother," and looked away unnerved.
Roger also carried cotton absorption wads-the kind dentists used-to be packed in his mouth to alter the shape of his face when they stopped for tolls and gas.
In the middle of the night they loaded the car undetected.
Amidst suitcases of clothes sat the cooler containing chopped ice and two hundred vials of frozen Elixir serum. The remaining supply and notebooks were miles from here, buried nearly a decade ago. And with them, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in cash.
Before they left, Brett asked to see a sample, so Roger removed the emergency supply from around his neck. He snapped open the tube and extracted the long glass ampule.