James had tried. He'd really, really tried.
He knew he should call home, tell his dad everything was okay, but cops would be watching the house. That was the first thing they'd figure he'd do. They'd also be watching previous associates and members of the academic community. Friends, if he had any.
Funny how you could be an outcast even among your own kind.
He had to go it alone.
He had to disappear.
New Orleans was perfect for that. After things cooled down, he would hitch a plane to the Bahamas, then on to Haiti. Once there, he'd call his dad. Tell him he was okay. Try to convince him he hadn't really done anything wrong.
Shouldn't have done it. With hindsight, he could see it had been a bad idea. But he'd been a little out of his mind at the time. And when he was out of his mind, he did unpredictable things. Crazy, foolish things.
Sometimes, when he looked back after a particularly wild encounter, he couldn't remember what he'd done, where he'd been.
Who he'd been.
When he reached New Orleans, James referenced movies he'd seen, as a blueprint to disappearing.
He didn't use his credit card. He cut hisJ Bleached it blond. Quit shaving. Wore Different clothes.
A whole new persona. It felt good. Great to reinvent himself. Step into a new life…
But not many days into being a fugitive, the novelty began to wear thin. He grew tired of trying to find places to sleep, tired of being dirty, tired of wandering the streets of New Orleans.
Then he was mugged.
The last straw. The last fucking straw.
"Don't spend it all in one place!" he shouted after the three hoodlums as they ran down the alley with his billfold.
Enough.
He wandered into the New Orleans Police Department Headquarters.
"I'm James LaRue," he announced to the female officer at the front desk.
His new persona must have been good, because nothing about him registered with her. She stared blankly, waiting for him to state his purpose.
"If you look up the name on your computer, you'll see that I'm wanted in Savannah, Georgia, on a felony charge."
She called for assistance.
Two more officers showed up, one huge black guy and a white guy who looked as if he spent every free second in the gym.
"James LaRue," the female officer confirmed when she checked the computer. She eyed him, then the screen. "But you don't look much like the guy in our database."
Another officer wandered by, glanced at the screen, then back at James. "Could be him. What about prints?"
"No prints in the system. Never been in trouble before."
"Got any ID?" the black officer asked.
James patted the pockets of the baggy tan shorts he'd picked up at a thrift store and shrugged, his hands spread. "I was robbed."
"Did you report it?"
"I'm reporting it now. And aren't we getting a little off track?"
"I think we'd better get one of our facial-identification specialists down here," the black guy said.
"Why would I say I'm somebody I'm not?" James asked. "Especially somebody who's wanted for a felony?"
"Happens all the time," the woman told him. "You could be a Confessing Sam, looking for some attention your parents didn't give you as a child. Or you could just be looking for a free ride to Savannah."
Ingenious. He'd stepped into a whole new sick world.
"You could have run into LaRue somewhere. You could be pulling this switch for LaRue."
Until they could make a positive ID, they put him in a holding cell, fed him, and gave him a pillow and blanket.
After what James had been through, it felt like a five-star hotel.
Chapter 31
Elise folded the newspaper and tossed it on her desk. The cemetery photo was kind of campy, but the reporter had done a good job on the TTX article, getting her facts straight and displaying the Savannah Police Department tip line in large numbers on the front page.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
The sound came from beyond her office window.
Elise looked out to see David and Audrey in the cemetery, playing catch. She zipped her computer in its carrying case and went down to meet them.
"The pitcher hurt her arm," Audrey announced. "So I'm going to pitch a few games. Isn't that cool?"
"Isn't pitching a dangerous position?" Elise asked. "Didn't somebody break a nose last season?"
"I have to practice." Audrey lined up her fingers on the softball. "A lot." She tossed the ball to David, who was crouched in white shirtsleeves, his jacket and tie draped over a tombstone.
He caught the ball and straightened, shaking his bare hand. "That's enough for me without a glove."
"Mom, will you practice with me? Maybe tomorrow or the next day?"
Elise had never tossed a ball in her life. "What was her name? The girl who broke her nose? Camille? Didn't they say if it had hit any harder, her nose would have been shoved into her brain and she could have died?"
"Mom!" Audrey let out a laugh of exasperation. "Will you practice or not?"
"Okay." Since life made no sense, Elise would probably be the one to end up with the broken nose.
She eyed her partner. He obviously knew quite a bit about gloves and balls. "Need a ride home?" she asked. His car was still in the shop.
"Love it." He grabbed his jacket and tie.
It was late afternoon and traffic was heavy getting from downtown to the suburbs. They hit every red light and breathed in enough carbon monoxide to kill all of the canaries in the state of Georgia. Audrey, still excited about pitching, chattered the entire way and bailed out of the car as Elise pulled to the curb in front of Thomas' house.
"I'm going to pitch!" she shouted, dropping her glove in the grass and running toward Vivian, who was strolling around the yard, a baby on each hip.
Vivian passed off Toby to Audrey, then came over to sit cross-legged in the grass so that she could chat through David's open window. In the background Audrey put her mouth against Toby's belly and blew, making the baby grab fistfuls of her hair and laugh hysterically.
"We're having a neighborhood block party and cookout in two weeks," Vivian said, bouncing baby Tyler on her knee and making faces at him. "Please come. Both of you. You need to have some fun, Elise," she added as if anticipating an argument.
"Oh, I have fun," Elise muttered. "Lots of fun."
Block party. It meant a bunch of strangers milling around, struggling for common ground. Elise didn't fit in that kind of world. A world that pretended bad things never happened. But then, was her world any more real? A world where horrendous things happened on a daily basis?
Vivian attempted a new tactic. "Try to get her to take some time off," she begged David. "Try to get her to come."
David was slouched in the passenger seat, eyes squinted against the setting sun, arm braced on the window. "Sounds nice to me," he said congenially. "But I don't have any influence over her."
Everything seemed way too normal all of a sudden. It made Elise feel a little queasy. "We'll try to make it," she lied.